“Stifling Innovation” – Nintendo Issues Statement on Dolphin Emulator
The past couple of weeks have been rather interesting in terms of all things Nintendo – following the release of one of its biggest games of all time, the Japanese gaming monolith issued a takedown against the folks behind the popular Dolphin Wii emulator, which was set to be released on Steam. More recently, the company has issued a statement about the whole matter, as per a message sent to gaming website Kotaku:
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers. This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.”
The listing for Dolphin has since been taken down from Steam due to a cease and desist order issued on behalf of Nintendo. At the moment, the emulator’s Steam release remains “indefinitely postponed.”
Nintendo has long been known for keeping an iron grip on its intellectual property, going so far as to hunt down individuals and groups that have attempted to provide users with “unofficial” methods on playing Nintendo games. Given that another big entity such as Valve is involved with this latest incident, it’s interesting to see how this will impact things to come, at least as far as emulation is concerned.
Source: Kotaku