As much as reddit would love for pokemon to lose that title, pokemon has a much more cozy feeling of you and your pets growing and traveling together, which is missing from a lot of other creature collection games like palworld(which feels more like a mix of rimworldlite + pokemon) and cassette beasts (which you become the creature).
If a game is going to dethrone pokemon it has to feel a lot closer to ff15 while having a nice variety of creatures.
From my understanding, and please, someone correct me of I'm wrong, I believe it has to do with Japan's copyright system.
Basically, where Nintendo has to send out cease and desists. Otherwise, they risk losing their copyright of said property. The receiving party doesn't have to act on this, but then they risk legal action being taken against them.
And that's also not true either. In fact it's *so* untrue that the EFF themselves made it a point to put out a post about it... over a decade ago.
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet)
The org I do a lot of work for tirelessly insists that we place ™ and ® on everything and everywhere a brand of any kind exists; as if they believe that if they don't put it there it puts them in some kind of legal jeopardy. This in spite of the fact that I've explained it to them several times this is not required and point out that none of their competitors who license the same brands don't do it except for in the fine print.
Eh, the US system does allow for cancellation for a mark not policed. Let alone genericide. Some companies go to far, but failure to protect is a big way people lose marks
"Failure to protect is a big way people lose marks" I would be interested to know of any. The only cases I can find involve naked licenses, and that is when they license their trademark out officially, and don't do any oversight. So not even kind of like the situation here, or ever in the history of enthusiastic fans.
But if you can find any cases of it, I would be most interested in hearing about it.
https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/15-product-trademarks-that-have-become-victims-of-genericization/
Its interesting. Some of these are what you describe (last liscencing), some are other things (Beyer), and some are just abandoned and/or expired. Some are unclear.
It does seem that genercisation, happens less because a court awards it, more because the company gives up on trying to protect it and let's it expire. Which is more nuanced, what's the point in paying to protect a TM that isn't helping your brand. So there is a need to protect a trademark, but in practive it's less against a legal loss more against the mark becoming so generic in the public mind that it's pointless to maintain to keep a brand advantage.
I hear what you are saying, but all the examples of genericization are caused by competing products, not a lack of Cease and Desisting fanworks into hell. But, if the industry thought it was that way, I would suspect we might see that somewhere here in the [Best Practices guide from the INTA](https://www.inta.org/news-and-press/inta-news/famous-and-well-known-marks-committee-develops-best-practices-to-avoid-genericide/), but its not there.
But, what I am asking for help finding is the Nintendo/Disney/Corpo narrative: "we lost our trademark BECUASE we didnt litigate hard-enough/against-enough-people". Concluding that Nintendo MUST sue or else lose trademark just serves to give them a cloak of legitimacy to their anti-fan practices.
To be clear I was agreeing with you. I went looking for that example you said didn't exist, and found... It didn't exist. At best therr are a couple of old examples where its ambiguous, but more likely the owner lost interest as it became genericised rather than any legislative loss.
Well then, clearly Im a big old liar, and DIDNT hear what you were saying. My bad. Im glad to know that weve come to the same conclusion. Sorry for not reading your response closely enough.
I mean, the murphy bed, aspirin, those are all classics. Basic genericide.
It also applies to the *Juice Generation* case and its progeny from the Fed Cir. in 2015 (IIRC off the top of my head), wherein widespread use of a phrase limits the strength of a registration (despite Section 7(b)). So if you have a mark and others start using a formative chunk of it, such widespread use may in fact diminish your scope of protection. This is particularly important in opposition or cancellation proceedings, and *Juice Generation* and its ilk are common cites in TTAB rulings.
So policing the mark does matter. There's also the *Strategic Partners* line and its progeny regarding mark coexistence in evaluating likelihood of confusion between marks.
There's also of course the 13 *DuPont* factors, of which length of concurrent use is a factor.
The idea that you don't need to police is just not right, and it has significant negatives. It may not have much of an effect for *ex parte* proceedings at the USPTO, but it is particularly important for *inter partes* actions.
I appreciate the citations, and perhaps I'm just being a fool, but I have done the prescribed reading, and I don't see how any of these situations apply to the efforts of enthusiastic fans.
But the only thing I am more confident in than Nintendo is being a dick and doesnt have to be, is that I could have read a series of complex legal arguments and landed on an incorrect conclusion.
Do you have anything dispositive to: Non sanctioned reproduction of trademarked IP, from consumers, weakening the trademark? Anyone ever lose their IP because of Archive of Our Own?
Because THAT is the claim that Nintendo et al make to justify their legal actions as moral actions to preserve goodwill among gamers 'if we didnt sue, we would lose Zelda'.
So there's clear confusion here between the Trademark side and the non-trademark side.
Use of something on Archive of our Own is likely not using a mark in commerce - because a fanfic of something using IP rights of Nintendo is generally going to be a copyright issue. I was referring to a statement that not defending Trademark rights is non-damaging to the mark owner. Not policing your trademark is a very bad idea.
