Nintendo issues Valve DMCA takedown to remove Dolphin emulator

Nintendo is doing its best to fight piracy and unlicensed software for years, and the past Friday saw the publisher slamming DMCA takedown over their support of “Dolphin”, a popular GameCube and Wii emulator for PC.

The legal notice (originally obtained by PCGamer) reads:

“Because the Dolphin emulator violates Nintendo’s intellectual property rights, including but not limited to its rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)’s Anti-Circumvention and AntiTrafficking provisions, 17 U.S.C. § 1201, we provide this notice to you of your obligation to remove the offering of the Dolphin emulator from the Steam store.”

The team behind the Dolphin emulator launched a Steam page back in March stating that they intend in a short unspecified window, only to end up being blocked and having to postpone the launch of the Dolphin emulator indefinitely.

The developers replied via their official website, saying: “It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed. We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.”

They now have two weeks to decide whether to abide by Nintendo’s decision or to file a counterclaim. If they go against Nintendo, the publisher will have the chance to sue them.

At the moment, we are still waiting for Valve to comment on the matter.