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Dancing With the Devil
I’m probably going to be reviewing some UltraCade products eventually.
I suspect that first sentence is pretty shocking to some of you. Mind-blowing, even, considering my vocal opposition to David Foley’s actions in the trademarking of the MAME name and logo. How can I even consider reviewing products from “the enemy” now?
To answer that question, you need to look at the events around the MAME trademark fiasco, figure out where things stand now, and consider where we as a community can go from here.
The Coming Storm
The MAME trademark situation has really shaken up the MAME hobbyist community, and forced a lot of us to really examine the hobby’s “dark side” more closely. I know I’ve done a lot of thinking about where I stand. The illegal ROMs at the heart of this controversy are the 800-pound gorilla in the corner of the room that we’ve all been trying to ignore.
In the beginning it was easy to ignore the fact that the ROMs used in MAME were illegal. After all, no one was enforcing their IP rights for these ROMs, and hadn’t in over twenty years in some cases. The games were considered dead and buried. It was a “victimless” crime: no one was collecting money on these games, and the companies didn’t care about them anyway.
Then something happened: thanks in part to the enormous success of the MAME emulator, a “retrogaming” boom has begun to take shape in the industry and is rapidly gaining momentum. Companies have noticed the new interest in these old games, and are now starting to cash in on their long-dormant IP, releasing compilations of old arcade games for consoles and even re-releasing some of the games in their original arcade format.
As the real or perceived value of these old games continues to increase, so does the motivation for companies to protect their properties. While MAME is merely an “enabler” for these old ROMs (much like an MP3 player is an “enabler” for ripped MP3 tracks), it will still most likely come under fire eventually. The grace period is over, and it’s time to prepare for the attacks that will come.
Who’s the Bad Guy Here?
The “trademark gambit” pulled off by David Foley was a sledgehammer blow that got things moving and brought the hobby’s problems out into the spotlight. Whether or not we agree with his actions, the ROM and IP violations that have haunted MAME are now front and center: the gorilla is awake.
I’ve been communicating with Mr. Foley, and I certainly can see his point of view here: he’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to obtain the licensing rights to game ROMs, IP, and even character artwork for some of the classic arcade games. Meanwhile, small companies have been reproducing that same game artwork, copying the ROMs, and selling it all without paying a dime in licensing fees to anyone.
It’s an unfair fight, and while their strong-arm tactics may have been distasteful, UltraCade is, ultimately, in the right. David Foley’s large investment in the legal rights to these games is being undercut by illegal sales, and now everyone has been made much more aware of these infractions.
Does my support of Foley’s legal right to protect his huge investment mean that I’m against the companies that have grown up around the MAME project, selling cabinets and encoders and joysticks? Absolutely not. We've all just got to be more aware of the legality of using someone else’s copyrighted material in our own creations.
The subsequent enforcement of the MAME trademark by the MAMEdev team has also forced these small companies to scramble once again to adapt to a now seemingly ever-changing legal landscape. Ads are being rewritten, infringing artwork removed, and references to MAME reduced or removed altogether.
The small cottage industry that has grown up around MAME will adapt, and in the end these new rules, however clumsily implemented, will help protect and legitimize these products and companies. Let’s face it: neither the MAMEdev team nor any of these small companies can survive a legal skirmish: even if they were in the right, the legal fees alone would destroy them.
The Final Solution
The bottom line is this: for MAME to survive its own success, it needs legal ROMs. The “gray cloud” of uncertainty hanging over the MAME project will never go away until there is a legal way to play the games emulated by MAME. StarROMs currently provides licenses for a handful of Atari ROMs, but more ROMs are needed if MAME is to appear “legit” in the eyes of the industry. Right now, it seems that the best hope of additional legal ROMs is UltraCade’s announced “i-ROMs” service.
It’s a new world for MAME, and there are new rules. We can all adapt, or watch as legal forces rip apart the project. Are the new terms a perfect solution? No, there’s certainly room for improvement. Do we owe the MAMEdev team unquestioned allegiance? Once again, no, but they certainly deserve our respect and patience as they work through this.
So, is UltraCade the enemy? In the long run, no: they may even turn out to be our greatest ally, as ironic as that may seen right now. While I don’t agree with their previous tactics, this whole situation may have very well been the “kick in the pants” that MAME needed to safeguard the project and ensure its continued survival in a lawsuit-happy world.
Retrogaming isn’t dead, it’s just transmogrifying a bit. In the end, the more legal everything is, the safer it is, and I hope that MAME will continue to grow and thrive, preserving the arcade joys of the past.
