Nintendo is threatening legal emulation...and it doesn't look good
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- čas přidán 26. 05. 2023
- Dolphin, the popular Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator has been removed on Steam due to a DMCA citation from Nintendo. In this episode I take a closer look at what's gone down and why Dolphin is in potentially some legal trouble.
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#dolphinemulator #DMCA - Hry
just wait until nintendo find out about the REAL illegal number....... 69...
How the hell do you have more subscribers than me?
holy shit it’s setheverman the bald guy. u need to get that as a title on like a birth certificate.
That's the Bald Number
Nice
>two bald people on the internet...
That's illegal •_•
If they're distributing the decryption keys, that's such a silly mistake to make. So many other emulators make you supply the BIOS for this reason specifically.
Hey, get your logic out of here, hate-boners for Nintendo only.
Interestingly enough, that's only for the Wii part. As far as my knowledge goes, the GCN part does not need any keys.
there is a huge difference between one key (1 single big number) and a firmware blob like a BIOS which is a lot of executable code
@@TheBackyardChemist yes, there is a difference. But the fact of the matter is still that it's a private key and Dolphin developers should've probably left it up to the users to provide the key.
Take Cemu for comparison, one of the benefits of it being able to run extracted game copies is that it does not need the Wii U Common Key as the game is already decrypted. However, if you want to run the encrypted copies, you need to provide the Wii U Common Key yourself.
There is a difference. decryptions keys are not copyrightable unlike BIOS images. The only reason this is illegal is because of copyright circumvention provisions in the DMCA (and these provisions are ridiculous).
If that's the case, Dolphin should search a way to bypass the use of keys, or make the user add it themselves.
I was thinking the same thing.
The easiest way is to just make the user load it in, then upload the key to The Pirate Bay.
Either using pre-decrypted roms or requiring separate keys like every other modern emulator.
But Nintendo is also trying to make getting your own keys illegal, look at locpick dmca (the tool used to get switch keys) So in the end it will make all emulation illegal
@@TakumiJoyconBoyz TPB is not trustworthy at all, even for piracy
The truly nightmarish thing is that, if the encryption keys must be removed to ensure the safety of the repository, the only way to truly do so would be a rewrite of git history. This is a massive headache for all forks, open pull requests, and any commits between then and now which touched the offending code. Even worse, all downloads using the encryption keys on the dolphin-emu website would need to be removed or recompiled.
Edit: I encourage everyone watching this video to seek out the Mastodon posts that Delroth (former Dolphin team member) posted about the situation. It clears up a lot of misinfo.
I suppose that's the "best practices" thing to do, long-term, but isn't it much simpler just to stand up a brand new repository with a "safe" revision? I can't imagine implementing a user-provided key is a major programming challenge to a team capable of such sophisticated hardware emulation.
link to post? i only got a 404 not found error on his mastodon profile
@@WaysofReading Git history is really important for bisecting stuff like some random change from the tev-fixes-new back in Dolphin 4.0 that accidentally regressed some tiny thing and went unnoticed for years. It is not a good idea to throw it away.
Automatically doing that rewrite should theoretically be achievable, albeit slow. I'd imagine the way to do it would be to identify the earliest revision that has the code, rebase a private repo "dest" to the revision before that one (with a repo "ori" being a copy of the original one, set to the commit that introduced the problem in the first place), indicate to your custom rewriter where the offending code is actually located, and have it then start "translating" commits from the original repo "ori" to your private one, with the offending code being removed (I _think)_ from "ori" individually for _each_ commit that's getting translated. You'd want to be careful, and some commits dealing solely with this might be best removed entirely, but such a thing should work.
Indeed. You cannot just remove something from Git without essentially re-creating the entire repository from scratch.
You CAN alter the commit history but that is a messy and slow process and likely won't help all the forks out there.
We really need international laws for abandonedwere. When a company doesn't use, sell or update a software for a certain time (maybe a few years) it should go into public domain.
It will go into public domain after 75 years after the last programmer dies.
@@IkarusKommt It should go into public domain immediately after it isn't being sold.
@@IkarusKommt The existing 75 year period is obsolete for digital media, though. There are games barely 30 years old that are almost impossible to find, and developers can lose the source code of games (this can even happen with high profile, AAA franchises like Silent Hill). Making it 75 years after the fact basically condemns a huge chunk (maybe even a majority) of video games to being lost to history. That's not just bad for gamers, it is bad for any art form to be relegated to destruction like that. Public domain should be updated to account for new media.
Or you could do what we're already doing today. Emulating old games and ignoring copyright.
Pikmin 1 and 2 just got a HD rerelease, for the Switch, considering not long ago we got Metroid Prime HD Nintendo is giving Gamecube games to the fans
I'm surprised...only because I would have thought if they wanted to target Dolphin that they would have done it YEARS ago.
I agree it's really odd there going after them now like dolphin is nearly 17 years old if not a bit less
Nintendo is selling a portable PS3 in 2023, emulation is so far ahead anybody can run their games at 4k60fps.
You don't see how that would be an obstacle to their greed?
Blame the yuzu freaks and Tear of the Kingdom folks for setting Nintendo on a warpath.
Folks are wayyyyyyyyyy to eager to publish and pirate before a game releases.
The community's fault again, and again.
No one trained in subtlety, this company is the most legitious modern day corpo around.
Companies need to have a reason for things. Very often, this is a financial reason. I think we can all guess what Nintendo is planning. It has been already way to long ago that they came out with something as well. They also probably know that nostalgia is selling big time at the moment. Their latest movie was full of it as well.
@nuruddinpeters9491 I would pin the blame on corporate journos who can't abide there being a single facet of this industry that doesn't bow to their neoMaoist cult.
They're the ones explaining how to pirate new Nintendo releases.
I love how nintendo will discontinue games, removing them from their digital storefronts and relegating them to a used market with exorbitant prices, then get mad about people who dare to emulate them. Like bro ... sell me your games. I'll pay for them, but I'm not paying 500 dollars for a damn pokemon game released a decade ago. Get real. They're not losing any money on these games because they won't even sell them to us. ridiculous
It was a mess seeing just doing stupid stuff Imposing sanctions against Nintendo would have a last option
Imo, if I talk like the late ghandi, " I like Nintendo, but I don't like your illegal corporate ways." If you get my gist of it.
i agree and disagree
they have the right to sell their games, they own them, you have the right to decide to buy them at high prices or not... but roms or games in general are not there just for you to take, don t act as if the games are yours to take...
Nintendo are like Russia and China, they have power and control fantasies. They enjoy dictating what people can and can’t do with their products and it’s not about their bottom line. They instead do it because they get off dominance in a sadistic sort of way.
@@omegarugal9283 that ignores the reality that whether or not those games are mine to take, people will pirate them. That's their choice. Nintendo's choice is to make them available for purchase, thereby opening up a revenue stream that they themselves have chosen to close off, or to whine about emulation. Neither of those choices can stop piracy, but one of them does make money for Nintendo. The smart choice should be obvious.
By stopping people from playing older games, they force them to play new games. Or stop playing their games entirely, hahahahaha
I always wondered why Dolphin didn't ask for BIOS... Big mistake on the team's part; I hope they sort this stuff out soon.
I literally started using it yesterday! I dumped my BIOS and everything from my GC. I thought it was like all other emulators, that explains why it didn’t want to use it. Thought I was doing something wrong, I had no idea how the GC side worked. I never used the Wii portion. Keeping my Wii put up.
Nope also they remove it because you cannot download any illegal rom from the website because of copyright.
@@Xboxbuginhead0 not true
There are GB, gba, nes, and snes emulators that dont ask for BIOS
@@nightruler666 the vast majority of those use simulated/emulated bios which is not as compatible with games as a dumped bios
Putting this on an official game store seemed like asking for trouble to me.
Maybe, but emulation in and of itself is legal (this has been proven in court many times). Downloading ROMs (even if you own them legally) is the moral gray area that's always been an elephant in the room.
Well sure. But that wasn't really the issue since others exist on there.