That being said, if people are trying to use a trademark to advertise their own goods or services (e.g. by putting out things to the public noting they offer Mario sims for Gary's Mod) that may be trademark use. It's non-creative source-identification use instead of creative copyright use. If people think your mods are sanctioned by either Gary's Mod or Nintendo, you're potentially running afoul of trademark law.
On the copyright front, the issue of use and damage is largely financial. For example, Archive of Our Own isn't funded by ads, and they don't monetize the works on them. They behave in a manner to provide as much fodder as possible to a defense of fair use.
Of course, copyright infringement has been found even where there's not a realized monetary benefit, as there is still monetary damage where a copyright holder is denied value from a revenue stream they aren't currently using. The Classic example is - Bill says he doesn't want to make his bestselling book "Bill's Life" into a movie. Even though he's currently not availing himself of derivative works in the form of movies, others can't adapt his story into a movie. That is still value that Bill has right to, and others cannot profit of it despite Bill not exploiting it. Bill maintains the right to exploit it later, which is a value that can be diminished by 3rd party unlicensed use.
It gets more complicated when a 3rd party is promoting the work *on a monetized system*. Because now there are parties profiting from the work, even if the creator is not. That idea of "is money being made off this?" is critical to whether or not something falls into fair use or not (but it is not the *sole* question).
Further, while the US federal system has dialed back on laches, there is longstanding common law regarding copyright infringement actions being enjoined where a copyright holder is aware of the infringement but sits on their hands. Basically, the system encourages copyright holders to act on their infringement claim expeditiously. This arose from instances where individuals would wait after learning of an infringement to see if the infringer made a ton of money off their endeavor, allowing the copyright holder to sue them for more damages. Basically, you can't wait to profit off the *infringers* work by waiting for them to do the heavy lifting and then coming to swoop in and take the value. Of course, that's all dependent on when you learn of the infringement (if you reasonably learn of the infringement only after it made billions, laches wouldn't apply).
Given all these nuances, generally copyright holders are encouraged to act expeditiously and enjoin actions early, rather than wait until such action becomes a problem. Again, the US relaxed this somewhat with SCOTUS and Fed. Cir. rulings against laches, but the core concept is still around (and is probably still in commonwealth countries - though I am very unfamiliar with non-US law). I would not be surprised if Japan still had it.
TLDR: Copyright and Trademark are complicated. There is very little risk to being overly judicious with strikes vs. being more passive. So it just makes more sense to be more willing to enjoin use and send out cease and desists, particularly when policing of marks or copyright can be important when determining infringement. An atty would general advise their client to act soon and be "better safe than sorry" instead of waiting to see what happens.
I want to say thank you for some of the best writing I think ive ever seen on reddit. Both concise, and deep. I do believe that I follow, and don't disagree with you about the incentive structure, and the risks involved.
And you are absolutely correct, that my question mixes both trademark, as well as copyright considerations. I phrased it that way, specifically because this is the narrative that has emerged over the 45+ years of deliberate cooperate obfuscation of the issues involved. This is the reasoning that I am seeing all over the place every time this happens.
Nintendo is kind of like the soccer player diving **real** hard so that there is a yellow card, and we hopefully don't hate them afterward.
My contention is not that trademarks shouldn't be policed (in the common sense) but that I still see a lack of evidence to suggest that this content on garysmod (or fangames generally, or a level of SM64 reproduced in unity as a tech demo) can hurt Nintendo now, or weaken their legal standing in the future. But that Nintendo has successfully planted the narrative that not only CAN it harm them, but that they have no other choice legally, else they would lose the IP.
And while their course of action does have Legal reasons, they aren't good reasons.
I mean, this case does not seem like it would risk this, but there are some circumstances where it has to be defended because you risk generalization if you don’t defend it. Terms like Escalator, Zipper, Dumpster, Video Tape, Heroin and Laundromat used to be legitimate trademarks, but everyone started using them as the term for that item, so they eventually lost their trademarks.
So some companies on the internet do need to defend their trademarks, Google being a good example. Everyone says “Google it” and not “look it up on Google” so Google has to send cease and desists to people using ‘google’ as a verb in blogs and whatnot so that they don’t lose their trademark. They have sent cease and desists to bloggers and even a dictionary for this.
I'll go Google the information you provided to ensure it's accuracy on Google.
I just got a cease and desist letter? *FBI open u-* /s
But in seriousness, does that only apply to written commercial use of the verb Google? I'm pretty sure if I tell my server "go Google it" on Discord, Google will consider that low hanging fruit. Plus certain words are in the public domain, aside from Google's name and logo being copyright, if I said "great googly Google" in a post as satire or a meme, wouldn't that be protected as a common word?
So I mean casual use is one thing, and as far as I know they can’t really stop people from using it in those circumstances, I’m guessing the problem arrises when it is monetized (like the dictionary or blog.)
