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Are you serious here? You think the Dolphin team can meaningfully affect Valve here? That's delusional.

dathinab 3y ago
no they can't, and I didn't say so but it's Valve which is blocking them not Nintendo and sure Valve might do so on behest of Nintendo but it's still Valves doing so the idea that Dolphine (or Valve) have to asks Nintendo for anything is just completly absurd and beyond any legal basis which is why Nintendo doesn't use the proper legal methods here IMHO, because then you can dispute it and they can (probably will) lose but as long as Valve plays along there is nothing much Dolphin can do, so again it's Valve who first needs to be convinced before then either Nintendo gives up or you have a proper legal dispute with them anyway like you correctly pointed out there is no way for Dolphin to affect Valve so the is no way for Dolphi on steam
- rowanG077 3y ago
  Legality is not the issue here. Not everything that is legal can be published on Steam. The people who make it a legal argument after this article are missing the point.
  - shagie 3y ago
    (furthering this point) consider the recent Developer claims Steam is rejecting games with AI-generated artwork -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522665 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520701 AI art isn't illegal, but Steam still has taken a position of not wanting to be the middleman for distribution of such content.
    - wtallis 3y ago
      > AI art isn't illegal All indications are that the dubious legality of ML-generated art is exactly why Valve is not approving those games. Valve isn't taking a moral stance against ML-generated art, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure the ML models were not trained on unlicensed content and will not spew copyright infringements.
      - shagie 3y ago
        Consider then the statement: Valve isn't taking a moral stance against emulators, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure that unlicensed software won't be run on them and will not invite copyright takedowns. --- Valve doesn't want to carry software that they may be sued over as a distributor. Until they are on very firm standing that it is ok, they pull the software. https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-steam-pc-dmca-takedown-communism-1850125125 https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-steam-pc-dmca-takedown-... https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-soviet-republic-pc-dmca-city-builder-1850190837 https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-soviet-republic-pc-dmca... As a distributor of software, Steam has no appetite for distributing any software that may lead it to legal entanglements. Spurious DMCA requests, AI art, or credible threats from Nintendo - that game cannot be distributed.
    - dathinab 3y ago
      Different situation. Valve limited there store to "in general not contain products of a certain type (here AI art containing)". But in case of Dolphin this isn't the case but a explicit ban of dolphine without it braking Valve TOS. If Valve would but in their TOS that "emulators are generally not allowed" then rejecting Dolphine would be okay and no one would have wirten any blogs or news articles about it, or even tried to put it on steam.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    > Legality is not the issue here. It's is in the sense that through Valve Nintendo effectively circumvented the legal protections targets of DMCA take down notices have. So while this is not using law it has everything to do with circumventing law.

no they can't, and I didn't say so but it's Valve which is blocking them not Nintendo and sure Valve might do so on behest of Nintendo but it's still Valves doing so the idea that Dolphine (or Valve) have to asks Nintendo for anything is just completly absurd and beyond any legal basis which is why Nintendo doesn't use the proper legal methods here IMHO, because then you can dispute it and they can (probably will) lose but as long as Valve plays along there is nothing much Dolphin can do, so again it's Valve who first needs to be convinced before then either Nintendo gives up or you have a proper legal dispute with them anyway like you correctly pointed out there is no way for Dolphin to affect Valve so the is no way for Dolphi on steam

rowanG077 3y ago
Legality is not the issue here. Not everything that is legal can be published on Steam. The people who make it a legal argument after this article are missing the point.
- shagie 3y ago
  (furthering this point) consider the recent Developer claims Steam is rejecting games with AI-generated artwork -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36522665 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36520701 AI art isn't illegal, but Steam still has taken a position of not wanting to be the middleman for distribution of such content.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    > AI art isn't illegal All indications are that the dubious legality of ML-generated art is exactly why Valve is not approving those games. Valve isn't taking a moral stance against ML-generated art, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure the ML models were not trained on unlicensed content and will not spew copyright infringements.
    - shagie 3y ago
      Consider then the statement: Valve isn't taking a moral stance against emulators, they're playing it safe legally by avoiding distributing such games when they cannot ensure that unlicensed software won't be run on them and will not invite copyright takedowns. --- Valve doesn't want to carry software that they may be sued over as a distributor. Until they are on very firm standing that it is ok, they pull the software. https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-steam-pc-dmca-takedown-communism-1850125125 https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-steam-pc-dmca-takedown-... https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-soviet-republic-pc-dmca-city-builder-1850190837 https://kotaku.com/workers-resources-soviet-republic-pc-dmca... As a distributor of software, Steam has no appetite for distributing any software that may lead it to legal entanglements. Spurious DMCA requests, AI art, or credible threats from Nintendo - that game cannot be distributed.
  - dathinab 3y ago
    Different situation. Valve limited there store to "in general not contain products of a certain type (here AI art containing)". But in case of Dolphin this isn't the case but a explicit ban of dolphine without it braking Valve TOS. If Valve would but in their TOS that "emulators are generally not allowed" then rejecting Dolphine would be okay and no one would have wirten any blogs or news articles about it, or even tried to put it on steam.
- dathinab 3y ago
  > Legality is not the issue here. It's is in the sense that through Valve Nintendo effectively circumvented the legal protections targets of DMCA take down notices have. So while this is not using law it has everything to do with circumventing law.