@@FamousWolfe Involving money often makes it easier for things to go bad for the devs.
@@FamousWolfe May be legal but doesn't mean it doesn't cause problems to the company that owns the copyright of those products.
The company may want at some point in the future to release/port those products in for their mordem hardware, but their sales/profits will be impaired by the existence of alternatives that they don't own that let people access their products.
You, me and the world may not like it but its reality.
You can look at things this way: If there was no emulators there would be a ton less people downloading ROMs that they don't legally own.
This could technically increase the interest for the company to reintroduce this products in the market at a later date because of their increased perceived value due to scarcity.
Its a complicated topic but with emulators the copyright owners always ends up in the losing end of the bargain.
@@vitor900000
If there were no emulators, many games would just be lost forever.
And while in theory not providing alternatives MIGHT increase demand for an official rerelease somewhat... the reverse is often true as well. Consider the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 for instance. At present, there is no legal way to acquire anything except the original Metroid Prime that makes Nintendo any money whatsoever. And even buying used is prohibitively expensive depending on region and possession of a working GameCube.
Since there is no way to easily experience the rest of the series, people who might otherwise be interested in the sequel may pass on it, which of course hurts sales.
Even for just rereleases and not sequels, having the original versions readily available through emulation keeps it possible for fanbases to grow and develop long after a game's initial sales run, which means more people who know to be excited about an official port or remaster.
Consider the constant demand for Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door to get a rerelease. While Nintendo has not yet given any indication of delivering, do you think that demand would be as strong if new fans hadn't been able to play it at all in the intervening years?
I was surprised its hardcoded as CEMU requires you to find a title key off their emulator to avoid this issue.
You know Nintendo, maybe if you would offer your older games officially on PC or your own hardware, maybe you wouldn't have so many people pirating your games
They do. It’s just in the shittiest forms possible. Some fabulous examples include Mario 3d All-Stars and N64 Switch Online
@@Butwhythough881 plus sometimes you dont even own the games. you are just paying a subscription for them.
$10M 3 days tears of the kingdom and even the busted pokemon scarlet/violet makes nintendo too big to fail. People don't even buy the voucher for overpriced tears that is too late for preorder bonuses and probably collector's edition.
I am thankful indie developers recreate a lot of stuff as well as collections on other systems (no idea why arcade archives sells king of fighters '94-'98 for more individually than the $3 orochi saga that has all those games).
As bad as xbox is sometimes, they do have the best backwards compatibility for 1 system (ps3 is needed for a ton of ps1 and ps2 games digitally with way better prices than the crazy $20 or $40 old 3ds games before the shutdown).
@@MrVariant tears of the kingdom is fine, the large game statement is just an excuse, the real reason is inflation, if you said this, you might as well the world is anti-consumer. Nintendo just use this to recover the losses on the $60 games, it’s all been planned. Sony & Microsoft did the same thing even before Nintendo and they also made an excuse of next generation games but it’s also just inflation. We just have to accept it and help the economy to recover so company would be able to stop charging $70
You're stupid if you think they'd even consider releasing games on PC.
As soon as I heard that Dolphin would be available on Steam. I knew that Nintendo would step in or figure out a way to make sure it wouldn't be released on there.
Same, I dont know why they wanted to release it on steam. Were they planning on selling it?
@@chinito77 - Most likely, to make it easier for Steam Deck users. That alone was probably the biggest reason.
@@JediMastr80 emudeck is way
I think we can all agree that Nintendo's a BIG FAT CRYBABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kind of reminds me of the first DVD decrypting software. I don't remember all the details, but basically they were sued because they had the encryption keys used by DVD copy protection, but the makers of the decryption software pointed out that those keys were revealed in a court trial previously and were a matter of public record. Oops!
I had a t-shirt with that key printed on it that I used to wear. While it was certainly a clever shirt in concept, in retrospect it was terribly obnoxious to be constantly having to explain to everyone what the hell the shirt was about, as it's a very nuanced conversation that can easily come off like I was just mad about it for piracy reasons.
@@P-_-S I can imagine how many questions you got. I used to have a shirt that said:
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't"
Don't ask me how many times I had to explain that one!
BONUS: Another one:
"Why do programmers get Christmas and Halloween mixed up? Because DEC25 = OCT31"
"NOOOO THAT'S COPYRIGHT!!!! STOP STEALING OUR CODES!!!!"
Hey didjaknow? There's a case where ALL these keys are just, dangling in the open?
"Uh.... no."
Case. Dismissed.
@@Not_interestEd- and the Wii common key was found with a set of tweezers over 15 years ago
@@sebay4654 A set of tweezers? Please explain!
Emulation needs to be protected at all costs
@watching stuff how much does Nintendo pay you
@watching stuff no, it should be protected for everyone and every use case lol. There's no metric of right and wrong there.
What people like you do not understand is that emulation (and hell even some degree of piracy) HELPS nintendo. Sometimes, even with money and time, there is virtually NO WAY of getting in touch with older games. These older games can make someone attached to certain franchise and eventually they'll make the hypetrain for the new title.
@@Laekith all he did was give his opinion and you're on his dick.....chill out nerd.
@watching stuff how does pirating a new game for a new console have anything to do with emulation 💀💀💀, dolphin is for the wii, which hasn’t had a new game release and sell on it for years 🤯🤯🤯
Indeed.
Maybe i should i pirate a Nintendo game today?
It is always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.
play wind waker
I’d say get in as much of it as you possibly can. I’m gonna my Steam Deck Yuzu’d and Dolphin’d up hard when I get back from work 😈
Yes. In my book, they have lost all their rights to intellectual property.
TOTK is playable from start to finish with minimal issue on both Yuzu and Ryujinx.
Just saying for no particular reason.
At least a part of the similar case with DVDs ended up to the key being posted widely on different platforms, and even printed in T-shirts. That made it publicly available information, which was at least in part / in some juridistiction rulings a reason why the key was no longer possible to be considered a trade secret. I wonder if this is going to cause a similar Streisand effect. Maybe we will quickly need to order some T-shirts with the Wii encryption keys printed on them.
A key is basically a password though. So I don't see how printing a password to someone's bank account for example could be legal.
@@flameshana9 but it is a key to content you own (or at least are supposed to own). What is illegal is to copy games; however, this issue was not about copying games. Circumventing copy protection itself is not, so as far as I can tell, this is a matter of 1) whether the key itself can be copyrighted, 2) whether the key itself can be considered a trade secret. The part 2) in the DVD case ended up basically what could be considered if your password was "abc123" - anyone would be able to quickly find that out. Disclaimer, I am not a lawyer and also am not too familiar with the related court cases. So I could be wrong here, but this just is the way I see this is.
@@flameshana9 when you ship your pasword on.... 140 billion disks and 80 million computers.. you might be publicly sharing it.
I started pasting the Switch keys to Twitter when Shitendo went after Ryujinx and Yuzu over the TOTK leaks.
I look at this as a nice reminder that when building any software or emulator, you MUST ensure it is 100% clean and free of anything copyrighted. Had the devs forced the users to obtain the Wii Key on their own, this never would have happened. Good lesson to all.
Nintendo is an incredibly litigious, influential, and bad-faith rightsholder -- it's likely that they would have fabricated some pretext for this takedown even if the devs were more careful.
The point isn't to stay well within the law. The point is to push the boundaries and get companies to actually enforce these stupid laws. Then let's see just how long they can keep these laws on the books in our so called "democracy".
No, it still would have. Valve poked Nintendo, Nintendo gave their canned reply.
Yep. If they had to pull anything out of Wii's proprietary code to make it work, its not legal.
Just a good rule of thumb for anyone making emulators.
@@four-en-tee
That's not necessarily true. The distinction lies in whether or not the devs used illegal means to create legally protected software. A good example comes from the infamous "Gigaleak" that publicly exposed very detailed information about Nintendo's hardware, and if such illegally acquired information was used as THE basis to make Dolphin, that would render the entire project "illegal."
