Nintendo Hates You: Gaming Giant Lobs A DMCA Nuke At Hundreds Of Fan Games

from the nintendon't dept

Nintendo has built quite a reputation for itself as an intellectual property protectionist, going much further than most other game publishers to exert strict control over all of its IP. While this control is deployed in a wide-ranging manner, one of the most visible, common, and consequential avenues for this protectionism comes in the form of Nintendo getting all manner of fan-made creations taken down. These games, almost universally created by huge Nintendo fans as labors of love, are nearly always the subject of DMCA takedowns. Think for just a moment what that means: Nintendo is disallowing, on the regular, the expression of fandom by its own customers.

Every time I have written a post about some individual game being erased in this manner, rather than Nintendo exploring how to officially endorse these fan-made creations so as to protect its IP while still promoting its own fans, it's left me scratching my head. But now that Nintendo has managed to get hundreds of fan-games taken down in one fell swoop, well, it seems the company has decided to take this war on its own fans to another level.

Hundreds of non-commercial Nintendo fangames have been removed from the popular game publishing community Game Jolt after the platform complied with several DMCA takedown requests. Many of the affected games have dedicated fanbases including many die-hard Nintendo fans, some of whom now seem eager to revolt.

A few days ago, Nintendo’s legal department sent DMCA notices to the game publishing community Game Jolt. The site, where hobbyists and indie developers share their creations for free, was notified that hundreds of fangames infringed Nintendo’s trademarks.

Now, GameJolt does advertise on its site, leading Nintendo's DMCA notice to warn that the site was profiting from this infringement. As a result, the site took 379 games down. But it's worth noting both that uploaders appear to have an option to turn off ads on their games' pages and that the developers and fans for these games are absolutely livid about Nintendo's actions. One developer summed it up nicely and then went on to point out why this attempt at enforcement by Nintendo probably won't even work.

“They’ll get no sympathy from me, this isn’t the first time they’ve pulled a stunt like this. They’ve made it clear they hate their fans and repeat it time and time again never learning from it.”

The developer will continue to work on his “Five Nights At Team HQ series” but fears that it will be targeted eventually. That doesn’t stop the developer though, and he encourages others to simply flood the Internet with copies.

“Nintendo if you think taking down everyone’s games will help your image and get people to buy more of your games then you’re sorely mistaken! I’ll keep making and reuploading fan games even if you try to take them down, so DEAL WITH IT! All people who have copies of the fangames that were taken down take them and reupload them all over the internet so they stay up no matter what!”

And that already appears to be happening. Some developers are taking their fan games to other platforms and reuploading them there. Other developers are actually reuploading their games back to GameJolt, but without advertising on them, in the hopes that banner ads were somehow the lynchpin that caused Nintendo to target their particular games.

Nintendo has remained silent on the matter as of the time of this writing, but readers here will know its reputation well enough to know that removing advertisements won't stop the takedowns. Nintendo hates fan-made creations, see, and has taken down plenty of games that were completely devoid of any commercial aspects.

The only thing that will stop the company from treating its biggest fans so poorly, it seems, is if those fans suddenly begin disappearing like the games they created.

Filed Under: dmca, fangames, fans, takedowns
Companies: nintendo

Nintendo Appears To Be Using A Fan-Made Drawing Of Mario Without Artist's Permission Or Credit

from the real-nice-guys dept

Nintendo, of course, has an impressively long history of being IP protectionist in the extreme. But if there is one thing that Nintendo really cannot stand, it's when its own fans choose to express their fandom with art and creativity. Cool ways to use Animal Crossing? Nintendo shut it down. Dedicated gamers porting an antique Mario title to the PC? Nintendo shut it down. Fan game, after fan game, after fan game? Nintendo shut those down too. In other words, the impression you're left with is that fan creations using anything remotely close to Nintendo IP is the devil's work in the eyes of the company.

Except, perhaps, when the company would like to use some of that work without permission or giving credit to the artist, it seems.

A new website for Nintendo’s upcoming Japanese theme park Super Nintendo World went live yesterday. It featured new details and a virtual tour of the video game wonderland ahead of its February 4 opening. It also used an image of Mario for its loading screen that appears to have been created not by Nintendo, but one of its fans.

