Comments 3

Re: Hyperkin Responds To Accusations Of Infringing On The Rights Of Emulator Creators

AndresSM

Emulation is perfectly legal. Downloading and playing games you don't own isn't. It's not the same.

By the way this is just damage control, I don't think they ever intended to release anything.
https://twitter.com/Hyperkin/status/481857441332596737

Guess they'll delete this tweet now but no worries, I have saved this just in case.

Byt the way this doesn't change anything, they are still using RetroArch's resampler code which is covered under the GPLv3 which means they should release their complete frontend code. Also they are still using several emulators that were released under non-commercial licenses which can't be used for commercial products.

If anything I find their response funny. I'll just quote myself (from a reddit thread):

Thing about this is that they are not responding to any of the public threads now floating around regarding this matter (there are 2 reddit threads and the blog post at libretro's). And now their page lists a contact email ([email protected]). My guess is they plan to offer "financial compensation" in exchange for a license exception.

Another shady thing is that they kind of refused to address this being an emulator and there have been claims here and there about everything being developed from scratch. As far as I know they have a follow up to the RetroN5 that plays DOS games (funny thing, they called it a "DOS box" in an interview and in the AMA thread they claimed they are creating their own solution instead of Dosbox). Nothing else has been said about that. Maybe they are waiting for the new DOSbox-libretro port?

They should really read the licenses of the cores. They are even including the original SNES9X license on the source package but I guess they never read it.