However, a very important distinction in this case is that Dolphin was not only built using a "clean" approach, but also that the decryption key included in each installation of Dolphin is _100% required in order for the software to work._ This creates a dynamic where copyright/trademark law would be misused to bar the public from engaging in a legally protected activity, and since such intentions are to use such a minimal (yet necessary) snippet of a decryption key to get their legal software up and running, a US court would be far less inclined to issue any sort of judgement against the Dolphin team.
This case may not be perfectly related, but it does offer some insight into how a US judge would perceive the matter. When Sega launched their Sega CD add on for their Genesis/Megadrive system, a legal tactic they attempted to abuse was to have a "Licensed by Sega" message appear every time a game was launched. The problem they were facing was that some software developers didn't want to negotiate with Sega and release software through "official" means since they knew they could legally develop their own software for Sega's machine without having to ask for permission. Instead of investing in security, Sega wished to display the "Licensed by Sega" message before the start of every game as a means of fitting words in the developers' mouths. One indie developer went ahead and unofficially released their own Sega CD game, and Sega sued them claiming that the devs misrepresented their software as being officially licensed by Sega since the Sega CD system displays that before the start of every game. The judge ruled that since the indie devs are legally allowed to develop software for hardware without the manufacturer's approval, and the only way the devs can engage in this legally protected activity is by having the "Licensed by Sega" appear at every bootup, then the developers haven't violated trademark law since their intention is to merely have their software run on Sega's hardware and not to confuse the public into thinking that Sega approved of the developer's game.
Intentions make a WORLD of a difference in the field of copyright/trademark law, and if a code of a few digits is being used solely to make a nonprofit piece of software run out-of-print Nintendo games, I honestly can't see any US judge thinking that such use constitutes legal sanctions against the Dolphin team.
Nintendo has been getting bolder recently, seems like they're trying to attack the ways emulation is made possible, instead of attacking the idea of emulation itself. This could be very worrying for emulation...
They're getting bolder because any dummy with eyes can see how corrupt US politics are, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court who makes rulings on stuff like this. I'll bet you anything they're vying for another run at copyright law to have it rewritten in their favor and outlaw emulation. Bookmark my comment for future reference, this is going to happen.
And the sad part is that people who don't know better (or nintendrones who know what emulation is but just worship companies) are defending nintendo for this.
Emulation is preservation, just look at games that had their source codes lost to time, all the lost media (or nearly lost media) games out there, or games like star fox Assault and Eternal darkness, *Nintendo* games btw that haven't been sold for the better half of 20 years.
It was never about protecting developers, it was about control and sending a message. I hope that one day Nintendo is gonna get their comeuppance.
Litteraly what they did to patch zelda glitches, not going at the source, just removing the ability to access it, aka a work around WILL be found
Nintendo can't attack the idea of emulation since they themselves use emulation so they can sell their older games to you again on the Switch for full price with minimal effort on their side (no need to pour time and resources to port the game).
@@elimalinsky7069 They don't sell retro games on Switch, you can only rent them, it's worse
they were being so careful with their emulator, reverse engineering it etc, then make such a silly mistake like this.
Must be kid developers behind it
If they've had the encryption keys in the publicly available emulator since ver. 3, they were not "being so careful". They were careless AF.
@@robowenmikels must be kid developers behind it, lesson learn
It isn't a "silly mistake". The general consensus within the emulation community has always been that sharing the Wii's common key is fine. You can find it plastered all over the internet and Nintendo have never issed a single DMCA takedown over it to my knowledge. As such, any worries over the legality of it were basically forgotten by this point. Those arguments were had 15+ years ago. Now, suddenly things have changed and it will require a rethink. It's no big drama, despite everybody trying to whip it up into one. Dolphin will simply make a few changes so that you have to input the key yourself and that'll be the end of it. The doom-mongers will have to find something else to feast on.
@Kenway true. The real mistake is when they introduced a load of bad frame pacing to the emulator. Forcing people like me to go back to 5.0 stable to have a smooth exprience
The first thing that came to my mind is, why don't they just make the user provide the keys themselves? Like you do with CEMU and Yuzu. Should absolutely not include this in the emulator itself, risk ruining the entire project this way.
I really hope the Dolphin devs can resolve this as quickly and painlessly as possible. Hell, even if I have to dump the BIOS from my own GameCube then fine. So be it. Nintendo and their legal ninjas need to be taken down a peg or two.
This is literally the same thing that happened when the MPAA tried to use the DMCA to protect the AACS encryption key that was used to encrypt some DVD and Blu-ray discs.
its exactly the same thing. and i can only hope it winds up ending the same way.
@@kenabi It might and I can see it going to court in Nintendo's hubris too. Nintendo isn't very popular nowadays.
he shows off the flag on the WIkipedia page that was designed specifically to protest this.
@Mr. Number While I get your sentiment, sales of the Switch, nuZelda, and the bottomless market that are Pokéaddicts tells a different story.
Personally though, I'm just glad I gave up my Nintendo fanboyism in the Wii era.
@@h8GW Sales mean literally nothing, especially when Nintendo were the original "we count shipped as sold" like VGChartz would popularize.
Their public image is complete dirt at this point to the point that the most staunch anti-piracy people think they fucked up with the Gary Bowser case.
Their image is so bad that "Nintendo heard of the Pokemon-themed funeral for Little Timmy, who died of cancer at the age of 8, and was so moved that they sued the family for 20 million dollars." is a POPULAR JOKE.
A lawyer on reddit a while ago was saying that (unspecified) big companies actually do take people to court (or threaten to) but we never hear of it because they slap NDAs on their settlements, they might actually be in deep legal trouble and we'll never know about it
It's doubtful because it'll be hard for Nintendo to claim financial damages because of this - which is necessary. It's true people often do settle when getting sued for 15 million dollars or whatever, because it's a lot of money. There's no financial loss here because it hasn't even been listed on the store yet. Nintendo may be able to claim that if it was already up.
Most settlements have NDA's, yes, but a DMCA C&D isn't a settlement, and isn't covered by an NDA - an NDA needs to be signed by both parties, a DMCA C&D which is a 1-way notice and can't be covered by an NDA. They could straight up have sent them a summons to appear in court, but without a C&D and without financial damages since it never got launched? It wouldn't go anywhere. Lot of time for the lawyers to waste for no real gain. First thing a judge would ask is if they had issued a C&D, he may not even be willing to hear the case without it.
Everything that lawyer is saying is true, but it doesn't really apply here. They responded to the demands in the letter, no financial impact happened, that's generally where something like this ends.
EDIT:
To be clear, these are civil cases, not FISA courts. You generally can't have signed an NDA and settled *AND* be in deep legal trouble. You sign the NDA and settle to avoid said deep legal trouble.
@@MrSlowestD16 very informative, thank you!
a lawyer
...on r**dit
PPPPHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
@@amacsizbirkisi be glad it wasn't a lawyer on 4chan, it would have sounded even less legitimate than that
I'm concerned that they'll now go after non-steam dolphin, given that all those existing releases also contain the key
How did Dolphin NOT think this would happen?
AACS on DVDs is a perfect parallel to this.Nintendo had nothing to stand on if its even really them, after the lockpick DMCA being filed by Twitter trolls i think the DMCA needs to be crushed completely.
@@snintendogIn the US, corporate interests are too strong to fight. We're lucky the DMCA is as permissive as it is.
It's an open source project provided with no warranty. Mistakes happen. Someone could have submitted a patch that fixes this.
@@halcyonacoustic7366 DMCA isn't permissive it abused AF it costs noting to file but billions to fight. Only the brave and rich can fight a DMCA even if it's an open and closed case
@@penvzila Could have but did not. Now they need to buy the code and sell the thing or they need to re work Dolphin without keys. They have to do this now no matter what to stay alive but usually this type of action is made to scare the people involved into shutting down. Dolphin has been around too long for that so I hope they find an amicable solution.
