Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?
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I am enjoying building this cabinet with my son and I was wondering if there is a way to build and sell arcade cabinets legitimately. Is there a license or organization you have to goto to get a license, pay fees etc so you can sell cabinets like Pacman or Donkey Kong?
Thanks,
Chris -
@ChristianG You cannot sell the RetroPie image, even without games. You can't even provide it "for free" along with the cabinet hardware, due to the licenses on the various emulators.
It's my understanding that the "right" way to go about it would be to sell the hardware, and then provide instructions on how to download RetroPie from the website, and then you could provide a custom script to setup any tweaks necessary for your particular hardware configuration.
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@obsidianspider I wonder if this is the case if you use Jama boards. Some have like 60 in 1 boards.
Obviously you see people selling those like crazy online so I guess they are either all on Ebay illegally or they have bought some form of a license.
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@ChristianG said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
I guess they are either all on Ebay illegally
Correct
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Well, you obviously cannot deliver a cabinet with roms, and some emulators carry licenses that don't allow them to be included in a commercial product, but you can certainly create a cabinet with a pi, a front-end, and F/OSS emulators like MAME installed.
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@phulshof said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
Well, you obviously cannot deliver a cabinet with roms, and some emulators carry licenses that don't allow them to be included in a commercial product, but you can certainly create a cabinet with a pi, a front-end, and F/OSS emulators like MAME installed.
I don't think you can do that either - MAME has a license which prevents commercial distribution too.
All you can really do is sell the cabinet complete except for the SD card image and give instructions to the customer on how to download and install the software.
It isn't rocket science, so most people should be capable of doing it given adequate instructions.
Would it be a mini cabinet or a full size?
If it's full size, then put a PC in it.
The only reason to use a Pi for an arcade machine is if a PC won't fit. -
@jamesbeat Its funny how these cabinets are all over Ebay, Craigslist etc. I guess people take their chances.
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@ChristianG unfortunately people are greedy dbags. Wish it weren't so, but it is.
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@jamesbeat said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
@phulshof said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
Well, you obviously cannot deliver a cabinet with roms, and some emulators carry licenses that don't allow them to be included in a commercial product, but you can certainly create a cabinet with a pi, a front-end, and F/OSS emulators like MAME installed.
I don't think you can do that either - MAME has a license which prevents commercial distribution too.
Not anymore; MAME is licensed under BSD (for the most part) and GPL 2.0 (some parts) these days. You can freely distribute it these days, even in a commercial product.
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Would the same hold true for the libretro MAME and AdvanceMAME versions?
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@herb_fargus said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
@ChristianG unfortunately people are greedy dbags. Wish it weren't so, but it is.
I'm not 100% sure I agree with you here. While it's certainly true that selling arcade cabinets with all the roms included is illegal as hell (and may land you into a heap of trouble), I think there's nothing wrong with selling the cabinet itself (there's a lot of work going into a good cabinet), and helping people set up a proper emulation platform shouldn't be a problem either (many people have no clue how to do that properly). The problem starts when you include other people's IP without their permission.
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@phulshof said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?
I don't think you can do that either - MAME has a license which prevents commercial distribution too.
Not anymore; MAME is licensed under BSD (for the most part) and GPL 2.0 (some parts) these days. You can freely distribute it these days, even in a commercial product.
not the older versions of mame we use by default in retropie.
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@dankcushions said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
@phulshof said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?
I don't think you can do that either - MAME has a license which prevents commercial distribution too.
Not anymore; MAME is licensed under BSD (for the most part) and GPL 2.0 (some parts) these days. You can freely distribute it these days, even in a commercial product.
not the older versions of mame we use by default in retropie.
That's true, and I'm not familiar with the license for RetroArch either. I'm currently using the 2016 core myself, and am planning on having a closer look at the latest (non-RetroArch) releases. On my Linux PC I always use the latest version.
Edit: Just checked: RetroArch itself is developed under GPL 3.0, so that shouldn't be an issue. You just need to be careful with the cores you want to include.
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@phulshof well absolutely I agree, nothing wrong with selling a quality product (like the picade) problem is when people use the software as added value which as I've seen is almost always the case. After working with retropie for so long I've lost faith in humanity when it comes to people not being greedy dbags.
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@herb_fargus said in Anyone know of the route you have to take to build and sell retro cabinets legitimately?:
@phulshof well absolutely I agree, nothing wrong with selling a quality product (like the picade) problem is when people use the software as added value which as I've seen is almost always the case. After working with retropie for so long I've lost faith in humanity when it comes to people not being greedy dbags.
True, though I have no problem as long as people stay within the limits of the law. Linux, RetroFE, MAME, etc. are all distributed under F/OSS, and as such can be added by people within the limits of those licenses. I have no issues with that. I did however have some huge issues with RetroSpel, a fully loaded RetroPie image with roms and controllers that was sold on the Dutch market until BREIN put a stop to it recently. I especially disliked the fact that they lied to potential customers regarding the legality of the product.
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I agree with herb_fargus here, there is nothing wrong with selling a quality product and making money for the time you invested designing and making the product. But when you slap someone elses work and IP into the deal, and then increase the price because of that, you are an illegal scumbag.
I learnt my lesson on ebay about 12 years ago when I was banned for selling cd-r's full of roms, lol, it was a good little earner for a while, but I got caught, I had no idea at the time that it was illegal.What WAS a great earner was gold coins for Runescape, oh man I made a killing with that. We used to spend hours playing the game and then drop swap the coins with the ebay listing winner. It was a great way to make pocketmoney until Runescapes developers outlawed it.
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@ChristianG You might start by reading the 'free games' thread: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/9500/looking-for-free-legal-games
The homebrew ROMs thread is also relevant: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8792/big-rom-hacks-homebrew-thread
(Assuming you're running a Linux distribution which allows commercial sale.) You can preload a title when you find 1) a ROM that is public domain or licensed for commercial redistribution and 2) an emulator core that is GPL or otherwise licensed to allow commercial use.
This will not be a cornucopia of emulators and ROMs, but it might be enough to be useful in a product that is legitimately sold.
Edit: If you didn't pick up on this from earlier posts, you should not start by using the prebuilt RetroPie image. You should start by using the RetroPie setup script on a commercial use-friendly Linux distro.
Edit 2: Also remember to check on the license of the frontend theme that you use.
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