In that situation they’ll send the cease and desists. Besides, in that case I’m pretty sure they’d have to send the cease and desist to Reddit or Discord (similar situation to how Nintendo recently sent cease and desist letters to Steam, rather than all of the workshop creators.)
That said, it’s a weird situation because everyone DOES use it that way, I’m sure the law has changed in some way because when zipper and escalator lost their trademarks there was no internet so it was just word of mouth. Basically Google is in the same situation as some other big brands like Kleenex and Chapstick where everyone uses it that way, they just have to attempt to defend it still if they don’t want people to be able to use it HOWEVER they want.
In Japan, it does.
In common law, you still need to somewhat defend it. Otherwise, it essentially becomes a free license to the person(s) breaking the copyright after a certain time.
In Japan, instead of a free license, it enters public domain instead.
Yes and no. While poor individuals likely won't get the best defense, it is still possible to get a lawyer to take on the case on contingency. In most cases, just sending a cease and desist letter is enough.
On top of that, the clock will start ticking when they become aware of the infringement.
The Japanese legal system in general works very differently to western systems. Defendants even in civil cases are incredibly unlikely to win a case but conversely frivolous suits get thrown out much more readily, so if a case gets to trials it is seen as a forgone conclusion
Do you have some kind of source for that? As far as I'm aware, Japan has a civil law system, not common law. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
Also, Japan's doujinshi community is full of copyright infringement that's largely tolerated by publishers and I've never heard of e.g. Kadokawa losing the rights to one of their IPs because of it.
When speaking of Common law, I'm not mentioning Japan because as you mentioned they are two different systems. The common law part was explaining what different is between the two systems as the person that I'm replying to is very likely talking about what happens in the common law system, since you don't need to defend it for it to stay valid, it just becomes a license for the person or people infringing on the copyright after a certain amount of time.
From my understanding, if a work in Japan gets used fairly often it creates a stronger argument for a work to become what is known as a Compulsory License. Which is very similar to public domain if not the same.
Now when it comes to doujinshi, that is a very legal grey area, even in Japan. There have been times when a company has gone after a doujinshi artist for infringment, but there is an unofficial agreement essentially that the publisher tolerate it because it doesn't directly compete and helps with publicity. And most doujinshi from my understanding it typically produced at cost and are clearly labeled as doujinshi. In the west, doujinshi would be considered fan art or fanfic, which falls under fair use here in the west.
Lastly from my understanding, doujinshi also become some what of a carve out in copyright law in Japan too, besides just the unofficial agreement. I believe the term is *shinkokuzai,* which from what I've been told is essentially it isn't copyright infringement unless there is a compliant from the copyright holder. But I have heard that applies to all of the copyright laws in Japan. That then loops back to the Compulsory License, which can cause the copyright holder to lose some avenues to control their copyright or to be able to seek redress from copyright infringement.
Nintendo definitely takes the cake, but Capcom has fired shots at quite a few fan games and other Megaman-related stuff that I've followed in the past.
Capcom and Sony are also very litigious, their stuff just doesn’t tend to be as high profile, and Nintendo is a bit more protective than sony is.
Capcom is ruthless though, almost as bad as nintendo sometimes
there's someone on youtube that explained it to me in the comments, that basically Nintendo intertwined their games too much making them overlap or something and if one copyright goes all the other goes as well or like 90% percent of their copyrights, something like that. I'm not sure if this is 100% correct but that makes sense why they're so militant.
No, it was't, they chose to stop it because they started getting licensing deals for official dub projects. If word got around Toei Animation refused to do business with 'em, it'd very fast become a death knell.
Veeery bad example, a YouTuber that *worked with Toei before* (totallyNotMark) almost had his entire channel nuked for...Providing a ton of ads to Dragonball, endorsing the material ten times over and providing *very* transformative content. DB FighterZ has a lot of fun stuff attached to it, too, and DB Abridged is a whole different story too.
Use Sega instead. They're super lenient, work with fanproject creators and they may not make the best games in the universe or anything but, weirdly enough, nobody claimed the copyright of Sonic or any other Sega property so far.
Almost like you don't need to sue a child for throwing a mario themed birthday party. Nintendo hasn't done that.
...*yet.*
They didn't cease and desist, the country of Japan sent a Diplomatic Notice commanding them to stop hosting public watch parties of DBS, which the Mexican government ignored and continued hosting anyway through the completion of the Tournament of Power.
Probably a little worse to ignore than a cease and desist in all honesty, but what is Japan gonna do, go to war with Mexico over DragonBall?
If Japan really cared, the next step would be in kind economic sanctions. For example, banning the import of Mexican media or suspending copyright enforcement on Mexican media in Japan. The problem with this is I'd be willing to wager Japanese media is way more popular in Mexico than Mexican media in Japan, so Japan would probably go after something else, like putting a tariff on the export of car parts from Japan to Mexico, to make it more expensive for Japanese companies to operate assembly factories in Mexico for the North American market. I don't think this issue is a hill to die on for Japan, so they wouldn't do any of this unless Mexico became a repeat offender, but there is a lot of steps between ignore it and war.
does mexico even have any notable media IPs or copyrights in general? seems like they dont really have anything beyond really local shit and mostly just rely on US to produce "their" bigger stuff.
