this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Dolphin has been around for literally 20 years and Nintendo have never pursued them because they follow the law. More importantly, they are non-profit.
Taking payments to allow people to play leaked first-party titles was a very, very stupid thing to do.
They prevented Dolphin from getting on steam (for free) a few years ago, so I certainly wouldn't say "never."
They didn't 'prevent' anything. Ask Dolphin themselves.
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2023/07/20/what-happened-to-dolphin-on-steam/
TL;DR: Valve asked Nintendo of America's layeers if they want it on the store and they said no. No pursuit. No DMCA. No threats. A legal opinion. Valve gave a copy of the response to Dolphin and said if they wanted it on the store they needed an agreement with Nintendo. i.e. instead of benign ignorance from Nintendo, to get a literal "emulate our games" approval from Nintendo. Dolphin wisely decided not to.
In Nintendo's response they mentioned Dolphin includng the Wii encryption key which if you are old like me you will remember being a meme almost 20 years ago (https://gizmodo.com/wii-officially-hacked-338713). Nintendo takes issue with how this was achieved (physically modifying the chips with a tweezers) but again, have never IIRC attempted any legal action to prevent it. So, "no we don't approve" was always going to be the answer. Dolphin appear to have either expected Valve to risk its own position, or to slip under the radar, to distribute its software. In the end, the status quo was maintained: Valve do not publish or distribute (or prevent you installing yourself through Non-Steam-Games) Dolphin, Dolphin did not seek approval from Nintendo, Nintendo does not pursue Dolphin. Except Dolphin got a nice bit of tech news coverage 15 years after its launch and some nerd cred for kinda-not-really taking on Nintendo.
They didn't prevent anything, they just said no and then the thing didn't happen because they said no and for literally no other reason. But it wasn't Nintendo's fault!
Valve were the ones that explicitly told Dolphin that Dolphin would need to supply them (Valve) with evidence of an agreement. Nintendo would not have even been aware of it had Valve not independently reached out to them. Dolphin (wisely, again) did not contact Nintendo. "Prevent" has an actual meaning and it's not "have a negative opinion towards".
I don't know why I'm arguing with you, go argue with the Dolphin devs themselves that they are wrong about their own application.