Nintendo also released an update for the 3DS last week which fixes the bannerbomb hack, even though the console has been sunset and the e-store has been shut down
Because they want you to have to buy your whole game library 3 more times
The modding community already made a workaround
@@skepticcritic4995 nice try fed
@@TheChayxxx czcams.com/video/sy-CW0X9V7o/video.html
@@junglezone7323 Nice! Let Nintendo waste more money trying to make fixes while we circumvent them for free
Always thought it was weird that Dolphin didn't require this considering every other emulator did.
The oversight is that Dolphin does Gamecube also, which isn't encrypted. With Wii bundled, it worked fine for awhile. The direction now, for sure, is the 6XX lines related to key decryption, Dolphin updates and removes them, and I guess we just have to dump our wii hardware keys going forward.
To clarify, with "wii bundled" that means there was no encryption involved on the Wii library functionality, at least it was an assumption we all followed.
I always thought that they reversed engineered the "BIOS", there are open source bios for PS2, for instance, although they don't work as good as putting an official one. I always thought that the big Dolphin win was making a really good open source alternative.
well i probably wont be using dolphin once they remove the key cause i hate having to do that shit its super annoying and if they dont provide the key for download on their site im not gonna hunt for it at all or do it by ripping the nand on my wii console cause i dont want to bring it out just for that
@@billyhatcher643 guess you'll just be on an old version forever? It's not hard to do. They put in the legwork of making this emulator and provide it for everyone free, and you don't want to paste a few bytes into a text field. How lazy and entitled can you get
Nintendo want you to rebuy their games on their new consoles, legitimately running these games to them is either on original official hardware, so in this case Wii and GC, or run them on the likes of the switch via their own emulation. On a side note, it would be interesting to see whats in the nintendo emulators as I would not be suprised if they were using code stolen in part or complete from free to the public emulators.
Strange they choose to go after a matured emu. Yuzu/Ryujinx seems like their target right now with TOTK being 100% playable.
they already gone after a switch emulator for Android devices....Called Skyline Emulator....Just a week ago
@@ultron6583 Notice it was Android devices. That explains why they didn't DMCA Dolphin directly instead of Steam's Dolphin page. Both would work on portable devices that aren't the Switch.
@@ultron6583 They did not go after Skyline. IIRC the skyline dev got scared off by the DMCA over Lockpick.
@@bruhtholemew That doesn't explain why Nintendo did not DMCA'd Dolphin in the Google PlayStore.
Is because is the only one they have a case, the other emulators don't have copyrighted code
I'd bet that the issue is the Steamdeck. Nintendo sees portability as one of their ecosystem's key selling points and the idea of Steam having a native version of Dolphin is a step too far for them. It's one of the few things that makes sense, imo. I mean if Dolphin contains these keys and is technically illegal but Nintendo hasn't dmca'd them prior, then the issue must have to do with Steam's ubiquity and ease of use.
No, it's because the code of Nintendo console is contained in the key. The key is visible so that makes it an evidence and it force Nintendo hands, they must act. And from their past actions, their actions is DMCA
I agree. People are so quick to spout the nonsense that "they aren't selling these games anymore, so why can't we pirate them?" It's because of exactly what you described. Dolphin being on the Steamdeck may have persuaded someone to buy a steamdeck and that is not something Nintendo likes. Using their products to sell someone else's product? That's a big NOPE
@@robowenmikels Argument then circles back to the classic Gaben quote of piracy being a service issue.
Agree 100%
@@Yoshi278 would he go to court and say that to nintendo's lawyers ?
3 ways Nintendo makes money:
1. Makes games
2. Makes exclusive games
3. Sues everyone for small reasons
This is the ONE time i sadly have to agree with Nintendo, since Dolphin comes with its own decryption keys for the wii (which is technically illegal) they have a leg to stand on.
Now if Dolphin would put a version on steam where you have to provide the decryption keys yourself instead of it being bundled in.... you know like EVERY other new nintendo emulator (like CEMU, Yuzu, Ryujinx...) then this whole stupid case flips right on its head.
You gotta wonder how large Nintendo's legal department is
Bigger than there development team prolly
It's so large that there's no space for the R&D department to work on fixing joycon drift.
I was gonna make a quip about it taking up more than half their budget, but the other commenters hit the nail better than I was planning to :)
Must be larger than the development budget of the Pokemon games.
@@mushroom4051 the information is readily available and they don't spend even 5 million on it
it's kinda impressive how obsessed Nintendo is with emulation I feel like if they could they would actually use intercontinental ballistic missiles to blow up emulator devs
Or just take 30% of the money they earn for the rest of their lives.
Oh wait.
@@flameshana9 100% false equivalency. That guy was PROFITING off of hardware modifications that allow pirated games to run on switch. Dolphin is not a paid product. Yes you can (I assume) donate to the project but that’s a lot different than having a paid for profit modchip/OS.
That guy 100% deserves his punishment, he broke the law. Dolphin isn’t.
Don't give them any ideas.
I'm not saying that Sony and Microsoft are not doing the same thing. Nintendo seems to be more aggressive towards emulation then the other 2.
@@cookietoonam116 they are overly protective of their IPs. They're not called the Disney of video games for nothing.
I love Dolphin and I always loved how you didn't need a BIOS file to run GC and Wii games... Now I know why... Hopefully they resolve this quickly, not because of the Steam thing, but for them to not be taken down by Nintendo and if it means having to dump the keys out of my own Wii, so be it, whatever it takes for them to not get the kibosh from Ninty's blood thirsty lawyers.
plenty of people have the version that doesnt need a bios lol, Ive got it on multiple drives myself, they cant get rid of something thats out in the wild already.
@@thefilmdirector1That's true, however a new version requiring a BOIS should be released so that Dolphin can continue development for steam, and other platforms.
There are GB, gba, nes, and snes emulators that dont ask for BIOS either
Dolphin is actually not that hard to build from source anymore so this is never going to be an issue for end-users unless Nintendo manages to make life too difficult for the core team to continue the project.
In which case it'll be forked. And Nintendo knows that.
@@nightruler666 Those ROMs weren't encrypted. The BIOS wasn't necessary to avoid copyrighted content...
Good info, thanks for explain the why of the situation. I'd seen this covered on another channel already, but they didn't even mention or talk about the keys being bundled in the emulator. The Dolphin team really should have known better.
Nintendos stance on emulation reminds me of the record industrys when mp3 happened. Looking like a legacy company stuck in the nes days of consumer control. They need to evolve with the times and tech.
It'll happen eventually when the dinosaurs running the company pass on someday.
The moment they give me a legal, official, above-ground, easy way to pay full price for a game and get a ROM is the moment Nintendo starts getting my money again. I put WAY too much money into my PC to pay for 7-year-old hardware with a 10-year-old chipset, but I'm more than willing to pay full price for their games.
@@ryo-kai8587 Finally! Someone that says screw Nintendo but doesn't buy games day one.
@jangelelcangry You're quite in the right. And yet I will argue (and defend myself) about whenever they release a VERY GOOD game, the kind only they can, the kind that takes many many years and great minds, and sets new standards in the discipline of game design. In that case, in my opinion, there's nothing wrong in showing support to send positive reinforcement, and show support for their game studios, which work very very hard and have little to do with the bad business practices, if anything they are also victims pulling through crunches and getting bad rep for releasing unfinished games on tight deadlines. Sometimes these game studios have to close down because of said bad practices.
In other words, you can buy Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey on day one and yet shit on them for not letting you emulate it on better hardware. Just please don't buy all the crap they've been putting out these last years, neither day one or year 20. Looking at you, mario tennis ultra smash.
Just my two cents, trying to peacefully argue to add different perspectives to the discussion. With that said though, my thumbs are tired from doing that in 30 different threads 😅 and I'm proud of playing ToTK for free a few days before release.
@@jonpatchmodular As I guy that supports emulation,In My Opinion Of Course, I see Nintendo as a Cancer that needs to be starved to death. Nintendo, the same company that releases SM64 emulated while the modding community already released PC ports of it. Remember, Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but an empty wallet will ALWAYS break my soul.
