The GameCube And Wii Emulator Dolphin Is No Longer Coming To Steam

Its not that much of a loss given you can still launch Dolphin from steam anyway. It just won't be on the storefront.

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.
Another thing, all the enhancements planned for dolphin on steam will still be hitting the standalone version
Yeah, but you don't get cloud saves or achievements

Can't complain too much though. Dolphin is so good were spoiled.
- Not just that, guides, community controller configurations...

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.

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.
- Dolphin uses literal copyrighted Nintendo code, that’s the issue.
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.
- Ouch
- Please don't integrate with steam dick

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...
- Dolphin has a one click updater already.
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?
- There are already emulators in steam, so...

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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Old Nintendo was only interested in profit as well, they just didn’t have the reputation to act quite as greedy.
  
  Current Nintendo is the capitalist wet dream
They're not lost, although they would be if Nintendo ever got their way. They have conclusively proven they're not up to the challenge of preserving stuff, and luckily people have done so anyway - despite Nintendo's attempts at fucking with it. The bummer is that you have no legal recourse.
- So there's two thoughts on this, yes the games are preserved thankfully. But also, they are culturally lost. If people don't have easy access to creative works, those creative works become lost to all but the few who 1, even know they exist and 2, have the ability to aquire them
  
  So yeah you and me, we can go grab images and emulators. I have a hacked wii and a retrotink. But that doesn't mean the games aren't lost to the vast vast majority
FWIW I believe Mario Galaxy was recompiled for Switch with only some parts being handled via emulation, so it likely isn't just a broad drop-in solution for any game. Though I do wonder if they did something similar for Pikmin and Metroid Prime

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.
- I hear RetroArch doesn't have the best and latest emulation cores in general, though I don't keep up closely enough to know why.

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

What a surpirse

retroarch remains.

(Add mandatory "go screw on a corn Nintendo" comment here)

Fuck Steam, download it directly from their website and tip them on their develoemt fund if you like it!

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.

Steam is a much better updater.
- Steam is a better updater than your OSes built in package manager?
- Dolphin is open source, add a better updater.
  
  I was only saying my opinion and in my opinion people are making way too much of a fuss about this, as if the world ended. This outcome should seriously have been expected in my opinion.
  
  Anywas we're not missing out on anything, if it doesn't go on Steam, except of course slightly more comfort and functions that can be fulfilled by other programs as well.

Thanks for nothing Nintendo :(