Anbernic stops selling most of its handhelds with a microSD card, days after the ESA's piracy filing

The card bundles that came with Anbernic handhelds have mostly gone from its store, a week after the US games industry named it a piracy market. On 17 October two models still offered one.

AI-drafted from 5 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Anbernic has taken most of the microSD card options off its own store. Retro Handhelds spotted the change on 15 October, eight days after the Entertainment Software Association, in a filing dated 7 October, named Anbernic.com in its nominations for the US Trade Representative's review of notorious piracy markets. The handhelds still take a card. What has gone is the choice to buy one already in the box.

The ESA's filing, reported by TorrentFreak on 12 October, says Anbernic's devices "are routinely offered or shipped with removable memory cards preloaded with hundreds or thousands of unauthorized copies of copyright-protected video games". Anbernic's listings never said what was on the cards. Retro Handhelds calls it an "unwritten understanding" that they came with games, and says the practice is common across retailers and has gone on for a long time.

What changed on the listings

A Retro Handhelds contributor first noticed that bundles with a card only appeared when "Ships from: China" was selected, which suggested the change was being made in stages. The site compared a Wayback Machine capture of the RG SP page from 14 August, which offered 16G, 16G+64G and 16G+128G, with the live page on 15 October, which offered 16G alone. That 16GB card stays because the RG SP's stock firmware lives on it. Several Android listings, the RG Rotate among them, lost their card sizes too.

We went through all 93 products in Anbernic's store on 17 October. Every variant of the RG Rotate, RG 557, RG 477M and RG DDS is now labelled "No SD Card", and their spec sheets still list "TF card expansion, up to 2TB". Two leftovers remain. One RG SP variant, US stock in Pearl Pink, is still sold as 16G+64G. The RG DS offers a "Standard Version+64G (Linux)" beside the card-free one, from both its China and US stock.

Other sellers have not followed

Retro Handhelds points out that AISLPC still lists several storage options for the R36T MAX, although that model has 8GB built in. LITNXT and others sell a microSD card on its own for people who want to try CrossMix OS, and the site says those cards usually come loaded with a selection of ROMs. It also notes that nobody yet knows whether other makers and shops will drop their bundles too.

Anbernic has not said why it made the change. A nomination is not a listing: the US Trade Representative decides what goes on the final list, and the last one was published in March.

Sources

• Anbernic Begins Removing Bundled microSD Cards From Its Storefront (Retro Handhelds)
• ANBERNIC RGSP (Anbernic)
• ANBERNIC RG DS (Anbernic)
• Game Industry Asks U.S. to Flag Denuvo Cracker ‘voices38’ as Notorious Piracy Threat * TorrentFreak (TorrentFreak)
• Discussion: Game Industry Asks U.S. to Flag Denuvo Cracker ‘voices38’ as Notorious Piracy Threat * TorrentFreak (Reddit)

Image: Retro Handhelds