Its not that much of a loss given you can still launch Dolphin from steam anyway. It just won't be on the storefront.
I use Steam ROM Manager to add my games to Steam and it works wonderfully.
There's also EmuDeck that automates this process too.
TLDR
Because Valve asked Nintendo if it was allowed, and Nintendo said it shouldn't (pretty please), so Valve asked Dolphin to ask Nintendo if they could. Dolphin's team finds of obviously impossible to accomplish.
I think it's smart on Valve's part. With how litigation-happy Nintendo is, I don't think Valve really wants to go to bat for a program that isn't even their own, and isn't even needed on Steam anyway.
Valve is lawsuit averse. They sacked NFT games and AI generated games for similar reasons.
By the same extent, Valve is so based.
With Nintendo, it's always a double-edged sword. On one hand, they create really good games, but on the other hand, they are a shitbag company.
I don't mind that Dolphin is not staying on steam for whatever reason - they do have an auto updater and I can use any other cloud service to synchronize my saves - but seriously, just let them be, Nintendo...
Yeah, let them be, or release your games on PC. They would make so much money it's ridiculous. I would quite possibly rebuy all of my favorite Nintendo games if they released on PC
Not sure why it was coming to steam in the first place, made no sense. All it would do when you open it through steam is open the dolphin program, the games themselves weren’t being integrated into steam.
Just seemed like a bizarre decision by the devs that was always going to get blocked.
Cloud saves kinda big ngl
RetroArch is on steam right now and that has Nintendo emulators in it. So I dont see why not.
I think cuz integration with steam dick would be more seamless
I'm going to guess you mean deck. But all steam features. Like community controller configuration, guides etc.
I don't really see the point of adding it to Steam in the first place anyways
Free lifetime cloud storage for my savefiles and an easy way to update would have been pretty sweet...
Accessibility, ease of use, community for both discussion and content?
it's a bit of a tangent on this story, but it's been super disappointing that the wii/gc emulation layers they built for the mario collection hasn't really materialized in anything else. I feel crazy for thinking we would start getting ports of gc/wii games that feel lost to time
You'd think Nintendo want's people to play their games, but you'd be wrong. Nintendo wants people to buy their games. Whether they play it or not is irrelevant. While some producers and creatives might still have fun and the user first mindset, current Nintendo is only interested on profit. New releases will always make way more money than supporting old releases via emulation. They don't care that people can't legally purchase or play their old games. They think of them as marketing to leverage nostalgia for new releases. They place no value in their library of past games.
Replace Nintendo with Sony or Microsoft and you get the same result. No company cares about you playing their games, just buying and spending money. Hell they’d prefer if you didn’t play them and just gave them money.
Frankly I don't think this is quite accurate when it comes to media companies. They want people playing games because people who play games are more likely to talk about them and sell them to other people.
But they would rather have people talking of their new games. for sure.
I've never thought about it like that, but this is so true. I've thought about how easy it would be for Nintendo to port for example gen 1 Pokemon to phones and charge $5 or $10 and make a boatload of cash. Easy money. But as you imply, that would devalue new releasesand reduce sales if people would rather spend time playing old games.
This video from a real lawyer explains the Dolphin Steam situation better than anyone I've seen: https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI
Dolphin is also available as a core on RetroArch, which is on Steam (though I greatly prefer the non-Steam version)
The core is quite buggy and outdated IME. It’s also not included in the Steam release you have to manually install it.
Oh no I would not have expected this /s
As much as I hate Nintendo, I fucking hate them for their stance on emulation. You would think they would have the sense to preserve their heritage outside of their own platforms since they do such an absolute dog shit of a job of providing access to the library and catalogue of games. Either make your games available (as widely as they are via emulation) or move the fuck outta the way.
Edit: I meant to say “as much as I love them”, but going to leave my double hate up there because of how idiotic their decision is to crack down on emulation.
Nintendo loves emulation, they’ve been emulating their games for at least 15 years when they started doing it on the wii, it lets them sell you the same game over and over again on new platforms. They just don’t like it when anyone else does it because they don’t make any money off it.
When Nintendo embraces PC, the world will end
What a surpirse
A community for everything Nintendo. Games, news, discussions, stories etc.
Game | Date
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Luigi's Mansion 2 HD | Jun 27 Nintendo World Championships: NES™ Edition | Jul 18 The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom | Sep 26 Super Mario Party Jamboree | Oct 17 Mario & Luigi: Brothership | Nov 7 Donkey Kong Country Returns HD | Jan 16, 2025 Metroid Prime 4 | 2025