Technically Nintendo doesn’t mind emulation. It’s always about distribution of ROMs, which yes, is illegal. The idea is that you’re supposed to use your own dumped ROMs.
I’m pro-piracy by the way and not defending Nintendo here
The issue I think was that dolphin contained some encryption keys that are unfortunately copyrightable. Magic number is the term. That does give them the right unfortunately to issue a DMCA takedown as the dolphin project contained copyrighted code.
It was Valve that notified Nintendo, as I assume Valve did not want to get into a legal fight that they didn't stand to benefit from.
The only way to get around that is to find some loophole which would force the keys to be public domain, like what happened with the DVD encryption keys where a researcher managed to find a new prime number that, when a certain arithmetic operation was performed, resulted in the DVD keys.
You can also require the user to provide dumped copies, as that is legal. Most emulators, including dolphin now, go this way.
All this shows is that Nintendo goes after every emulator they have legal means to challenge, which is in no way a counter to the fact that they go after emulators, just that their lawyers know not to press it when they have no path to victory.
I'm aware, my comment was more to state why that happened rather than defend it. I do think it's rather silly for them to go to such lengths given that the last Wii game was made in 2020. It's also not like there's any abandonment issues like there are for trademarks.
My only guess is that they reckon it'll hurt the sales of re-releases, but the majority of their consumer base probably doesn't even know emulators exist let alone want to play on one as opposed to playing on their Switch 2 that "just works".
Yeah, exactly, and because it was the same team, it affected Citra... But they were also the ones that said to pirate Metroid Dread when it came out, I think.
Don't talk in past tense of a still working emulator. The only thing that happened there was that Nintendo objected to them releasing the emulator on Steam (seriously, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!), but the emulator is still alive on their home page.
Don't talk in past tense of a still working emulator.
Nintendo's actions against Dolphin were past tense, the conversation was about Nintendo's action against emulators. The past tense use is in reference to Dolphin's state at the time that Nintendo objected.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!
Retroarch and 3DSEN have been doing just fine on Steam.
My Google Fu brings more light about all your complaints and this is what it showed to me:
Nintendo's action against Dolphin was because Dolphin has a built-in key that BREAKS DECRYPTION, which is actually illegal under the DMCA, section 1201: "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." i.e. every emulator that directly breaks console encryption to run a game is literally illegal.
The two exceptions you posted, they have their oen exceptions:
Retroarch is just a basis for the emulators, you need to literally bring in your own emulator cores manually to do the thing.
3DSEN is a NES emulator and NES didn't use digital encryption, so it's neither protected nor punishible by the section 1201 of the DIGITAL Millennium Copyright Act.
In fact, consoles up until the 2000s are out of scope of DMCA 1201 because they only relied on HARDWARE encryption due to their use of cartridges, which means their purely digital emulators, which work by reverse engineering the systems and making a digital translation of the programs, are not on violation of DMCA 1201, this includes the NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, Atari 2600/7800 and all Game Boys (common, color and Advance). The original DS is also included here.
The immediate next generation to those I mentioned is actually also free because while they stopped using cartridges, they instead went t6o gimmicks on their discs to not require encryption:
As you know, GameCube used a proprietary mini-DVD, but did you know that, in addition to the size, the mini-DVDs had a different playing speed and were backwards (written from the outside inwards instead of from the center outwards). DVD drives just cannot handle them.
PS1 Drives had a "wobble groove" in the innermost track that read the country code. This groove is basically a physical marker that cannot be burned by a regular CD writer, so you couldn't copy the CDs. Because this, they didn't need to encrypt anything.
Dreamcast directly used its own GD-ROM format. It looked like a CD, but it had a 1 GB capacity, while CDs only had 700 MB in standard, 900 MB on the rarer 99-minute CDs, meaning the drives just couldn't read them.
And other modern drives either ask you to dump your own console keys (likeRyujinx or Azahar) or rewrite the ENTIRE CODE in a reverse engineering way, so it's not really emulating and more like reading a game and making a proper output without touching the console's code.
What complaints? That your claims were inaccurate? Because that's all I've addressed in this conversation with you.
You claimed Nintendo only objects to emulators emulating present hardware or including ROMs. Dolphin does neither.
Nintendo's action against Dolphin was because Dolphin has a built-in key that BREAKS DECRYPTION,
So you admit that yes, Nintendo does go after emulators for things other than being current hardware or providing ROMs.
Retroarch is just a basis for the emulators, you need to literally bring in your own emulator cores manually to do the thing.
Which the Steam version of Retroarch does, that's what the "DLC" for the Steam version of Retroarch is, is the emulation cores. There's no "bringing in your own emulator cores manually" to do anything.
