Online Game Shutting Down All User Created Levels That Reference Someone Else's IP

from the IP-enforcement-gone-mad dept

Plenty of video games have the ability to create user-modification and user-made levels. Back in the 80s and 90s, this was made popular with games like Castle Wolfenstein and Doom. Many of these user-made versions involve famous characters. In fact, one of the first such cases was when some high school kids remixed the original Castle Wolfenstein to create Castle Smurfenstein, replacing all the Nazis in the original game with smurfs. In Matt Mason's book The Pirate's Dilemma, he talks about how these early mods helped shape and grow the video game industry.

But, apparently, some game makers either don't know their video gaming history, or are too afraid of lawyers preventing similar things from happening again. The makers of the game LittleBigPlanet, which allows users to create their own levels, have apparently started deleting any and all levels that include any mention of anything that might be construed as someone else's intellectual property. This seems both extreme and unnecessary. It's certainly not going to keep fans particularly loyal to the game.

Filed Under: copyright, games, user-made levels
Companies: littlebigplanet