Irony of Nintendo's DMCA Antics

Nintendo has recently gone on a rampage against it’s creative fan base. They have been issuing takedown notices against fan made games based on classic Nintendo franchises left and right as of late, as well as making copyright claims on massive amounts of YouTube content. In the past 2 months, Nintendo has actively pursued the eradication of two long in development fan games. Another Metroid 2 Remake (AM2R colloquially) and Pokemon Uranium both garnered significant press coverage. Just enough coverage, in fact, to get them both shut down. I would link you to Uranium’s homepage, but sadly it no longer exists. I personally have been looking forward to both projects, especially AM2R, for many years now. I have been checking …

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

It would be one thing if these were helping the official stuff sell better, but there's no data proving it.
And in absence of said data, a company is obviously going to take action against an unauthorized remake of franchises that still have games out for sale, in stores and digitally, who's sales could be negatively impacted by things like these popping up outside of the systems these IP's are meant to run on.
Fans might think of it as screwed up, but the fact of the matter is that Nintendo's games are the most prone to being emulated instead of bought, lately.
One look at CEMU and the pirates supporting it shows that there's an uncomfortably large amount of fake fans looking to hijack Nintendo's games without having to pay a cent.
Whether they hate the system or not is irrelevant; it doesn't make it wrong, morally or legally, for Nintendo to exercise their right to protect their IP.

Having said that, though, I do wish Nintendo would wise up and start making some long overdue sequels in certain franchises.
There'd be fewer fan games if Nintendo would just put out more games in these franchises themselves.

[CorndogBurglar]

Not sure why youngot disagrees. You are 100% right.

People think with their hearts and not their common sense.

Of course a company is going to shut something like this down. No one in their right mind would let someone else use their IP's to make their own games to distribute.

Also, if anything, these fan games as much potential to hurt Nintendo's sales as help them. Especially with something like Pokemon Uranium, knowing full well Pokemon Sun/Moon is coming out in a couple months.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Well, one of those disagrees is from a stalker I've had following and planting a disagree on every single post I make for roughly the past month and a half, so I don't count that first initial dislike, personally.XD
As for why I got disagrees at all?
Well, probably for a couple of reasons;
#1 People don't like hearing gamers being blamed over companies at any point in time.
#2 CEMU supporters don't like being called out for the thieves they are.
Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.

As for Pokèmon S/M, I'm considering getting it, but with Monster Hunter taking up practically all my handheld gaming time, I'm not sure if I want to get back into the series...

[eldingo]

Nintendo has a really bad habit of incurring bad pr with their use of dmca takedowns on fangames.I prefer segas and valves approach of encouraging fan games from their more passionate and creative fans over nintendos draconian policy on fan games along with their asinine creators program on youtube,Nintendo may not need the fans they are pissing off and pushing away every time they do this but i'm certain they aren't better off in the long run either for it only time will tell.

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

Neither Sega nor Valve are in the same position as Nintendo software-wise or hardware-wise, though.

[eldingo]

if being successful makes you become a dick towards fan games then valve is the company that proves that absolutely wrong early access be damned.

If thats not what you meant please explain in depth would you because otherwise i dont know what your getting at.

[TheCommentator]

Sega was in their position, hardware-wise. Ninty is just too stubborn to give that part up, but let's face it, Ninty would ne much better off if they just quit the hardware business and made their games on mobile and real consoles instead. They're just too stubborn to admit it.

You know it would be really funny if the NX was revealed to be vaporware, and a code name for nix-ing their hardware division instead. They did release Pokemon Go and have Super Mario Run coming out on mobile, so...

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

@ Commemtator

No, Sega and Nintendo's positions were vastly different.
Sega was putting two or three systems out within too short a time to try and land a hit, which had the effect of making people think Sega's systems were not long-lived enough to bother purchasing.
Which is a damn shame, because I loved games like Power Stone on Dreamcast, but I digress, so moving on...

No, Nintendo would not be better off going third party and dropping hardware.
Expecting the same crowd that looks down on cat suit Mario to prioritize a game like Zelda, when it releases at the same time as games like Fallout, Uncharted, FIFA, CoD and Witcher, is a false hope.

It'd be like expecting Halo to out-sell Breath of the Wild if Microsoft put it on NX.

Third party lovers on other systems don't like Nintendo games enough to prioritize them, so Nintendo would make far less off of their games there despite the larger install base. (an install base which, I might add, frequently doesn't make many of its games sell 3-5M+, like some people ignorantly claim they'd do for Nintendo's games)
There's no financial future for Nintendo, in console gaming, without their own hardware.
They'll make more money, and give a home to more exclusives like Bayonetta 2, by making high-selling hardware of their own for people to play their software on, than they would by trying to sell software to two fanbases that think they're "too mature for Nintendo".
And they're perfectly capable of making it happen.

