Its not that much of a loss given you can still launch Dolphin from steam anyway. It just won’t be on the storefront.
Just add it as a non-Steam game, right?
Yup
I constantly say “we live in the future,” and this is more proof.
Steam has done this for like 20 years now
Being able to emulate a Switch on the SteamDeck by simply adding it as a non-Steam game isn’t something we’ve been able to do for 20 years… but OK.
If you’re emulating the switch on dolphin, you’re not even in the same time line as everyone else
I use Steam ROM Manager to add my games to Steam and it works wonderfully.
There’s also EmuDeck that automates this process too.
Yeah, but you don’t get cloud saves or achievements
Can’t complain too much though. Dolphin is so good were spoiled.
As much as I hate Nintendo, I fucking hate them for their stance on emulation. You would think they would have the sense to preserve their heritage outside of their own platforms since they do such an absolute dog shit of a job of providing access to the library and catalogue of games. Either make your games available (as widely as they are via emulation) or move the fuck outta the way.
Edit: I meant to say “as much as I love them”, but going to leave my double hate up there because of how idiotic their decision is to crack down on emulation.
Nintendo loves emulation, they’ve been emulating their games for at least 15 years when they started doing it on the wii, it lets them sell you the same game over and over again on new platforms. They just don’t like it when anyone else does it because they don’t make any money off it.
When Nintendo embraces PC, the world will end
Fuck Steam, download it directly from their website and tip them on their develoemt fund if you like it!
it’s a bit of a tangent on this story, but it’s been super disappointing that the wii/gc emulation layers they built for the mario collection hasn’t really materialized in anything else. I feel crazy for thinking we would start getting ports of gc/wii games that feel lost to time
You’d think Nintendo want’s people to play their games, but you’d be wrong. Nintendo wants people to buy their games. Whether they play it or not is irrelevant. While some producers and creatives might still have fun and the user first mindset, current Nintendo is only interested on profit. New releases will always make way more money than supporting old releases via emulation. They don’t care that people can’t legally purchase or play their old games. They think of them as marketing to leverage nostalgia for new releases. They place no value in their library of past games.
Replace Nintendo with Sony or Microsoft and you get the same result. No company cares about you playing their games, just buying and spending money. Hell they’d prefer if you didn’t play them and just gave them money.
You’d think Nintendo want’s people to play their games, but you’d be wrong. Nintendo wants people to buy their games.
Ford doesn’t want you to drive their cars, they want you to buy their cars.
Apple doesn’t want you to use their computers/phones, they want you to buy their computers/phones.
My town doesn’t want me to use water, it wants me to pay for that water.I don’t think the Ford and Apple examples apply, as these companies make primarily physical products. Both of these companies really do want you to use their products for two reasons:
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Most of their marketing is literally just people seeing their products being used.
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Cars wear out with usage, as do computers, so the more you use their products, the sooner you’ll buy a new one.
Digital media is unique in that it’s not highly visible and using it more doesn’t make it degrade.
Digital media is unique in that it’s not highly visible and using it more doesn’t make it degrade.
I’m not sure what they has to do with whether the business involved in funding and creating the media wants to be paid for that work. But I’ll provide more examples if that helps.
Disney doesn’t want you to watch their movies, they want you to pay to watch their movies.
Netflix doesn’t want you to watch their shows, they want you to pay for a subscription.
Sony doesn’t want you to play their games, they want you to buy their games.
Apple doesn’t want you to listen to music, they want you to pay to listen to music.I agree with your examples, all of which have been heavily criticized for anti-consumer behavior, particularly Disney and Netflix, so I’m really not sure what point you’re trying to make. Just because Netflix does it, doesn’t make it okay for Nintendo to do it. Digital media companies have strong incentive to practice anti-consumer behavior, so public outcry is important to counterbalance that.
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Old Nintendo was only interested in profit as well, they just didn’t have the reputation to act quite as greedy.
Current Nintendo is the capitalist wet dream
Just Nintendo though.
