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mupen64plus / mupen64plus-core

Core module of the Mupen64Plus project
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Commercial Licensing #575

Open tomspilman opened 6 years ago

tomspilman commented 6 years ago

Hi.

I have an indie game studio and recently we've been doing ports for various companies.

I've been approached about some ports of old N64 titles to main stream consoles (PS4, XB1, etc). We're evaluating the possibility of licensing the core of an existing emulator so we can port the emulator to consoles and ship one or more titles.

Does the Mupen64Plus team have a process for doing this? Has this been done before?

I understand the complexity of this sort of thing, so i know it may not be possible at all too.

Thanks!

bentley commented 6 years ago

You can certainly use Mupen64Plus under the terms of the license (GPLv2). It allows commercial use but requires you to release the source of the emulator and modifications (but not the emulated game) on request. I believe there are a number of game rereleases on GOG, Steam, etc. that use free emulators (like DOSBox) this way. I don’t personally know of any for N64.

To license it for GPL‐incompatible use… IANAL, but the copyright to Mupen64Plus is held by the individual contributors. You would need to contact these contributors for their permission, and I think it’s unlikely you’ll be able to do so, because a) some people are inactive and b) some people won’t want to grant that permission.

So if I were in your position I would aim to sell a GPL‐compliant port, if that’s allowed by the target platforms you’re releasing for.