Legitimacy of Lauchbox the Software?

[Judas The Priest]

Hello everyone this is my first post and while the thread title may look ominous it is not at all. I just have a few questions ?

I'm sorry this has to be my first post but I am rather annoyed and I need some answers please.

Having just found out about Launchbox and am enjoying the experience so far but something sinister has happened lately.

I mentioned Launchbox on the Steam Community forums quite innocuously within a thread simply because the thread contents sort of dictated I mentioned it and I wanted to let other know of the software I had just found, and that it may be useful for others. Within that post I also copied and pasted the list of uses as described on the website page. A hour later I was banned Quote:

Ban Reason:

 

"Any discussion of piracy is not allowed. Normaly this is a permanent ban, so I suggest not doing it again."

Now I was amazed and continued on to Steam support to contest this 1 month ban.

I am using Launchware for my non DRM/ non Platform games and that is it. I have no idea about Roms and from what I have read they can be illegal and LB can launch them. That is none of my business as this software as far as I know fully legit and what users do with it is their business. I also believe the developers of LB would never advocate the use of illegal Roms.

Now the above may or may be all naieve and illinformed but it is what I believe to be the case.

Steam or the petty minded devs are apparently treating this software as 'talking about piracy' and my post was deemed to break Steam rules because I mentioned the name and also the uses. No as I say I have no idea about roms other than what I have read and apparently the mention on the Steam forums is also included in their banned list of things that can and can't be mentioned.

Are there such thing as legal Roms as I say I don't believe LB to be used only for the illegal type or am I wrong?

 

I'll stop there because I think I ought to being rather naíve about the whole business.

Is Steam out of order for forum banning me. Can anyone tell me why they see LB as a threat enough to ban people for mentioning it ? Thanks for any replies and apologies if somehow this contravenes the rulse of this forums as franky I'm getting rather fed up with Steam and their petty mindededness. Of course I've replied to the 'unamed mod' who banned me but of course they don not care a damn whether their actions were misguided, or not.

Can someone please explain why this is the case and if Steam somehow has a case. I'm just confused and annoyed at this whole silly affair. Any information to assist my clear lack of knowledge would be gratefully received. Please forgive me if this is out of order in any way.

Thanks - Rob

 

Edited July 29, 2018 by Judas The Priest

[ModerateNOOB]

I just replied on a topic in which a user held the record of 50.000K roms, So i think people in here are pretty easy going on that matter.

[cpujunkie]

that is just wow. I use launchbox to launch all games. especially pc games bought on all the different stores (steam, Gog, origin, uplay, Facebook gameroom). Must of been just the mention of the word rom.

[Lordmonkus]

27 minutes ago, Judas The Priest said:

Is Steam out of order for forum banning me.

No idea because I have no knowledge of the contents of the discussion but there are people out there that automatically equate emulation to piracy, Nintendo and PayPal spring to mind off the top of my head. They are wrong in this assumption / belief of course.

27 minutes ago, Judas The Priest said:

Are there such thing as legal Roms as I say I don't believe LB to be used only for the illegal type or am I wrong?

Of course there are legal roms. There are plenty of freely released homebrew roms for older consoles as well as ripping your own roms and disk images which is perfectly legal in many countries and the legalities vary quite a lot depending on the country an individual is from.

27 minutes ago, Judas The Priest said:

Can someone please explain why this is the case and if Steam somehow has a case. I'm just confused and annoyed at this whole silly affair. Any information to assist my clear lack of knowledge would be gratefully received. Please forgive me if this is out of order in any way.

Steam has a case because it is their site and they get to say what can and cannot be discussed on their forums, even if it is asinine. I can only suggest that in the future you remember that they apparently have a petty and downright stupid policy regarding emulation discussion which is rather hypocritical because the Sega Collection and the newly released MegaMan Collection both use emulation and roms.

27 minutes ago, Judas The Priest said:

I don't believe LB to be used only for the illegal type or am I wrong?

No one here is naive enough to believe that everyone here uses 100% legally obtained roms but we also don't allow linking to sites that distribute them, mentioning sites by name is allowed though.

[Judas The Priest]

Thanks guys.

