We told you a few months ago Dolphin Emulator, an emulator for Nintendo ROMs, has announced its arrival on Steam. Unlike RetroArch, which has been present on the Valve store for many years and manages to emulate every system via DLC (free, yes), Dolphin specializes exclusively in the two big N consoles, the GameCube and the Wii. , models they value in their catalog. games some of the company’s biggest successes.

Obviously, and as with RetroArch, It should be noted that Dolphin Emulator does not offer access to ROMsthat is, to the dumps of the games of both consoles, they only offer a platform that allows their use, so the way to get it remains in the hands of the user, either by amending the law (that is, if you have bought a copy of the game) or if, on the contrary, although you do not have the original, you choose to download the ROM from the internet or get it in some other way.

This is also important to remember Dolphin Emulator is a completely free and open source application (published on GitHub), which, in addition to offering game emulation, brings substantial improvements to the experience, such as offering HD video (1080p), compatibility with all PC drivers, turbo speed, network multiplayer and much more. So it is able to improve the gaming experience compared to what both consoles provide.

However, it seems that the Japanese tech company was not amused that Valve opened the doors to this emulator and as we can read on its blog, Nintendo sent a claim to Valve that forced the exclusion of the Dolphin Emulator from Steam. As we can read in the said publication, the claim was sent directly to Valve, the place responsible for the emulator, and the store’s decision was to postpone its publication indefinitely. They will not sit idle, yes, «We are currently investigating our options and will have a more detailed response in the near future.»

No one will be surprised Nintendo is acting out of proportion again. Intellectual property is clearly one of your most valuable assets, and it’s understandable that you want to protect it. However, their war in this regard should take place in the field of ROMs distributed over the Internet, not against emulators, because the legal framework and case law in this regard only reaffirm the complete legality of this type of software.

Nintendo identifies the emulator with illegally obtaining ROMs, and one would have to be very cynical to deny that this usage occurs on a regular basis. However, Attacking an emulator for illegitimate use of ROMs is like attacking web browsers for their malicious use by some users.. An emulator like Dolphin Emulator, just like a web browser and virtually any other type of application, device and service, can be used for legitimate or illegitimate purposes and ways, but if they are legitimate applications, devices and services, and in this case emulators are, they should not be able to pursue them.