Its not that much of a loss given you can still launch Dolphin from steam anyway. It just won't be on the storefront.
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Just add it as a non-Steam game, right?
Yup
I use Steam ROM Manager to add my games to Steam and it works wonderfully.
There's also EmuDeck that automates this process too.
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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.
Plus it helps leave the door open for a potential partnership if Nintendo ever decides to bring some of their games to PC. I think it will happen at some point because there is both a growing frustration with having to re-buy your library with every new Nintendo system and a lot of profit to be made on PC if you approach it like Sony has.
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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...
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Accessibility, ease of use, community for both discussion and content?
I completely agree. Emulators don't belong on Steam.
Steam hosts software. Emulators are software. Google Play and Apple Store have emulators, why is Steam any different?
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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.
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I think cuz integration with steam dick would be more seamless
Please don't integrate with steam dick
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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.
You’d think Nintendo want’s people to play their games, but you’d be wrong. Nintendo wants people to buy their games.
Ford doesn't want you to drive their cars, they want you to buy their cars.
Apple doesn't want you to use their computers/phones, they want you to buy their computers/phones.
My town doesn't want me to use water, it wants me to pay for that water.
I don't think the Ford and Apple examples apply, as these companies make primarily physical products. Both of these companies really do want you to use their products for two reasons:
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Most of their marketing is literally just people seeing their products being used.
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Cars wear out with usage, as do computers, so the more you use their products, the sooner you'll buy a new one.
Digital media is unique in that it's not highly visible and using it more doesn't make it degrade.
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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.
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.
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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.
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This video from a real lawyer explains the Dolphin Steam situation better than anyone I've seen: https://youtu.be/wROQUZDCIMI
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
Adding it to Steam would do shit anyways. It would just add another layer between the user and the program.
The only positive would have been that saves could have been synced but there's other (cloud) platforms that let you do that as well.
What a surpirse