Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie
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Piko Interactive has published a number of games on Steam (some on GoG too), and I know of at least three of their games that have ROM files available:
Super 3-D Noah's Ark is a SNES game and the .sfc file is available in the main folder.
Water Margin is in the SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Water Margin\res folder, named simply "game" which can be renamed into a .bin file for emulation.
Nightshade also is in the res folder (also named "game") and can be renamed to an .nes file.
They have lots of other games, so there are probably other possibilities.
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@themazingness said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
Piko Interactive has published a number of games on Steam (some on GoG too)
A link to those on GOG:
https://www.gog.com/games?devpub=piko_interactive
(I don't use Steam, so I am not familiar with how to make a similar link there.)
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@Clyde said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
@themazingness said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
Piko Interactive has published a number of games on Steam (some on GoG too)
A link to those on GOG:
https://www.gog.com/games?devpub=piko_interactive
(I don't use Steam, so I am not familiar with how to make a similar link there.)
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@Clyde said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
you agreed to in order to use the software
I can undo it just by sending them an email that undoes it by forcing them to agree to undo it just by reading my email:
READ CAREFULLY. By reading this e-mail, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, onfidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
But of course, legalese isn't a magic language society runs on. Society runs on the Golden Rule: "Whoever Has the Gold Makes the Rules"
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@BenMcLean said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
I can undo it just by sending them an email that undoes it by forcing them to agree to undo it just by reading my email:
Well, I strongly doubt that this would hold up in court, but as IANAL myself, I would strongly recommend to anyone who also isn't a expert of the legal system in question to consult one before trusting their own layman's guts about it.
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@Clyde said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
I strongly doubt that this would hold up in court
Only because of the "Golden Rule"
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@Clyde Wow, I tried reinstalling the games to read the EULAs a bit, and I'm surprised what I found.
Atari Vault says you can't play it on unauthorized devices. It's one I thought would be perfectly fine since the console ROMs are freely installed on your computer. But then I wonder "well, I'm not installing Atari Vault on another device, I'm just using the ROMs on one." (Not a rationalization so much as wondering how courts would look at that differentiation). Still, surprised it actually had a strict EULA.
Taito Legends 2 was equally strict yet ambiguous whether or not you could use the ROMs elsewhere even though they are installed on the drive as is. It did prohibit decompiling, etc. (though extraction is unnecessary so it's a moot point regarding the ROMs). It allowed for backups but said the backups had to be for archival use or the same use granted in the rest of the license.
Nothing else really had a EULA at installation or in the files (and I have tons of collections like these). Most of them were games you had to extract from rather than the ROMs being included (the Sega Mega Drive and Genesis Classic Collection had no EULA either though).
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@themazingness Interesting, thanks for sharing your finds.
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@themazingness said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
Atari Vault says you can't play it on unauthorized devices.
Authorized by whom?
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@BenMcLean Hmm... I tried but I can't get the EULA to show up again by uninstalling and reinstalling. Presumably Atari.
I feel like EULAs should be required by law to be a text file for computer licenses. It shouldn't need to rely on arbitrary installation conditions to access them.
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https://store.steampowered.com//eula/400020_eula_0
You can read for yourself. They're also easier to find than I realized. There is a EULA for every game on Steam as far as I can tell. They're on their store page on the right hand side after the list of features. So my previous post about the games not having EULAs at installation can be true sometimes (there seems to be an algorithm there to detect if you have accepted it recently). But they all seem to be on the store page.
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Fun fact: According to the German Wikipedia, in Austria and Germany, any EULA that isn't presented to the buyer before the purchase is legally void. This even applies if the user is forced to agree to it afterwards to be able to install the software.
Furthermore, even a correctly presented EULA may be partially ineffective if it violates the laws on AGB (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen, General Terms and Conditions of Business).
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Because of the Halloween Steam sale, I was able to confirm some more Piko Interactive games that have SNES ROMs available by simply renaming (and adding a .sfc file extension) the game file in the res folder (as described in my post about Piko Interactive, a few posts above this one).
Dorke and Ymp
Gourmet Warriors
Iron Commando
Legend
Jim PowerNote that Jim Power has 2 versions of the ROM, the original and an enhanced version (in two separate folders within the res folder).
Also, no EULA on these :)
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I can confirm Dragonview works with the above method as well (rename "game" to a .sfc) and has no EULA.
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Don't know if anyone said this but
archive sitehas a ton for you to use for free as long as it isn't commercially.I have been using Google and using search criteria: internet archive <system name> ROMs and I currently have about 15 different sites ranging from Atari to PSX.
Enjoy and have fun!
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@dan1300 Please, no links to ROM sites. The archive site has a special DMCA exemption for the US, but it's not a legal avenue to get ROMs/games.
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@mitu I was always wondering why the links to archive site are allowed (across the board on other communities as well). The site contains illegal hosted ROMs.
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@thelostsoul said in Where to (legally) acquire content to play on RetroPie:
The site contains illegal hosted ROMs.
The site doesn't hosts the ROM illegaly, their usage is however not under the same terms.
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@mitu I'm just trying to understand what the difference between this archive page and a website who offers ROMs for download is. What if I create an archive website and offer the download links, just as the archive site, but do not allow them to download. Because the terms do not allow this. So, whats going on here that the DMCA allows this? And BTW its only for the US, so shouldn't this be only accessible from the US in that case? I am just confused about how this stuff works from legal perspective.
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@thelostsoul AFAIK, The Internet Archive was recognized as a public library and thus, got a exemption from copyright laws by the DMCA. So I would concur with @mitu that their hosting of retro software seems to be legal, but since a) this doesn't allow the use of that software by everyone, and b) even if so, it would only be legal in the US, and linking to it may cause problems for websites in other countries, e.g. retropie.org.uk.
Some links about the matter:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive#Software
- https://archive.org/about/dmca.php
- https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/librarian_statement_01.html (mainly #2 and #3 of the penultimate paragraph.)
Cognate subject: this year's lawsuit by some book publishers
edit: I wonder if and how DMCA permissions may apply to foreign countries the US have copyright treaties with, like the WIPO Copyright Treaty, but here my motivations to dive deeper into the matter subside without further importance to my own activities.
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