“I love how Nintendo used MY old ass Mario render in their official Nintendo World website,” Twitter user and Mario fan artist ujiidow tweeted earlier today. Their image of Mario was created roughly three years ago using the open source animation software Blender, and was shared on Reddit at the time. The Mario model used for the render wasn’t one of Nintendo’s, but instead belonged to 3D artist RafaKnight, who shared it for download on their Patreon in 2017.

Nintendo hasn't bothered to comment on any of this, but it's a funny thing how those that scream about respecting artists and creators can't seem to find it in themselves to treat others the way they want to be treated. Now, some will point out that Nintendo controls the Mario Bros. IP, as though it gave them the right to simply use any 3rd party artwork as though it were their own. That almost certainly isn't true, though, and is sort of besides the point. Nintendo goes way beyond just following the law in its intellectual property enforcement and treats it like some sort of ethos that aggressive protection is the right way to go.

So why, then, not seek permission from the artist to use what he created? Why not credit the artist in some way? It's not like said artist wouldn't have been amendable to any of this.

Ujiidow isn’t necessarily complaining though. “I’m so used to my Mario renders getting very little attention,” they told Kotaku in an email. “I’m being told to take action on the matter but I find it very nice to finally have some recognition on it.”

Holy shit, imagine if Nintendo had the same gentle attitude towards its fans that its fans have toward Nintendo? What a wonderful world that would be.

Filed Under: copyright, fan art
Companies: nintendo

Nintendo Hates You: DMCA Takedowns Of Game Music Continue While Nintendo Offers No Legit Way To Listen

from the mine-mine-mine dept

Well, it's been a measurable amount of time, so we have yet another example of Nintendo doing the Nintendo, which is best described as depriving its fans of ways to celebrate their fandom via intellectual property enforcement while also offering no alternative route for said fans. Whether it's stripping some of the creative fun out of its Animal Kingdom game, nuking fan-made games of Nintendo properties like some kind of IP-version of Missile Command, or just generally being as IP protectionist as possible, it seems that Nintendo chooses restrictive enforcement over creative methods for granting fans permission to be fans at every turn.

You will recall that Nintendo is currently embroiled in a controversy, having first disallowed a Smash Bros. tournament that had to go remote over the use of a mod that made remote tournaments possible with the game, followed by rescinding the broadcast ability of a Splatoon 2 tournament almost certainly just because several teams chose team-names that were protests of its Smash tournament actions. The backlash over those actions have been fairly universal, which may explain why Nintendo is now retreating to older, more familiar methods for pissing people off: DMCAing music from its beloved games.

Now, they’ve come under fire yet again for taking down YouTube videos with music from Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Mario Kart Wii. It’s nothing new. Nintendo has been doing it for years, and they’re well within their rights to.  

GilvaSunner is a YouTuber known for uploading soundtracks from video games, mostly Nintendo. Understandably, he’s had many videos taken down over the years due to copyright claims. In 2019, he posted a tweet that said, “Game over.” It includes a screenshot with emails from YouTube telling him that some videos had been blocked due to copyright claims. However, he didn’t specifically mention it was Nintendo.

Now, more than a year later, he followed up on his initial tweet with an update. More videos have been taken down over copyright claims. He specifically mentioned it was Nintendo JP, although it cannot be seen in the screenshots.

He's not the only one, of course. Again, I will point out that Nintendo absolutely can do this. It's within their rights. But they don't have to. There are plenty of methods by which it could offer an inexpensive license for people to portray its game music if it wanted to. Or, given that this is copyright and not trademark law we're talking about, Nintendo could simply ignore all of this, as they selectively have throughout the years. The post goes on to note that reactions to these takedowns among Nintendo fans are mixed, which is understandable.

But it seems like fans are also finally beginning to ask the right questions.

Either way, the consensus is that this whole predicament has a simple solution. Nintendo needs to make the music from their game soundtracks more readily available and in a legal way.

“Please put your soundtracks on Spotify and/or other music streaming services,” said GilvaSunner. “Others have already seen the light, when will you?” It’s a sentiment that others share.

