Nintendo Sics Lawyers To Take Down Fan-Made FPS 'Pokemon' Game Footage

from the nintendon't dept

At this point, posts about Nintendo getting fan-made games or content removed from the internet over IP concerns are evergreen. Nobody should be surprised by this shit any more, though you should still be either very angry about it, or at least disappointed. The company is almost a caricature of an IP maximalist company: anything and everything that even comes close to touching its IP gets thrown at the company lawyers to deal with. It's bad enough to be parodied by the general public. This is where I remind you that companies like Nintendo have a wide spectrum of avenues for responding to fanworks. Depending on the IP in question, the company could do any of the following besides going legal: let fans have their fun, issue zero-dollar or cheap licenses to fans to legitimize their work, or incorporate fanworks into official releases by either licensing or employing these fans. Plenty of other companies have taken these routes, or others, and have survived just fine. Nintendo never does this.

And so, here we are again with Nintendo getting footage of an unreleased fan-game disappeared from the internet, citing copyright. In this instance, one fan made a first person shooter game in the Unreal Engine so you can go hunting Pokémon as violently as possible.

For the past month, Reddit user Dragon_GameDev2 has been working on a side project imagining a PC Pokémon game, built using Unreal Engine, that you played in first-person.

While your thoughts may now be drifting towards something resembling Pokemon Snap, Dragon_GameDev2 had more violent plans for this game. He instead showed off some videos where players were dropped into a Pokémon-filled landscape, given modern firearms, and set free to hunt (and defend themselves from) as many of the pocket monsters as they liked.

Now, were it not for Nintendo's reputation, someone might be able to convince me that the bloody, violent murder of video game Pokémon might have been the impetus for Nintendo's actions here. After all, the Pokémon series is very much not in the style of Doom or Quake. But that reputation does exist and I don't believe for a second that the violence depicted here has anything to do with the takedowns.

Those takedowns, by the way, are not of the game itself. Rather, images and videos of the game being played that were shared on the internet is what was disappeared. Can Nintendo do this legally? Probably, though I could certainly make a fair use argument for it. Perhaps not a perfect one, but an argument nonetheless. But again, the question isn't so much can Nintendo do stuff like this, but should it?

This sucks, just like it always does, because unlike many other major international companies, Nintendo seems utterly unwilling—or even unable—to differentiate between commercial projects that infringe on their copyrights and fan-made playthings that are free and made for fun.

That, of course, is nonsense. Nintendo absolutely can make this differentiation. It chooses not to. Don't take that agency away from a company that worked quite hard to build a reputation for itself for absolutely hating its fans' attempt to express their fandom.

Nintendo isn't confused. Nintendo hates you. Or, at least, it hates what some of you do in the name of your love for the company.

Filed Under: copyright, fan games, pokemon, takedowns
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

Take 2 Sues Fan Over Project To Finally Bring 'Red Dead 1' To The PC

from the red-and-dead dept

Take 2 Interactive, the famed game studio behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, is no stranger to our pages. When we have posted about the company, however, it has typically been to highlight how many ridiculous lawsuits and threats it faces over IP from unlikely sources. There was the ongoing battle with Lindsay Lohan over GTA5. There was a strange cease and desist notice sent to the company by the infamous Pinkerton Agency over its accurate depiction in Red Dead Redemption. The point is that Take 2 has been on the receiving end of frustrating intellectual property challenges such that it really should have some perspective on better ways to handle things than to simply be as heavy-handed as possible.

But apparently that's a lesson that hasn't stuck. Take 2 Interactive recently filed a lawsuit against Johnathan Wyckoff and several John Does over what appears to be a now-defunct project entitled Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project. The goals of the project were somewhat simple. Fans of the series may already know that the original title was never released for the PC, only the PlayStation. The original game was also released several years ago, with now outdated graphics. Using the more recently released PC version of Red Dead 2, the project aimed to put the game map from the original game into its sequel and then update the graphics from the original game to produce a more polished version of the original. Worth noting here is that the gaming public has complained about the lack of a PC port of Red Dead 1 for years, with Take 2 offering no hint that it had any intention of meeting this demand.

And yet they filed suit anyway.

In September, however, things started to go off the rails. Project lead ‘DemandDev’ took to GTAForums to reveal that development had been stopped. He didn’t directly state that Take-Two had put him under pressure but complained of being bullied by a corporation.

“They done shady stuff getting my private info and contacted my family,” he wrote. “I’ve been contacting people to spread word. I’m not letting them them bully me and keep my mouth shut. I complied and stopped progress but hopefully I can sort out this.”

Several months later, sorting it out will now have to be actioned through the courts. On December 26, Take-Two Interactive filed a lawsuit at a New York court against a Johnathan Wyckoff and John Does 1-10.

