www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed

mediamogul

Holy lord. I just read through the verbiage on that site and he really smooths horse paste around like icing on a cake. I'm surprised he doesn't claim to have invented pixels, or at least that his team worked tirelessly to improve their very nature to produce a unique, pixel-driven experience unparalleled on other retro-gaming platforms. Below are two particularly flowered claims.

"Not Just Another 'RetroPie' Knockoff"
With a custom operating system built exclusively for gaming, our consoles not only run faster and smoother than other "RetroPie" builds, but support more games!

Our hardware is based off the most recent advancements in micro-computing which have allowed us to cut our costs while still offering powerful game systems capable of running almost every game console from the Playstation 1 and Earlier. What this means for you is a low price, yet powerful, customizable system built specifically for gaming!

I suspect he comes from a background in advertising and if not, he's got a natural ability for the nonsense.

lilbud

@mediamogul

To his credit, that is actually an impressive amount of misleading BS in very few words

herb_fargus

@mediamogul I'd love to see how he's made the pi run even faster than all of our optimisations... Must be because of his extensive academic BS degree. Of course there is no source code to be found...

PetroRie

LMAO he did even mention Game Cube? Anyone noticed the power indicator icon on his screen in the upper right corner.

@Darksavior Haha, I've seen his comments and he's getting butthurt. IMHO a YouTuber should never post under his own video's. It makes everything look so amateur.

Darksavior

Well damn, he brought the video back. Probably took it down until the heat died down from our wrath.

BuZz

@Darksavior I filed a copyright complaint against it so it was initially taken down. Unfortunately however the author did a counter-claim knowing that we would require a court order to do anything further. That would be a lot of cost and certainly not worth it. As we didn't provide google evidence of an order, the video was restored.

Once we have the US trademark sorted, we may have a little more power though.

A Former User

140 bucks for the basic package (Pi+32GB SD) ~double the component's worth, they're making a killing. It's sad, really.

Though when you read the specs they say they're using Lakka as an "OS", so not sure if this is our fight anymore. It's still ridiculously arrogant of course...especially seeing as they also say that "SNES, Sega Genesis and FB Alpha (arcade cabinet games) emulators have non-commercial licenses and must be downloaded by the user themselves.". As if Lakka didn't have the same license.

There's a "chat" option on their site, feel free to use it :)

BuZz

@arkive Yeah on their site it looks like they are no longer using RetroPie (if they did before as it seemed from the video).

Still a shame as they are still breaking the licences of many of the emulators included with Lakka. I'm not convinced they are shipping Lakka without the non commercial emulators, but if they are they may actually be ok legally. But I'm no lawyer.

markwkidd

@arkive said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

140 bucks for the basic package (Pi+32GB SD) ~double the component's worth, they're making a killing. It's sad, really.

Though when you read the specs they say they're using Lakka as an "OS", so not sure if this is our fight anymore. It's still ridiculously arrogant of course...especially seeing as they also say that "SNES, Sega Genesis and FB Alpha (arcade cabinet games) emulators have non-commercial licenses and must be downloaded by the user themselves.". As if Lakka didn't have the same license.

Actually, Lakka does not have a non-commercial license. It's based on LibreELEC which is available under a commerce-friendly GPL license. Though if they change any of the Lakka source code for their product they'd have to release their changes under the GPL.

A couple of the bundled emulator cores, and possibly some themes, have non-commercial stipulations, but it wouldn't be too hard to remove those in order to sell a pre-installed Lakka OS legitimately. As to whether it's a good idea to do so I leave as a separate issue.

A Former User

@markwkidd said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

Actually, Lakka does not have a non-commercial license. It's based on LibreELEC which is available under a commerce-friendly GPL license. Though if they change any of the Lakka source code for their product they'd have to release their changes under the GPL.

Ah, seems I misread their FAQ statement:

"Can I sell Lakka boxes?
No. Lakka is shipped with emulators protected by a Non Commercial license. Also, the name and the logo are a registered trademark."

So it seems they switched from the Pie to Lakka because of that lack of license and only bundle the licence-free emus. Slippery ones, eh.

A Former User

It's amazing people are paying for this when a quick google/youtube search could show you where and how to get this at a fraction of the price. If people are lazy enough to waste hard earned money like this I say let them do it

herb_fargus

@KiloPIE the issue isn't whether or not people are stupid enough to waste their money. The issue is these greedy dbags are profiting off of the work of the developers and people in this community.

markwkidd

Umm, when I see clauses like this I feel like they are not 'dbags' but instead people with a respect for licensing: SNES, Sega Genesis and FB Alpha (arcade cabinet games) emulators have non-commercial licenses and must be downloaded by the user themselves.