And thus we have the crux of how Nintendo does the Nintendo. The company patrols and controls its intellectual property with a fervor normally reserved for cult followers, but refuses to offer the legitimate -- and lucrative! -- methods for fans to enjoy that intellectual property.

Nintendo, whatever else I might want to say about the company, makes great products. And great art! Being restrictive on the IP side while also being restrictive over where that art is enjoyed is immensely frustrating, both to me and the real, true fans of the company's work.

Filed Under: dmca, fan made games, mario kart wii, ocarina of time, streaming, super mario 64, takedowns, youtubers
Companies: nintendo, youtube

Nintendo Plays 'Control Inception', Cancelling Splatoon Broadcast After Teams Protest Canceling Smash Bros. Tourney

from the will-slip-through-your-fingers dept

If you're one of what I assume are zillions of folks who come here for my rants about Nintendo, I owe you an apology. While I'm usually pretty good about bringing you every instance of Nintendo doing the Nintendo all over itself and its fans, one such instance from last month slipped through the cracks. The Big House is a high profile Super Smash Bros. tournament series and host. Unfortunately, Nintendo shut down what was supposed to be the latest tournament and broadcast of The Big House via a C&D notice. At issue appears to be the use of a mod called "slippi", a fan-made mod that basically unbroke the nearly two decades old game when it came to online play. Without getting too technical, the mod simply made the game perform well over internet connections, whereas it was previously essentially unplayable. Given that The Big House tournament was rendered virtual this year due to you-all-know-what, the mod was essential to running the tournament. From Nintendo:

Unfortunately, the upcoming Big House tournament announced plans to host an online tournament for Super Smash Bros. Melee that requires use of illegally copied versions of the game in conjunction with a mod called ‘Slippi’ during their online event. Nintendo therefore contacted the tournament organizers to ask them to stop. They refused, leaving Nintendo no choice but to step in to protect its intellectual property and brands. Nintendo cannot condone or allow piracy of its intellectual property.

Which is a misleading statement at best. While The Big House confirmed most of those details, it's also true that digitizing one's own video game collection is not "illegal copying". Unless Nintendo has reason to think players in the tournament were simply pirating the game, which would be insane, given the high profile nature of the tourney, that part of its statement is nonsense.

Nintendo does, however, meticulously control its image, how its games are broadcast, and any modifications to its games, a la the slippi mod.

And, apparently, it may also play authoritarian when it comes to how the players of its games choose to express their displeasure at Nintendo's actions. That's the speculation, given that just this past weekend, Nintendo pulled the broadcast for a Splatoon 2 tournament that was notable pretty much solely because a healthy chunk of the participating teams chose team names protesting the cancellation of The Big House.

Word of an issue broke to the public at large on Saturday evening when a gamer who goes by the name Slimy Tweeted that “the Splatoon community, in support of the Smash community, has 30% of the top teams in this weekend’s Spl2 NA Open with Team names in support of Melee and Smash.” They then noted that Nintendo then canceled plans to livestream the event. The tweet went viral.

Was it really the existence of team names such as InC #FreeMelee, Melee Nation, and #FreeMelee 227 that made Nintendo drop the stream? The company isn’t saying and hasn’t responded to Kotaku’s requests for comments.

Notably, when gaming sites asked Nintendo whether this was the reason, the company responded: "La, la, la, I can't heeeeaar you!" Battlefy, the company hosting the event on Nintendo's behalf, issued a vague statement saying the broadcast had to be cancelled due to "unexpected executional challenges." Few in the Splatoon community appeared to believe this.

A fan-run streaming organization, however, had no issues taking over... and taking a shot at Nintendo at the same time, with more clever naming of this replacement tournament.

On Sunday morning, EndGameTV, a fan-run Splatoon and Smash streaming organization not connected to Nintendo, announced that the group, with the help of fans, would hold its own Splatoon 2 finals. The event would be called “The Squid House” a direct reference to The Big House. The Splatoon 2 teams who were supposed to play that day in the official Nintendo event dropped out of the tournament just hours before they were supposed to play, leading to the event not being held. On the Battlefy page for the event, the top four section seems to have been removed.

