On Friday (26 May), the developers of the Dolphin emulator, which allows users to play GameCube and Wii games on their PC/Mac, announced that the planned release of the emulator on Steam has been postponed indefinitely.

The statement claims that Nintendo filed a DMCA takedown notice with Valve, the owner of Steam, against the Dolphin page on the PC Game Store and that this page has now been removed.

 

 

The statement says: “It is with great disappointment that we must announce that the release of Dolphin on Steam has been indefinitely postponed. We have been informed by Valve that Nintendo has filed an injunction under the DMCA against the Dolphin page on Steam and that Dolphin has been removed from Steam pending resolution of the matter. We are currently reviewing our options and will provide a more detailed response in the near future.”

Emulation is in a legal grey area. In this case, however, emulation enthusiasts claim that the inclusion of Wii Common Code in Dolphin’s source code could be the reason for the takedown.

What’s next? The Dolphin team now has two weeks to appeal to Valve if they feel the emulator does not violate the DMCA. Then Nintendo has two weeks to decide whether or not to file suit. If it decides against it, Dolphin could be added back to Steam.