Dolphin, emulator for GameCube and Wii, cancels its release on Steam

The Dolphin emulator will ultimately not be released on Steam. This one, which allows you to play GameCube and Wii games, has experienced several blockages from Nintendo for several months.

It’s certain his blog that Dolphin announces the abandonment of the release on Steam:

After a long silence, we have a difficult announcement to make. We are abandoning our efforts to release Dolphin on Steam. It is Valve that manages the store and can impose the conditions it wishes for the software to appear there. But given Nintendo’s longstanding stance on emulation, we find Valve’s requirement to get Nintendo’s approval for a Steam release impractical. Unfortunately, that’s all.

The team behind Dolphin announced plans in late March to bring the emulator to Steam, Valve’s digital PC distribution platform. However, in May, the team announced that the Steam release was “indefinitely postponed” after receiving a cease and desist order from Nintendo.

The ethics and legality of video game emulation is a regularly debated topic in the industry, but Nintendo’s position is clear, and it has had a chilling effect on the emulation community. Last month, Reddit shut down the largest Nintendo Switch emulation and hacking community after its membership plummeted following the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.