The Squid House competition, which was organized overnight, was held as planned on December 6, with team FTWaveDash winning the event and the prize pool of $25,000, which had been raised by fans during the tournament. The competition also raised over $3,000 for charity. According to Slimy, The Squid House prize pool was the largest seen in any western-held Splatoon 2 tournament.

And so, in an effort simply to play Grand Moff Tarkin and squeeze its fist around its own community, Nintendo instead allowed a fan-run streaming site to put on what might be the most successful Splatoon 2 tournament in our hemisphere. Success, it would seem, just not Nintendo's.

Filed Under: cease and desist, mods, slippi, splatoon 2, super smash bros., the big house, tournaments
Companies: nintendo

Mine, Mine, Mine! Nintendo Neuters The Cool Ways People, Groups Are Using 'Animal Crossing'

from the nintendon't dept

To be honest, Animal Crossing was always going to be a hit. It's just the perfect distillation of the Nintendo experience: a cutesy social experience couched in harmless video game fun. Still, one unanticipated side effect of the global COVID-19 pandemic was how plenty of people and groups turned to the game for new and innovative ways of connecting with others. Examples abound, including players building a real-world economy around the game's resources, TV stars plying a version of their trade in the game, protests and social movements springing up in the game's world, and even the use of the game as part of the presidential election campaign. Mostly absent was any pushback from the gaming community. Instead, these few instances of crossover from real world to gaming world appeared to simply show the power of what Nintendo had created: an open and innovative gaming experience based on community and unbridled social interaction.

That description, of course, is about as historically un-Nintendo as it gets, so perhaps it's not entirely surprising that a recent update from Nintendo over its usage terms for the game seems to squarely aim to neuter much of this. In a post titled "Animal Crossing: New Horizons usage guidelines for businesses and organizations", which you can read for yourself in its entirety, Nintendo prohibits groups and organizations from doing the following:

However, please observe the following points when you engage in these activities.

Please be aware of the game rating and do not engage in activities that go beyond the rating.

Please refrain from using the Game inappropriately or creating any content within the Game that would be considered vulgar, discriminatory, or offensive. Please also refrain from bringing politics into the Game.

Please do not share false information about the Game with anyone, and do not deceive others while using the Game (e.g. falsely indicating you are separately licensed or otherwise approved by Nintendo).

Please do not leverage the Game as a marketing platform that directs people to activities or campaigns outside the game (including directing people to a sales page, distributing coupons, sweepstakes, giveaways, requiring consumers to follow social network services accounts, gathering customers’ information, or other invitational activities).

You are not allowed to obtain any financial benefit from using the Game (including selling your Custom Design or earning any advertising revenue with the Game content).

Now, some of these prohibitions are reasonable, albeit quite vague. No, you shouldn't falsely imply sanctioning by Nintendo; no, you shouldn't break the game's age rating through your actions.

But reading those guidelines pretty clearly also prohibits several of the cool interactions we detailed in the opening. Making any money from selling the game's resources to other gamers. Starting social movements within the game. And if all politics in the game are banned, there goes the innovative organizing use by Biden or other politicians as well.

And on that last bit about removing all politics from the game world: good fucking luck. This is a game built on social interaction and, since politics in 2020 has managed to invade every last crevice of our over-bloated society, it's going to come up. I imagine Nintendo mostly wants to limit official campaign actions within the game, which is stupid in and of itself. Still, building a social game and then telling customers how they can be social is simply not going to work.

Again, it's not surprising: this is as Nintendo as it gets. But it is certainly disappointing.

Filed Under: animal crossing, culture, politics
Companies: nintendo

Thanks To Fair Use, One Man Is Trying To Preserve Old School Video Game Manuals

from the preserve-art dept

We have discussed at some length the intersection of copyright laws and antiquated video game preservation. Going back at least a decade now, most of that focus has been on whether the use of emulators and the digitization of games that no longer have systems to run them ought to qualify as fair use. You can couple that with the more recent trend of some museums with a focus on the art of video games seeking to get exceptions to the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules in order to preserve both offline and online games that might otherwise be lost to the ether. When viewed properly through the lens that copyright law exists for the purpose of promoting more culture, not less, it should be immediately obvious that preserving culture in this manner is one of the chief aims of fair use and copyright law in general.