For my part, I have contributed well more than 100 hours of my time to improving the way that RetroArch works, particularly for arcade emulation. I am totally fine with people taking that work and making money from it, which is why I contributed my work with a GPL license.

I don't need anyone to white-knight for my open sourced intellectual property. I decided to open source it by contributing to RetroArch and that was my call. If there is some specific violation of someone elses licensed IP that's a part of these products, then fine let's point it out and I'm right with you on enforcing the license.

martin88

@markwkidd I agree with you. People seem to just dislike any monetary transactions involving Raspberry-Pi-retro-gaming, even if they're perfectly legitimate. Just because you had to spent all the time learning to set one up yourself you're not entitled to forbid others for wanting to pay for this set up service.

A bit of an elitist attitude to be honest.

herb_fargus

@martin88 it's a matter of respecting licences. Not elitism. I have no problem with people setting up arcade hardware and pi kits so long as they aren't selling software that have non commercial licences.

As far as elitism, if people are too lazy to learn something new and would rather throw money at something, that's their loss is that want to wallow in sloth and mediocrity. I care very little for people with no ambition.

A Former User

@martin88 said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

People seem to just dislike any monetary transactions involving Raspberry-Pi-retro-gaming, even if they're perfectly legitimate.

As it has been pointed out it is not "perfectly legitimate" at all. Guy has one clause to cover his ass - quite possibly after some backlash - and yet continue selling/using other trademarked properties such as RetroPie, themes and whatever else (I guess you can only find out by buying one since his utube/website doesn't carry the same info.)

Then you have extreme price gouging - double the mark up on components for installing one image on SD? Sure, cool job if you can get it. But no, wait, here the man himself explains the sweat & toil that the inventor of a "best retro gaming multi-system ever " had to go through:

Have you ever designed and built a game console? Get back to us after your days of research, configuration, testing, optimizing, overclocking and let us know what you think a good price would be :-)

markwkidd

@arkive said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@martin88 said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

People seem to just dislike any monetary transactions involving Raspberry-Pi-retro-gaming, even if they're perfectly legitimate.

As it has been pointed out it is not "perfectly legitimate" at all. Guy has one clause to cover his ass - quite possibly after some backlash - and yet continue selling/using other trademarked properties such as RetroPie, themes and whatever else (I guess you can only find out by buying one since his utube/website doesn't carry the same info.)

Forgive me, but please could you recap exactly what license or trademark violations, specifically, that you are talking about?

markwkidd

@herb_fargus said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@martin88 it's a matter of respecting licences. Not elitism. I have no problem with people setting up arcade hardware and pi kits so long as they aren't selling software that have non commercial licences.

I am ready to start filing complaints if you can show me what software with a non-commercial license is being sold.

A Former User

@markwkidd

Retropie
emulationstation themes

Like I said to find out which ones he's selling atm (website says Lakka, his vids & feeds say RetroPie) we'd have to purchase one - something I'm kind of reluctant to do.

This is beside the point anyway - even if this guy was "smart" enough to backtrack and legalise his warez it does not change the general point - just hit the ebay and you'll find instead of this saint a 100 more blatant ones who also ship it with roms etc.

markwkidd

@arkive said in www.retrogame.club another scam site selling retropie pre-installed:

@markwkidd

Retropie

emulationstation themes

Like I said to find out which ones he's selling atm (website says Lakka, his vids & feeds say RetroPie) we'd have to purchase one - something I'm kind of reluctant to do.

This is beside the point anyway - even if this guy was "smart" enough to backtrack and legalise his warez it does not change the general point - just hit the ebay and you'll find instead of this saint a 100 more blatant ones who also ship it with roms etc.

OK. You don't know for sure what copyright violation you're alleging. That may be defamation in some jurisdictions, but I'm not a lawyer.

However I do feel qualified to say that this is an example of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD): "Fear, uncertainty and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a disinformation strategy used in sales, marketing, public relations, talk radio, politics, religious organizations, and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information and a manifestation of the appeal to fear."

I also feel confident that your posts are part of an overall Chilling Effect, as pointed out by @martin88: "In a legal context, a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat of legal sanction."

If you are in the US, and so are the people responsible for this effort, you may be liable for Defamation if it turns out that they are, in fact, distributing the software within the terms of its licenses.

In other words, if we're going to talk about intellectual property as a legal matter, then let's do it the right way and look at the accuser as well as the accused.