[CorndogBurglar]

Just because other companies are okay with it doesn't mean Nintendo is doing something wrong.

Nintendo has every right to protect their IP's.

[eldingo]

nintendo isn't doing anything wrong legally and they have that right however enforcing it in such a draconian way when they don't have to and striking down free fan games like they are now and if they keep it up then they are going to piss people off alot of people and whether they like it or not actual fans of theirs like these things and when they do this they hurt themselves in the long run eroding relations with their fans and that's just one example of ways nintendo pisses off their fans.

I mean think about how many fan games sega and valve have encouraged over the years and some of the people who made the best fan games got hired by the companies themselves such as sega with sonicmania (i think thats the name) and valve with the black mesa project i know companies need to protect trademarks and logos or they can be legally lost in court but that doesn't apply to copyright which games fall under my question isn't whether nintendo can take down fan games or not legally but rather Should they to such a hard line degree? and if they decide that they should do that, why do it in such a draconian way that even free fan games aren't safe is such an enforcement good for them in the long run?how are they benefitting from this because all i see is a fan game you have to download from somewhere else on the internet and a whole lot of pissed off fans.

I can understand dmcaing them if its a fan game making money by charging for it or the game jolt ad revenue situation but when the game is put up for free for anybody to play and they still enforce it that hard i can't help but wonder if they know or not how much bad pr comes from being so draconian with the copyrights they own.

@ZeekQuattro Gotta love when people generalize,ignore all other reasons and points of why im on my side of the opinon spectrum for this issue so they can reduce it all to a one sentence diatribe and not have to think about the actual ramifications of all my points or their merits or even ya know try to debate me on why their side of the argument is valid or why i might be wrong.

Its a really Lazy dishonest thing to do if you ask me.

[ZeekQuattro]

Got to love when people are reduced to saying everyone else is doing it so it must be okay defense. Its damn pathetic if you ask me.

[OtakuDJK1NG-Rory]

AM2R is not a Fan game though.
Metroid II is a copyrighted game.

When will people understand what fan games are.

[eldingo]

The guy made Am2r from scratch with gamemaker over the course of about 10 freaking years he might be using copyrighted assets in terms of looks along with some originial contributions of backround assets and enemies to the game by artists who volunteered to do it for free but make no mistake this guy didn't just copy paste metroid 2 from the gameboy or some rom online and call it a day he from the ground up remade metroid 2 in a seperate game engine from the original work in question with all the modern improvements the sequels had for free for anyone to play on the internet.

if people want to play the actual metroid 2 its on nintendos stores along with being buyable on sites like ebay and the guy who made Am2r even encouraged getting it there if you enjoyed his remake,if you wanna give me the whole nintendos copyright must be defended thing then im going to tell you right now when it comes to free fan games i disagree with doing that wholeheartedly if nintendo truly does think anything violating copyright should be taken down regardless of whether its free or not then they need to start applying that logic to all the fan art of their games online as well that ALSO violates copyright since its of their original copyrighted characters if they are going to be dicks about this since they can legally then i ask that they go all the way and be consistent in their dickery instead of picking and choosing the things they don't personally like to take down.

@Blawren4

Half life 1 and 2 are still regarded to this day as some of the best games of all time and there are still people asking for half life 3 to this day regardless of any fan games hell one of the best fan games A remake of the first half life is getting published by valve themselves its called black mesa look it up.

Modern Sonic games these days might be shit but Thats on Sega not the fans who make fan games of sonic I don't know what your point is blawren fangames don't cause franchises to look bad or fail the people who run that franchise are responsible for that.

[blawren4]

What I want to know is did this guy ask Nintendo's permission first. If he did, and they said no, then that's his problem he wasted the years when he could have made his own game. If he didn't ask, then that's his problem he wasted the years when he could have made his own game. Similar to not asking your parents for permissions for something because you know they would say no. And for everyone here that keeps referring to other companies that allowed this. those companies should have protected their assets more...where are those franchises now.

[CorndogBurglar]

"if people want to play the actual metroid 2 its on nintendos stores along with being buyable on sites like ebay"

That is the problem right there. Maybe I do want to play Metroid 2 but don't want to pay for it. I have an easy place to go to get a free (possibly better, considering its in a newer engine) version for free.

Perhaps I want to play a Pokémon game. Here's a great Pokémon game called Pokémon Uranium that's free. Why should I pay for the upcoming Pokémon Sun/Moon when this Pokémon game does such a good job of hitting all the Pokémon tropes in their games?

Do you see what this possibly does?