But it's not just the games themselves being preserved by fair use provisions. One dedicated man has led a six year effort to digitize and preserve the game manuals for every Super Nintendo game ever created.

In some cases, they’re lost forever! Other times, we’re lucky to have folks like Peebs, who devote an incredible amount of time to collecting, cataloguing and then ensuring manuals to every Super Nintendo game ever released are scanned and uploaded, so that future generations can enjoy them as much as we did.

For the last six years he’s also been hosting a Twitch channel, where he’s been slowly trying to beat every single Super Nintendo game. A lot of the time, in order to complete a section or just look something up, he’d need to consult the manual. “It didn’t take long to realize that most of the time when I went to look for a scan of a manual for control schemes or just backstory, they mostly either didn’t exist or they were all scattered to the far corners of the Internet,” Peebs says. “There was a severe lack of organization: mislabeled files/links, old defunct websites with broken interface/files, incomplete scans, etc.”

Now, I do not expect everyone to particularly care about the preservation of old video game manuals. I do, but then I'm precisely the right target audience for this sort of thing. Cartridge console gaming was a thing at the exact right time in my youth and I loved going through the manuals for games. The art, instructions for play, backstory, and detailed explanations for the setting were part of the fun of buying a new game. If you're of the tabletop gaming sort, think of it as a truncated version of going through player handbooks and monster manuals.

But even if you don't give two poops about video game manuals from the 90s, it's still important to recognize that fair use is what enables this sort of preservation. This sort of non-commercial categorization and preservation, frankly the kind of thing that museums do, would certainly run afoul of copyright law otherwise. But thanks to his efforts, Peebs nearly has every manual available to anyone, free of charge. And a grateful clique of the gaming community is actively trying to help him complete his goal.

There were around 600 manual scans available on the SNES Manual Archive when it opened to the public in September 2020. Since then, a community has sprung up around the project, with fans around the world eager to help out with their own submissions.

“I got approximately 20 scans sent in on the first day, and since then I’ve received about one per day,” Peebs says. “People have started letting me know when they buy a manual so I can mark it off as incoming so other people don’t buy the same thing. I’d say we probably have a total of another 15-20 manuals in the mail from people around the world right now that will be scanned and uploaded when we get them.”

That leaves just over 100 manuals, at least for Western games or versions of games. Though the project is looking to expand its Super Famicom collection in the future. “The support of people contributing to the project has been super surprising and I’m very thankful for every manual that has been submitted.”

There have apparently been no game publishers, nor Nintendo itself, coming by to lob copyright shots at this project. That's a good thing, so clearly an endeavor of appreciation of the art in these manuals this project is. One hopes that, with this new notoriety Peebs is receiving, he isn't suddenly forced to confront just how much fair use protection his project has. To have this part of gaming culture under threat just because copyright would be a shame.

Filed Under: archives, copyright, fair use, manuals, video games
Companies: nintendo

Nintendo Nukes 'Zelda' Fan Game, As Per Usual

from the death-of-the-wild dept

I've tried with Nintendo. For some years now, I have both complained about how strict and hamfisted the company is when it comes to allowing fans to express their fandom in the form of fan-created games and content, as well as offered the company advice as to how it could be just a little more cool about all of this. The frustration really starts to boil over when you realize just how much cool content the world could have if Nintendo could figure out some way not to be as protectionist as possible and instead seek out ways to work with fans to allow for this sort of thing. To be clear, as I have said in the past, Nintendo certainly can act this way when it comes to how it treats its fans, but it doesn't have to act this way.

But, when you jump at every fan-made work like a toddler on meth jumps at their own shadow, I suppose you just can't help yourself. The most recent evidence that Nintendo isn't changing course comes in the form of a fan-created Zelda game put up on GitHub that Nintendo swiftly got taken down.

Well-known modder Kaze Emanuar, who has been releasing a number of unofficial Nintendo-based projects over the last few years, launched a title called 'The Missing Link' earlier this year. The game made use of the very same engine from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and aimed to bridge the gap between Ocarina, and later N64 title, Zelda: Majora's Mask.

