ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

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Drag
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by Drag »

To be fair, most fan games and romhacks are using somebody else's intellectual property without their permission.

Why does that matter? In the United States, when you buy something with "Mario" written on it, you already have a good idea of what to expect, and it's because Nintendo is able to stop others from using their property without their permission. Compare that to, for example, the Dendy where "Mario" could mean anything, including pirate originals, and nobody had any way of knowing what Mario was actually supposed to represent.

Although Nintendo's choice to take down gameplay videos and flag videos that use game music (also usually gameplay videos) seems like a step too far by US-cultural standards, it's actually not outside of the boundaries to want to make sure the Pokemon logo and Mario aren't used in things they don't have control over.

The selective enforcement of trademark infringement seems suspect as well; why did a high-brow Pokemon fangame get shut down while SMWCentral and Lunar Magic continue to thrive? It could be due to SMW romhacking having a large Japanese fanbase, but I don't have anything to base that on.

Finally, most C&Ds would be resolved by just removing the infringing elements (usually logos and characters) and replacing them with something else that cannot legally be mistaken for the trademarked things. Take Cities: Skylines and Planet Coaster for example; they're very obviously someone else's clones of Sim City and Roller Coaster Tycoon, but as similar as the gameplay elements may be, none of that needs permission to be used, and as it turns out, neither game needed to piggyback on the source work's names or marketing in order to compete with (and actually surpass) the originals, hence no mention of sims nor tycoons anywhere.
psycopathicteen
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by psycopathicteen »

Nintendo should sue everyone with the name Mario.
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tokumaru
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by tokumaru »

psycopathicteen wrote:Nintendo should sue everyone with the name Mario.
As absurd as that may sound, here in Brazil there's a famous singer named "Roberto Carlos", who recently sued another guy named "Roberto Carlos" for naming his company after himself. The singer lost, obviously, but still.
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Banshaku
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by Banshaku »

@Drag

My opinion on the subject would be that they make millions every year out of pokemon (the kids got their fix this Christmas..) but not from super mario world. In that context, Pokemon related non official derivative work with be go after first since there is a big money incentive.

@Tepples

If you are going to do a hack of a game like Pokemon which is not something that have the option to do game mod anyway, don't expect any blessing from the company. Like mentioned above, since it's a very lucrative ip, they will shut down anything that can impact the brand.

And nintendo is an old company with a very old way of thinking. This is the last thing I would expect from them, to allow rom hacks. And if you don't believe me then just check super mario run business model.

Anyway, if you do a rom hack, don't expect too much from those still popular ip.
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Drew Sebastino
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Banshaku wrote:they make millions every year out of pokemon (the kids got their fix this Christmas..) but not from super mario world.
Why are you being specific about Super Mario World, but not the about the Pokémon game Pokémon Prism is using? Is it because most Super Mario World hacks don't advertise themselves as being new games? I really don't know.
Drag wrote:why did a high-brow Pokemon fangame get shut down while SMWCentral and Lunar Magic continue to thrive? It could be due to SMW romhacking having a large Japanese fanbase, but I don't have anything to base that on.
I doubt that has to do with it. It probably has more to do with trying to block every Super Mario World hack being made would be a hopeless effort. I really don't understand why they'd be going after a Pokémon hack though. I guess that leads to...
Banshaku wrote:they will shut down anything that can impact the brand.
Do they really think this will negatively affect sales of Pokémon Sun and Moon? If they do, they have a serious disconnect to reality.
Banshaku wrote:if you do a rom hack, don't expect too much from those still popular ip.
So F-Zero's fine, right? :lol:
Banshaku wrote:And nintendo is an old company with a very old way of thinking. This is the last thing I would expect from them, to allow rom hacks. And if you don't believe me then just check super mario run business model.
The problem with Nintendo is they've proven time and time again that they just don't know how to adapt to evolving markets. It seems increasingly so that they're sill trying to chase the ghost of the Wii. Look how well that went last time.