There are several layers of silliness in all of this. To start, if development has ceased as of the summer of 2019, what is the point of the lawsuit? Unless Take 2 has some kind of proof that this work has continued, this seems purely punitive in the most pernicious way possible. Add to that the fact that this development team is clearly made up of fans of Take 2's property and you have to wonder why threats and lawsuits are a better way to deal with this than reaching out to these fans and finding a way to at least bless their fan project if not bring them into the official fold and make use of their work entirely. We've made this point many times: copyright is not trademark. You can simply make a project official through cheap means without risk of losing your property rights.

Finally, Take 2's suit nods at how this project would compete with a Red Dead PC port that Take 2 has had years to provide themselves, but for which it has never shown any interest.

Take-Two’s lawsuit details two matters. The first, the ‘RDRII Project’, aims to add the full RDR1 game map to RDR2. This, the company says, would not only “dramatically change the RDR2 experience but also reduce interest in purchasing a future release of RDR1 or a RDR1 add-on map for RDR2. The company doesn’t state it intends to release either, however.

The second targets the ‘Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project’ which Take-Two says would utilize game files from Grand Theft Auto V and RDR1 “to vastly improve the graphics and performance of the game” and enable players to play RDR1 on PC, where it isn’t officially available, “thereby destroying the market for an official, updated version from Take-Two, and creating competition for Take-Two’s PC-version of RDR2.”

To be clear, all of that is true... but then where the hell have you been, Take 2? The original Red Dead released just shy of a decade ago. I realize that development cycles can be long, but ten years for a PC port? If the company had intended on doing one to satisfy PC gamers, it would have been nice if it had been completed sometime in Barack Obama's first term. And when a fan project comes along to try and satisfy that desire, the company peels off a lawsuit?

Again, Take 2 should know better, having been on the wrong side of IP bullying itself. This was an opportunity for the company to act cool and human, but it chose litigation instead.

Filed Under: copyright, fan games, fans, johnathan wyckoff, red dead 1, red dead 2, red dead redemption, red dead redemption damned enhancement project
Companies: take 2 interactive

Nintendo Does The Nintendo: 'Mario Royale' Fan Game Becomes 'DMCA Royale'... And Is Now Dead

from the mission-accomplished? dept

I've often made the point before that Nintendo hates you, dear Nintendo fan and general gamer. Between taking down fan-made levels, fan-made games, and going to war with all the ROMs everywhere, Nintendo values an overwhelmingly tight grip on its intellectual property rights far more than the natural desire by its own fans to express their fandom. The speed and reliability of Nintendo's lawyerly involvement has become something of a legend on the internet, with folks that make these expressions of fandom often joking upon release that it's only a matter of time before the suits come calling.

This held true with Mario Royale, a delightfully simple little web game created by a fan that allowed players to play through Mario Bros. levels alongside up to 74 other simultaneous players. The classic game had never been used for this sort of thing and it was quite interesting to watch how it all worked. It's also worth noting that the game was playable for free, meaning there was no commercial aspect to it. Despite that, you all know what happened next.

Given Nintendo's litigious reputation when it comes to fan games, it's perhaps no surprise that the "game got DMCA'd," as creator InfernoPlus noted in a comment on the game's YouTube trailer over the weekend. InfernoPlus himself didn't seem all that surprised. In an interview with Vice last week,he said he "anticiapate[d]" a letter from Nintendo. "I’d say it’s [a] 50/50 [chance of attracting Nintendo's legal ire], maybe more, because it got so big all of a sudden. If [Nintendo] does, I can just re-skin it."

Now, that's precisely what's happened. Following a June 21 "DMCA Patch," the game that was Mario Royale is now DMCA Royale. While the gameplay is unchanged, the game's music, sound effects, and in-game sprites have been replaced with much more generic versions—including a new player character named "Infringio."

Beyond how clever this all is on the part of InfernoPlus, the changes made to the game are important for other reasons as well. By changing the assets to no longer be clear rips from the original Nintendo game, it should have put the game in a place where it was no longer infringing. By changing the name of the game, the characters, and the messaging around the game to focus on the fact that the original was DMCA'd by Nintendo, the game also transformed from a cool experiment into something in the realm of parody and social commentary. That last bit is important, because it should have also transformed the game into something that would pretty clearly fall under fair use.

Which is why it's odd, given both of those factors, that you also no longer can play DMCA Royale, as Nintendo's lawyers apparently issued threats over that game as well. At the URL for the game, all that is left is a message from InfernoPlus saying it had to take the new game down as well.

Unfortunately, Uncle Nintindie's lawyers have informed me that, despite my best efforts, the game still infringes their copyright.
They refused to give me specifics (I asked multiple times) but it would seem that either the level design or general mechanics are still too close to the original game.

