WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE FAN GAMES HERE AFTER WHAT HAPPENED TO THE METROID 2 PROJECT

author=Xenomic
Hm...I wonder if I should be worried at all about my project that I've been working on for 8 years.

Most definitely. It's been 8 years. I'd be worried too if I wasn't done.

With over two million downloads, good luck to Nintendo getting people to stop playing it. I've seen it on a torrent site or two already and even if one torrent gets taken down, another one or two rise up in it's place.

I mean, I have the game myself (and yet don't really play it - mainly downloaded it knowing it'd go offline from the main source eventually, as was right) and while it's neat, all I see it using are assets from the games such as tile sets, character sets (more as models, I think - most of the battle models look new to me) and the battle system.

Then again, I'm not far enough into it to see if the original 700+ Pokemon pop up or if it's all 198 of the ones made for the game.

To me, Nintendo has made themselves look like angry children over the fact fans would take their characters and make viable titles that were contenders to their own. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but apparently not to Nintendo.

But on the other hand, protecting their IP is at the core of their legal action, which is well within their right. Doesn't stop me from thinking they're pitching a tantrum over a free-game that won't rival their new games once they drop.

Punk_Kricket
With over two million downloads, good luck to Nintendo getting people to stop playing it.

...

To me, Nintendo has made themselves look like angry children over the fact fans would take their characters and make viable titles that were contenders to their own. They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but apparently not to Nintendo.

People need to stop spinning such emotional narratives about why things like this happen. Like, honestly, I've seen claims that Nintendo hates their fans, hates creativity, abuses people, doesn't care about their own IP, want to see themselves go down the shitter, etc. It's nuts. The goal isn't to "get people to stop playing it" or "remove it from the internet forever", the goal is to say "we legally protected our trademark".

It's a business decision. There's a new Pokemon game coming out this year and a new Metroid game coming out tomorrow. With US copyright law in the sorry state that it is it's not at all surprising that Nintendo's lawyers would DMCA this stuff:

Toaster_Team
As for throwing a tantrum, I think you're seeing this as more an emotional reaction than it really is. I doubt those types of decisions are based on knee-jerk emotional response but rather from bureaucratic legal protocol. If you use the IP without their permission, you get taken down, that's it really. Corporation are not moved by emotion, they're moved by gain/potential of gain.

Frankly a friend of mine said it best in the Slack a few days back: this is a win win scenario. The games are released, they're still being worked on, and Nintendo gets to legally say they protected their IP. I don't feel bad that they can't host it on their own sites or whatever anymore, since that's what happens when you distribute stolen stuff, you use torrents and the like.

Another thing to consider: do any of us think Nintendo doesn't pay as close attention to the indie scene as we do? There may or may not be Nintendo employees hanging out at RMN, but they know about the major indie fan releases well ahead of time, too, just like the rest of us. Metroid 2 got a lot of public attention. So did Pokemon Uranium, but the difference is, Pokemon Uranium wasn't getting reported in the mainstream news to nearly the degree that Metroid was.

Does anyone really think Nintendo wasn't fully aware they were late to the party shutting down Pokemon Uranium? Anyone think they might have waited on purpose, to perhaps give the game a chance to survive? I think that might have very well been part of the reasoning, because there's no way Nintendo didn't know about it in plenty of time to stop a single gamer from ever seeing it. Companies like that have entire departments whose sole job is to keep an eye out for plagiarism, and Pokemon Ur wasn't exactly on the down-low.

Another thing to consider: do any of us think Nintendo doesn't pay as close attention to the indie scene as we do? There may or may not be Nintendo employees hanging out at RMN, but they know about the major indie fan releases well ahead of time, too, just like the rest of us. Metroid 2 got a lot of public attention. So did Pokemon Uranium, but the difference is, Pokemon Uranium wasn't getting reported in the mainstream news to nearly the degree that Metroid was.

I would be very surprised if employees scanned the net at all. They are probably informed of fangames by other people who report them.

People need to quit with the idea that IPs are hanging from a thin line and "one fangame too many!!!" will let their IP roam free in the wilderness susceptible to wild orgies. It's not true. It takes far more than a successful fangame (or five, or twenty) to threaten an IP. What Nintendo did was the smart move in this situation, yes, but it's not always the smartest choice and it's something that is in flux and may get phased out of how companies protect IPs in current wisdom.

Says who? You?

Here's the bottom line: it doesn't matter how you guys feel about IP and about what should or shouldn't be allowed. People are coming up with those elaborate explanations going in details about why Nintendo should do what they think they should do.

They don't care.

It's their IP and they'll DMCA stuff which uses it without their permission. That's it.

Yet somewhere on the net, a few days in the future some dude is going to wake up and go: "Hey I'll spend the next years of my life to work on this fangame" and then there's this outrage by the internets when it gets taken down.

"But it would help their sales!"
"But it's just one fangame!"
"But they haven't made a good Metroid in ages!"
The law doesn't care feelings and other musings when it comes to IP (and neither should it).

It's not that the Japanese are any more strict about copyright than the US is. They just handle it differently. That's why stuff like comiket (a massive anime/manga/games convention with over a million attendees) can have oceans and oceans of fanworks (the majority even being porn) and the copyright holders float alongside the fans. These fanworks are even sold and 0% of the money goes to the companies. Although the event only happens twice a year (not counting the countless small events, usually themed on a specific series), digital distribution and sales happens year-round.

