The Nintendo Dillema

Miru

Miru

Well-known member
As you may know, Nintendo are becoming notorious for killing promising projects by their own fans. As I was discussing on a Sonic board why I would never trust Nintendo again if they bought Sonic, one of the reasons I brought up was their fangame-killing. One user there brought up that Nintendo were in their right to shut down AM2R, as they had a Metroid 2 remake in the works, and it was likely any other shut-down games were similar situations.

So, what do I say? Since Nintendo aren't ones for Beat em Up games, Go ahead! And if Nintendo does strike, I think it's time to fight back.

Edit: Nintendo have released an article on their thoughts on fan-games.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/games.mxdwn.com/news/nintendo-explains-their-war-on-fan-made-games/amp/

However, I think they're lying, considering the number of games they took off GameJolt that didn't seem like a threat.
 
Ah that sad news  :'( . There are some fan games in the work on Game Jolt currently but who knows how long they will survive  :-\
 
Hey guys, sorry to be away so long. Summertime stuff had me all over the place.

Anyway... I wish there was something we could do Miru, but the truth is Nintendo has every legal right to shut down fan productions. More to the point, under US Copyright law (which for the most part other nations emulate or at least respect), they have an obligation to shut fan games down. If they don't, it sets a precedent that will bite them in the rear end should they actually have a real need to defend their property. They know the fan games are no threat, but they can't afford to leave them alone in case a real threat arises.

Basically, let's say that Sega went back into the console market, their killer app is a blatant ripoff of the latest Mario game, and it starts taking Nintendo's market share. When Nintendo inevitably sues, Sega could point out that Nintendo let fan games go unchallenged. The court would say (paraphrasing) "Well, you didn't say anything about such and such ripoff, why do you suddenly care now that one is making money?". Under said precedent the court would likely as not rule against Nintendo, and they would effectively lose ownership of their Intellectual Property.

Hilariously enough, Nintendo themselves pulled this exact same stunt - they stole King Kong right out from under MCA's nose and made it into Donkey Kong, which is how they got started in the USA. They got away with it because MCA had previously allowed other entities to use King Kong in the public domain. Oooops.

It's for this reason that NO creator will ever be cool with you encroaching their IP. We get away with using sprite resources because most companies consider resources to be a separate issue from the IP. As an example, Capcom doesn't really care about us using Final Fight sprites for artwork and non Final Fight related projects, but the very second someone gains some ground with their "Final Fight My Ultimate Edition", I guarantee you a C&D will be issued in short order. It wouldn't matter if every last pixel was crafted from scratch - the IP encroachment is all that counts.

It's still a jack-hole move on Nintendo's part and a classic case of vapid corporate knee-jerk, but those same laws are what protects the little guy too - like say, Andrew's Bad Ass Babes IP. Give and get sometimes.

DC
 
why I would never trust Nintendo again if they bought Sonic
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The question is: why you would trust Nintendo ANYWAY? I know they are part of many people childhood, but they NEVER were a trustful company. Just remember the NES abusive exclusive contract for developers, the SNES Playstation and so on.

They are far from being good guys...
 
Heh, I feel like I go through this argument too much at this point. Especially in regards to the SoR Remake situation. DC pretty much nailed the whole thing in the head so I'll just add my small two cents. A better idea would be to just make your own games, Yeah I get it people want to do tributes and what they think is a deserved sequel etc but you should know what comes with the territory when it comes to that. Why beat a dead horse and whine about stuff we know isn't going to change.

This is why the AM2R project creator wasn't mad about the situation, he knew what he was getting into when he started the project but he did it because he loves the franchise not for nintendo's recognition. (Ironically enough one could say he may have influenced the new Metroid 2 remake but that's another story.) I for one don't really understand why there's so much complaint about nothing being original or new anymore yet... everyone wants to make fan games or blatant rip offs of older titles. Even worse they want to fight for the right to do something with some one else's IP.

Nintendo is definitely far from being a good company, as O Ilusionista pointed out but they have a right to do what they want with their IP. Focus on building your own stuff and from that point you decide if you want people making fan iterations of it or whatever.
 
I'm doing a Ninja Gaiden fangame (Something silly) , but I'm aware of what this means. If Koei-Tecmo ever says "get this out of the internet", then so be it. They're the owners of the IP and I abide by their terms.

And in regards to Nintendo, recently they made the 3DS be a region locked console. Something they never did before.
 