That all makes sense and I agree with all that has been said and I take in the advice and info very gratefully. The shame of it is that I have all the info I now need to go back and add to my ban complaint but when you (Lordmonkus) say it's up to them what they choose to ban people for it basically defuses my whole 'argument' as clearly facts are a waste of time to them as they are a single entity which doesn't hold recourse to anyone but themselves and that is what gets me the most. The absolute power these people hold without any requirement to make decisions based on facts.

I will add that if I were the developers of LB I would be very annoyed indeed this software is being viewed in this way by these people.

Thanks guys. anymore posts would be very welcomed too ?

Edited July 29, 2018 by Judas The Priest

[ModerateNOOB]

20 minutes ago, cpujunkie said:

that is just wow. I use launchbox to launch all games. especially pc games bought on all the different stores (steam, Gog, origin, uplay, Facebook gameroom). Must of been just the mention of the word rom.

Cool, I'm only interested in consoles that uses cartridges, But there's still plenty to choose from.

Currently looking at a 20tb external harddrive, So maybe i will use launchbox for my steam library sometime in the future.

[Judas The Priest]

This is not me as my post was deleted but it was this thread I posted in and how I actually heard about LB in the first place. This is just another poor geezer who was banned for simply mentioning LB:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1762481957309245452/?ctp=8#c1762481957316895439

Edited July 29, 2018 by Judas The Priest

[ModerateNOOB]

9 minutes ago, Judas The Priest said:

This is not me as my post was deleted but it was this thread I posted in and how I actually heard about LB in the first place. This is just another poor geezer who was banned for simply mentioning LB:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/1762481957309245452/?ctp=8#c1762481957316895439

That's typically Steam, You are "Almost" only allowed talking about games that requires Steam.

Don't talk about games "NOT" requiring Steam as they could be pirated (Just saying).

[DOS76]

well just because that user is banned now doesn't necessarily mean he was banned for mentioning LB (not saying he wasn't either) but if you notice the next person in that post is banned too but they didn't mention LB at all probably any post that he participated in has the same banned listing on their forums.

[Zombeaver]

I've outright talked about emulation/Launchbox on the Steam boards and nobody's ever had a problem with it; nor should they - neither is illegal.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/483368433104667829/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/485623406943314193/

Sounds like someone's just ban-happy without having any idea what they're talking about. That said, they're within their right, dumb as it may be, to ban for any reason (even dumb/misinformed ones). That's just the way it goes.

[Judas The Priest]

On 7/29/2018 at 10:31 PM, DOS76 said:

well just because that user is banned now doesn't necessarily mean he was banned for mentioning LB (not saying he wasn't either) but if you notice the next person in that post is banned too but they didn't mention LB at all probably any post that he participated in has the same banned listing on their forums.

That user I pointed out was banned for mentioning LB and I am the next person. My post a little later was deleted ?

Edited July 30, 2018 by Judas The Priest

[Judas The Priest]

10 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

I've outright talked about emulation/Launchbox on the Steam boards and nobody's ever had a problem with it; nor should they - neither is illegal.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/483368433104667829/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/353380/discussions/0/485623406943314193/

Sounds like someone's just ban-happy without having any idea what they're talking about. That said, they're within their right, dumb as it may be, to ban for any reason (even dumb/misinformed ones). That's just the way it goes.

It appears sadly that the mods may have changed since then or they have been further advised.

As for my official complaint about the ban to the official steam complaints dept all my time spent gleaning info from you guys and time spent researching the forums was wasted by a simple message saying: 'The ban was implemented correctly' I replied in disgust suggesting that maybe Steam members mentioning cars should be banned also because they can be driven by those over the legal alcohol limit. I was wasting my time all along you won't be surprised to read.

Thanks anyway guys you have been great ?

Now it's time to enjoy LB ?

[xsvtoys]

The primary reason I found Launchbox was because I wanted a simple unified way to run all of my PC DOS and Windows games from a single menu. These include a bunch purchased from GOG as well as a lot purchased from Steam.  Steam can supposedly do this and I spent some time trying it, but it fell short as far as handling the non-Steam games. Well, actually it sucked. Launchbox handles it just as it should be handled with a minimum amount of effort. So that’s a completely legal and legitimate way to launch the games that I BOUGHT with my money.  Just sayin’.