Nintendo cracks down on fan-made games
A little word of warning to people making games using other peoples' assets, like ripped sprite sheets. Even if you're doing it with no profit motive, be careful about sharing it. Nintendo apparently didn't go after the game makers, only against the site. But they certainly could, just to teach a lesson.
FRI 02 SEP 2016 2:27PM GMT / 10:27AM EDT / 7:27AM PDT
DMCA takedown notice prompts closure of more than 500 projects on GameJolt
It's not uncommon for fan-made games using big-name IP to get shut down as soon as they draw some interest online. It's less common for rights-holders to aggressively and indiscriminately squash those projects by the hundreds.
Freeware site GameJolt yesterday announced that it received a DMCA takedown notice from Nintendo for 562 projects infringing on its rights to the Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon franchises.
"These web pages display images of Nintendo's video game characters in connection with unauthorized online games that copy the characters, music, and other features of Nintendo's video games," Nintendo's representatives wrote in the takedown notice. "The web site at gamejolt.com generates revenue from advertising banners displayed on the site and advertisements played while users wait for the games to load."
GameJolt has removed public access to those games, but their creators can still access them "for historical purposes."
Nintendo has been cracking down on fan-made projects recently. Last month it squashed Pokemon Uranium, a PC version of the franchise nine years in the making that was pulled down less than a week after launch, but not before it was downloaded 1.5 million times. That was just a week after it had a free fan-made remake of Metroid 2 pulled.
Interestingly, Nintendo's GameJolt requests were limited to those three main properties. As of this writing, the site still hosted numerous projects based on franchises like Metroid, Donkey Kong, Earthbound, and Yoshi.
Replies
Nintendo is well within their rights to do this,
I'd even go as far as to say,
Nintendo should do this.
Because they have the right to shut it down, but not to use it themselves. So if they like the game and don't want to re-do it again, they might simply buy the developed game for a not so fat check (since the competition to buy it will be non existent, but still without the devs consent Nitendo won't be able to make profit with it either).
since there are so many doing fan made games based on nintendos games they just seem a lot worse then others.
But also this is a japanese company. Rules are followed no matter how old or how little sense they make, even if it's positive for the company itself they will always follow the rule and probably never change it, which is why I need to run to the post office every time I deal with SquareEnix O.o
CryZenx updates the ooT stuff pretty frequently and hes still not roasted on a spit.
Pokemon Uranium had a patreon.
AM2R was a direct clone of a currenlly commercially sold copyrighted product
and yet I still don't know why and how Zelda Classic is still existing after 16 years of being available, but after all this, its days are numbered for sure
I think this can have an adverse effect of making nintendo "hentai" being the only thing easily findable on the fan side, which arguably tarnishes their childhood-friendly brand more than fan games, and it's allowed to exist by parody law. which is terrible to begin with. Thanks Newgrounds
Can't a company show they are defending their IPs by shooting down projects attempting to make money on their designs, or people selling fanart, as opposed to shutting down these fan passion projects that actually do the IP justice, and that aren't out to profit?
Also often enough those things get actually settled without anything major happening except the project being taken down - so they don't push for money they could actually get from such infringements.
But lets not forget 2 things:
1. The company would be allowing competition from their own IP. That's actually also an arguement against mods - see how EA for example has stopped creating NHL games for PC, as it simply doesn't pay off for them. Fans being able to exchange rosters, jerseys, arenas with ease in older versions of the game probably didn't help on an already small market.
2. Its one project for the fan, thousands of fan-projects for the company to keep track of. If you are establishing an IP you sometimes don't want it distorted by fan-visions/version of it (see R.R. Martin complaining about fan fiction). So its easier to shut them down or get a consent with the bigger ones.
In the end most companies are not doing much against fans. It happens like in this case, but we see a lot of mods, fan art, fanfiction all over the place. It's not like they are harassing their fans all the time.
According to the government (P7, "Copyright Registration), as long as you register a copyright, it "will establish prima facie evidence in court of the validity of the copyright." Sounds clear enough to me. Definitely doesn't say you need to show ongoing defense of the copyright after that point.
The real reason they're doing this is almost definitely for marketing reasons, not legal. They want to control how their brands are presented to the world.
Trademark rights can also be lost unintentionally. For example, in some countries, it is possible to lose rights in a mark by allowing third parties to use the mark without controlling how it is used.
FYI, April of next year will be the 20th anniversary of Fox shutting down the Alien Quake mod. I was planning on making a "why you should know better" post around that time.