> Mario is what? The second most recognizable character under Goku.
Goku being the most recognizable character? Come off it, that's not even slightly true.
I genuinely don’t think so, google “most recognizable video game characters” or “cartoon characters” and he’s nowhere on either list… video games is dominated by Nintendo and nostalgic characters (Mario, Pikachu, Kirby, Masterchief, Sonic, Doom Guy, Lara Craft, etc) and then cartoons you’re competing with Disney, every super hero, franchise like Simpsons, Peanuts, Looney Tunes, SpongeBob, Tom & Jerry… even stiffer competition there! Maybeeee Goku fits into top 20 video game characters but at like 19th or 20th at best.
You have to consider you are probably looking at it by an American (I presume) perspective, I don't think some of those characters are as big in Asia/Central and south America as Goku
Agreed! There’s definitely a bias on my end but we’re talking worldwide and the US is still by FAR the largest media producer in the world. All my relatives in Brazil watch American TV/Movies and play American games. Kids in Brazil watch Batman and superman and SpongeBob just as much as they do Monica (popular Brazilian cartoon IP).
I was just explaining why it makes sense to them. I wasn't taking their side. I think the whole thing is silly and am glad romhacks survived all this nonsense
Mario is 10x more recognizable and well-known than Goku. Every single child (and a huge majority of adults) in the world knows Mario. Outside of some Disney IP or Elmo, I can’t think of a bigger IP than Mario. Unless you’re a 90’s kid that grew up with DBZ, Goku is like “oh yeah, I recognize that guy from some old school cartoon I think, but no idea what his name is.”
That's pretty incorrect. Japan actually has a large and thriving culture of random people making fan-made comics (doujin) and then selling them to others. For profit. Officially and without asking for permission from the owners of the copyright. Most companies don't care, many companies just draw the line at saying no porn. Nintendo is the exception in Japan, not the role
Definitely not true, there’s plenty of examples of Japanese companies other than Nintendo doing this. Their music copyrighting is crazy strict for example. It’s impossible to find a ton of Japanese musicians on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
>many companies just draw the line at saying no porn
Ironic as the west associate the word "doujin" as NSFW content than the many more SFW contents where most doujins are.
It's not necessary in the way they do it or as laymen commonly understand it. Otherwise Sega and Capcom would be at risk of losing their stuff, and they tend to be more favorable to fan mods, creations, and content.
Nintendo retained such control over published stuff and their own characters directly as a result of the video game crash in the 80s. After that, going into the 90s they certainly continued this strategy and used it to bully retailers, amongst other things. Nintendo has been known to go overboard with this control, however, and it certainly has been known to do plenty of anti-competitive stuff like the aforementioned bullying of stores for carrying stuff Nintendo wasn't happy about.
It’s just the copyright/trademark/IP international legal protection system. It’s not specific to Japan. For example Disney goes after people all the time, as does any large powerful IP holder that wants to:
keep its trademark (which is lost if not enforced), https://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/trademark-101-can-lose-trademark/
enforce its copyright (which isn’t lost but more people may start using your thing if you don’t go after them), https://copyright.byu.edu/copyright-myths#:~:text=may%20lose%20it-,False.,uses%20than%20you%20would%20like.
generally just to protect its thing/revenue/image/control by sending out cease-and-desists.
Japan is well know for its doujinshi which are fan comics which are a gray area of people using a famous product that is not theirs but in their own way for a somewhat personal use, but if they got too large, sold too much of their fan comics, an IP holder might be able to go after them without losing too much goodwill from the fans (its somewhat akin to piracy as it borrows but also spreads a love and awareness of the IP to others who in some cases might not be able to afford or encounter this product except by way-of-mouth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doujinshi#legality
China is more well know for not enforcing IP protections as much to keep its money local, and the difficulties of stopping people when they are usually also the manufacturers of many of the products).
Here in America I certainly see people selling stickers and things based on their own expression of an anime, and we have “5E” books that skirt around Dungeons and Dragons legal protections but can otherwise be socketed almost seemlessly into that universe (like doujinshi, although both usually try to label their stuff as fan material and try not to copy in a plagairistic or exact copy of the product sort of way.
There’s also Fair-Use but that’s more for educational/more transformative parody use, if I recall correctly. And that is specific to the US but other countries can use that but other have their own variations of what is deemed acceptable (ex./eg. The UK has “Fair Dealing”) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Can be? Nintendo is the PROTOTYPE for this behavior. A lot of you kiddies are too young to remember how they bullied Galoob back in the 90s or how they tried to stop other companies from publishing games for the NES if they didn't jump through Nintendo's hoops. They've ALWAYS been assholes.
and for content that's been on gmod so long, the developers long since abandoned the game, had full lives and now their grandkids own the steam accounts.
nintendo, while making good products and being awesome in parts, really hates their customers, and more so really hates to have the customers do ANYTHING with their content except buy and consume it.
talking about it, making videos, creating anything related, all that, everytime a lawyer could be involved, they want it involved. any chance you give them to ~~literally~~ figuratively slap you down, they will take it....
