LOC wrote on May 27, 2023, 12:57:
So the keys the Wii used is baked into the source code for Dolphin, which is a major no-no and why Nintendo decided to finally go after them and their Steam release. Modern Vintage Gamer did a video on this yesterday, and actually showed the source code (blurred out so he wouldn't get DMCA'ed also) literally showing the keys in the source code. Not sure why the Dolphin team did that since again it's considered a major no-no for emulation teams. But, hopefully they can fix the situation easily and fairly quickly. The Gamecube keys aren't included, just the Wii. So it seems removing the Wii keys from the code would be the easiest solution, but I am not a coder so I don't know how difficult it would be.

The current flow of ripping a Wii disc and making an image doesn't include decrypting the code and data, which is required to play the game. Since the keys are on each Wii and basically available in plain text format, it would be possible to change the process and create decrypted images.

The main issue with that is the already ripped images which are encrypted. The main reason to put Dolphin on Steam is visibility and that could turn into a negative if it doesn't support existing images. "Go rip your entire library again if you want to use it" is not a message that will go down well.

It is theoretically possible that they could remove the keys from the code and just rely on a separate keyfile loaded at runtime, but I haven't studied how they handle it.