Oh yeah, and about where Super Mario Run's business model has gotten it: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ny-country :lol:
tepples
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by tepples »

So adapting to market realities is another one of the ways SEGA does what Nintendon't.
nitro2k01
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by nitro2k01 »

tepples wrote:So adapting to market realities is another one of the ways SEGA does what Nintendon't.
Arguably, Sega's and Nintendo's realities differ a lot.
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by NovaSquirrel »

8bitMicroGuy wrote:So how about we all create our own fandom with our own music and characters and everything and share it together like some kind of a public domain fanbase or at least a Creative Commons / BSD licensed fanbase?
There's Floraverse where the whole comic and everything derived from the comic is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licensed and it already has an established fanbase.

It's probably far from the only freely-usable fictional universe out there.
8bitMicroGuy
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

Nice. The story is a bit scary, though. But what's mostly scary is that if I'm gonna make any crossovers of that universe with any of mine or someone else's such as in a fighting game where all OCs/avatars of us Nesdevians are playable characters, the game with all its contents will need to be ShareAlike licensed. The big problem is that the Creative Commons license doesn't prevent rule 34 or sexualization or profanity or blasphemy while I wish that none of those things are ever made of my work. A ShareAlike license allows all usage purposes and prevents me from disallowing anything because it's a copyleft license. Therefore, a ShareAlike license is not good. A good copyleft license would be one that has a list of rules about moral standards such as the PG-13 rating. The main reason why I mentioned the BSD license is because of the freedom it brings so that I'm not forced to give out to someone the rights to make perversions out of my work just because the OSI standards say that open source licenses don't discriminate against perversion. Yay, neutrality/tolerance/insertAnyWordThatCausesALogicalFallacyCausingYouToApproveAPerversionBlindlyLikeAnIdiot *sarcasm*. I've probably made someone angry right now, but I don't really care. Nothing will change my opinion on perversions and I'm not letting any of my work be desecrated under the excuse of "artistic expression". I'm sick of searching for innocent and cute fictional character things from my childhood on Google Images only to find porn that the search engine couldn't filter.
zzo38
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by zzo38 »

8bitMicroGuy wrote:The big problem is that the Creative Commons license doesn't prevent rule 34 or sexualization or profanity or blasphemy while I wish that none of those things are ever made of my work.
I may also wish that none of those thing will be applied to my work but I do not believe that I should be allowed to stop it if people wish to do; it should be freedom of speech you should not be allowed to stop it, and should be allow to any freedom of speech that you want to.
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
8bitMicroGuy
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

If I was a country ruler, I'd say that personal peace is of a bigger priority than freedom of speech, but... It seems that people's freedom without responsibility has ruled over. Freedom without responsibility equals chaos and that's why all unregulated freedoms will end up lustfully, corrupting young people who seek awesomeness through the unknownly perverted Google Images search engine in order to recruit them to support the lust just like zombies turn humans into zombies. The majority is lustful so the majority will use the freedom of speech to cover up their lustful behaviors, but not just that, but to hijack someone's dear sweet innocent cute dreams into rule 34 without permission. I'd say that that freedom violates the freedom of purity of the creator and the freedom of children and teens online who just want clean awesomeness. When I get a lawyer for my video games, I'll insert a term into my EULA that forbids and punishes rule 34 just like how Nintendo punishes fan game developers.

Bottom line, have as much fun as possible, but avoid impurity, blasphemy and immorality like a plague and you'll be okay.

Now let's return to the original subject.
Erockbrox
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by Erockbrox »

I would like to see a romhacker make a hack which only changes around the information already in the game so that there is nothing infringing on any trademarks or copyrights in the patch. Then take that case to court when Nintendo gives a C&D and prove to them that a patch which contains only a list of changes does not violate anything. In fact the patch should be the ownership of the person who created it and if Nintendo tries to block it then Nintendo should be counter sued.
Last edited by Erockbrox on Wed Mar 15, 2017 11:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tepples
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by tepples »

Perhaps Nintendo wants the public to forget about its old products so that they don't unfairly compete with its new products.
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Zepper
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by Zepper »

tepples wrote:Perhaps Nintendo wants the public to forget about its old products so that they don't unfairly compete with its new products.
What about the copyright of the games? And the hardware patents? Expired after 20, 30 or 70 years? Or... more?
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rainwarrior
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Re: ROM hacks now in Nintendo's crosshairs

Post by rainwarrior »

There are no expired copyrights on video games. Not enough time has past since the beginning of the computer age.
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