Public notice on Atgames Sega Genesis Flashback and libretro's role

 Since this subject just came up, I felt this is important to address in order to clear up any confusion//misinformation -

https://github.com/ekeeke/Genesis-Plus-GX/issues/249#issuecomment-421091846

We have been contacted sometime ago by a representative from AtGames. They wanted to use the libretro API in conjunction with the Genesis Plus GX libretro core and Stella libretro cores for use in their product. To the best of our understanding, we were informed they made their own libretro frontend and just want to be able to use the unaltered libretro cores for the emulators they have obtained licenses to.

We basically told them that it was imperative that emulator developers were in agreement with this and/or they had a license agreement (considering that Genesis Plus GX is non-commercially licensed). They confirmed this was the case and after consultation with Ekeeke/Charles MacDonald, this turned out to be the case.

So, considering those basic conditions are met, we feel that the necessary requirements have been met, and we agreed to the usage of the libretro cores as-is as long as the license text for libretro is included. These conditions appear to have been met.

https://fccid.io/2AMTQ3680SEGA18/Users-Manual/User-manual-3952641

It is important to note - we are not getting paid for this, neither were we at any point involved in the development of the hardware. No contract was signed, no work was rendered. As far as we are concerned, they wrote their own libretro frontend, and got the authors of the emulator core 'Genesis Plus GX' to agree to a commercial license. Our involvement begins and ends with the e-mail replies, and this usage of the libretro API should be permissible to this end.

Hope this clears up any and all confusion. We at libretro/RetroArch remain fully independent and to date, our only source of funding has come directly from the users. As far as I am concerned, and for as long as the users have our back, we will remain fully independent for the near foreseeable future.

So, to conclude, there is no issue here as far as we are concerned. At the same time, we were not involved in the development of it either, so any development/support/reliability related questions you have to take up with Atgames. We just agreed to the usage of the libretro cores and the libretro API in general. It simply implements the libretro API just like how other frontends implement the libretro API.

Regards,
Daniel De Matteis