We need less praying hands and more middle fingers.
I personally don't care if Dolphin is unable to ever be on Steam, i'm worried about the potential ramifications of this. Like a pandora box that has just been opened.
What's scary is the fact this is just sitting in the source code. Nintendo is totally within their rights to dmca takedown it. To me it seems like they're gearing up for a legal battle, and this takedown was just to prevent it from spreading further while they prepare, it makes no sense why they'd stop at steam release.
And to scrub this from their github repository is going to be fun for their devs, it almost seems like it'd be easier to start a new repo rather than going through the history of every branch and cleaning it up (since git has a history of everything ever but it is modifiable)
I get the messed up feeling that the end of the golden age of emulators is going to be forced on us by Nintendo. I mean really, it's surprising that Bleem vs Sony hasnt been challenged before now, and if anyone has the bottomless pockets and awful intentions to fight it, it's Nintendo.
@@tricursor2481 or they want to make nintendo online on switch 2 to have gamecube games?
@@MrHkl8324 yeah that's possible but Nintendo has been going after tools that DONT have intellectual property right in their repo. Emulators have already been grey area and seem to overlap with the law about "tools that promote or assist with piracy" that they used to go after team xecuter. The only thing stopping them is the precedence set by Bleem Vs Sony. I would hope that the case would just be thrown out but Nintendo could even go after these emulators for infringing their trademarks since the console name and logo are referenced throughout. It's happened before, suing them just to cost the devs money (which they don't have) and starve them out even if they have no leg to stand on legally speaking.
@@tricursor2481 Yeah, they are most likely gearing up for a legal battle, hopefully that never happens...
I think the real reason why the original git repo for dolphin was untouched by Nintendo, is because Nintendo know if they push the dolphin dev team a court case will start and that is risky for both sides (as it can set a precedence and snowball either way). Going after the steam version is like a warning shot from Nintendo without either side going to court
I heard a lot of panic over this, but I wanted to wait for what you have to say. Thanks for explaining the situation, because there was so much mixed information I think from people just reacting, and not doing the research.
I hope we can one day see a law allowing piracy of any media that is no longer sold by the first party at a reasonable price in a given region
Yes
Will never happen but it's a cool idea
@@ninjamimealt US - probably not, Europe - maybe, there is a lot of gray area with the local and EU laws not exactly agreeing with each other and there is a lot of confusion if piracy for your personal use is legal, partially legal or not legal
Its called Russia. The made piracy legal there.
oh my gosh yes let it be a law
Dol;phin should take a route similar to yuzu, where the keys are in a binary file users can rip from modded wiis(if possible) and then the pirates will just share that file if they want anyways and users can extract it on their own falling in the USA at least under consumer protections.
This is actually a really good idea. I have a modded Wii, so I wouldn't have to pirate a key file to provide it to Dolphin. This would mean that Nintendos' copyright stays intact (on dolphins' and users like mes' ends, at least), and Nintendo cannot copyright someone else's program.
Next dolphin update: Ability to download the bios/decryption keys online or from internal storage, so no "copyrighted numbers" are stored in the source code or in the compiled form.
Or, encrypt in the emulator the decryption keys/bios files and copyright a "illegal number" as the password so nintendo cannot decrypt them without infringing the copyright of the emulator
Both of which would still be illegal, with the second half being an issue for version control I would imagine
While this is a sad thing to happen, legally speaking it's a slam dunk. The Dev team should have known better.
Emulators arnt illegal roms are
@@marcellofunhouse1234 Emulators are illegal when it uses private keys or bios files that have been ripped and supplied to the public, that's why other emulators tell you to get the bios yourself or steal from your own console, Dolphin had keys bundled in with it
@@gmanoffury tell that to the bleem cases that won in court years ago
@@marcellofunhouse1234 I appreciate the sentiment but it literally has Nintendo IP, whether we like it or not. This is why a clean room project is untouchable when done right.
@@marcellofunhouse1234 bleem didn't implement any circumvention of copy protection
Nintendo has always been a toy company first, and their legal team behaves as such. They view emulators as no different from reverse-engineering an injection mold to make your own little luigi figurines.
The were a card company and a whore house before that. Soo....
@@Jordan-jw1rk all of Japanese gaming started as ways to circumvent their strict gambling laws, this is nothing new.
if i buy a toy
i sshould be allowed to play with it how i want
@@aclzibi1156same with the states lol some games are just legal gambling for children.
@@BLARG0w0 and you can, play with the toy you bought
The moment they decided to place Dolphin on Steam, they triggered Nintendo because this immediately made it a direct threat to the Switch in Nintendo' s eyes (i.e. Dolphin on popular portable device).
The ninjas went into overdrive at that point, and it was only a matter of time for this to happen.
Steam ≠ Steam deck
@@AbteilungsleiterinBeiAntifaEV Steam might not be the Steam Deck, but the Steam Deck is Steam. Dolphin would likely work on the Deck just fine, and I'm sure the devs were doing this release for that very reason.
@@bruhtholemew dolphin *does* work on the steam deck just fine. Dolphin on steam benefits windows users more so than steam deck users who can already install dolphin through kde-discover.
Agreed. Too much exposure
@@bruhtholemew I bet you much better too considering right now it sucks ass.
legal precedents be damned I guess, I thought Sony made it clear back in the 90s with Bleam that your legal precedents don't really matter, they set the rules and they dictate what is and isn't legal.
edit. I think the Dolphin devs need to remove any copyrighted code and make a bios requirement to run the emulator and see what's to come, hopefully Nintendo will lay off of them.
oh no no no,
you don't know shit about corporate lawyers
once you give them an inch, they will take miles and miles from you
they can revert/fix the copyright no matter, supplying the bios for your emulator is a retarded idea
Quite ridiculous that an arbitrary sequence of 16-bytes that was most likely randomly generated by a machine is considered IP.
It's beyond me why Dolphin thought they could go on Steam given how litigious Nintendo is.
I guess they got cocky after seeing Retroarch up there
Retroarch however doesn't come with bios files and decryption keys, which are proprietary and copyright protected files, it's just a frontend that can download emulator cores that still require some extra files you have to track down yourself to work.
Dolphin's mistake was having a hard-coded Wii decryption key inside it, which is a big no-no.
They have been aware of this since 2020 and haven't had an issue so "assumed" they wouldn't. Should have had a lawyer look into it before trying to put it on the Steam Store.
I mean providing BIOS files and encryption keys are basic 101 rules you shouldn't do as emulation developers it's crazy how this happened to Dolphin who have been active for years without any problems.
I'm not talking about me technical reasons I'm just talking about the fact that you're making a big splash by going on steam and that increases the chances of the wrong person at Nintendo noticing the splash
They probably see Nintendo games on the Steam Deck as direct competition with the Switch, even through emulation.
But Dolphin only runs Gamecube and Wii games, which are nowhere to be found on Switch or the Nintendo Online Expansion package. I would understand if the Dolphin ran Switch games.. If they're jealous of someone running Gamecube and Wii games on the Steamdeck, then why don't Nintendo just sell Gamecube and Wii games for the Switch? They're just being petty.
They're missing the game then! The competition is that Steam Deck plays Switch games as a gimmick but plays then better than actual Switch hardware does.
You can't stop people getting around your cheap nasty hardware Nintendo, I am done now. 35 years of buying Nintendo, I will never spend another cent with them now.
*I will still 100% emulate all my games, I paid for them I own them, screw you Nintendo.*
Good. Nintendo shouldn't own a monopoly on running GameCube or switch games or anything.
The importance of emulators for competition is something that shouldn't be understated.
@@DerekMoore82 Because that would be pro-consumer.
Nintendo probably feels really threatened by the Steam Deck, and rightfully so. It's a better device compared to Nintendo's own offering from a performance and open platform perspective.
