Ark: Survival Mod That Replaces Dinos With Pokemon DMCA'd, Possibly By Another Rival Modding Group

from the strategic-censorship dept

This story is a rather fast-moving, so let's dig in. Ark: Survival is a survival game in which you hunt dinosaurs. Being a PC game, there is a fairly healthy modding community working with the game to expand it, make slight alterations to it, and even inject other instances of pop culture into it. Case in point is the Pokemon Evolved mod, which replaces the dinos that are to be hunted with, you guessed it, pokemon. As you probably also have already guessed, the mod was hit with a DMCA notice and was briefly taken out of the Steam Workshop.

You would be forgiven at this point if you immediately assumed that it was the folks at either Nintendo or The Pokemon Company, both of which have been noticed policing the Pokemon IP aggressively. It was therefore head scratching that much of the reporting was peppered with caution over assigning blame for the DMCA, such as was the case in the original PC Gamer post linked above.

We're not sure yet who issued the DMCA notice—we've inquired and will let you know when we hear back, but it could definitely spell trouble for the mod, especially since modder 'Mystic Academy' admits the models and animations used in the mod were imported directly from Pokémon X/Y rather than recreated from scratch. The modder only made changes to ensure the models worked in-game.

Anyone familiar with how the Pokemon property has been protected in the past no doubt saw these caveats as superfluous hand-wringing. Turns out they were not, however. The developer of the mod, Mystic Academy, began making a great deal of noise about the DMCA actually coming from a rival modding group that was also releasing a mod for the game to inject Pokemon into it. That accusation appears to now be the accepted reality, with the DMCA being rescinded...

The DMCA notice has apparently been lifted, and no longer appears on the mod's page in the Steam Workshop.

...and Mystic Academy having a bit of fun at the accused DMCAer, a modder going by "Cheese", who does indeed have a rival mod called ARKmon WIP.

Now, the DMCA process is supposed to be utilized by rights-holders to protect their own intellectual property. DMCA notices initiated with service providers typically (always?) include language such as the following example from Vimeo:

A statement by you UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that the information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

The "penalty of perjury" portion sounds great, warning against issuing DMCA notices over intellectual property not owned by the issuer, except the provision is so rarely enforced as to render it mere legal smegma. Too often the DMCA process is abused in this way, acting as a weapon against rivals rather than a tool for copyright enforcement. That this can be done at all should signal a significant flaw in the process, one in need of correcting.

Of course, the next update in this story may end being that Nintendo or The Pokemon Company render this drama moot by issuing their own DMCA notices to takedown both mods, which would be disappointing but not surprising. Still, this serves as a useful highlight of a flaw in the system that renders DMCA as a potential tool for censorship rather than protection.

Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: ark: survival, censorship, copyright, dmca, mods, pokemon


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2017 @ 3:25pm

    Perjury

    A problem ONLY for people that the police or government is after, otherwise... you are clear to commit perjury without discrimination!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2017 @ 3:49pm

    > legal smegma

    top kek

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    That Anonymous Coward (profile), 20 Jan 2017 @ 8:47pm

    Do you remember when perjury had a penalty?
    Pepperidge Farms remembers.

    Something something, first they let the cops perjury themselves, then they let the corporations, then people tried to say lying was bad... and they are now in the Trump ReEducation DaySpa & Work Farm.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Jan 2017 @ 8:54pm

    "The DMCA would never be used for censorship," claimed Whatever/My_Name_Here/horse with no name. Bah! Humbug!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ninja (profile), 23 Jan 2017 @ 4:58am

    The mocking was awesome. This is Streisand in action alright.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    John85851 (profile), 23 Jan 2017 @ 3:38pm

    Why was this taken down in the first place?

    Are websites so paranoid about the DMCA process that they take anything down with any notice? Why didn't someone look into the claim before taking the mod down? Wouldn't it be obvious that the DMCA claim didn't come from the rightful rights owner?

    And even if there's no punishment for perjury, what about other action against people who file a false claim? In this case, shouldn't the other company be kicked off Steam for filing a false claim?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Delta, 2 Apr 2017 @ 4:39am

    Amazing post.

    I just love pokemon Go game a lot. Pokemon Go game is going like crazy in these days. Thanks for the amazing post.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.