Given how many YouTubers brazenly use dolphin on steam decks and say you can get free games, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner.
It's sad too, since the Wii is a console that makes it extraordinarily simple to dump your own game discs and use the emulator in a completely legal fashion.
In case you haven't heard of it, Valve sells the Steam Deck: a handheld gaming console with Steam as its primary UI. Under the hood, it's a low-power AMD x86 system running Linux (specifically, Valve's SteamOS distro). So having Dolphin on Steam would be the optimal way to make Dolphin available to Steam Deck users, just like having Dolphin available on the Google Play Store is the optimal way to make Dolphin available to Android users even though side-loading is an option.
That used to be true, but today, ROM sites are very easily discoverable on Google. People also sell ROMs on hard drives and SD cards on Amazon, many of them qualifying for Prime delivery.
I'm pretty sure it hasn't been true at any point in the past 25 years. ROM sites have always been easy to find, even pre-Google.
I now it is legally, but morally I don't think people are doing something wrong here.
Should it be? No.
Anyone interested in emulating a Wii or GameCube for legitimate reasons will easily find Dolphin and can install it on their Steam Deck.
Anyone?
Really, anyone?
rubs forehead
It's easier to have it on Steam. When I was 15, 25 even, maybe I'm so excited and hellbent on getting an emulator that I actively figure out the 10 step process to sideload. As a casual, it's much nicer when it's one step.
Steam Deck isn't locked down. From Steam itself, you just "exit to desktop", and bam you're met with a KDE desktop. Running Linux. You can do whatever you want. Including installing emulators and games that aren't distributed on Steam. It only takes one step: "flatpak install dolphin-emu"
So what? If Nintendo fails to provide a way to buy the games on that device its on them. We really don't need to make excuses for corporations generating unneccesary E-waste due to their greed.
Convenience is important.
Which means a bit of hacking, which means you should already be capable enough to install emudeck on your steam deck. Which is vastly superior to any single emulator on steam itself.
Yet.
>Where can I download game ISOs/ROMs ?¶
>Short answer: You don't. Buy games and dump them with a Wii.
>Long answer: Downloading commercial games is illegal and thus strongly frowned upon by the Dolphin developers.
[1] https://dolphin-emu.org/docs/faq/#couldnt-dolphin-use-more-m...
Ps this is not a moral judgement, I would use it myself except I don't like Nintendo's style of games. I owned a Wii and bought some games but I was really bored. I modded it and downloaded everything I could get and not a single game could capture my attention. I missed good fpses, it was all party games and kiddyish/cartoonish stuff like Zelda and Mario. So I've never looked at Nintendo since. Perhaps these days their offers would be more interesting to me but I haven't checked.
This was in the early days of the Wii though, when it was still a big hype. So all the games I tried were launch titles or very soon after. I thought the motion controller thing was not very well worked out and more of a gimmick. I was expecting it to be more exact like with VR controllers these days.
When it was on its own website and hosted on its own servers, with mostly word of mouth (online) spreading it, Nintendo were probably not too happy, but accepting that it was legal.
But when Valve, who are sort of competing with Nintendo, host it and promote, that's another matter. Especially when many people do play games using it that they have not legally obtained.
It really is one of the main reasons to do a Steam release. Seamlessly playing your savegames and save states on desktop PC over to Steam Deck and back again made RetroArch one of the killer Deck apps IMO.
- Steam Remote Play: Seamlessly playing your Wii games from your TV.
- Steam Workshop: Authoring, distribution, and management of modifications to the emulator.
- Steam Input: A powerful abstraction layer dealing with different controllers and the mapping of their inputs. Sharing and downloading input maps from the community is directly integrated.
- Steam cloud save: Share configuration and save data between computers.
- Steam's multiplayer API could potentially have made it much easier to use Dolphin for multiplayer games.
Most of these things can be achieved without Steam but they're less convenient, more difficult for non-technical users, and yet another thing to manage, update, and keep track of.
Nintendo sells games from other publishers, Sega doesn’t. Other publishers get mad if Nintendo can’t keep piracy on their platform under control. They send angry letters, complain to their representatives, and so forth. It’s not just (arguably) lost sales, but now you have to deal with more cheating players. To Nintendo, piracy is an embarrassment. Nintendo files DMCAs, in part, because other publishers expect them to and because only Nintendo can.
Also, the last original Wii game was Just Dance 2020. Not joking, a Wii game was released 3 years ago.
The Wii was the first console to use digital signatures; which would make it the first console to really invoke DMCA Section 1201 when prior consoles did not. Establishing out the gate that this tramples on 1201 could be extremely important in the future. Section 1201 is also what overrides Bleam and other prior emulator lawsuits - they didn’t have cryptographic keys protected by law flying around.
Because, how long until Yuzu is on the Steam store? And if Nintendo didn’t take action for the Wii (the first one protected under the title), defending against Yuzu is much harder.