Nintendo is such a frustrating company. They make such great games on the development side but on the business side they are way behind the times and bullish.
even then Nintendo is pretty damn low effort compared to the past. Yeah they still make good games, but honestly their efforts in the Switch era are pretty damn lazy when you actually open your eyes to all the shortcuts they use. Even Tears of the Kingdom is really just a gigantic expansion for BoTW complete with a bunch of asset flipping. They tried ten times harder during the Wii U, 3ds and Gamecube era.
@@anasevi9456 using that same logic god of war Ragnorok is dlc
@@anasevi9456by your logic all major company does "gigantic asset flipping". New Spiderman reuses the same Manhattan. God of war Ragnarok reuses majority of the assets from God of War. Dragons Dogma 2 looks exactly the same as 1st game just with added shader. Forspoken is FFXV assets flip and so on...
@mushy Nintendo is doing completely fine even if emulation is quite popular nowadays. Sega didn't just move from consoles because of piracy; they got out of the business due to no one giving a shit about the Dreamcast (sadly), after the disaster that was the Sega Saturn.
Idk why you feel like bootlicking a multibillion dollar company, especially in the case when it doesn't hurt them anyways. I don't think Nintendo is gonna gain anything from people buying GC and Wii games, considering that they're not selling them atm, so "pirating" games to emulate on Dolphin isn't that much of an issue for them anyways.
@mushy Rob them blind of what? 15-35 year old games they sold and resold and resold and resold over and over again? Oh yes, please daddy Nintendo let me pay a monthly subscription fee to play the NES Super Mario bros. after i bought it on Virtual Console for both the Wii and the WiiU, AFTER i have already bought it for the GBA in the NES classic series, AFTER i have already bought it for the SNES on the All-stars version AFTER i already bought it once on the NES PLEASE!!
If you're gonna be a corporate white-knight at least have a better argument for it than this.
I'm glad you covered this, because when I first heard this story yesterday I thought the same, that Nintendo was just flexing their muscles as the Sony/Bleem case was very clear about the legality of emulators, but then I heard the Dolphin team had included keys, and my opinion kinda changed. because the precedent on including encryption circumvention measures is ALSO very clear (especially copyrighted magic numbers), and this is clearly an IP violation, so Nintendo has a rock solid standing. IDK what the Dolphin team was thinking, this was a big screw-up. Luckily it's a very easy fix, so hopefully they do it and re-list it.
Dang, Littlemac123's reasoning was justified. Dolphin really needs to be more careful here in the future. They can't make a mistake like this again. Good on them for pointing that out in 2020.
You’re all a bunch of thieves going boohoo I can’t play an old game from. My childhood so let me steal it from Nintendo. It’s nintendos property and if they never want to rerelease their game…it’s their right . But you know I wouldn’t expect you to understand this …thieves think they’re entitled to everything they don’t own.
@@Mynipplesmychoice ok then. Did you pay for that Looney Tunes compilation? And bear in mind Looney Tunes is way older than the NES. Of course these sanctimonious little a-holes lack self awareness.
@@Mynipplesmychoice stop attacking the multibillionare corporation 😡😡
@@Mynipplesmychoice relax bro nintendo is running out of boots for you to lick
@@Mynipplesmychoice Ah yeah I'm sooooo gonna steal money from a company that no longer sells and manufactures X and Y products.
Things like this remind me of the BIOS files needed for other emulation software, like PCSX2 for example, it states you need the PS2 BIOS file to boot any PS2 game, whether the disk version or whatever due to encryption, and its NOT included with the emulator for legal reasons. Other emulators have done the same, but i will leave it at that.
It goes without saying the corporate entities that still own the intellectual property no matter how old, will protect it by any means necessary.
The DS scene is interesting because they have an open source bios alternative to the official Nintendo ones.
@@muizzsiddique I agree it was not as heavily regulated compared to the home consoles. The 3DS is another example, where there were security loopholes everywhere and it all started with a single game and a certain QR code. I know MVG covered a video about it as well as others. But that was patched later and the mod community always found another way to bypass it after those patches.
The BIOS is required because it contains a library of low-level system code that games rely on (system calls).
Dolphin literally rewrote the BIOS using clean-room techniques: analyze a game running on real hardware, see what system calls it requests, see what that system call actually _does_ on real hardware, and then someone who's never seen the real BIOS code has to write code that does the same thing in the emulated system.
This is legal. The only flaw is that it's absolutely necessary to decrypt the game binary before it can run. Nintendo is trying to use the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, but fair use is an _exception_ to the anti-circumvention clause. If you're trying to _illegally_ use the game, it'd be illegal for the Dolphin team to crack the game's encryption for you. But if you legitimately own a game disc, and you want to play it, it's perfectly legal for Dolphin to enable you to do that.
You can't release something and say "this will let you play ROMs off a pirate site." But you _can_ release something and say "this will let you play genuine discs that you own, or backup ROMs that you've created of genuine discs that you own"... and if that enables some people to play pirated ROMs, that's not _your_ fault; you don't have to come up with some way to ensure that only legitimate discs and ROMs can be played.
@@FirstLast-gw5mg I see your point. Some consoles have physical decryption methods, like the PS1 for example has a warble in the disk and the bios has to detect that.
While in this case, it's a software level decryption, and if you physically own a copy of said game, you can use emulation for it.
Nearly didn't recognize your channel with the new Logo.
Dam, Dolphin is a great emulator, I played like 20 hours of NFS UG2 GameCube on it. It was flawless.
Really getting pissed at Nintendo.
This is why I love MVG. Even when it’s a topic he’s passionate about, he can look at the issue objectively. Very few CZcamsrs do this.
Virtually Zero. MVG is an honest chap.
Yeah other CZcamsrs like penguinz0 and ReviewTechUSA like to spread false, incomplete, or subjective information.
Spawn Wave is also objective.
Many CZcamsrs do this, just look for the right ones
Stop watching children on the internet then.
It's because he cares about this topic, that he points out mistakes that were made. If you're a fan of a project, company, team, or anything, you want them to better themselves, and that means pointing out mistakes and boneheaded decisions that were made too. The type of person to look the other way towards major oversights, is no fan.
Would be funny to argue that keys are not copyrightable, since their creation doesn't require human input.
That might actually work.
There is precedent for that because of Midjourney
You could argue that it does require human input. Without the sotware developer (human) getting to write the code and run it (which then the machine goes on its way to fetch random numbers and generate a secret key), it wouldn't happen. A human needs at the very minimum press the button (which is input).
The entropy built up for use by any key generator is partly based on the timings of user input. So in a very real way, modern keys only have the values they do because of the way the user moved the mouse (and other things)
There absolutely isn’t enough human creativity in the key itself to make it copyrightable, although current law doesn’t actually care about that aspect of the law based on recent precedent.
But the DMCA has an anti-circumvention clause, which is what they’re using here and against lockpick-RCM. And this clause is broad enough that it has been applied against *web browsers* because they let you access piracy websites. This is not theoretical: a file browser was just kicked off Google Play for having a web browser due to “anti-circumvention”
Something like this happened almost a quarter century ago, with DVDs and a program called "DeCSS". DeCSS was banned by the courts because it included the 40 bit encryption key for DVDs. Years before the photo that lead to the creation of the concept of the "Streisand Effect", the DVD encryption key ended up being plastered on t-shirts, bumper stickers, baseball caps, etc. There's even t-shirts being sold to this day that contain a print out of the entire source code to DeCSS.
Basically, Nintendo needs to tread lightly. The courts can't help them with it if it happens again.
Now I’m no expert on emulation development, or any software development, but this seems like such a rookie mistake.
I think what scares Nintendo more than anything is the thought of their IP running on competing hardware at any commercial level. Which is what Dolphin on the Steam Deck would be. Couldn’t they just remove the Wii bios info and release a GameCube only version on Steam?
Legally what's there now is fine, but simply removing the keys (as the bios is not part of the emulator) would remove the basis for Nintendo's complaint. Then the emulator could persist in whole, Gamecube and Wii.