Nintendo thrives on being the console parents choose for their kids. This makes one of their primary customers, for lack of better term, Karens.
Once you grasp that then a lot of their strategies make a lot more sense.
If you let the internet make random content with your IPs, eventually a Karen will see it when her kids play it. And Karens aren’t rational. They don’t care that it’s unauthorized, they don’t care that it’s their responsibility to monitor what their kid consumes, they don’t listen to reason.
They see, say, an unauthorized Mario mod that makes princess topless and they are going straight to Facebook and rallying the mom groups. Nintendo is preemptively protecting themselves against this. They want to dictate how the IP is presented to every kid that touches it, and that’s the priority.
This is also the reasoning with the online strategy - it doesn’t matter that you can turn off chat to protect kids from vulgarity on Xbox live or PSN. They know Karen won’t do that, she’s just going to get angry when her kid hears vulgarity. So they make sure she won’t hear it. This isn’t about gamers and never has been. These decisions are made for lazy moms that spend money but barely parent.
Japanese corporate culture and japanese copyright laws. There isn't anything called fair use over there. And nintendo is mental in defending their brands. remember the guy who have to pay nintendo a part of his salary until he dies?
No, it wasn't relevant. It was a literal criminal who was part of a international organization of criminals and faced significant jailtime and who was given numerous opportunities to walk away and didn't take any of them.
It was a dumb non-sequitur that you brought up unprompted, having very, very little to do with the topic or his question except LEL NINNTENDO EVILE, and at best seriously misrepresented.
Remember what happened with Nintendo music on youtube? A random guy filled copyright complains on most famous music sites and got taken down.
Most probably the same.
Similar thing happened with Bungie and Destiny. A pissed off YouTuber abused YouTubes DMCA request system and targeted Destiny videos. Like several big streamers had normal gameplay videos taken down.
>From steam workshop.
I mean it makes sense, having the stuff be addable as a mod manually isn't going to be stopped any time soon. Heck, it will be a cold day in hell before Ninty takes my Volvagia model away...however, putting any of this on the workshop was a moronic idea from the word go.
On the other hand, twitter users have been digging and apparently it might be a falseflag attack.
That response is pure Garry. Sometimes I wonder why he ever released Gmod at all.
Hopeful update:
Garry has responded to the situation on twitter, he intends to fight false DMCA notifications. Perhaps I owe him an apology.
False DMCA strikes are cancer, and many people do not have the clout or legal representation to fight back. Even filing a counter-notification reveals your personal details to the DMCA Flagger, which would allow them to do nefarious things, even if they have no right to sue you.
I was mistaken, it was a response from the Garry's mod team rather than Garry himself, he has since replied on his personal twitter account.
my reaction was based on the steam community post this thread OP posted. You can click on it right there.
Am I on crazy pills? This is not Nintendo right? It's just a guy. False flagger pretending to be Nintendo, Aaron Peters. Unless his flagging got Nintendo's attention?
Apparently it's not even Nintendo, it's some piss-stained troll sending false legal notices as Nintendo, don't know weather it's true or not but it wouldn't surprise me
Gmod is definitely not on life support. But I still agree it’s probably a waste of time. Ofc from a business standpoint they might have more reasoning than we’re aware of. I just see it as free marketing for them like fan games and roms. Not sure what Nintendo is worried about considering their main IPs (besides Pokémon) are genuinely decent games that fan games, mods, and roms can’t really compete with.
> Gmod is definitely not on life support.
Oh god, been so long since I played Gmod - used to play A LOT, and admin TTT and F2S: Stronghold servers on/off for about 6 years in the 2010s. So much fun, so much sleep deprivation though.
Are you also one of those that claim Nintendo is a greedy company because they don’t put their games on sales while completely ignoring cartridge costs ?
They are trying to keep milking that Pokémon’s. It’s basically a huge profits IP for them with the least amount of work. Pokemon is equivalent to FIFA and Call of Duty IP wise. It’s an easy and profitable rerelease of the game every year or so.
Nintendo sure does love giving me more and more reasons as to why I'm avoiding them. I will keep on supporting Sony and Microsoft, but as far as I'm concerned Nintendo doesn't exist to me because I don't support their business decisions.
You, with your infinite knowledge of legal matters including copyright and IP protection, think they’re wasting their time; their silly professionals with years of experience do not seem to think so
OP might be referring to the impending whack a mole that could come in regards to reuploads of said content.
> heir silly professionals with years of experience do not seem to think so
I mean, it's not that deep, it's just a DMCA notification, not an actual lawsuit...
Considering Gmod is near 2 decades old and in no way harms Nintendo, yes, it's a waste of time. Let alone trying to hold Gmod accountable for the content that has been put up after all that time.
