They need Valve to not block them for Nintendo without legal case based on some excuses (which Valve as store owner is somewhat allowed to do).
And the one thing Nintendo does not want is a legal case, because they know they are most likely going to lose it and then it's likely not just dolphin which would take advantage of the additional legal clarity created by the case.
In the EU I'm not sure there even would be a case because the law being _that_ clear cut in favor of Dolphin.
> And the one thing Nintendo does not want is a legal case, because they know they are most likely going to lose it and then it's likely not just dolphin which would take advantage of the additional legal clarity created by the case.
Bollocks. Nintendo has a reputation for suing the hell out of anyone, often repeatedly, even if they would likely lose. They're rabid about protecting their IP, to the point where they're infamous for it.
Family friendly front-end, but ruthless corporation behind it. They'd absolutely get lawyers and charge in aggressively.
Valve has nothing to gain by putting their money at risk for someone else's emulator; "no dog in this fight".
But in this case if they lose in court they will lose far more then "just" dolphin being on steam.
And with how it's currently they for sure guaranteed won't see dolphin or similar on steam, a sure fire way which might even be cheaper then suing.
Also AFIK in most cases where they sue they either have a good chance of winning or losing will just lose that case and not set a precedence which can cost them dearly.
> But in this case if they lose in court they will lose far more then "just" dolphin being on steam.
The only thing they'd really lose is the money they already spent on lawyers, and they're more than happy to accept that loss. Nintendo will sue in futile situations just to make the other party miserable.
No they set legal precedence that Nintendo device emulators are legally okay (as long as they don't do anything additional etc.). And publicity, too.
If you considers how many people in this chat alone just blindly assumed it's illegal, and that's given a "more tech affine audience of HN, then that is a huge deal.
Go to your local supermarket and start selling things, let's see how long until you get kicked out by security.
If Valve says no, Dolphin doesn't come out on Steam. If Valve says "ask Nintendo", and Nintendo says no, Dolphin doesn't come out on Steam. Dolphin doesn't get a pass to be published everywhere because what they're doing is legal.
but it's Valve which is blocking them not Nintendo
and sure Valve might do so on behest of Nintendo but it's still Valves doing so
the idea that Dolphine (or Valve) have to asks Nintendo for anything is just completly absurd and beyond any legal basis
which is why Nintendo doesn't use the proper legal methods here IMHO, because then you can dispute it and they can (probably will) lose
but as long as Valve plays along there is nothing much Dolphin can do, so again it's Valve who first needs to be convinced before then either Nintendo gives up or you have a proper legal dispute with them
anyway like you correctly pointed out there is no way for Dolphin to affect Valve so the is no way for Dolphi on steam
Legality is not the issue here. Not everything that is legal can be published on Steam. The people who make it a legal argument after this article are missing the point.
All indications are that the dubious legality of ML-generated art is exactly why Valve is not approving those games. Valve isn't taking a moral stance against ML-generated art, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure the ML models were not trained on unlicensed content and will not spew copyright infringements.
Valve isn't taking a moral stance against emulators, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure that unlicensed software won't be run on them and will not invite copyright takedowns.
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Valve doesn't want to carry software that they may be sued over as a distributor.
Until they are on very firm standing that it is ok, they pull the software.
As a distributor of software, Steam has no appetite for distributing any software that may lead it to legal entanglements. Spurious DMCA requests, AI art, or credible threats from Nintendo - that game cannot be distributed.
Valve limited there store to "in general not contain products of a certain type (here AI art containing)".
But in case of Dolphin this isn't the case but a explicit ban of dolphine without it braking Valve TOS.
If Valve would but in their TOS that "emulators are generally not allowed" then rejecting Dolphine would be okay and no one would have wirten any blogs or news articles about it, or even tried to put it on steam.
>They need Valve to not block them for Nintendo without legal case based on some excuses
Or what, they sue Valve? It's still their store. Valve can reject any title for any reason (well, almost any reason. But proving discimination here would be difficult).
