RetroArch is officially coming to Steam

Bladexdsl · Jul 14, 2019

Graxer said:
That will always be a problem unless companies like Sony, Sega or Nintendo decide to actively support RetroArch for a cut

nintendo will never do that they want their games on their consoles only. it's their way...or DMCA

MetoMeto · Jul 14, 2019

kuwanger said:
Unfortunately, that's the sort of attitude that tends to poison the well of good will that are emulator writers. So, even if I don't contribute to questionable activities, other people who do can still indirectly effect the future progress of emulators which does effect me. There's already a lot of drama around Retroarch as its gained a lot of focus while the emulator writers themselves are ignored. And the funny part, of course, is that people complain about Retroarch over the same reason they avoid the source emulator--relatively terrible, in their opinion, frontends. :/

I think Retroarch is valuable. I think the emulator developers themselves make something valuable. And I think that something like Retroarch would be a good thing to have on Steam so IP holders could sell ROMs and end the quasi-blockade* that is "roms are piracy"--aka 'mp3s are piracy". It's not that any of this is not a doable thing. It's just that reasonably it's better to play nice and ask permission, even when it's not needed, because the point of Retroarch shouldn't have been to just be a technological platform--which it is, and why it's so legally gray area on some things--as much as a collaboration platform. Honestly, at least for the moment it sounds like some effort is going that way, and I do hope it continues.

Or selling an mp3 player without songs.. Seriously, Retroarch is for playing content. Some right holders have, directly or indirectly, sold the content digitally. Others are starting to rip their own collections. It's a chicken and egg thing, much like how digital music sales went where there was a lot of back and forth about how it couldn't possibly be people with massive CD collections wanting to consolidate their music nor would they ever want to buy more. The better analogy is wandering around in a desert and someone is provided cheap/free canteens, and the owner of the well refuses to sell you water because of course you'll just pirate it.

* Some IP holders already have, either in walled garden (Nintendo), one off consoles (often crap quality or legally dubious), or in relatively open compilations (with still often crap quality or legally dubious). Imagine if all your digital music was sold as albums each with its own bundled PC program to play it. It'd be a mess. :/

I know, but still, its used to play roms...downloaded roms...i never saw a rom being sold by nintendo or sega.
Call me stupid but i'm just a simple guy xD

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DKB said:
People getting upset at digital rights management is my new fetish.

OT: I say this is pretty cool.

But whats the point if you can download it from RA website anyway. Why do you need steam version (i dont mean you literally

)?

Graxer · Jul 14, 2019

Bladexdsl said:
nintendo will never do that they want their games on their consoles only. it's their way...or DMCA

I agree that it will never happen with Nintendo... but luckily none of their main consoles before the Gamecube need a BIOS.

MetoMeto · Jul 14, 2019

Bladexdsl said:
nintendo will never do that they want their games on their consoles only. it's their way...or DMCA

Hey, that rhymes!

Also...yeah. I mean what company wants that...

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Graxer said:
I agree that it will never happen with Nintendo... but luckily none of their main consoles before the Gamecube need a BIOS.

Well a rom is a rom, right? I guess all nintendo cores will not be present on RA steam version

Graxer · Jul 14, 2019

MetoMeto said:
Well a rom is a rom, right? I guess all nintendo cores will not be present on RA steam version

Well yes, but I would imagine that the rights to the games, no matter what console they are on, still lie with the developers. After all, the Castlevania and Contra collections that just came out have emulated versions of NES, SNES and Gameboy games, but they are multi-plaform. I think generally Nintendo can only complain if you are distributing roms of games they were involved in the development of. So no first party games like Mario, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, etc. or second party games like Pokémon.

Bladexdsl · Jul 14, 2019

MetoMeto said:
i never saw a rom being sold by nintendo or sega.

pretty sure the minis use roms. the wii/u vc deff used them even an emulator to run them

Graxer · Jul 14, 2019

Bladexdsl said:
pretty sure the minis use roms. the wii/u vc deff used them even an emulator to run them

Also, that is exactly what the Mega Drive / Genesis collection on Steam is. You buy the games and you get the emulation front end along with a rom file.

MetoMeto · Jul 14, 2019

Bladexdsl said:
pretty sure the minis use roms. the wii/u vc deff used them even an emulator to run them

I actually meant roms like "mario world.sfc" so you can use them freely and with N's approval x)

radicalnetwork · Jul 14, 2019

MetoMeto said:
I actually meant roms like "mario world.sfc" so you can use them freely and with N's approval x)

I don't think that ever happened with Nintendo's stuff but the Sega Genesis games on Steam and the Neo Geo (drm-free) games on Humble Bundle definitely give you the rom in a folder without hiding it or anything.

kuwanger · Jul 14, 2019

MetoMeto said:
I know, but still, its used to play roms...downloaded roms...i never saw a rom being sold by nintendo or sega.
Call me stupid but i'm just a simple guy xD

SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Collection on Steam includes an "uncompressed ROMs" folder with all the roms of the games you purchase. No magic at all for dumping. Meanwhile, while Nintendo doesn't officially provide a way of dumping you can definitely hack a Wii/3DS to backup and dump ROMs that Nintendo sells you. Same with many other companies (IREM, Capcom, Data East, and Technos) selling rights to sell mini-consoles with lots of their games. SNK is actually one of the first I'm aware of to include a bunch of dumped, unencrypted ROMs as part of their neo geo anniversary thing.