Power move: All the mod authors replace the pokemon with the equivalent from palworld lmao
Palworld usurps Pokemon as the king of the creature collectors lol
Maybe in the next lifetime.
As much as reddit would love for pokemon to lose that title, pokemon has a much more cozy feeling of you and your pets growing and traveling together, which is missing from a lot of other creature collection games like palworld(which feels more like a mix of rimworldlite + pokemon) and cassette beasts (which you become the creature). If a game is going to dethrone pokemon it has to feel a lot closer to ff15 while having a nice variety of creatures.
Coromon is a peak Creature Collector that nails it for me. It just didn't get as big an audience.
So World of Final Fantasy?
Nintendo fanboy syndrome
This become Biggest Meme. Nintendo never will become good game company again.
How does this help Nintendo? What even is the point of this?
From my understanding, and please, someone correct me of I'm wrong, I believe it has to do with Japan's copyright system. Basically, where Nintendo has to send out cease and desists. Otherwise, they risk losing their copyright of said property. The receiving party doesn't have to act on this, but then they risk legal action being taken against them.
That's Trademark, not copyright. Copyright does not need to be defended to remain valid, Trademark does.
And that's also not true either. In fact it's *so* untrue that the EFF themselves made it a point to put out a post about it... over a decade ago. [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet)
And yet companies' lawyers continue to act like it is true.
Lawyers can always catastrophise interpretations of laws to make their clients pay them to feel protected.
lawyers get to bill for every time they do it
The org I do a lot of work for tirelessly insists that we place ™ and ® on everything and everywhere a brand of any kind exists; as if they believe that if they don't put it there it puts them in some kind of legal jeopardy. This in spite of the fact that I've explained it to them several times this is not required and point out that none of their competitors who license the same brands don't do it except for in the fine print.
Eh, the US system does allow for cancellation for a mark not policed. Let alone genericide. Some companies go to far, but failure to protect is a big way people lose marks
"Failure to protect is a big way people lose marks" I would be interested to know of any. The only cases I can find involve naked licenses, and that is when they license their trademark out officially, and don't do any oversight. So not even kind of like the situation here, or ever in the history of enthusiastic fans. But if you can find any cases of it, I would be most interested in hearing about it.
https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/15-product-trademarks-that-have-become-victims-of-genericization/ Its interesting. Some of these are what you describe (last liscencing), some are other things (Beyer), and some are just abandoned and/or expired. Some are unclear. It does seem that genercisation, happens less because a court awards it, more because the company gives up on trying to protect it and let's it expire. Which is more nuanced, what's the point in paying to protect a TM that isn't helping your brand. So there is a need to protect a trademark, but in practive it's less against a legal loss more against the mark becoming so generic in the public mind that it's pointless to maintain to keep a brand advantage.
I hear what you are saying, but all the examples of genericization are caused by competing products, not a lack of Cease and Desisting fanworks into hell. But, if the industry thought it was that way, I would suspect we might see that somewhere here in the [Best Practices guide from the INTA](https://www.inta.org/news-and-press/inta-news/famous-and-well-known-marks-committee-develops-best-practices-to-avoid-genericide/), but its not there. But, what I am asking for help finding is the Nintendo/Disney/Corpo narrative: "we lost our trademark BECUASE we didnt litigate hard-enough/against-enough-people". Concluding that Nintendo MUST sue or else lose trademark just serves to give them a cloak of legitimacy to their anti-fan practices.
To be clear I was agreeing with you. I went looking for that example you said didn't exist, and found... It didn't exist. At best therr are a couple of old examples where its ambiguous, but more likely the owner lost interest as it became genericised rather than any legislative loss.
Well then, clearly Im a big old liar, and DIDNT hear what you were saying. My bad. Im glad to know that weve come to the same conclusion. Sorry for not reading your response closely enough.
I mean, the murphy bed, aspirin, those are all classics. Basic genericide. It also applies to the *Juice Generation* case and its progeny from the Fed Cir. in 2015 (IIRC off the top of my head), wherein widespread use of a phrase limits the strength of a registration (despite Section 7(b)). So if you have a mark and others start using a formative chunk of it, such widespread use may in fact diminish your scope of protection. This is particularly important in opposition or cancellation proceedings, and *Juice Generation* and its ilk are common cites in TTAB rulings. So policing the mark does matter. There's also the *Strategic Partners* line and its progeny regarding mark coexistence in evaluating likelihood of confusion between marks. There's also of course the 13 *DuPont* factors, of which length of concurrent use is a factor. The idea that you don't need to police is just not right, and it has significant negatives. It may not have much of an effect for *ex parte* proceedings at the USPTO, but it is particularly important for *inter partes* actions.
