Valve Confirms It Contacted Nintendo About Dolphin Emulator Coming To Steam

"We brought this to their attention proactively"

Towards the end of May, the team behind Dolphin Emulator revealed its release on Steam had been "indefinitely postponed" after it was contacted by Valve.

Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle has now issued a statement (via The Verge), confirming Valve originally reached out to Nintendo:

Given Nintendo's history of taking action against some emulators, we brought this to their attention proactively after the Dolphin team announced it was coming soon to Steam.

And here's Valve's full response, clarifying this is a legal dispute between Nintendo and Dolphin:

We operate Steam as an open platform, but that relies on creators shipping only things they have the legal right to distribute. Sometimes third parties raise legal objections to things on Steam, but Valve isn't well positioned to judge those disputes – the parties have to go to court, or negotiate between themselves. An accusation of copyright infringement, for example, can be handled under the DMCA process, but other disputes (like trademark infringement or a breach of contract claim between a developer and a publisher) don't have a statutory dispute resolution process, so in these cases we generally will cease distributing the material until the parties tell Valve that they have resolved their dispute.

We don't want to ship an application we know could be taken down, because that can be disruptive to Steam users. Given Nintendo's history of taking action against some emulators, we brought this to their attention proactively after the Dolphin team announced it was coming soon to Steam.

Based on the letter we received, Nintendo and the Dolphin team have a clear legal dispute between them, and Valve can't sit in judgment.

A Nintendo spokesperson previously shared the following statement about the company's stance on "illegal" emulators and copies of games:

Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers. This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo's protection measures and runs 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 in turn expects others to do the same.

You can get a more detailed rundown of the events so far in our original story:

Update: Nintendo responds with statement

If there are any significant developments moving forward, we'll let you know.

[source theverge.com]