There's been a bit of a furore in the emulation community lately centred around the PlayStation 1 emulator DuckStation, which has now seen two license changes recently.
The article says he got permission from people who wrote the code to change the license. If they didn’t give permission then he has rewritten the code.
They usually do this if the project finds out it’s being used in some uncouth way and don’t want to be tied to whatever that is - limiting their exposure and liability, essentially.
I imagine they found some cheap hardware vendor selling this on their shipped units on Amazon or something and don’t want themselves tagged onto a lawsuit about it. Probably got wind of some legal action coming in the future.
More likely it is related to the years of harassment from the transphobe “running” retroarch and his horde of hateful shitheads who harass emulator developers until they work for him. Duckstation is far from the only emulator that has been targeted by this and “Swanstation” has always been incredibly sketchy for a “fork”.
If you spend years torturing open source developers, this is what happens. Which… has no real impact on the “legitimate” users but will hopefully bring more eyes to why we actively should not support retroarch and their campaigns of hate. Especially when tools like ES-DE do an amazing job of just scanning for what emulators you have installed and “making it work” without demanding developers make tweaks to support their framework.
This is unfortunate to hear. I had no idea the RetroArch team was like that. Looks like I need to move to stand-alone emulators when I get the chance. Convenience always comes with a price
My tip: Ares. It’s a multi system emulator that is independent from retroarch/libretro while providing the same convenience and AFAIK is the most accurate n64 emulator available.
I’ll have to look into it, thanks for the recommendation. I’m stuck with Android currently. I purchased LaunchBox years ago, so I may see how that is doing
Edit: I don’t see an Android port on the site, and they seem to be missing Dreamcast among others. Both are a deal breaker unfortunately
Its not even that much more convenient, truth be told. Yes, just double clicking to install a core is nice but you do that basically once per computer. Contrast that with downloading the emulator you like (most of which are installers on windows/mac and flatpak/appimages on linuxes) once per computer.
At which point… just use ES-DE. It automagically detects the majority of standalone emulators and gives you a nice controller based GUI to pick what game you want to play and so forth.
The unified control layout is nice-ish but basically every modern gamepad is “close enough” to xinput that defaults work. And for the more obscure stuff… odds are you are looking more toward a mister anyway or it is that you actually have a god awful claw for the four n64 games worth playing.
Yes, there is a lot to be said about being able to just double click to install (and I think that most gui package managers provide flatpak integration these days? So that might actually be there?). But if you don’t know how to install an application then you are going to have a bad time setting up retroarch/es-de in the first place and likely also difficulty totally ripping all your cartridges and yeah…
I think retroArch is strong on niche devices with only few emulators ported to it. Having to only port RetroArch framework and then having many emulators seems very convenient.
But hearing that they have bad behaviours towards emulator devs and minorities is extremely sad and I can not understand why people are like this…
I have had every type of emulator setup imaginable. I personally find RetroArch the most convenient. Sure, if I can setup RetroArch or a RetroPie, I can easily setup stand-alone emulators with a front-end. Been there done that. I chose what I found to be convenient for my needs
If you are only trying to genuinely help, removing the negative statements and trying not to come off as condescending would do wonders
Yeah… I make it a point to not handle people with kid gloves when they are looking to make me convince them it is worth the mild inconvenience to not support a product with a long history of bigotry and harassment. Because, truth be told, it will never happen. Could give you a straight up handy and that would still not be neough.
So I’ll continue to make my disdain for people who knowingly use a product run by people who profit off of bigotry and harassment quite clear. Same end result but with the added benefit of making them feel slightly bad and me have a giggle.
Also, if you thought the above comment about ES-DE vs retroarch was “condescending” then… wow you are sheltered.
Would have been nice if this context was in the article. I got into an argument 10+ years ago with some militant prick by the name of “SquarePusher” on Reddit about how his emulator was the best and anyone who dares to charge for an emulator is evil. I wrote him and his stupid emulator off then.
Turns out it’s the same guy. I’ve used it a bit since then as I wasn’t aware of other reasons to not support it other than my own personal grudge but I’ll definitely stop now.
Do you have any source for the transphobic stuff he’s said? I Googled but I couldn’t find anything other than vague references rather than specific comments.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa, WHAT? I don’t use RetroArch most of the time (I find its UI rather inconvenient), but I had no idea its main developer was transphobic, can you tell me more?
Very aware of him and his attacks on other emulator authors (remember VirtualJaguar?) but was not aware of him being a transphobe. Is there somewhere I can read about that that you’re aware of?
The article says he got permission from people who wrote the code to change the license. If they didn’t give permission then he has rewritten the code.
They usually do this if the project finds out it’s being used in some uncouth way and don’t want to be tied to whatever that is - limiting their exposure and liability, essentially.