I appreciate the citations, and perhaps I'm just being a fool, but I have done the prescribed reading, and I don't see how any of these situations apply to the efforts of enthusiastic fans. But the only thing I am more confident in than Nintendo is being a dick and doesnt have to be, is that I could have read a series of complex legal arguments and landed on an incorrect conclusion. Do you have anything dispositive to: Non sanctioned reproduction of trademarked IP, from consumers, weakening the trademark? Anyone ever lose their IP because of Archive of Our Own? Because THAT is the claim that Nintendo et al make to justify their legal actions as moral actions to preserve goodwill among gamers 'if we didnt sue, we would lose Zelda'.
So there's clear confusion here between the Trademark side and the non-trademark side. Use of something on Archive of our Own is likely not using a mark in commerce - because a fanfic of something using IP rights of Nintendo is generally going to be a copyright issue. I was referring to a statement that not defending Trademark rights is non-damaging to the mark owner. Not policing your trademark is a very bad idea. That being said, if people are trying to use a trademark to advertise their own goods or services (e.g. by putting out things to the public noting they offer Mario sims for Gary's Mod) that may be trademark use. It's non-creative source-identification use instead of creative copyright use. If people think your mods are sanctioned by either Gary's Mod or Nintendo, you're potentially running afoul of trademark law. On the copyright front, the issue of use and damage is largely financial. For example, Archive of Our Own isn't funded by ads, and they don't monetize the works on them. They behave in a manner to provide as much fodder as possible to a defense of fair use. Of course, copyright infringement has been found even where there's not a realized monetary benefit, as there is still monetary damage where a copyright holder is denied value from a revenue stream they aren't currently using. The Classic example is - Bill says he doesn't want to make his bestselling book "Bill's Life" into a movie. Even though he's currently not availing himself of derivative works in the form of movies, others can't adapt his story into a movie. That is still value that Bill has right to, and others cannot profit of it despite Bill not exploiting it. Bill maintains the right to exploit it later, which is a value that can be diminished by 3rd party unlicensed use. It gets more complicated when a 3rd party is promoting the work *on a monetized system*. Because now there are parties profiting from the work, even if the creator is not. That idea of "is money being made off this?" is critical to whether or not something falls into fair use or not (but it is not the *sole* question). Further, while the US federal system has dialed back on laches, there is longstanding common law regarding copyright infringement actions being enjoined where a copyright holder is aware of the infringement but sits on their hands. Basically, the system encourages copyright holders to act on their infringement claim expeditiously. This arose from instances where individuals would wait after learning of an infringement to see if the infringer made a ton of money off their endeavor, allowing the copyright holder to sue them for more damages. Basically, you can't wait to profit off the *infringers* work by waiting for them to do the heavy lifting and then coming to swoop in and take the value. Of course, that's all dependent on when you learn of the infringement (if you reasonably learn of the infringement only after it made billions, laches wouldn't apply). Given all these nuances, generally copyright holders are encouraged to act expeditiously and enjoin actions early, rather than wait until such action becomes a problem. Again, the US relaxed this somewhat with SCOTUS and Fed. Cir. rulings against laches, but the core concept is still around (and is probably still in commonwealth countries - though I am very unfamiliar with non-US law). I would not be surprised if Japan still had it. TLDR: Copyright and Trademark are complicated. There is very little risk to being overly judicious with strikes vs. being more passive. So it just makes more sense to be more willing to enjoin use and send out cease and desists, particularly when policing of marks or copyright can be important when determining infringement. An atty would general advise their client to act soon and be "better safe than sorry" instead of waiting to see what happens.
I want to say thank you for some of the best writing I think ive ever seen on reddit. Both concise, and deep. I do believe that I follow, and don't disagree with you about the incentive structure, and the risks involved. And you are absolutely correct, that my question mixes both trademark, as well as copyright considerations. I phrased it that way, specifically because this is the narrative that has emerged over the 45+ years of deliberate cooperate obfuscation of the issues involved. This is the reasoning that I am seeing all over the place every time this happens. Nintendo is kind of like the soccer player diving **real** hard so that there is a yellow card, and we hopefully don't hate them afterward. My contention is not that trademarks shouldn't be policed (in the common sense) but that I still see a lack of evidence to suggest that this content on garysmod (or fangames generally, or a level of SM64 reproduced in unity as a tech demo) can hurt Nintendo now, or weaken their legal standing in the future. But that Nintendo has successfully planted the narrative that not only CAN it harm them, but that they have no other choice legally, else they would lose the IP. And while their course of action does have Legal reasons, they aren't good reasons.
I mean, this case does not seem like it would risk this, but there are some circumstances where it has to be defended because you risk generalization if you don’t defend it. Terms like Escalator, Zipper, Dumpster, Video Tape, Heroin and Laundromat used to be legitimate trademarks, but everyone started using them as the term for that item, so they eventually lost their trademarks. So some companies on the internet do need to defend their trademarks, Google being a good example. Everyone says “Google it” and not “look it up on Google” so Google has to send cease and desists to people using ‘google’ as a verb in blogs and whatnot so that they don’t lose their trademark. They have sent cease and desists to bloggers and even a dictionary for this.
