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We recently learned that the release of the Dolphin emulator on Steam has been delayed indefinitely. Back then, many reported that Nintendo sent a copyright infringement notice to Valve. But it looks like it wasn’t quite like that.
Po words Pierre Bourdon, one of the people involved in the development of Dolphin, Valve contacted Nintendo before adding the emulator to their platform, asking if there would be any problems, but in the end received a negative response from Nintendo. This is not a removal due to copyright infringement! This is a normal removal by agreement between the two companies.
Basically, Valve has the right to remove any content on their platform, and they probably didn’t want to take a chance with Nintendo, so they reached out to the Japanese company to get their opinion. This means that the creators of Dolphin will not be able to file any kind of appeal, since Valve has the right to refuse content on its platform.
As for the legal reason why Nintendo didn’t agree to this, it’s that Dolphin relies on Wii Keys to decrypt games. While most emulators require players to provide a key, Dolphin comes with a pre-built key.