As a result I can't just blindly change the game and leave it up. Doing so would put me at risk of further legal action. I'll likely talk in detail about the game and it's short lifespan on my youtube channel in the coming weeks.

I'm sorry about this guys. It was fun while it lasted.

It is equally unclear to me what Nintendo's continued problem with the reskinned game could be. The specific expression in the game assets that might have been copyrightable were removed. What was left was a transformative work that may have mirrored the basic game mechanics from the original Mario Bros. game, but those aren't copyrightable. On top of that, as I mentioned above, this new work seems like pretty clear fair use to me, in that it both serves as commentary on Nintendo's aggressive behavior and is also a clear parody of the original game. Were this to go to court, it's hard to see how it wouldn't result in a win for InfernoPlus.

But, given the legal war chest at Nintendo's disposal, that doesn't ultimately matter. A small developer making a game as a fan and as a cool little experiment isn't going to risk its existence to have such a legal fight. It's worth pointing out briefly here, and I'll expand on this in a separate post, that Nintendo had many other options than DMCAing this game to hell at its disposal. Why didn't it engage any of those other options?

Because Nintendo hates you, that's why.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca royale, fair use, fan games, infringio, mario, mario royale
Companies: nintendo

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.

Filed Under: dmca, fan games, sonic the hedgehog
Companies: nintendo, sega

Nintendo DMCAs Fan-Game 'No Mario's Sky', Devs Rename It 'DMCA Sky'

from the way-to-go dept

In the world of video games, it's always useful to remember one thing: Nintendo hates you. More specifically, Nintendo hates its fans that go about expressing their fandom in ways that Nintendo does not specifically approve of. And Nintendo doesn't approve of much it seems, whether its fan-remakes of games made 25 years previously, fan videos of fan-created Mario Bros. levels, or fan-made movies featuring Nintendo game characters. Nintendo is not on board when it comes to its customers' desire to be creative and express their love for the games the company makes or the characters within them.

That stance continues to present, with Nintendo shutting down all kinds of fan-made creations. Those creators typically walk away from their projects in defeat. But when Nintendo decided to send a DMCA complaint to the creators of No Mario's Sky, those creators didn't just walk away. The game itself came out of a coding competition.

Ludum Dare (Latin “to give a game”) is a triannual game coding competition that was first held in 2002. In recent years it has become more popular after Minecraft designer Markus Persson became a semi-regular entrant. Its unique feature is that competitors are given a theme and then expected to produce a finished game in 48 to 72 hours.

One of the team entrants to Ludum Dare 36 (theme ‘Ancient Tech’) were ASMB Games (Alex McDonald, Sam Izzo, Max Cahill, Ben Porter) with their creation No Mario’s Sky, a game featuring “exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe.” While the game’s title clearly plays on Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky, it was the Nintendo element that got ASMB in hot water with the gaming giant.

The developers complied with the DMCA request sent by Nintendo. This also voided their entry into the competition. The team put out an announcement that detailed the DMCA request and thanked their fans for playing the game while it had been available. And that would normally be the end of this story, with another fan-created project torpedoed by the always-aggressive Nintendo.

In this case, however, the story continues.

While it’s disappointing that the game had to be taken down, ASMB weren’t quite done. After addressing the issues highlighted by Nintendo of America, the team went back to work and removed all ‘infringing’ content from No Mario’s Sky. The end result is a new game cheekily titled DMCA’s Sky.

And so the game Nintendo tried to kill off lives on and has even been renamed so as to increase the awareness of Nintendo's aggressive and bullying ways. Meanwhile, because of the controversy, a heck of a lot more people are being exposed to DMCA's Sky than would have been otherwise. Bang up job, Nintendo.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca sky, fan games, no mario's sky

Blizzard Allows Release Of Fan-Game It Initially Tried To Shut Down, Reaps Rewards It Should Have Had All Along

from the derp dept

We've dinged Blizzard quite a bit in these pages for acting overly protectionist of its intellectual property in the past. And that dinging has been well deserved, with Blizzard doing things like trying to twist copyright law as a way to combat cheat software within its multiplayer games, to use intellectual property as an excuse to shut down a World of Warcraft vanilla fan-server, and has otherwise not always acted in human or awesome ways towards its own fans.

But sometimes, with much kicking and screaming and the insistence of making many a mistake along the way, even a company like Blizzard can manage to do what game companies like DoubleFine have already done: loosen the leash on its own IP and reap the rewards. StarCraft Universe is a fan-made mod that consists of a full new game in a genre that Blizzard had never taken the StarCraft universe into.

StarCraft Universe takes place in an alternate timeline where Kerrigan got torn chitinous dreadlock-from-weird spider spine at the end of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. After that, it didn’t take long for the Hybrids to bring down the Protoss as well. It’s up to a few remaining survivors to, you know, not die.