So, yea, not going to call you stupid, but there's various IP holders that have bought up dead companies trying to milk as much money out of their properties as they can. Selling ROMs is a quick and dirty way of achieving that, so I can only imagine relying upon Retroarch instead of a 3rd party to develop and package something is great for them. That Nintendo won't likely join the bandwagon? Yea, Nintendo isn't the gaming industry.

MetoMeto · Jul 14, 2019

kuwanger said:
SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Collection on Steam includes an "uncompressed ROMs" folder with all the roms of the games you purchase. No magic at all for dumping.

Didn't know that about sega roms.
Still it's limiting and i see no point in RA on steam...

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radicalnetwork said:
I don't think that ever happened with Nintendo's stuff but the Sega Genesis games on Steam and the Neo Geo (drm-free) games on Humble Bundle definitely give you the rom in a folder without hiding it or anything.

I just read that on post below. Didnt know that, thats nice of sega.
Still, Its known what emulators are used for so...idk how that will work for RA. All those official emulators are probably licenced by companies that give the roms to use them. I dont see how RA is gonna do that, also RA is already on PC, why steam version?

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kuwanger said:
So, yea, not going to call you stupid, but...

I think you just did

kuwanger · Jul 14, 2019

MetoMeto said:
I think you just did

There's a difference between being stupid and being unaware or simply having a difference of opinion. If you don't think there's value with RA on Steam, that's fine. I disagree. *shrug*

MetoMeto · Jul 14, 2019

kuwanger said:
There's a difference between being stupid and being unaware or simply having a difference of opinion. If you don't think there's value with RA on Steam, that's fine. I disagree. *shrug*

Call it whatever you want and play with semantics, but we both know that there is nothing polite underneath that. x)
But thats not really the topic here. Sorry. Anyway, just saying...

Mythical · Jul 14, 2019

I stopped using Retroarch a while ago, but this is really cool! I feel like this could show a lot of people an easy door into the emulation community

radicalnetwork · Jul 14, 2019

MetoMeto said:
I just read that on post below. Didnt know that, thats nice of sega.
Still, Its known what emulators are used for so...idk how that will work for RA. All those official emulators are probably licenced by companies that give the roms to use them. I dont see how RA is gonna do that, also RA is already on PC, why steam version?

Yeah i'm not sure either about what's their goal with the Steam release, but i definitely think it's an interesting development and i'll be following what's coming next.
As someone else pointed out, there are already some emulators suites on Steam (like the New Retro Arcade Neon) so maybe it's possible that nothing at all will happen except for RA being available on Steam, or maybe it'll rise some questions and issues since it's a way more high-profile project than the ones already on Steam. Personally i'm pretty curious.

CameronCataclysm · Jul 15, 2019

Tbh I honestly look at this as a huge marketing stride. Not sure on how much revenue will be produced but I mean think about it. Most people who emulate have some sort of tech interest. We go out and find what we need, mod what we need to mod, then run retroarch. This hits a whole other range of individuals that didn't do what we did, but want to emulate just the same. There will always be that guy like "Holy crap, I can play almost anything I played as a child/Young Adult?! On Steam!?!?!?". As far as I'm concerned if you played that shit as a kid and your parents bought it with their hard earned money, you deserve to play it no matter if you lost it.

Clutz450 · Jul 15, 2019

Doesn't Steam already use dosbox and scummvm in order to play some games? Aren't those emulators? So how is using retroarch on Steam to allow an easier and legal way to play older games any different? For instance, I tried downloading a few point and click games and had a hard time getting them to work correctly in scummvm. So when Steam had them, I bought and downloaded them and everything just worked. So if they can do something similar with retroarch I think that would be great.

MetoMeto · Jul 16, 2019

radicalnetwork said:
Yeah i'm not sure either about what's their goal with the Steam release, but i definitely think it's an interesting development and i'll be following what's coming next.
As someone else pointed out, there are already some emulators suites on Steam (like the New Retro Arcade Neon) so maybe it's possible that nothing at all will happen except for RA being available on Steam, or maybe it'll rise some questions and issues since it's a way more high-profile project than the ones already on Steam. Personally i'm pretty curious.

Yeah, me to. Interested to see how events will be evolving.,.

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radicalnetwork said:
Yeah i'm not sure either about what's their goal with the Steam release, but i definitely think it's an interesting development and i'll be following what's coming next.
As someone else pointed out, there are already some emulators suites on Steam (like the New Retro Arcade Neon) so maybe it's possible that nothing at all will happen except for RA being available on Steam, or maybe it'll rise some questions and issues since it's a way more high-profile project than the ones already on Steam. Personally i'm pretty curious.

but RA is a little different than official emulator...in sense that is can play everything with cores.

|<roni&g · Jul 16, 2019

Roms & ISO’s are free, they better not Ben thinking of selling them. $1 DLC for classic games would be cool though

smf · Jul 16, 2019

|<roni&g said:
Roms & ISO’s are free

Are you talking about illegally downloaded roms & ISOs?

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