Sony, Microsoft, Sega, Activision-Blizzard, Rockstar, etc all just care about producing quality games for people to enjoy and don’t really care about being paid for them.
I don’t really see the point of adding it to Steam in the first place anyways
Free lifetime cloud storage for my savefiles and an easy way to update would have been pretty sweet…
I completely agree. Emulators don’t belong on Steam.
There are already emulators in steam, so…
And evidently I don’t think they belong there.
Say goodbye to all the Sega Classics and Mega Man Legacy Collections then.
Rereleases that utilise an emulator released by the rights holders is absolutely not the same as a general purpose emulator and you know it.
Sure but why does that difference matter?
Easy access to piracy.
Steam hosts software. Emulators are software. Google Play and Apple Store have emulators, why is Steam any different?
Because it’s actually a good storefront?
No reason it shouldn’t have emulators, of course, but there’s definitely differences.
TLDR
Because Valve asked Nintendo if it was allowed, and Nintendo said it shouldn’t (pretty please), so Valve asked Dolphin to ask Nintendo if they could. Dolphin’s team finds of obviously impossible to accomplish.
I think it’s smart on Valve’s part. With how litigation-happy Nintendo is, I don’t think Valve really wants to go to bat for a program that isn’t even their own, and isn’t even needed on Steam anyway.
Valve is lawsuit averse. They sacked NFT games and AI generated games for similar reasons.
By the same extent, Valve is so based.
I don’t understand, why are people mad that Nintendo isn’t allowing a random person to make money off its intellectual property and consoles? Why would or should they? There’s nothing for them to gain
There is no money being made here? This is foss software
With Nintendo, it’s always a double-edged sword. On one hand, they create really good games, but on the other hand, they are a shitbag company.
I don’t mind that Dolphin is not staying on steam for whatever reason - they do have an auto updater and I can use any other cloud service to synchronize my saves - but seriously, just let them be, Nintendo…
Not sure why it was coming to steam in the first place, made no sense. All it would do when you open it through steam is open the dolphin program, the games themselves weren’t being integrated into steam.
Just seemed like a bizarre decision by the devs that was always going to get blocked.
Cloud saves kinda big ngl
RetroArch is on steam right now and that has Nintendo emulators in it. So I dont see why not.
Dolphin uses literal copyrighted Nintendo code, that’s the issue.
No, it doesn’t and no, it’s not. The blog post from dolphin that I’m assuming this article is parroting articulates that perfectly.
It does actually.
Nintendo’s lawyers argued in a letter to Valve that Dolphin operates by incorporating Nintendo’s “proprietary cryptographic keys” by decrypting the ROMs of GameCube and Wii software, thereby violating the DMCA. Nintendo is referring to the Wii Common Key, a decryption key built into Wii hardware that was extracted more than a decade ago by a separate group — known as Team Twiizers — and incorporated into Dolphin’s code.
The team behind Dolphin argued in their blog post about the emulator’s Steam release that “only an incredibly tiny portion of our code is actually related to circumvention,” and that using the Wii Common Key does not apply to GameCube games.
It doesn’t. Encryption keys are not code and are not copyrightable. Distributing them is also not illegal. The word “proprietary” here is meaningless at best and dishonest at worst.
Of course actually using that key to circumvent drm may be illegal, but I’m no lawyer. Send like that would be on Dolphin’s users anyway.
Food for thought: if Nintendo genuinely thought they had a good legal argument against Dolphin, why wouldn’t they just send them a cease and desist directly instead of just getting them kicked off Steam?
They very well might now - valve went to Nintendo to ask about dolphin. Nintendo might not have looked into it previously but now they have. They recently got the android switch emulator “skyline” shut down via dcma. Dolphin might be next.
There’s no chance that a company as litigious as Nintendo somehow didn’t know Dolphin existed or how it works.
They know that they have no chance of winning because Dolphin is legal.
I think cuz integration with steam dick would be more seamless
Please don’t integrate with steam dick