The game was available from GitHub, but following the copyright claim, has since been removed.

To be charitable to Nintendo, there is no lawsuit thus far involved in this story. Given that the company has never been litigiously shy, perhaps that's progress of a kind. And, again, Nintendo is well within its rights to take this action. The takedown request itself at least nods at any question as to whether this game would constitute fair use.

"The copyrighted works are the video games in Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda video game franchise, including without limitation the audio-visual works, story lines, characters, and imagery in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0000901848), The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (U.S. Copyright Reg. No. PA0001940271), and others.

Nintendo has reviewed the reported material and does not believe it qualifies as a fair use of Nintendo’s copyright-protected work."

All true, except that isn't where this story has to end. There are plenty of ways that Nintendo could sanctify these sorts of fan-made games and content that don't involve taking them down. It could work out some arrangement with the fans who make these fan-games to make them official, thereby alleviating any concern for copyright protection. On the copyright side specifically, the company could simply ignore these fan-games, like plenty of other game studios do. Hell, if it's some monetary corporate itch that requires scratching, Nintendo could even build a fan-creator program that allowed it to make some money and have curation abilities over these expressions of adoration turned into gaming content.

But, no. Instead, out comes to the copyright takedown request, down goes the game, and the world is an objectively slightly worse place for it.

Filed Under: fan games, trademark, zelda
Companies: nintendo

Animal Crossing Continues To Be An Innovative Playground As Biden Campaign Begins Advertising On It

from the sign-of-the-times dept

For nearly half a year now, especially when this damned pandemic really took off, we've been bringing you the occasional story of how Nintendo's Animal Crossing keeps popping up with folks finding innovative ways to use the game as a platform. Protesters advocating for freedom in Hong Kong gathered in the game. Sidelined reality show stars took to the game to ply their trade. Very real people enduring very real layoffs used the game's currency as a method for making very real money. As someone who has never played the game, the picture I'm left with is of a game that is both inherently malleable to what you want to do within it and immensely social in nature.

So perhaps it was only a matter of time before one of the major Presidential candidates got involved.

Joe Biden's presidential campaign is rolling out a series of official virtual yard signs designed for display on islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch.

As first reported by The Verge, the four virtual sign designs squeeze supportive messages for the Democratic candidate into a 32 x 32 pixel, 16-color custom pattern square, suitable for displaying on a sign in front of your virtual house. In addition to the standard "Biden Harris" and "Team Joe" designs, the campaign has also released a version with a rainbow pride logo integrated into the "JOE" branding and a design featuring Biden's signature aviator sunglasses in red, white, and blue.

Putting any thoughts about individual candidates aside, it's a pretty fun and low-risk use of a social video game by the Biden team. How much effort did it take to put these images and in-game items together? Not very long, to be sure. And, with turning out the youth vote being such a premier goal of literally any political campaign, this is at least an innovative way to try to build some momentum with younger voters.

And, thankfully, it won't be terribly intrusive, unlike the politics of this stupid real life hellscape we all live in. Nobody is going to see these signs unless they visit the island of the person using them. This isn't any more in-your-face than real life yard signs for a candidate.

All that being said, the Biden campaign should probably be on the lookout for some unintended fuckery, given historical attempts to do this sort of thing.

Political campaigns using video games to get their message out has a short and spotty history. Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner was among the first politicians to be interviewed in Second Life's virtual world back in 2006, an interview locale which later became known for attacks by flying penis griefers.

Not going to lie, I'm sort of sorry I missed that one. Either way, it remains interesting to see how folks are finding new ways to use open and social worlds like Animal Crossing.

Filed Under: advertising, animal crossing, joe biden, political advertising, video games
Companies: nintendo

Nintendo Cryptically Points Out That Selling 'Animal Crossing' Assets For Real Money Violates ToS

from the sooooo? dept

Back in May, we wrote about something of an economy springing up around Nintendo's hit game Animal Crossing. With so many folks enduring the hardships of layoffs, or unable to find work, it turns out there are people making very real world money selling in-game assets and collecting payment outside of Nintendo's platform, which doesn't have a method for these types of transactions. This sort of thing fascinates me on many levels, perhaps mostly in how nearly perfectly this highlights the reality of income disparity in America. Some folks have to farm digital bells to make money by selling them to people with enough money to buy them.