What you are suggesting is not reasonable across the entire landscape. Not every publisher/company should have to offer these people money every time someone STEALS their property and makes a "fan game" without their permission. I mean where does it end? The precedence that would be set is horrendous. If you want to get a game published, HEY, just rip-off a company's IP. Then they'll pay to publish it! I mean, this can't be that hard to understand.

In the case of Pokémon Sun/Moon, do you honestly think its in Nintendo's best interest to back a fan game that was never brought to them in the first place, knowing full well they are already developing other Pokémon games themselves? Where is the sense in that?

At the end of the day, people need to think about the companies as well. They shouldn't have to promote, and put money into every fan game that gets made. Its basically saying its okay to hold a company ransom simply because you stole their property, and now the company has to dump their own money into it.

That isn't reasonable. Its a gamble everyone should know of before they start putting years of work into a fan game that you plan to distribute.

There are a lot of reasons to be upset with multiple publishers and video game companies, but protecting their IP's is not one of them.

[eldingo]

What you suggest is absurd paranoid fanboy nonsense that will never happen now allow me to explain why you aren't thinking straight in the case of pokemon uranium that game took 8-9 years along with am2r taking just about 10 years any game that will come close to the original in quality will take far longer than if that actual company tried to develop the game themselves also most fan games in general suck.

My assertion is not that nintendo shouldn't protect its IP my assertion is that they shouldn't be so draconian in the approach if they don't want to publish these specific fan games (uranium and am2r) fine but going out of there way to take down all the free fan games they can find regardless of their quality as actual games is a step too far in my opinion the law might let them do this but the law has yet to fully catch up to the internet so for now only time can tell.

people could already emulate all the classic metroid on roms online anyway assuming the am2r fan remake was gonna take more sales out of nintendos metroid 2 is asinine and ignores how long emulators and roms have existed on the internet its that whole piracy argument that people never stop arguing about and here's my two cents on it people who were never going to buy the game were never going to do it anyway these things don't change that.

ALSO point to where i said every company should be backing every fan game ever made regardless of how good the actual game is because if you can't do that then your just pulling smoke out of your ass and lying with incredulous claims you fabricated yourself that were never said by me they were only thought up by your paranoid fanboy mind.

If you really think what nintendo is doing is a good precedent to set since its violating copyright then you should be asking them to be consistent with their copyright takedown policy and have all the fan art for their games taken down since those ALSO violate copyright if not then nintendos just being picky and using the law to their own advantage instead of following it to a tee and abiding by it 100%

Fan games are distributed on their own personal sites among things like that in general people don't make fan games to make money and put them on steam its a tribute to the thing that inpsired them.The reason fan games are called fan games is that they are games made by the fans for free and thus not canon to any game series that inspired them and not sold for actual money if your idea is that now everybodies gonna start making remakes of other games and publish them for money then yet again you have made an incredulous illogical claim that will never happen.

FINALLY your idea of a precedent is absurd when you look at valve and segas current relationship with fan games and how many have been made in the past few years with nothing at all resembling your so called precedent the evidence clearly shows anybody paying attention how wrong and stupid your claim is along with how little thought you put into your rebuttal maybe actually think and put some legitimate research into your own rebuttal before you try to argue the merits of my points.

[CorndogBurglar]

This article was written by an angry child from the looks of it.

1. Nintendo owns these rights. If they choose not to create anything with them, that is their decision. It may suck, but it doesn't give any fans the right to steal their property and make games to distribute. (Also, Metroid Federation Force just came out. Pokemon Sun/Moon releases in 2 months.) They are using the properties. It may not be the way you or fans want, but its theirs to do with as they please. It doesn't give anyone else the right to go and make their own games using these properties.

2. Donkey Kong Irony. The only thing ironic about that is that MGM didn't own the King Kong rights either.

3. Metroid/Aliens. There is a BIG difference between taking inspiration to create something entirely new, and using another property to create something. This example would only be the same if Nintendo created a game within the Aliens franchise and used characters and Xenomorphs. Metroid is VERY different than Aliens though. Sure it took some inspiration, but the end product os a very different world.

Again, this guy sounds like an entitled baby.

[JacketsNest101]

As much as fans may hate it, it is Nintendo's job to protect their bottom line and things like Pokémon Uranium could very well effectbthe sales of Sun and Moon. Now, I know that these people worked really hard on these games, and it sucks that their work went to waste. But instead of covertly releasing the gane, send it to Nintendo and open a dialogue with Nintendo so that these games, especially the likes of AM2R can be released legally and you still get credit for the work you put in. At the end of the day, it is the fans who made these games who are to blame for this as Nintendo is simply acting within it's rights and responsibilities to protect and enforce its trademarks and copyrights.