> to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner;
Nintendo has no standing.
“The "act" prohibition, set out in section 1201(a)(1), prohibits the act of circumventing a technological measure used by copyright owners to control access to their works ("access controls"). So, for example, this provision makes it unlawful to defeat the encryption system used on DVD movies. This ban on acts of circumvention applies even where the purpose for decrypting the movie would otherwise be legitimate. As a result, it is unlawful to make a digital copy ("rip") of a DVD you own for playback on your video iPod.
The "tools" prohibitions, set out in sections 1201(a)(2) and 1201(b), outlaw the manufacture, sale, distribution, or trafficking of tools and technologies that make circumvention possible. These provisions ban both technologies that defeat access controls, and also technologies that defeat use restrictions imposed by copyright owners, such as copy controls. These provisions prohibit the distribution of "DVD back-up" software, for example.
Section 1201 includes a number of exceptions for certain limited classes of activities, including security testing, reverse engineering of software, encryption research, and law enforcement. These exceptions have been extensively criticized as being too narrow to be of real use to the constituencies who they were intended to assist.“
https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-seven-year...
This comes up elsewhere on this Hacker News thread, because Dolphin actually does contain a Nintendo encryption key. Which makes Dolphin almost indistinguishable from, say, a DVD ripper or counterfeit DVD player, which this law was specifically designed to crush.
If you want a further example, look into Apple v Psystar, where Psystar broke Apple’s DMCA 1201 locks to run macOS on unofficial hardware with “interoperability between hardware” being one of their many legal defenses. They were squashed in hearing after hearing and declared bankruptcy after having exhausted all legal options.
Strictly speaking, this is true. It is not unlawful to plug a DVD player into your iPod and play the DVD back digitally though. That's basically what Dolphin is doing - it runs unmodified disc images, copy protection and all. They've even abstained from using code or insights gained from the Wii's source code leak. The emulator should be clean, outside of any legal complaints about "damages".
You're correct to highlight that it's still an ambiguous area, but in a post-Bleem! world it's hard for Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony to find the legal willpower to stop these people. They'll settle for easy wins like harassing Valve's legal staff with scary looking letters instead.
> If you want a further example, look into Apple v Psystar
There's more recent precedent with Corellium. Their commercial product is allowed to create iOS VMs on unofficial hardware. Running their code is considered fair use, the most valid legal claim Apple had for shutting them down was their violation of icon and wallpaper trademarks.
If it can play disc images with copy protection, it de facto requires a way around that copy protection that is unlicensed, slamming it squarely into Section 1201.
> The emulator should be clean, outside of any legal complaints about "damages".
Dolphin contains Nintendo decryption keys; which is actually very likely illegal when the rest of the emulator is not. Recall 09 F9…
A competing emulator developer (for Citra) has also commented on this and said what Dolphin did there was legally dangerous and very much not endorsed by courts.
https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/13ss1o9/comment/...
> Their commercial product is allowed to create iOS VMs on unofficial hardware.
If you read the ruling, the fair use won because Corellium successfully argued there was no way that their product could impact Apple in any substantial negative way in the general market. They also argued that their products do not perform as substitutes to any products that Apple provides. And lastly, their products offer a unique benefit for a unique, niche, special interest, with vetting and similar procedures to ensure only people with those interests used their software.
If, however, they had done that to make their own smartphones, or a general iOS emulator for playing games on PC, they would have been annihilated. Nintendo easily has a case that emulation causes substantial financial and business harm; and that emulation can serve as a replacement for their products. Courts don’t like that.
Edit (“posting too fast”):
Unlike the GameCube, Wii games are digitally signed and encrypted.
This specific line of code contains the illegal key:
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/blob/34527cadcce49a9a...
As the developer of Citra (above) noted, big no-no. The emulator is legally fine, but encryption keys are a no-go. Bleam was OK because keys were not involved. Every case that has involved keys for a non-extremely-specific use (Psystar, RealPlayer, VidAngel) has gone down in flames.
> Dolphin contains Nintendo decryption keys
I don't believe it does. Wii U emulator CEMU requires them to boot, and Citra the 3DS emulator also requires them. The Wii seems to have no copy protection to speak of, besides it's rudimentary disk check/hashing routine. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, though.
> the fair use won because Corellium successfully argued there was no way that their product could impact Apple in any substantial way regarding security research
> Nintendo easily has a case that emulation causes substantial financial and business harm
So did Sony. Bleem even used screenshots of their official, licensed games to advertise their commercial alternative to owning a Playstation, and a judge deemed it lawful: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_case?case=1183722407805...
From the appeal:
> To the extent Bleem merely approximates what the PlayStation games look like, by generating screen shots through a process of degrading a computer image, it is simply creating a simulation. If Bleem insists on generating simulated approximations of Sony's games, there is no need for Bleem to use Sony's copyrighted material whatsoever.
