Nintendo Justifies Blocking Dolphin’s Release on Steam in Light of Protecting the Hard Work of Developers and Engineers

Nintendo has done it all again. They have recently added to their growing reputation of banning content. This Japanese company has once again banned the release of an emulator. Earlier, rumors had it that Nintendo was the driving force behind Microsoft’s Xbox emulator ban. Although it was never confirmed to be true, the Japanese company got a bad rep for it.

Now they have blatantly shut down the efforts of a popular emulator for the GameCube and Wii. They have cited protecting their IP and the hard work of their developers and engineers for taking this decision. And surprisingly, experts in emulation see them at the right this time.

Nintendo bans the launch of the Dolphin emulator on Steam

Dolphin emulator, a popular emulator for the GameCube and Wii, recently released a piece of heartbreaking news for the fans. The company came forward on its website saying the release of its emulator on Steam has been postponed indefinitely. They also said that according to Valve, Nintendo had “issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page.”

This raised the eyebrows of many emulation experts at first. The emulators in themselves are a perfectly legal piece of software to use. The actual problem is due to the use of ROM images of copyrighted games. So for the aforementioned reason, many experts were backing the side of Dolphin.

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The emulator company, on the other hand, used the Wii Common Key, a cryptographic key utilized by the Wii to decode games. The Japanese company cited this to be the reason they took the step of issuing a statement to Valve and the Dolphin creators.

The Japanese company further explains their decisions

Nintendo claims the use of Wii Common Key actively bypasses their piracy protection measures. Other emulators choose not to do this, or require players to source their own BIOS files to legally protect the emulator.

However, in a statement to Kotaku, Nintendo said, “This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games.” This process harms their development process and endangers their IPs according to Nintendo.

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What are your thoughts on the cease and desist issued by Nintendo for the Dolphin developers? Let us know in the comments section below.