Image: via Twitter
Towards the end of May, the team behind Dolphin Emulator announced that the release on Steam had been “indefinitely postponed” after contacting Valve.
Valve spokeswoman Kaci Aitchison Boyle has now issued a statement (via The Verge) confirming that Valve initially reached out to Nintendo:
Given that Nintendo has taken action against some emulators in the past, we proactively brought this to their attention after the Dolphin team announced it was coming to Steam soon.
And here is Valve’s full response, clarifying that this is a legal dispute between Nintendo and Dolphin:
We operate Steam as an open platform, but that relies on the developers only sending out things they are legally allowed to distribute. Sometimes third parties raise legal objections to things on Steam, but Valve isn’t in a position to judge such disputes – the parties have to go to court or negotiate among themselves. For example, an allegation of copyright infringement may be dealt with as part of the DMCA process. However, for other disputes (e.g., a trademark infringement or a breach of contract lawsuit between a developer and a publisher), there is no statutory dispute resolution process. In such cases, we generally stop distributing the material until the parties notify Valve that they have resolved their dispute have.
We don’t want to release an application that we know could be removed as it may be disruptive to Steam users. Given that Nintendo has taken action against some emulators in the past, we proactively brought this to their attention after the Dolphin team announced it was coming to Steam soon.
Based on the letter we received, Nintendo and the Dolphin team have a clear legal dispute between them and Valve cannot judge.
A Nintendo spokesperson previously shared the following statement on 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 bypasses Nintendo’s protections and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games hurts development and ultimately hampers innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies and expects others to do the same in return.
For a more detailed look at what’s happened so far, check out our original story:
If there are significant developments in the future, we will let you know.
[source theverge.com]
When he’s not paying off a loan to Tom Nook, Liam enjoys sharing the latest Nintendo news and admiring his video game library. His favorite Nintendo character used to be a guitar-playing dog, but now he prefers to hang out with Judd the cat.
