Dolphin emulator team gives up on releasing it on Steam

Dolphin, which lets you emulate GameCube and Wii games on PC, will no longer be available on Steam. It had been announced for service by Valve in March of this year, before being pulled from there shortly thereafter. After consulting with a lawyer, the emulator team released a declaration explaining what happened.

Initially, it was believed that Nintendo might have sent Valve a DMCA (Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notice, requesting that Dolphin be taken down from Steam. However, the team explained that this is not exactly what happened.

“What actually happened was that Valve’s legal department contacted Nintendo to inquire about the announced release of Dolphin on Steam,” reads the statement.

The team then claimed that Nintendo had apparently requested that Valve prevent Dolphin from releasing on Steam, “citing the DMCA as justification”. The team was then told by Valve that they had to reach an agreement with Nintendo to release the emulator on their platform.

“Given Nintendo’s longstanding stance on emulation, we feel that Valve’s requirement that we get Nintendo’s approval for a Steam release is impossible,” they explained. Because of this, the team scrapped plans to release Dolphin on Steam.