You guys get it! I think it's a real shame when 100% of the assets are Original on top of the fact of it feeling different enough to be it's own game and it still weighed down by a title alone.
 
A lot of things might not of been shutdown if the creators hadn't advertised it everywhere and just quietly released it, they might of gone on undetected.  Also when they're obviously generating revenue from downloads or a website in some way...what do they expect to happen?

NSW has a very good point, the naming alone can get you in trouble.  When someone names a fan remake a new number in series (for example  Super Mario Bros. 4, Double Dragon 4, SOR 4) Then there is much more reason to protect their copyright/IP as they probably want to release a game named that one day, or at least reserve that title.  For AMR2 I don't think Nintendo saw it as ANOTHER METROID 2 REMAKE - they just see METROID 2 REMAKE - the only new world is remake, they were literally developing the same game themselves. 

I had some NES themed OpenBOR projects I gave up on because of stuff like this happening...I don't think you would get away with anything Nintendo these days.  They seem more interested in these old IP's lately and they have been releasing quite a bit of old NES related products and games.

On another note, Nintendo have also decided they should collect any revenue from youtubers talking about their games.  Basically they copyright flag their videos and steal all the revenue.  I think this will become the norm for a lot of companies soon if laws don't change.  There has already been attempts by other companies to claim ownership of MODDED content for their games, giving them the right to sell them.  it makes sense companies would do this,  they are greedy corporations, if they can generate revenue from nothing they will definitely do it.  They look at the data, they see more downloads for free 3rd party content than the stuff they're selling and they REALLY WANT that money.

The way this is going...in the future people might be able to make fangames without being shutdown, but IP holders could claim your creative content as their own and even sell it for profit if they choose without any cooperation/agreement from the fangame creator(s).  So something like AMR2 could be claimed as mostly Nintendo's IP and therefore legal ownership would default to them.  Code could not be claimed by developers unless the code in question is something unique that has been patented by the developer (like a game engine or parts thereof ).  This would also mean Nintendo could release and sell ROM hacks, translations and things of this nature. 

It was confirmed the  MINI NES actually contained a pirated ROM of Super Mario Bros.  downloaded from the internet.  It also was a commercial product released by a major company using OPEN SOURCE emulator code.  So the potential is there for Nintendo doing more shady stuff like this...
 
I found an interesting update to all this:

https://gamingreinvented.com/nintendoarticles/fake-nintendo-employee-taking-fan-works/

https://seafoamgaming.com/2016/08/07/noa-isnt-your-enemy-regarding-the-am2r-takedown/

What a twist!
 
I know there's a lot of good points here about Nitnendo's actions, but for the record, that's why I stopped this.


And started this.


Yeah, the second project isn't original either but it's title bares no resemblance to another IP(That I'm aware of), and is a completely mixed bag of used IP's. I've never heard of Draglade until I found the sprites for it, the game Guy(Adeg) is from and doubt whoever made it is a big company, and I don't think Square and Namco are after fan games that like that, even in the chance that they find some of their assets being used here.

x)
 
I always wonder what would happen if you got a c&d, but the game has already been released on the Internet.
How would you stop it? I'm gonna use my own game as an example.

BDD: The Revenge has been around on the Internet for nearly 10 years now. What if Rare would suddenly say to me that I need to stop the game, how would I be able to stop it? I don't think that's possible. The game is spread out on the Internet by now. Or do you only get a c&d if you're still developing the game?
 
DJGameFreak TheIguana said:
I know there's a lot of good points here about Nitnendo's actions, but for the record, that's why I stopped this.


And started this.


Yeah, the second project isn't original either but it's title bares no resemblance to another IP(That I'm aware of), and is a completely mixed bag of used IP's. I've never heard of Draglade until I found the sprites for it, the game Guy(Adeg) is from and doubt whoever made it is a big company, and I don't think Square and Namco are after fan games that like that, even in the chance that they find some of their assets being used here.

x)
Click to expand...

Not to mention Sega Vs. Nintendo. (Perhaps a Sony Vs Microsoft game instead?). But given what I linked to above it’s possible Nintendo are being framed.
 
I was working on DOOM and Day of the Tentacle mods, but both are owned by different companies now. ( LucasArts is Disney and DOOM is now Bethedesa)  But I think I can still get away with TMNT fow now, it seems they've always been pretty cool with fanart etc.
 
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