The ESA – not, not the cool one – a lobby group made up of various videogame and entertainment companies, has asked the US Trade Representative (USTR) to add Anbernic to its list of companies that are supposedly notorious for engaging in and facilitating piracy. If you’re unaware, Anbernic is one of the bigger names in Android and Linux-based handheld gaming devices targeted at the retrocomputing market.
While many online sellers do include an SD card full of ROMs alongside emulation hardware of all types, Anbernic itself does not appear to do the same when selling directly from its website. Regardless, the ESA argues that these ROM-laden Anbernic devices selling through “normal retail channels” help to “normalize hardware-based piracy by delivering illicit catalogues through a polished consumer product.” This, the ESA says, meets the threshold for a “superfake,” an ill-defined designation that applies to “high-quality counterfeit trademark goods … on a commercial scale.”
↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica
There’s a lot of murkiness surrounding whether or not Anbernic sells their devices with preloaded ROMs or not. The number of reports from people who say they did get a ton of ROMs on their Anbernic devices, bought from Anbernic’s own store, is large enough that it’s clearly something they do. However, there’s an equal number of people who say their Anbernic devices were completely free of ROMs, and I’m one of them – I’ve bought like three or so devices from their store over the years, and they never came with any ROMs. My most recent purchase was an RG 35XXPro Linux-based model, and there were no ROMs on it (I replaced the stock operating system with Knulli, which has been a great experience).
If Anbernic does indeed ship at least some of their devices with ROMs preinstalled, then it’s their own damn fault if that lands them in legal trouble. It’s not like downloading ROMs is particularly difficult (just do an internet search for your preferred system and something like “ROM pack” and you’ll get the console’s complete library in a single download), so they really have no need to do so.
There’s one extra layer here though. Third-party resellers like Amazon offer loads of Anbernic devices preloaded with SD cards full of ROMs, all from third parties not affiliated with Anbernic. And wouldn’t you know it – Amazon is a member of the ESA lobby group. In other words, the problem also lies with lax retailers not properly vetting what they’re offering, but instead of going after places like Amazon, they’re going after Anbernic instead.
Amazon is a haven for illegal and counterfeit products, but they’re so wealthy and powerful they just get away with it.
I’ve bought two Anbernic handhelds from Amazon in the past, both came from third parties and both had an SD card installed that was preloaded with tons of commercial ROMs. Of course I removed those cards and wiped them immediately since I couldn’t be sure they were free from malware. My latest Anbernic handheld, the RG DS, I ordered directly from Anbernic. It had no commercial ROMs installed, only a few hobbyist ones that I was able to verify as open source and legitimate copies. I run an alternative Linux-based OS on it via the SD slot, but I kept the Android based native OS on the internal storage in case the SD card flakes out.
I hope Anbernic is able to work this out in whatever way that allows them to continue shipping to the US; their handhelds in my experience are the best on the market, especially if the Steam Deck or similar x86-based handhelds are too big and/or too expensive. I sold my Steam Deck a few months back (for more than I paid for it new in 2023, thanks RAMpocalypse!) and I don’t even miss it; the RG DS fits in my pocket and plays 99% of the games I played on the Deck.