In the resultant court case, Sony lost, reinforcing the legality of emulation; as long as no copyrighted material is being distributed – such as BIOS files – then emulation doesn't break the law.
Sadly, winning the case didn't stop Bleem from going under in 2001, crippled by legal costs – but the name would be picked up by Piko Interactive founder Eli Galindo in 2018, and it has now returned from the dead not as an emulation platform, but as a publisher.
Earlier this year, Galindo posted a blog which suggested that Bleem would be resurrected as the online "nostalgia portal" Bleem.net, which would allow Piko to leverage the vast amount of IP it has hoovered up over the years, as well as sell merch, digital ROMs, physical releases, digital comics and more.
At the time of writing, Bleem.net is still under development, but the name appears in the publishing credits for Rage of the Dragons, a Neo Geo fighter which is getting re-released on modern systems.
As spotted by GamesRadar, Bleem.net is listed as a separate company to Bleem, which has already released a bunch of retro titles on Steam, including Glover, Super Noah's Ark 3D and The Immortal. Bleem.net previously released Top Racer Collection on Steam; Rage of the Dragons will be its second release (just to confuse things even more, Rage of the Dragons has the standard 'Bleem' logo, and not 'Bleem.net').
Why split the Bleem name into two brands? Perhaps Galindo's plans for Bleem.net are so grand that he wants all of the attention to be on that particular site. Whatever happens next, it's comforting to see such an iconic name in the public eye once more – even if it's a little detached from its original purpose.
