Slashdot Mirror
Legal Arcade ROM Vendor Talks Business
jvm writes "Remember StarROMs, the company selling legal Atari ROM downloads for a few bucks a piece? They're still around and Curmudgeon Gamer posted an interview with StarROMs co-founder Frank Leibly. Have they been successful so far? How can they possibly expect to compete with free downloads? Are they giving money to MAME as promised? And why has their listing of games dropped from about 60 games to just over 50? It's all here. (Slashdot covered their initial launch late last year, and Slashdot Games recently also recounted a different discussion with Leibly.)"
The ultimate geek builds his own, see CmdrTaco's for an example, but in the future, there might be a market for people who want mame cabinets for sheer nostalgia reasons, as more and more, the computer seems to be in the right position to trump the arcade soon.
And of course, you're not going to put illegal roms on a commercial product. Enter StarROMs...
ROMs are a great reason to support HR2601 -- the Public Domain Enhancement Act. Copyrighted works that aren't commercially viable stand a chance to enter the public domain after 50 years. If you live in the US, I think you should write you Congressional representatives to co-sponsor this bill.
Digital Citizen
1. If you're willing to pay for those oldies, then just let the owners of the rights know. A number of them have already made their old games available again because of such reactions, either at a small charge or even completely free. This is for instance the case with the various versions of the excellent space sim Elite or the various Cinemaware games such as Defender of the Crown.
2. Leisure Suit Larry was was created and published by Sierra, which obviously still exists. They are even quite fond of releasing old games at low prices or entirely free (the excellent Betrayal at Krondor, for instance).
A LOT of these games are 20-25 years old. In the intervening years the original licensor may have gone out of business and determining who has the licensing rights after the business was dissolved requires a lot of legwork... or there may still be pending disputes between former owners of the businesses that tie up doing anything with the game until the dispute is resolved.
Tracking down the person with rights or waiting for a rights dispute to be settled are both reasons I've heard for some classic films languishing in the vault without seeing the light of DVD.
Games disappearing from StaROMs may be ones that were licensed to them in good faith, but were later found out to have a murky provenance where determining, finding contact information for, and coming to an agreement with the party that has licensing rights became difficult.
I'm not going to comment on other aspects, but I wouldn't use the drop from 60 to 51 games as an indicator of imminent failure of the site.
Start a happiness pandemic
Okay... found it... to answer my own question:
This License allows you
to use the Software on a single personal
computer for non-commercial
entertainment purposes only,
Interview: Frank Leibly of StarROMs
Wednesday, March 31 2004 @ 08:01 AM CST
Contributed by: jvm
Last Fall I interviewed Jeff Vavasour (parts one, two, three) and asked whether we'd ever see any game companies offering game ROMs in a pay-per-download service. Within a matter of days, StarROMs appeared in the public eye and caused a stir by offering several dozen classic Atari arcade ROMs for download, apparently legally, for a couple of dollars each. Shortly thereafter, I purchased several ROMs and enjoyed playing them in MAME, leading to one of the more curmudgeonly, controversial posts to ever grace this site.
Having already poked the ROM pirates with my sawed-off pointy stick, it seemed appropriate to needle the StarROMs people themselves. In the period shortly after their launch, however, StarROMs disappointingly declined my request for an interview. Being the patient type, I asked again recently and this time StarROMs co-founder Frank Leibly agreed to answer my questions.
Here, at last are answers to the big questions: How can StarROMs, a pay-to-download business, really expect to compete with the free, pirated ROMs people are already downloading? Have they been successful? And, are they really going to donate some of their earnings back to emulation projects like MAME?
jvm: Let's get right to the big questions. You've had your business open for nearly five months. Is StarROMs successful so far?
Frank Leibly: I think we're doing pretty good so far. Longer term, we aren't going to be happy until we get every copyright owner on board. And that's going to take some time. But I think we've made a lot of people very happy with what we have to offer now.
jvm: You're charging a couple dollars per game. How can you possibly compete with the "free" downloads of ROMs that any modestly skilled net surfer can track down?
FL: This is really the same issue every copyright owner and media company has been dealing with for years. As a kid I bought blank tapes and copied records and tapes from my friends but when I got to the point when I could afford it I bought the CD's. And I still do. If you look at the demographic of who we're selling to, it's people in their 20's, 30's and 40's for the most part. Spending a few bucks is pocket change and it's worth it to know you're dealing with someone legitimate. I like to think the service we provide is worth something too.
I also think the illegal sites are going to continue to experience pressure and when you get right down to it I'm not sure I see the point of putting up illegal roms if there is a legal source available.
We're also starting to work with some folks who are selling MAME cabinets who want to provide their customers roms legally. These customers are spending big money and they deserve to get something that's fully legitimate rather than pirated.
jvm: There has been some contraction in the catalog of games at StarROMs. I purchased Gauntlet II from you, and it's not listed any more. Could you explain this?
FL: We had a rights issue emerge with respect to ten of the titles we were initially offering, where a third party came along and said that they had rights to these games and that we couldn't sell them without their approval. We hope to offer these games again in the future, but for the time being we agreed to settle this issue amicably by pulling the titles from our offering.
jvm: So, is my license to use Gauntlet II a valid license, even though the game has been removed from your catalog?
FL: Yes, the license is still valid. Likewise, we will continue to provide support for customers who have purchased these games through us, including providing update ROM versions if necessary.
jvm: StarROMs says they'll give a portion of the annual profits to projects that support the emulation of classic games. Some are skeptical about how, or perhaps even whether, this will be done. What does StarROMS have in mind, specifically and when can
Namco do one as well with Pacman, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Bosconian and Rally X.
Thinkgeek stock them
Seems perfectly reasonable usage. Most of these files are copies (or derived from) the code that was in a physical ROM. Do you also get annoyed if someone refers to a CD "ISO"? That is somewhat sillier if you recall what the letters mean. Extending usage of a term is fine as long as there is no confusion created.
I find Mame to be rather stable. You can get Windows versions as well as dos, so it might be worth trying a windows version of mame. I use that without it being too fast, but then I've only got a 1GHz Athlon, with Windows ME. The only variation in speed seems to be that modern games are choppy. (low FPS).
.80.
Anyway, you can get the latest version(.81) at www.mame.net, although I haven't found aany rom sites with the updated roms yet, so it might be worth sticking with
I've not used many other emulation programs much recently, so I'm not sure what else has been going on emulation-wise.
Abandonware was never a legally defensable position.
It was a concept invented by some BBS owners in the 1980's to try to project the image that distribution of ROMS and such like was actually legal. This has always been Bullshit. I have no more rights to copy and distribute Wordstar than i have to distribute MS office.
A *morally* defensable position to on the other hand is different, although i would say that it is only morally defensable if you personally have tried to find the original copyright owner and after a very detailed search, cant find them.
(Note, a quick search in the business pages is not a good search)
I'm sure people will disagree in both directions.
The original creators of the rom never got anything anyway. Most of them were salaried employees of the arcade companies (And i believe were paid very well).
If you mean the original arcade companies, well then they know what they are signing up for. The advantage of this for them is that they have dealt fairly with the emulation buffs who want to want to be legal, while retaining their rights to the work in question when dealing with the pirates.
The service being described by the main article is a very good idea, and i hope more copyright owners take them up on it.