Nintendo breaks its silence on its recent legal action against the popular emulator, Dolphin. In a statement, Nintendo says it is "committed to protecting the hard work and creativity" of its developers, arguing that the emulator "harms" the studio and "stifles innovation."
This is despite Dolphin only supporting games that were released on now-dead consoles, the Wii and GameCube. Very few titles from this era are available to purchase and play legitimately, with emulation often being the only way to avoid going through scalpers.
"Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers," says a Nintendo spokesperson, in a statement sent to Kotaku. "This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation.
"Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same."
This suggests that Nintendo doesn't just want Dolphin to pull its plan to release on Steam, but perhaps even cease operations entirely. This would be a huge blow to innovation in the Nintendo modding scene, as Dolphin allows fans to get older games running on PC. For example, running Super Smash Bros. Melee through Dolphin has enabled fans to release HD mods for the game, and even get online play up and running.
Dolphin is yet to respond to this legal pressure from Nintendo, but has said that it is "currently investigating [its] options". Because of this, the Steam release of Dolphin has been "indefinitely postponed", while it draws up "a more in-depth response" to the DMCA it received.
While fans of the Dolphin emulator are disappointed that the Steam release might not ever happen now, few are surprised. Nintendo has a long history of proactively going after piracy, even when it concerns games that can't be officially purchased anymore. With that in mind, we shouldn't take this news as a hint that Nintendo is actually planning to release much of its GameCube and Wii catalogue of games - DMCAs and legal threats are to be expected at this point. But without a legitimate alternative, many games from this era will have to be purchased second-hand, potentially with a high price tag depending on the title.
It isn't just with Nintendo's home consoles either. Last week, Nintendo rolled out an update for the largely unsupported 3DS, which temporarily made it impossible for users to hack the console, and therefore get pirated games running. This was quickly circumvented, but given that Nintendo doesn't even support the eShop on 3DS anymore, many saw the update as a move against the modding community, trying to stop them from hacking their systems.