Encryption keys are not generally considered intellectual property. This is kind of weird. Now, if the software was made by Nintendo and being used, then there would be merit. The work has to be original to be copyrighted or patented. They did not patent file encryption. lol
Read up on the DMCA and copy protection circumvention
@@SlCKB0Y-sb1kg I get the argument about reverse engineering, and illegal numbers. I just think that courts are doing a terrible job of understanding what they are making rulings on. There are rulings on PC hardware that go in a vastly different direction. Literally reversed engineered hardware that was ruled as ok.
@@twithnell Nintendo obviously doesn't care about the law, only profits. How will they sell you a subscription to play 5 Wii/Gamecube games next year if you have a better option that let's you play the entire library for free?
@@flameshana9 this is a fair point.
an "illegal number" just shows how broken US copyright system is. Didn't Taylor Swift try to copyright the number 1989, the name of her 2014 album?
I'm not surprised Nintendo is being aggressive in response to listing on steam, given the fascination for Nintendo emulation on steam deck
dolphin's team probably shouldve taken more care than usual to go over stuff like this with a steam release in mind
This is very very bad for Dolphin this can retroactively affect all versions of Dolphin, and I am pretty sure Nintendo is looking into ways to kill it completely and now they can.
If that were the case they'd likely have sent a similar C&D to the Dolphin GH page. There's no financial gain here, think they just don't want it on a huge platform like the Steam store. But yea, Dolphin needs to fix this all around to protect their product.
@@MrSlowestD16 Going forward the Dolphin devs merely need to distribute it without the Common Key but provide a way for the key to be added by users. Not sure if that will placate Nintendo enough though or if they'll go after the Dolphin devs.
@@SlartiMarvinbartfast Yeah, it's a really easy fix for the Dolphin devs, luckily.
I don't think Nintendo can do anything about it if Dolphin removes the keys. They'll probably back down as its basically a lost battle. Probably won't be happy about it.
Wait for a real statement by Dolphin, there's a lot of misinformation about the legal facts of this DMCA, I think for people to assume that Dolphin Team were either too dumb or had too much ego to let something like console keys be oversighted should really think hard about why that can't possibly be the reality. This emulator started development in 2003 and got help from the public in 2008, it's 2023 and to think a well known emulator with this much respect would piss it all away is naive. We have to wait for the statement, internally Dolphin is talking to their legal teams before posting the statement, mods have confirmed this. There's too many holes in this story to make it so black and white. The subject is too complex and this is more than just video games, copyright laws are always going to be the most challenging to understand and work with and it's a can of worms the US is not ready to open yet.
And what will you say if it's proven to be true? I don't get why you assume putting Dolphin on Steam wasn't a very arrogant move. It's obvious that anyone who angers Nintendo is asking for pain.
@@flameshana9 RetroArch is on Steam already, so there is precedent for emulators on the store.
@@santumChannelYes Retroarch has no bioses and need to be obtained separately unless a core provides them. But you obtain the cores in a different manner as well. It was well thought out. @g Vulture is correct. It’s all in legal-speak. It’s all speculation until Dolphin team announces.
I think their motivation is to keep control of the older titles so they can rerelease them with their own emulator on newer hardware. And emulators they don't control take a dent from that potential pie. It's the same argument why general gaming companies dont want to declare their old titles as abandonware or sell it to someone else but want to retain control of the IP.
If not this generation, they will probably be ready to do a GameCube VC for Switch 2.
They "think" it takes a dent of that "potential pie," but it most cases, it really doesn't. Many people, myself included, who would emulate older titles, if that avenue was closed for us, we're not going to go to Nintendo's emulation to play those games; we just won't play them at all, and go find something else to play.
@@logan_wolf most casual people probably don't know about emulators though. They have no idea what Dolphin or Retroarch are or have no patience how to set them up. But one day they'll buy the new Switch with a shiny box that says "can play all your nostalgic games out of the box!" and Nintendo will make more money.
Honestly surprised how retroarch made it on steam without getting nuked from orbit
Emulation on official storefronts is a bad idea IMO. It puts way too much attention on them and draws the ire of these companies.
Some publishers like Piko decided to used trimmed down emulators for PS1, SNES, MD and so on, and add properly licensed games with the emulator, like some releases of DOS games with DosBox.
If the Dolphin emulator would be sold with some licensed games it would be possible to sold, but not the unlocked emulator to use any ROM.
Retroarch isn't a true emulator though, it's just a frontend that downloads emulator cores that do the "emulation" work for it. It doesn't naturally come built-in with ANY emulators at all (And EVEN THEN YOU yourself need to track down Bios and Decryption files SEPARATELY) and thus, it's technically safe.
The common keys issue is an easy fix, just ask the user to supply the keys, do you remember the old common key generators for the wii? use those instead, or get some from hardware, similar to what switch emulators require.
10:13 I didn't knew Little Mac was an emulator enthusiast. thank you for providing the good information, Mac!
Very good and informative video. 👍
Was just having a conversation about how are childhoods may have been very different if Nintendo had their way with lawsuits. Like against Blockbuster Video, Galoob, Sega..
Immagine if Nintendo didn't have their way too. Universal for one.
Going to be blunt,
If Nintendo can/could get away with indefinately barring Dolphin from getting on Steam. Then that could be a legal precidence/incentive for Nintendo to go on a DMCA Abuse on Emulators. Possibly other companies too, such as Sony or SEGA.
Maybe Sony but Sega has always been supportive on their emulation community, Nintendo sucks
@@watchyourtoneBOl Sega’s more like “we don’t really give a shit tbh” and only really responds whenever they HAVE to(such as Sonic Origins stuff)
Sending a letter to Valve isn't the same as setting a court precedent.
Going to be blunt, no. Dolphin provides the Wii Common Key in their source code, a copyrighted item, so they get booted from Steam. Emulators like PCSX2 know that's illegal and they could get taken down because of it, so what do they do? They don't include any copyrighted code. You need the BIOS to play PS2 games, but since it's copyrighted by Sony, the only way you'll get it is by acquiring it on your own. The Dolphin devs made a foolish mistake, but that doesn't mean their mistake will lead to everyone's downfall. I don't even think it'll lead to *their* downfall, since they could just remove the Common Key on a later update and that's that.
@@thebesto7787 Right. Nintendo will shake their hand and say "All is forgiven now" and watch happily as Dolphin goes up on Steam.
Next year when they release a few Wii/Gamecube games for a subscription fee they will still think fondly of their newfound friends who made a way to play every game from the entire library for free and at higher resolutions and framerates. Their investors will gleefully realize their product is inferior and tell Nintendo to be more like the Dolphin devs.
Great video, awesome shirt 👕
Idk if you know about this but in the first copy of proof of concept or GTFO a dolphin developer is featured explaining some of the nightmare weird tricks they had to do to optimize the emulator to be able to run full speed. It's pretty funny/interesting and all versions of PoC || GTFO are free online in their weird polyglot pdfs lol
Seems kinda straightforward to just remove the keys and leave a field people can put in themselves? Legally compliant, and Dolphin gets to put their hands up if users do it, and it's less of a pain for the community to distribute 16 characters or whatever it is than bios files. Considering the alternatives here included a legally justifiable nuke of Dolphin this seems like a worthwhile compromise, maybe some Wikipedia editors can include the Wii Common Key on Illegal number Wikipedia page in light of this news. Would be very relevant and citable!
I’d love to see a someone make a T-Shirt with the key encoded into it somehow in the design. As long as it’s transformative and literally clothing, Nintendo would have a difficult argument against fair use. I recall a similar effort with the RSA system that was largely successful
Nintendo would probably still argue that it violates the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA. As from Nintendo's point of view, even having that decryption key would be illegal, so Dolphin saying "we don't care where you got the key, just enter it here" would be illegal.
I don't agree with that by the way, but Nintendo would be paying a bunch of lawyers to argue it.
@@KindlTAS Idk man, i think that's weird too, but that's funny, so, let them do it.