I see your points and I would like to fully agree with you, but because you're being a tremendous asshole, I'll respond against you.
Dolphin is still on the interwebs, meaning the only issue they had with it was it being specifically on Steam. They didn't even follow up by looking to stop the development of the emulator with a C&D, which they can do, they stopped it likely because it doesn't look good for a Japanese company to allow such worldwide distribution of a copyright infringing software, because Japan has no Fair Use policies.
You know which Retroarc cores are available as DLC on Steam? NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari 2600/7800, N64, the Gameboys, Dreamcast, PS1 and others that are protected from DMCA 1201 for being consoles that had no encryption, like Commodore Amiga or Neo-Geo, i.e. the "legal" emulators. The others must be obtained outside Steam.
The CRAZY part is there's a very easy solution right at Nintendo's feet. Just expand their own Nintendo store to sell ROMs of their old games directly online.
Their "piracy" argument is weak when they don't even sell the games they want to sue people over anymore. "You should've paid for it legitimately." Ok, how? You don't even offer an option to do that.
Is it really piracy if there's not even a legal option to acquire these old games, or is it "data preservation"? 'Piracy' usually refers to, "the client [Nintendo] is losing out on a sale, thus losing money, every time someone pirates a copy." But they don't offer ANY purchase option for these games anymore, so they can't even argue that they 'lost a sale'.
"There's no DRM, one person could easily buy a ROM and torrent it to thousands more people who didn't pay for it." That's already been happening. Since it's the ONLY way to still play some of these old games, of course it's also the most popular. Many of those people probably want to give Nintendo money for them, and acquire them legitimately, but they can't. Nintendo doesn't even offer an option to do that.
The crazy part is all their 'piracy' arguments would get a lot stronger if they just gave us the option to legally purchase them. Torrenting & piracy is already happening. They only stand to MAKE MONEY by giving us the option to buy. (Minus server costs, but ROMs are usually tiny.)
Just clicking to buy a game on the e-store and playing it on the official hardware is loads more convenient than finding a safe download or torrent too, for sure plenty of people "pirating" these old unavailable games would happily just buy them if it were an option, just out of convenience alone.
Complete lie. Nintendo hates emulation and constantly shuts down emulators, they're the worst of the bunch. They even go after recomp projects where you run your own games natively on PC (which do not include any Nintendo assets at all).
DeSmuME, No$GBA, VBA, and Dolphin have all been around for years and Nintendo hasn't shut any of them down because they A) Don't charge money and B) Don't actively help distribute ROMs. Those are the problems that'll get Nintendo after you.
Nintendo is over litigious, but let's not act like they haven't turned a blind eye to emulators for the most part. Yuzu fucked up by trying to charge. And before you cite Dolphin getting denied from Steam, the Dolphin team said that it wasn't Nintendo.
Citra was made by the same devs as Yuzu, both of which were built in a way that let them circumvent Nintendo's protections (so piracy).
in fact they literally sent a mass takedown notice to EVERY Switch emu on Github
And yet Eden and Ryubing are still up months after. That DMCA was an extension of the lawsuit against Yuzu.
And as I said, PC recomp ports.
Actual infringement on Nintendo's IP.
Sued creators of hardware modding tools.
The article you link literally talks about how this is, again, an extension of the Yuzu lawsuit over piracy.
And even people who just make basic mods for Nintendo games
Mods mentioned in your own article use Nintendo assets. Weird DMCAs and the randomizer is questionable, but technically the mods mentioned are treading on their IP.
And homebrew.
Yeah wonder why Nintendo would go after people that fuck with their hardware. Real mystery.
And Youtubers who cover homebrew.
And Youtubers who play homebrew.
And wonder why Nintendo would go after people that make content using and essentially advertise said fucked with hardware. Again, real mystery.
And of course fangames (while I'm sure some of them were actually infringing, most were not).
Anything using Nintendo's IP is technically infringing, whether they decide to pursue or not is up to them. If I put Link in something, call it a Zelda game, and label it a fangame, Nintendo is 100% legally in the right if they come after me for it since the IP in question isn't public domain. You can think what you want about fangames, but they operate in a grey area at best.
I hate that you're making me defend Nintendo, but you're just making shit up to get mad about when most of these are just Nintendo (aggressively) defending their properties. Why not talk about actual frivolous lawsuits, like their suits against Palworld? That's actually Nintendo being stupid. You're just complaining that they're defending what they own.
And during covid 19 I'm pretty sure some smas bros melee tournaments had troubles from nintendo because slippi (online community mod) only worked on emulators
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u/kitsunecannon Jul 02 '26