Read the email: Valve helped Nintendo kick the Dolphin emulator off Steam

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Have you heard about how Nintendo blocked the Dolphin emulator from making its way to Steam, allegedly with a DMCA takedown? This is not the full story.

According to copies of communications provided by the Dolphin team ledgeValve helped Nintendo get Dolphin out – first by bringing the Wii and GameCube emulator to Nintendo’s attention in the first place, and second by unilaterally deciding to pull the plug without giving Dolphin out.

Valve doesn’t dispute this. Valve spokesperson Casey Aitchison Boyle said, “Given Nintendo’s history of taking action against certain emulators, the Dolphin team actively brought this to their attention shortly after it was announced to be coming to Steam.” ledge,

It sounds strange to me – but email Too The show Valve may have very good reason to nip the dolphin in the bud.

Here’s the full email Valve received from Nintendo’s lawyers on May 26th, so you can follow along:

Email via Dolphin Team

Email via Dolphin Team

First, below the first paragraph: “Thank you for bringing to Nintendo’s attention Valve’s announced offering of the Dolphin emulator on the Steam store,” says Nintendo’s attorney. In a series of mastodon posts On May 27, Pierre Bourdon, former treasurer of the Dolphin Foundation, suggested that Valve poked the bear, and this – plus Valve’s comment ledge – confirms this.

But second, the email confirms that there is nothing like that. A typical “DMCA takedown request” – and that’s why Valve didn’t give Dolphin a chance to contest it.

Nintendo’s lawyer writes (Boulding mine):

Wii and Nintendo GameCube game files, or ROMs, are encrypted using proprietary cryptographic keys. The Dolphin emulator operates by including these cryptographic keys without authorization from Nintendo and decrypting the ROM at runtime or immediately before. Thus, illegal use of the Dolphin emulator circumvents a technical measure effectively controlling access to a work protected under the “Copyright Act”. § 17 USC 1201(a) (1).

The distribution of emulators, whether by Dolphin Developers or other third-party platforms, constitutes illegal “traffic(king) in a (the) technology . . . that . . . designed primarily for the purpose of circumventing a technical measure or has been created. . . . § 17 USC 1201(a) (2) (a).

Why am I bolding 1201? I’m not a lawyer, but I spoke to three of them last year researching a similar story, and they drove home for me that DMCA section 512 – the one that holds platforms liable for what their users post Takes things down fast. — completely different from section 1201 of the DMCA.

1201(a)(2) says those companies Cannot host copyright fraud technique:

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

(A) Designed or constructed primarily for the purpose of circumventing a technical measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) Is limited to only a commercially important purpose or use other than by circumvention of a technical measure effectively controlling access to the work protected under this title; Or

(C) marketed by that person or any other person in conjunction with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technical measure effectively controlling access to a work protected under this title.

So it doesn’t matter whether Nintendo formatted the DMCA takedown notice correctly, or whether Valve gave Dolphin a chance to speak for himself (narrator: it didn’t). Nintendo is threatening Valve with a lawsuit, not Dolphin, and Valve can’t get away with just saying “Dolphin filed a counter notice, sue them first.” That’s how section 512 should work, but section 1201 doesn’t.

(Even though it’s Section 512, Dolphin doesn’t have the “right” to counter-notice – Steam is Valve’s shop and can take down whatever it likes.)

Email via Dolphin Team

Now, would Nintendo really prevail if it sued Valve for distributing Nintendo Wii and GameCube emulators? It’s impossible to say, but the Dolphins team confirmed it ledge That the emulator ships with a generic cryptographic key. Ars TechnicaKyle Orland spoke to several lawyers Who would think that Nintendo might have a good case because of this, and because it could mean relying on a very different precedent than previous emulator legal battles.

It looks like Nintendo is attempting to brand Dolphin an “illegal emulator”. Nintendo spokesman Eddie Garcia made this statement Verge:

Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers. This emulator illegally bypasses Nintendo’s security measures and plays illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and expects others to do the same in return.

“Valve may not be interested in picking that fight with Nintendo on behalf of the Dolphin team,” said Mark Methanitis, a video game industry attorney. Ars, maybe even valve was making up for that It Mistakenly Put a Switch Emulator in a Steam Deck Ad,

We don’t have to guess too much about what Valve thinks, because Valve provided this full description Verge:

We operate Steam as an open platform, but it relies on creators only shipping things they have a legal right to distribute. Sometimes third parties raise legal objections to things on Steam, but Valve isn’t in a good position to judge those disputes – the parties have to go to court, or negotiate among themselves. Allegations of copyright infringement, for example, may be handled under the DMCA process, but other disputes (such as trademark infringement or breach of contract between a developer and publisher) do not have a statutory dispute resolution process, so in these cases We will generally stop distributing Content until the parties notify Valve that they have resolved their dispute.

We don’t want to ship an application that we know can be removed, as it could be disruptive to Steam users. Given Nintendo’s history of taking action against certain emulators, we actively brought this to their attention after the Dolphin team announced it would be coming to Steam soon.

Based on the letter we received, there is an apparent legal dispute between Nintendo and the Dolphin team, and Valve cannot sit in on the decision.

On May 26, Valve told the Dolphin team that it had removed its emulator from Steam “unless or until both parties notify us that the dispute has been resolved.” Since there is little chance that Nintendo will ever actively support emulation, and Valve has decided not to protect the dolphins, that’s as far as the story will go.