Lenovo G02 retro handheld allegedly comes preloaded with thousands of copyrighted games, including Nintendo ROMs — company confirms that it’s an officially white-labeled device meant for the Chinese market

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Lenovo G02 retro handheld allegedly comes preloaded with thousands of copyrighted games, including Nintendo ROMs — company confirms that it’s an officially white-labeled device meant for the Chinese market What will Nintendo do? A Lenovo-branded G02 retro handheld launched in China earlier this month, coming in at an affordable $63.56 on AliExpress compared to the thousands you have to pay for the Lenovo Legion Go 2. There were some questions if this was a legitimate Lenovo product or just another hardware manufacturer using the logo of a prominent brand, but a Lenovo employee in the company’s Product and Licensing department reportedly confirmed to Retro Dodo that it was an official, white-labeled device the company intended to sell only in China. More interestingly, they have unearthed that the handheld ships with thousands of copyrighted games, mostly from Nintendo. “The G02 device is produced through a regional brand licensing agreement meant for the China market only and is not part of Lenovo’s official global product portfolio,” the company told the publication. “As such, products developed through these agreements may differ from Lenovo products sold through authorized channels.” However, it wasn’t the handheld’s branding that caught Retro Dodo’s attention — instead, it was the fact that it came with thousands of copyrighted titles out of the box, most of them from Nintendo. It’s unclear if these games are licensed at all; after all, Nintendo is famously protective of its intellectual property, and it’s unlikely that it would readily allow a third-party hardware manufacturer to include Nintendo titles. Furthermore, the Japanese company built a reputation as a litigious company, targeting anyone that poses a threat to its IP. The G02 is just a white-labeled device, meaning that its manufacturer just signed a deal with Lenovo to use its name for marketing purposes. However, the maker of the Legion Go handhelds still approved the regional licensing deal, even though we’re unsure if it reviewed the final product before it went on sale. One possibility is that the factory behind this retro handheld console loaded these ROMs after approval to boost sales, even though its AliExpress product page does not advertise that it comes with these games. Another alternative hypothetical scenario is that the developers behind this console accidentally included all the titles they were using to test the device in the general release. Whatever the case, this could become a legal problem for Lenovo. After all, even if it’s just a white-labeled device made by a third-party manufacturer, it still carries the company’s branding. The company, in theory, could do some damage control to prevent this from becoming a bigger issue, like recalling the affected products or remotely deleting them, if possible. But the fact that Nintendo games were likely distributed outside of official channels would catch the attention of the Japanese company’s lawyers. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. - usertests Looks like the guy who complained hard on the previous article got deleted, I was gonna quote him in.Reply That's quite the twist, that it was authorized to any extent. Still fairly uninteresting at that price point. - Notton I'm not entirely surprised. Lenovo (Xiaoxin) sells a bunch of products under its brand, even though it's a 3rd party product.Reply Their Go series of gaming handhelds have overly long gaps between driver updates exactly because the manufacturer is 3rd party, and the drivers are left to the 3rd party. Which is unlike Asus, who does everything from top to bottom. Lenovo also sells a bunch of Chinese market only devices like the Y70 gaming smartphone, and Y900 productivity tablet. The likes of which we rarely get to see in the western markets. Not that you can't buy Xiaoxin products from places like Aliexpress, but the firmware, localization, etc. are tailored for Mainland China, and not for westerners. As for Nintendo, the only thing they can likely do is ask for an import ban of that product specifically, but good luck with that, lol. - samtobyjenkins Reply Yeah I don't see why this is an issue when the retro handheld brands like Anbernic, Retroid and Powkiddy have all been shipping SD cards stuffed with unlicensed ROMs for years. Is the idea that Nintendo will pay more attention now because Lenovo is a more well known brand? I don't see why that would be the case - Nintendo are happy to go after small YouTubers and the like so it's not like they leave the little guys alone and only go after bigger companies.Notton said:I'm not entirely surprised. Lenovo (Xiaoxin) sells a bunch of products under its brand, even though it's a 3rd party product. Their Go series of gaming handhelds have overly long gaps between driver updates exactly because the manufacturer is 3rd party, and the drivers are left to the 3rd party. Which is unlike Asus, who does everything from top to bottom. Lenovo also sells a bunch of Chinese market only devices like the Y70 gaming smartphone, and Y900 productivity tablet. The likes of which we rarely get to see in the western markets. Not that you can't buy Xiaoxin products from places like Aliexpress, but the firmware, localization, etc. are tailored for Mainland China, and not for westerners. As for Nintendo, the only thing they can likely do is ask for an import ban of that product specifically, but good luck with that, lol. I imagine the reason they don't do anything about this sort of piracy is as you suggest - they don't have any real power over what happens with Chinese products. - bigdragon The G02 looks very awkward to hold and use. I'm not a fan of its design even if I do like the concept of a retro handheld device. I have to wonder if a company would have great success getting together a bunch of developers to make new 2D games in which to launch on a retro-focused system like this. There is probably a market between the AAA and indie space that is being completely ignored right now.Reply As for the Nintendo rom angle to this story, I feel so devastated for Nintendo here. Honestly, I might even shed a tear. Poor big N is having ancient games they couldn't be bothered to charge money for on the eShop or provide at no-additional-cost as part of their online subscription thing given away for free in some unauthorized, unaffiliated, and unlicensed product. We need a worldwide emergency declaration begging people to bash Lenovo until they stop because Lenovo is unlikely to change their brand to another random combination of key presses like every other company hawking white-label products when something goes wrong. (I'm being facetious with this paragraph) - hotaru251 ReplyIt’s unclear if these games are licensed at all its Nintendo....they'd rather die than allow their games to run on non nintendo handhelds.