But we also mentioned in that post that Nintendo is notoriously protective over how its games are played and used. On top of that, the only real way to be effective in this economy is to screw around with the clock and timer settings on the console itself to speed up the harvesting process. That, too, is the sort of thing that normally gets Nintendo's fur up. So, it's perhaps not surprising that Nintendo has pointed out recently that all of this violates its Terms of Service, though the company has remained cryptic as to exactly what it plans to do about it.

Nintendo has strictly defined rules about monetization. As clearly stated on the network services guidelines, Nintendo writes, “You may monetize your videos and channels using the monetization methods separately specified by Nintendo. Other forms of monetization of our intellectual property for commercial purposes are not permitted.”

J-Cast reached out Nintendo regarding the real-money trade of Animal Crossing: New Horizons characters. “We are aware of the violation of our terms of use,” Nintendo replied. Nintendo added that it is currently considering what steps should be taken regarding the sale of New Horizons characters.

One presumes the same would be true for in-game assets like Animal Crossing's bells. As stated, Nintendo has a reputation for this... but should the company drop the hammer on this sort of behavior? I've put some thought into this and I can't really come up with a systemic major problem that is or could be caused by this emergent economy springing up around a game like this. How much does this break the game's community, given that there is clearly a demand from players for buying these assets? And how much interest in the game is built on players knowing they have an outlet for progression through these purchases?

Interesting as those questions may be, Nintendo doesn't typically come off as though it engages in this type of self-interrogation. Instead, the company sees something happening outside of its control, has a visceral reaction to that something, and reacts with a heavy hand. Note that the quote from the Nintendo rep above says Nintendo is deciding what to do about all of this, not whether it should do anything at all. Which is too bad.

Filed Under: animal crossing, economies, in game sales, terms of service, virtual goods
Companies: nintendo

Hacks Are Always Worse Than Reported: Nintendo's Breached Accounts Magically Double

from the whoopsie dept

One of these days, we writers at Techdirt will put our collective and enormous heads together, and come up with an actual proposed mathematical formula that should be applied whenever a company first announces a security or account breach, so that the public can calculate what that breach count will eventually end up being. The reason the world needs such a formula is because you can pretty much set your watch when a company announces such a breach that in the following weeks or months it will grow significantly. This happened with Equifax, with TJX, and even with our own vaunted federal government. But if we ever really did want to try to put some kind of formula together for measuring the underplaying of a breach on initial response, the historical breach that would probably brake such an algorithm would have to be Yahoo's email breach, which, in 2013, was the breach of a few hundred thousand email accounts, but in 2017 magically became all of the accounts. As in, literally all of them.

This severity progression is so routine that it should have a name for easy reference. I propose Geigner's Effect. I heard somewhere that if you write for this site long enough you get an effect named after you.

The most recent example of, ahem, Geigner's Effect (actually first proposed on this site by Mike Masnick, but he already has an Effect) is Nintendo, which near the start of the year announced that roughly 160k of its Nintendo Accounts had potentially been breached. In an update this week, Nintendo revised that number to nearly double the original amount.

Today, Nintendo announced another 140,000 or so more accounts may have been accessed. That means a total of around 300,000 accounts may have been breached. Nintendo pointed out in an update today that that’s less than one percent of all Nintendo Network ID users.

While that's true, it's also 200% of the amount that Nintendo originally said had been breached. And who knows what that number is going to be in another couple of weeks or months? It could stay the same, or it could be more Yahoo-esque and balloon significantly. Remember again, Yahoo revised its breach numbers on a nearly annual basis until it finally settled on "all the accounts." The public has no reason to trust companies on these numbers and every reason to dismiss the casual trotting out of seemingly comforting math by some PR goon.

So, we reiterate: when you see a report of a breach, know that it's always more severe than first reported. Until we have our formula ready for prime time, that's the best you can do.

Filed Under: breach, data breach, geigner's effect
Companies: nintendo