“We wanted to combine the third person action RPG elements of World of WarCraft, the combat mechanics of Diablo, and the starship mechanics ofFTL with the StarCraft setting,” Upheaval wrote. “We wanted the game to be completely voice acted with a unique story, custom art assets, and a fresh musical score.”

You can see the trailer for the game here and you'll see that it looks pretty slick for a fan-made construction. Fully voiced characters and an original score, combined with gameplay elements familiar to fans of World of Warcraft and FTL. Using the StarCraft IP and some homebrew elements, this is a whole new world and a whole new experience for StarCraft fans, who are amongst the most passionate.

And if any of this feels familiar to you, it's because the project had originally begun in 2011 before Blizzard smacked it down.

Just a reminder: this is the mod that got announced in 2011 as World of StarCraft, ran afoul of Blizzard’s lawyers, caused hella controversy,relaunched with a new name, got Blizzard’s approval, and went on Kickstarter to ultimately rake in $84,918.

Rather than simply whipping out the intellectual property hammer and dealing a deathblow, Blizzard ended up communicating with the Upheaval team and allowing it to eventually move forward. It even allowed the group to run a Kickstarter campaign for it, along with an ongoing IndieGoGo page where gamers can donate to the developers of what is an otherwise free-to-play game.

The result? Well, loads of comments on all kinds of articles can be generally summed up as saying, "This looks cool! I have to go buy StarCraft 2!" Which is what should have been allowed to happen five years ago, if Blizzard had had the foresight to leash its lawyers instead of its fans. But better late than never, as they say, and Blizzard is fully on board with this now, with SC Universe appearing in the StarCraft Arcade store. Good will, more paying customers, and an expanded game universe, all for the cost of not being overly protectionist of intellectual property. Lesson learned, Blizzard?

Filed Under: copyright, fan games, fans, starcraft, starcraft universe
Companies: blizzard

Hasbro Spent Time, Money, Lawyers' Attention To Barely Make A Difference Over My Little Pony Fan Game

from the pony-up dept

Several years ago, we wrote about a fan game that had been shut down by Hasbro because it incorporated My Little Pony intellectual property. Yes, an expression of fandom was bullied out of existence by Hasbro. The argument trotted out by those in support of the company was the same argument that's always trotted out in these instances: the company had to shut the game down, or else risk losing its trademark protections through non-enforcement of its rights. That's not actually true, of course. There were many smart business routes to go for Hasbro, including offering a low-cost license to the gamemakers to allow the project to continue. Hell, we've actually seen instances in which Hasbro has chosen to enable fans to do some things with MLP characters, such as these 3D printing capabilities. But Hasbro chose to be the bully. And how'd that turn out?

Well, the company essentially might as well have done nothing as far as the end results go. Yes, the fan game is back, albeit with a barely different name, fractionally altered game characters, and with the collective understanding by everyone looking at it that this was supposed to be My Little Pony in a fighting game but now isn't because trademark. What was Fighting is Magic has become Them's Fightin' Herds and it's every bit as insane as it sounds. Oh, and they actually got someone who has worked on MLP properties to boot.

Them’s Fightin’ Herds is a 2D PC (Windows) fighting game with adorable animals in an original universe designed by Lauren Faust (producer and developer for "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"; creator, director and developer for "Super Best Friends Forever"). It is the spiritual successor to “Fighting is Magic”, with improved gameplay mechanics and graphics, an entirely new (and awesome!) dynamic music system, a graphic lobby, and a whole bunch of new features.

So, let's review. A group of My Little Pony fans created a fan fighting game using the Hasbro property. Hasbro, rather than spending ten seconds looking for an amicable route that would protect its interests while allowing this expression of fandom to continue, instead decided to sic the lawyers on its own fans. Those fans complied and took the game down...only to slightly rework it to avoid the legal issues and are now releasing the game pending its crowdfunding campaign, which has managed to generate over $100k of its $436k goal in one day, as of the time of this writing. The game is blatantly similar to the original MLP game, save for the changes made to avoid Hasbro's interference. And it looks like the team has a good chance of cashing out in a major way.

So, the legal route got us all to a barely different place than we would have all been three years ago. How much time and money did Hasbro spend on this? And, whatever that amount was, was it worth it just to get us to what could have been passed off as a possible example of what the many-worlds theory would look like in practice? A barely different adjacent reality that is nearly identical to our own, save for a few ultimately meaningless differences? And, the better question, why didn't Hasbro learn this lesson the first time, when its legal action against Scrabulous resulted in the exact same outcome?

Filed Under: fan art, fan games, intellectual property, licensing, my little pony, overreaction
Companies: hasbro