This works there because reputation is the massive thing in Japan. It's a more symbiotic relationship because when a company does smack down a popular comiket personality, the backlash costs them far more reputation and sales than if they'd just let it be. They also do the thing of acquiring the really big talent for themselves.

Examples of this exist in the west too. One being the best translator for Xseed is the guy who did the fan translation of one of what is now their main localization franchise. Xseed wouldn't even be on the map right now if not for their relations to Falcom, which is all because of their decision to not smack down the fans. Rather than slam him down they offered him a job.

IMO a better action Nintendo could have taken would have been to demand a build of AM2R and Uranium before they were completed and then acquired the finished game for official release before it hit the internet. They could have legally done this without even paying for it (except for disto/marketing costs, which they would have made back in spades). If I made AM2R and Nintendo said "your work is good enough to stand along side us. Rather than crush you and your devotion we want to honour your hard work." I'd print and frame that e-mail on gold paper and want it buried with me in the coffin when I die. Sure it makes every other dev think they can get noticed too but those people will either be smacked down if they're not good enough, or honoured if they are.

I'd wager the C&D order on Metroid and Pokemon came from the American side, where the law and legal responsibility of a company is more like what's been mentioned already in this topic. The morality of both the devs and the copyright holders are a different matter but the law is a law. Until it's been changed, they must abide by it. It's just that it really needs to change.

I've helped out on fan projects before (in this example a Castlevania one, two Touhou ones and a Neptunia one) and although all of them fell apart due to other issues they were all being made with two ideas in mind- "We might get a C&D for this" and "By the time we get a C&D the thing will already have released and it only takes 50 downloads to make for infinite redistributes."

Regarding reporting, from the website:

but there's a point where business and the law must adapt to changes or get left behind.

So you're saying that law must and business need to adapt to their environment. I mean, that's a truism if I ever read one. Laws do adapt and so do businesses.

Then you mention that Music has done this and that's it. Ok, I understand but I don't think it brings much to the topic of fangames and Nintendo's reaction about it.

As you said:

People need to quit with the ideathat IPs are hanging from a thin line and "one fangame too many!!!" will let their IP roam free in the wilderness susceptible to wild orgies. It's not true. It takes far more than a successful fangame (or five, or twenty) to threaten an IP. What Nintendo did was the smart move in this situation, yes, but it's not always the smartest choice and it's something that is in flux and may get phased out of how companies protect IPs in current wisdom.

Regarding the part in bold: how do you support such statements as: people must do x, y is not true and so on? Sorry, I'm just naturally skeptical when people make claims like that out of the blue like that I need dig a bit to see if there's something tangible there. It's as if Nintendo is run by a bunch of idiots who've never considered the idea that not DMCAing their IPs might be a good thing.

Maybe it's more complex than following a whim and maybe there's a pretty strong rationale supporting Nintendo's way of doing things. It baffles me when people drop by and lecture them how they should run their IPs because they want more Metroid fangames. It just doesn't work that way.

author=Toast
Regarding the part in bold: how do you support such statements as: people must do x, y is not true and so on? Sorry, I'm just naturally skeptical when people make claims like that out of the blue like that I need dig a bit to see if there's something tangible there. It's as if Nintendo is run by a bunch of idiots who've never considered the idea that not DMCAing their IPs might be a good thing.

Maybe it's more complex than following a whim and maybe there's a pretty strong rationale supporting Nintendo's way of doing things. It baffles me when people drop by and lecture them how they should run their IPs because they want more Metroid fangames. It just doesn't work that way.

You're getting way too technical and binary about this, fam. I mean, you could say that it was a pointless move, depending on their goal. Their goal was probably just a legal auto reaction to protect their IP. Got it. If though, their goal was to prevent the proliferation of Pokemon Uranium, then they have failed utterly, and every company attempting to do the same with similar fan ventures will also fail utterly, forever. I am going to assume that at least most Nintendo's lawyers and corporate heads aren't morons, so they're after the former instead of the latter.

(Another side effect with stuff like this is that now Pokemon Sun and Moon (and future titles) will have to compete with the fan-made Pokemon Uranium in terms of quality and player attention. Which is a good thing and an interesting effect of fan creations in the whole shebang.)

Anyway, I did not say that "Nintendo did a bad move here". What I did say is that a company protecting their IP through legal action isn't always the best move, which is true and is hard to deny. A legal right and a good business move aren't always the same thing.

I already gave you a great example; how Bungie responded with Red vs. Blue. They could have very easily shut it down, but they didn't, and it is hard to argue that Bungie benefited very much via brand exposure and goodwill from the machinima juggernaut that Red vs. Blue ended up becoming. Megaman vs. Street Fighter is another fan creation/parent company collab. Not to mention that TONS of successful, original IPs started out as fan creations as something else.

Is this always the case? No. But I was responding to the claim inevitably tossed around during these conversations that "a company must protect their IPs and it is always the right move to do so and it is always wrong not to there is no benefit from fan creations!!!"

author=Feldschlacht IV
Megaman vs. Street Fighter is another fan creation/parent company collab. Not to mention that TONS of successful, original IPs started out as fan creations as something else.

A good example of that would be Freedom Planet. It started out as a Sonic fan game and then they decided to make it their own thing, which still catered heavily to the existing Sonic fanbase while also drawing in new crowds from people who were just sick of Sonic and Sega using him poorly.