Well that blew up, huh? If you follow emulation or just gaming on the whole, you've probably heard about the controversy around the Dolphin Steam release and the Wii Common Key. There's been a lot of conclusions made, and while we've wanted to defend ourselves, we thought it would be prudent to contact lawyers first to make sure that our understanding of the situation was legally sound. That took some time, which was frustrating to ourselves and to our users, but now we are educated and ready to give an informed response.
Legality aside because I’m sure there’s always going to be some random law that they will use (or twist) to fight this… With 3DS I remember there was a community provided cloud cracking service. I’m guessing it was either some comically weak algorithm or they found some vulnerability they were able to exploit.
But even then that’s not really a good comparison because if there was some master key (I don’t know the specifics) it is still physically on your 3DS and they weren’t sending them around (or worse, hosting it on a store).
The situation sucks but I understand it from Valve’s point of view. It’s not about whether they think it is okay or not, it’s about them being concerned about liability from Nintendo who are well known for protecting their IP.
Get this: their digital licensing protection scheme was entirely client side. Which meant anybody with a hacked 3DS could just request any game they liked directly from the eShop.
Legality aside because I’m sure there’s always going to be some random law that they will use (or twist) to fight this… With 3DS I remember there was a community provided cloud cracking service. I’m guessing it was either some comically weak algorithm or they found some vulnerability they were able to exploit.
But even then that’s not really a good comparison because if there was some master key (I don’t know the specifics) it is still physically on your 3DS and they weren’t sending them around (or worse, hosting it on a store).
The situation sucks but I understand it from Valve’s point of view. It’s not about whether they think it is okay or not, it’s about them being concerned about liability from Nintendo who are well known for protecting their IP.
Oh the shit on the 3DS was absolutely comical.
Get this: their digital licensing protection scheme was entirely client side. Which meant anybody with a hacked 3DS could just request any game they liked directly from the eShop.