I've come across this issue with Valve's vague rulings for dozens of titles, so I'm not exactly surprised the outcome here once again favors Valve. But people are still in blind devotion for Valve instead of realizing that they have been leveraging their pseudo-monopoly on the Pc platform for years now.
They need approval from Nintendo because they include the circumvention code which is illegal under the DMCA. Whether the key is included or not doesn't change anything because the code itself is illegal as it is. But if they removed the circumvention code, Nintendo wouldn't have any right to ask for the emulator not to be published.
No. Valve needs them to get approval from Nintendo because Valve is afraid of Nintendo. They are afraid Nintendo might:
1. Start a lawsuit against Valve rather than Dolphin Team as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). Valve could then end up spending millions defending itself from the mad tyrant and the best case is it spent millions to confirm it was doing nothing wrong in the first place.
2. Tell all their 3rd party publishers to stop publishing on Steam, in order to continue doing business with them, utterly ruining Steam.
In both these cases, it has nothing to do with legality or the DMCA, which Dolphin Team's own lawyers have explained if you'd just read the article. It has to do with a big bully getting angry if it doesn't get what it wants, and is willing to throw its weight around.
The interesting question here would be if "Tell all their 3rd party publishers to stop publishing on Steam" would be legally OK or if it would result in a lawsuit against Nintendo because of e.g. anti-competitive behavior.
I see that this could go bad for Valve, but the principled side of me thinks this sets a bad precedent for Value and the gaming community at large to be asking for permission from publishers/developers to green light a tool that helps people play games that are no longer able to be played. (if I am understanding this correctly)
Retro games are in jeopardy of being lost forever because publishers/developers actively work against making it possible to preserve game history.
If that doesn't do harm to the common good, I don't know what does.
Also I doubt they would care about the legality in the slightest. It's not like they would send a press release about it.
It would be an one-time, in-person, strictly private meeting between the respective publishers and executive management. Like the one where they're shown a new console and talk about renewed licensing terms for the platform.
Nintendo literally has a history of this. If you did anything to try and get around their extremely restrictive game selling rules in the 80s to sell more games than you were allowed or games that weren't "licensed" or anything like that, Nintendo would just stop sending you any games.
Nintendo is straight up evil. US courts have told them in direct language that they are wrong and emulation is fine, but they don't give a fuck and the US seems against preventing big money entities from harassing people with lawsuits or fixing the goddamn court system to not cost you a million dollars when you are unambiguously in the right.
That sort of thing can drag on for years. Why would Valve be eager to get into such a fight, even if they feel certain they would eventually prevail? Valve is a business, not a charity or a public utility. (I think a lot of Steam-fanboy gamers are often confused on this point!)
Nintendo would deny ANY and ALL circumvention, no matter how “illegal” it is (which it isn’t, if you’d read the article). Nintendo profits off the deaths of their previous hardware, so of course they will say things are illegal which aren’t. I mean they did abuse the DMCA just a few months back against various legal projects.
It's way more than just profits, look at all the loved games from their past that they continue to not release on digital storefronts or "Nintendo Plus" or whatever they call it now.
Nintendo has an ideological position that essentially the first sale doctrine is wrong and they have privilege over you for things you legally purchased.
no that code is most most likely not illegal at all because there are cases, under DMCA, where code like that is fully legal
this is nothing but a ruse of Nintendo threatening Valve to avoid having to do a proper DMCA request/suing as such an action can be disputed in court, an dispute Nintendo is likely to lose
so it's basically Nintendo pressuring Valve to circumvent proper DMCA enforcement procedures in their favor in a sketchy dishonest way which undermines the law (but might happen to not be illegal)
if Nintendo would think it's illegal they would already have used DMCA to take down Dolphin everywhere, instead of using such roundabout ways
The article says a lawyer firm they hired say it's legal. They dedicate a significant portion of the article to it. So I don't understand how you can just it's illegal.
Nintendo doesn't have any right, in the legal sense. That doesn't mean it's smart for Valve to make an enemy of Nintendo. It's obvious Nintendo uses that pressure. Not legal pressure. The DMCA claim is just pretense.
