Sega Takes Potshots At DMCA-Happy Nintendo While Being Cool About Fan Games
from the doing-it-right dept
While Nintendo has been making waves for some time with its overly aggressive DMCA takedowns of any fan-work that includes its intellectual property, the company has really ramped things up lately. Recent actions include the takedown of a Mario fan game, a remake of a 25-year-old Metroid title, and engaging in all kinds of craziness over its Pokemon Go title. It was enough that one of Nintendo's biggest rivals couldn't help but take a subtle potshot at it, while simultaneously treating Sega fans like human beings.
Daniel Coyle, on Twitter as SuperSonic68, headed up a team of Sonic the Hedgehog fans in the development of a fan-made 3D Sonic game. Their work has been received rather well as of late, including on gaming blogs and YouTube channels. When one YouTube channel, GameGrumps, did a "let's play" of the fan game, it appears that Sega noticed and reached out in the comments section with a poke at Nintendo's aggressive nature and some encouragement.
This is the kind of thing we talk about a great deal around here: being human and awesome to your fans, while also understanding that not every use of your intellectual property is a threat. In fact, it can be a boon instead. This case is doubly so, with the fan-created work propelling more attention to the Sonic franchise as a whole by getting the brand into the gaming news bloodstream, while embracing fan creations builds up all kinds of goodwill towards Sega in general. This is how you do it.
Where Nintendo is in the news for treating its fans poorly, Sega makes news for treating them well, which will encourage other Sega fans to create more fan-works, which will keep Sega's properties moving around the wider internet as a result.
Sega’s latest dunk on their litigious competition shows a massive difference in how fan content is approached and I think they’ve got it right. Games Green Hill Paradise Act 2 like generate interest in properties and encourage passionate engagement with their franchise. They’ve even brought fans in to work on projects. Christian Whitehead, a long time fan, is now a programmer on Sonic Mania.
This is how you build loyalty, instead of anger, amongst a fan-base.
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Filed Under: dmca, fan games, sonic the hedgehog
Companies: nintendo, sega
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A quick note
Of course, then there’s the situation with the Streets of Rage remake, which is the flip-side of SEGA’s position here. (Long story short: SEGA put the legal kibosh on that particular remake after its release.)
You can’t win ’em all. But winning some of ’em still goes a long way.
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Re: A quick note
(Fill in your own joke here about how some Sonic fanfic and fan art are definitely not something most people want to be associated with.)
But the company seems to be moving in the right direction, and that's laudable.
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Yeah, about that...
Oh hey, TD even covered this:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130323/16493322431/sega-offers-half-hearted-non-apology-mas sive-youtube-takedown-promises-not-to-do-it-again-with-caveats.shtml
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Re: Yeah, about that...
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Re: Yeah, about that...
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Re: Re: Yeah, about that...
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They May Be Fan-Friendly Today ...
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Surprising Nintendo didn't nuke this meme
It uses music from Kirby games (Gourmet Race). May be usage of the character from Sonic (Robotnik, aka Pingas) played a positive role ;)
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This is one thing that Nintendo seems to be oblivious to. Nintendo wants to protect the brand and I get that but going after fan videos and games only hurts the fan base and damages Nintendo's rep with those very same fans.
If Nintendo was smart they would pull a Sega and jump on the band wagon and instead of trying to squash every fan lil project via the DMCA, encourage it. Nintedo has to relaise that the fans are doing this our of fun and love for some of the Nintendo games that they have coded or made videos of.
I highjly doubt Nintendo is going to be injured or their reputation shattered by some of the fan creations, the only one damaging Nintendo's reputation is their own draconian policies toward fan based collaborations and videos.
If anything the fan creation are putting Nintendo's name out there and bribing like minded fans together to talk about past, present and what could be future Nintendo games, why Nintendo see's that all as a threat is oblivious to a lot of folks out there
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Re: Nintendo wants to protect the brand
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This means as much
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Re: This means as much
Now, it is of course entirely possible that this policy will not be applied consistently, or that management could just plain change its mind, and fan devs, artists, etc. should definitely keep that in mind. But I don't see this as a rogue tweet from a PR guy who's disconnected from company policy, I see it as an officially-endorsed tweet from a PR guy who's been advised of company policy.
(And, tangentially, I really don't want this to turn into a whole thing, but I'm really not a fan of generalizing about certain dog breeds as vicious.)
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homebrew games would help
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Re: homebrew games would help
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This is very old and worn out...
SEGA does what Nintendon't.
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comment
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