I imagine they found some cheap hardware vendor selling this on their shipped units on Amazon or something and don’t want themselves tagged onto a lawsuit about it. Probably got wind of some legal action coming in the future.
More likely it is related to the years of harassment from the transphobe “running” retroarch and his horde of hateful shitheads who harass emulator developers until they work for him. Duckstation is far from the only emulator that has been targeted by this and “Swanstation” has always been incredibly sketchy for a “fork”.
If you spend years torturing open source developers, this is what happens. Which… has no real impact on the “legitimate” users but will hopefully bring more eyes to why we actively should not support retroarch and their campaigns of hate. Especially when tools like ES-DE do an amazing job of just scanning for what emulators you have installed and “making it work” without demanding developers make tweaks to support their framework.
This is unfortunate to hear. I had no idea the RetroArch team was like that. Looks like I need to move to stand-alone emulators when I get the chance. Convenience always comes with a price
My tip: Ares. It’s a multi system emulator that is independent from retroarch/libretro while providing the same convenience and AFAIK is the most accurate n64 emulator available.
I’ll have to look into it, thanks for the recommendation. I’m stuck with Android currently. I purchased LaunchBox years ago, so I may see how that is doing
Edit: I don’t see an Android port on the site, and they seem to be missing Dreamcast among others. Both are a deal breaker unfortunately
Its not even that much more convenient, truth be told. Yes, just double clicking to install a core is nice but you do that basically once per computer. Contrast that with downloading the emulator you like (most of which are installers on windows/mac and flatpak/appimages on linuxes) once per computer.
At which point… just use ES-DE. It automagically detects the majority of standalone emulators and gives you a nice controller based GUI to pick what game you want to play and so forth.
The unified control layout is nice-ish but basically every modern gamepad is “close enough” to xinput that defaults work. And for the more obscure stuff… odds are you are looking more toward a mister anyway or it is that you actually have a god awful claw for the four n64 games worth playing.
Yes, there is a lot to be said about being able to just double click to install (and I think that most gui package managers provide flatpak integration these days? So that might actually be there?). But if you don’t know how to install an application then you are going to have a bad time setting up retroarch/es-de in the first place and likely also difficulty totally ripping all your cartridges and yeah…
I think retroArch is strong on niche devices with only few emulators ported to it. Having to only port RetroArch framework and then having many emulators seems very convenient.
But hearing that they have bad behaviours towards emulator devs and minorities is extremely sad and I can not understand why people are like this…
I have had every type of emulator setup imaginable. I personally find RetroArch the most convenient. Sure, if I can setup RetroArch or a RetroPie, I can easily setup stand-alone emulators with a front-end. Been there done that. I chose what I found to be convenient for my needs
If you are only trying to genuinely help, removing the negative statements and trying not to come off as condescending would do wonders
Yeah… I make it a point to not handle people with kid gloves when they are looking to make me convince them it is worth the mild inconvenience to not support a product with a long history of bigotry and harassment. Because, truth be told, it will never happen. Could give you a straight up handy and that would still not be neough.
So I’ll continue to make my disdain for people who knowingly use a product run by people who profit off of bigotry and harassment quite clear. Same end result but with the added benefit of making them feel slightly bad and me have a giggle.
Also, if you thought the above comment about ES-DE vs retroarch was “condescending” then… wow you are sheltered.
I didn’t ask you for anything. I stated I was going to move away from it. Get off your fucking high horse and you would see that
This is exactly what I was thinking although in more simple of a “I bet this is because of that retroarch dickbag” way
And, of course, the GOL article is written to make stenzek look like a jerk.
I like GOL as a blog a lot, but holy crap is Liam good at half-baked takes on nuanced subjects that mostly just rain shit down upon people.
Also, if you make any honest attempt at constructive criticism on his articles, he just blocks you regardless.
Would have been nice if this context was in the article. I got into an argument 10+ years ago with some militant prick by the name of “SquarePusher” on Reddit about how his emulator was the best and anyone who dares to charge for an emulator is evil. I wrote him and his stupid emulator off then.
Turns out it’s the same guy. I’ve used it a bit since then as I wasn’t aware of other reasons to not support it other than my own personal grudge but I’ll definitely stop now.
Do you have any source for the transphobic stuff he’s said? I Googled but I couldn’t find anything other than vague references rather than specific comments.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa, WHAT? I don’t use RetroArch most of the time (I find its UI rather inconvenient), but I had no idea its main developer was transphobic, can you tell me more?
Very aware of him and his attacks on other emulator authors (remember VirtualJaguar?) but was not aware of him being a transphobe. Is there somewhere I can read about that that you’re aware of?
I’m surprised he had enough contributors give him the OK for that to be viable.
How does that work? Like, refactoring?
Yes, you throw away the code and write it again.