Again - there is still ambiguity in these rulings, especially for modern console emulators. It's easy to scare Steam into taking this down since Valve doesn't want to take the fall for emulators. That being said, a true cease-and-desist scenario for Dolphin is likely unlawful, given the precedent and context.
Edit in response to your edit: Citra's developer is right - this is brazen. But it's also a legal can of worms Nintendo cannot guarantee a win on. Their claim is that it violates the Copyright Act, which they would then have to defend against the DMCA amendments that give explicit protections to many classes of usage. If "the key" is their objection, Nintendo's copyright complaint will be about as effective as the DeCSS moratorium.
The aes keys checked in to their GitHub are linked elsewhere in this comment section.
To me the private key is just a secret blend of bits to make the output bits look exactly the way you'd expect. If Nintendo can't keep their private keys private isn't that their problem? Why does someone else have the responsibility to keep Nintendo's key private if they discover it?
An emulator, meanwhile, only mimics hardware which is considered legal. An example: It is completely legal to implement the DVD specification; but brute-forcing the keys to decrypt DVDs because you don’t have a license is not.
The same applies to AACS, which protects Blu-ray Discs. It’s actually published publicly - you can just go download the spec for that copy protection right now. But getting a legal, unique device key will require contracts.
Stupid? Yes, but that’s where the law is drawn right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Computer_Entertainment,_I....
Decided in 2000, and the DMCA was signed into law in 1998?
we get public domain in 70 years just like everything else, and i can't think of an argument for any game being more of a public good than works of other types like lolita, the search for animal chin, or paul's boutique.
I don't think Nintendo gets a cut of used game sales; †he first-sale doctrine should still apply.
Nitpick: video games are almost always a work-for-hire, so it's 95 years after publication (or 120 years after creation, in the unusual event that publication gets delayed long enough for this deadline to expire first).
You may already enjoy that creation by paying for it, just like you would for many other cultural items.
Or was it just sarcasm?
This is one of the most important purposes of emulation: it allows for digital archival of otherwise-obsolete hardware and software.
I thought I heard that this is actually a specific brand with chip defects.
Googling found: https://hackmd.io/d12Fq9g-QlCjN2HJp7Yvew
Its mostly the hynix flash chips.
"Protected in any way possible"? Why should copyright holders with money get that benefit, but those without money are screwed?
Anybody who thought that was a good game is now looking for the second and third installments in the trilogy which Nintendo offically said they weren't going to develop (oops). So those are effectively only available on Dolphin/Wii.
Yeah, Nintendo got caught with their pants down (Metroid Prime sold way better than they expected) and are losing future sales for every person who pulls up Dolphin and the next two Metroids.
Maybe, but if that mattered we would have seen the consequences already because Nintendo since the gamecube has been uniquely abysmal at anti-piracy, the worst by far of any console maker. Most recently their blockbuster game Tears of the Kingdom was playable for free for anyone with a decent video card, more than 10 days before the game was officially released.
That’s not an aberration, they are just extremely bad at securing their hardware platforms. they still seem to be doing OK.
And Nintendo Fokus on gameplay and not doing the hardware race makes emulation much easier for current games (switch is also really old by now)
What they really seem to care about is their brands and IPs, and seem to go after about people using those - for example, the draconian rules on streaming, shutting down Smash Bros competitions, etc.
I can understand their actions. More than any other game company, Nintendo lives and dies on their brand and IPs. Sony and Microsoft are larger than their gaming divisions. Nintendo only has gaming to save itself, and their IPs are major console sellers.
Frankly, though I hate to defend them; this is wrong and an insult to Nintendo.
The Nintendo Switch was so, so close to being a masterpiece of security. Nintendo even built their own OS from scratch for it based on a microkernel. It is so secure that an open-source developer who reimplemented it (SciresM) has said we very likely may never have a kernel exploit on future Nintendo systems, ever. The entire kernel is so compact there’s almost nothing to attack. Everything else from graphics to USB runs in sandboxed usermode and can’t run homebrew. This thing is intrinsically more secure than the Xbox One and PlayStation 5 in design.
Nintendo’s software was, according to him and other developers looking at it, downright almost flawless in security. The problem was NVIDIA, who had a bug in their recovery mode allowing unsigned code; and NVIDIA again for releasing a chip with inadequate protections against glitching. Nintendo did everything they could almost perfectly, but their chip supplier didn’t.
Both of those are one-time plays though. The next chip will almost certainly contain glitch protection; and the recovery mode bug has already been patched on newer Switches. Combined with Nintendo’s (literally) impeccable OS design, and the Switch 2 may not be broken for a very, very long time.
I'm still amazed at the 3DS piracy that was done through downloading from the official eShop.
"Information wants to be free" as the adage goes.