@@FirstLast-gw5mg Agree that Nintendo could still make the argument, but making it more legally ambiguous rather than simply having the keys in the source seems safer than the status quo which (imo) seems obviously naughty. Circumvention becomes harder to argue when it cannot circumvent without a user-provided string
@@c6m Personally I'd argue that the keys aren't protected by copyright and that there's a fair use exception to the anti-circumvention clause which makes it completely legal for them to have the key there.
But Nintendo has a lot more money to pay lawyers than they do.
I hope Dolphin is able to get this resolved, with getting this part of the code rewritten, and making it work.
I do believe a rewrite could legally then fall into the same category of Sony vs Connectix.
I think it would. Im seeing a ton of people that are trying to argue that VGS and Bleem prove that Dolphin is in the clear here and I have to point out that the cases are totally different - Bleem and Connectix didn't include decryption keys into their products like what happened here. It's not the emulation itself or anything like that. If Dolphin didn't include these keys they would be fine and Nintendo would have done nothing.
@@purelogarithm Exactly
Of course, I'm also scared with how courts are these days that Ninty wants the courts to reverse those decisions - precedent be damned.
Big shock
Had a feeling this would happen, surprised it took so long
I wonder what kind of loop holes exist for an illegal number. like can you store the key as an equation and dynamically calculate it at run time?
Distributing emulators on Steam always seemed like flying too close to the sun to me, regardless of legality. Nintendo's lawyers are a ruthless pack of hounds that'll take a mile out of any inch you give them.
The Steam release was a dumb idea to begin with, it could jeopardize everything.
I said this exact same thing. too much attention
Hurr durr too much exposure
People NEED to know how idiotic Nintendo is
Incredibly stupid idea.
yeah, why? who was the genious who though this was ok??
@@koghs We all already know how idiotic they are. They're a multi-billion dollar corporation, and the Dolphin devs provided the Wii Common Key in their source code. That was VERY foolish of them.
So if they remove the keys and instead write code that can "figure it out" and generates it in real time (if that's possible) then the code isn't physically there in the code anywhere and that should be a legal workaround right?
Nintendo can't stop me lol, even if they completely shut down dolphin, I still have my original wii with homebrew and a backup of all my games.
They also cannot stop local copies of Dolphin and its source code.
@@Gramini if they shut down dolphin then there will be no more updates, theres some games I'm playing rn that still have graphical glitches but I'm waiting for a fix.
@@spiral7399 this would be where the open source community comes into play
@@lssjvegeta7103 Dolphin.A: continues the battle.
It's a tale as old as time about flying too close to the sun.
There's a reason why virtually every other emulator asks you to supply your own keys or bios files, it's to avoid this costly mistake.
If I've learned anything by being in the Nintendo hacking space, it's that you DO NOT poke the bear. Putting Dolphin on Steam and not removing the keys was effectively slapping the bear in the face.
Didn't they lose this case before with the unlicensed GameBoy game that had the bytes needed to draw the Nintendo logo and bypass the check on the ROM but used some clever bank switching to avoid actually displaying it?
The court found that it couldn't be subject to copyright if it was required to build compatible hardware. It's essentially part of the protocol at that point
Also, they're just asking for the AACS key fiasco all over again. You know, 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
if i had to take a guess, with very minimal knowledge on the matter, it may have something to do with copyright expiration. Sort pf like how disney keeps releasing a new thing with their main IPs, so they can continue to hold onto them and keep them out of open domain
It’s really frustrating because between the Mario movie and TotK, Nintendo is primed to make astronomical amounts of money this year. They don’t even *need* to do this.
To the execs at Nintendo, this is more about projecting strength than saving revenue. You're thinking about Japanese execs as if they were Americans. Money is not the thing they care about the most. From a Japanese perspective, they NEED to do this to remain respected and save face for their employees.
@@pretzelboi64 I don't doubt that Japanese business culture is playing a role, but other Japanese video game companies aren't nearly as litigious as Nintendo.
@@pretzelboi64 Well to the public they look straight evil now, so good job to them
@@geraldchurchill5576 All the big ones are and they are all known for it. Square Enix, Konami, Nintendo, etc. The only one who is somewhat large and not like that is Sega, a company founded by Americans.
Konami is possibly even crazier than Nintendo about perceived copyright violations.
@@pretzelboi64 while I agree with you about them using this as a means to project strength (a perspective I hadn’t considered yet), I would disagree that they don’t care about the revenue aspect of it. They’re business executives. Regardless of nationality, they genuinely care about money above all else. It’s their sole purpose for existing in their roles, to grow their companies and continually increase revenue. Two things can be true at once.
Outstanding research and approach! As much as we all would like to see Dolphin be okay, your honesty and integrity in your approach when covering this topic is awesome.
I got a wii at home, but still play on PC for the ease of sitting in my chair with some upscaling features and games ripped from my physical library. Feels kinda bad, but at least my Wii doesn't get a stability upgrade that suddenly screws up everything
Great vid. On a completely separate subject: your moustache is looking very luxurious today!
Thanks for the info. That was very informative. When I heard the news I was worried for my son's emulator. I'm glad you explained everything and hope Dolphin figures out a way around this issue before it affects the emulator.
I was so scared when I got the notification for this video that I immediately downloaded all nintendo console emulators.
Yeah ima about to do the same on my phone. Just in case.
Some nerd at Nintendo gets the praise:
"Alright Felvine, you made good today by finding this embedded code... keep up the good work, another few such finds and you may even get a raise..."
"Yes, Mr. Ferguson, Sir!"
As soon as they announced it was coming to Steam, I knew this'd happen.
Honestly I don't know what they were thinking. What can possibly be gained for this coming to Steam?
@@FrozenDozer It's not like it would be more convenient if it was on steam. Downloading the emulator is literally as easy as downloading the installer on the website and letting it do the job for you.
And besides. Emulation is the exact opposite of convenience, finding roms could be troublesome and troubleshooting problems could be difficult and sometimes outright random.
You cant know something is going to happen until after it has occurred. You must mean that this was a possibility you thought could happen of all the outcomes that exist, right? ;)
Emulators of any type on Steam just seems like a really bad move - it puts emulation in the spotlight and practically guarantees that certain companies are going to start looking into legal actions via any loopholes that they can find. Yeah, we know, emulation is legal, but being an ass and including keys in emulators is going to cause problems for the devs.
@@REALMARCHINADER It was for the sake of convenience though. RetroArch did it.
They should just add a menu where the user can add the key manually, it's gotta be easy enough to find at this point
Retro Arch has already made their own automatic code system that virtually does what Dolphin’s code presently does.
Yeah this was a silly mistake by the Dolphin team
I wonder how Miyaomoto and the others sleep at night, knowing that in the future, people are going to pirate the shit out of their company, long after they are gone, and especially after the company eventually goes under?
Suprisingly it was steam who asked nintendo if they could upload Dolphin. Nintendo Found out about Dolphin through steam. And then issued a take down. Thankfully though the emulator is still up on there own site. Because its in fair use. However Unfortinally nintendo may be on the moarly right side with the keys. You can still download Dolphin. Easilly . Just not on steam. I honestly thnk it was stupid of Dolphin for even going on steam in the first place.
Thank you for explaining. Other channels do not explain the real reason why what Dolphin Team is doing is illegal.
no dolphin will win if it goes to court. Those encrypted keys aren't intellectual property. so dolphin has not done anything wrong at all yet. These description keys should never be copyrighted.
Remember, it is always moral to pirate Nintendo games
This is precisely why i haven't swapped to Dev mode on the Series S. Keeping Series S in retail and offline seems to have been the sensible way. I'm sure Nintendo will takes things beyond Steam
Same bro. Xbox series X offline with the emulators is great. Get to play my old games that aren't officially backwards compatible anymore.
Wait but can you put it online again to play other games and put it offline after to play emulators with no problem?
@@CrossUnity I'm not willing to try. I'm happy for my S to be an emulation only machine :)
They're not going to remote-detonate your console bro
I'm an Xbox guy so I use my Series X for most games, but dev mode is amazing whenever I want to play an old Genesis game or whatever.
Honestly I am surprised Nintendo didn't discover that they could do this sooner.