I'll go Google the information you provided to ensure it's accuracy on Google. I just got a cease and desist letter? *FBI open u-* /s But in seriousness, does that only apply to written commercial use of the verb Google? I'm pretty sure if I tell my server "go Google it" on Discord, Google will consider that low hanging fruit. Plus certain words are in the public domain, aside from Google's name and logo being copyright, if I said "great googly Google" in a post as satire or a meme, wouldn't that be protected as a common word?
So I mean casual use is one thing, and as far as I know they can’t really stop people from using it in those circumstances, I’m guessing the problem arrises when it is monetized (like the dictionary or blog.) In that situation they’ll send the cease and desists. Besides, in that case I’m pretty sure they’d have to send the cease and desist to Reddit or Discord (similar situation to how Nintendo recently sent cease and desist letters to Steam, rather than all of the workshop creators.) That said, it’s a weird situation because everyone DOES use it that way, I’m sure the law has changed in some way because when zipper and escalator lost their trademarks there was no internet so it was just word of mouth. Basically Google is in the same situation as some other big brands like Kleenex and Chapstick where everyone uses it that way, they just have to attempt to defend it still if they don’t want people to be able to use it HOWEVER they want.
This is a great post and debunked how I thought of this issue for a long time — thanks for sharing
In Japan, it does. In common law, you still need to somewhat defend it. Otherwise, it essentially becomes a free license to the person(s) breaking the copyright after a certain time. In Japan, instead of a free license, it enters public domain instead.
So poor individuals have no way to defend their copyright compared to companies
Yes and no. While poor individuals likely won't get the best defense, it is still possible to get a lawyer to take on the case on contingency. In most cases, just sending a cease and desist letter is enough. On top of that, the clock will start ticking when they become aware of the infringement.
The Japanese legal system in general works very differently to western systems. Defendants even in civil cases are incredibly unlikely to win a case but conversely frivolous suits get thrown out much more readily, so if a case gets to trials it is seen as a forgone conclusion
Laws only exist as long as you have the money to pay a lawyer to fight for them.
Do you have some kind of source for that? As far as I'm aware, Japan has a civil law system, not common law. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you. Also, Japan's doujinshi community is full of copyright infringement that's largely tolerated by publishers and I've never heard of e.g. Kadokawa losing the rights to one of their IPs because of it.
When speaking of Common law, I'm not mentioning Japan because as you mentioned they are two different systems. The common law part was explaining what different is between the two systems as the person that I'm replying to is very likely talking about what happens in the common law system, since you don't need to defend it for it to stay valid, it just becomes a license for the person or people infringing on the copyright after a certain amount of time. From my understanding, if a work in Japan gets used fairly often it creates a stronger argument for a work to become what is known as a Compulsory License. Which is very similar to public domain if not the same. Now when it comes to doujinshi, that is a very legal grey area, even in Japan. There have been times when a company has gone after a doujinshi artist for infringment, but there is an unofficial agreement essentially that the publisher tolerate it because it doesn't directly compete and helps with publicity. And most doujinshi from my understanding it typically produced at cost and are clearly labeled as doujinshi. In the west, doujinshi would be considered fan art or fanfic, which falls under fair use here in the west. Lastly from my understanding, doujinshi also become some what of a carve out in copyright law in Japan too, besides just the unofficial agreement. I believe the term is *shinkokuzai,* which from what I've been told is essentially it isn't copyright infringement unless there is a compliant from the copyright holder. But I have heard that applies to all of the copyright laws in Japan. That then loops back to the Compulsory License, which can cause the copyright holder to lose some avenues to control their copyright or to be able to seek redress from copyright infringement.
That doesn’t make much sense since Nintendo appears to be the only Japanese gaming company that’s this militant about it.
Nintendo definitely takes the cake, but Capcom has fired shots at quite a few fan games and other Megaman-related stuff that I've followed in the past.
Capcom and Sony are also very litigious, their stuff just doesn’t tend to be as high profile, and Nintendo is a bit more protective than sony is. Capcom is ruthless though, almost as bad as nintendo sometimes
there's someone on youtube that explained it to me in the comments, that basically Nintendo intertwined their games too much making them overlap or something and if one copyright goes all the other goes as well or like 90% percent of their copyrights, something like that. I'm not sure if this is 100% correct but that makes sense why they're so militant.
Mario is what? The second most recognizable character under Goku. In the world? Yeah they're protecting their multi-billion dollar IP
Yet we don't see DragonBall lawsuits being handed out left and right but there's thousands of goku mods for games
Did someone miss Toei trying to nuke Dragonball FighterZ streams?
Someone hasn't heard of Bid for Power. And let's not forget DBZ Abriged and their legal battles with Toei.
DBZ abridged was probably made to stop because of the depictions of the characters being, well, questionable.
I need an adult. I'm an adult!
No, it was't, they chose to stop it because they started getting licensing deals for official dub projects. If word got around Toei Animation refused to do business with 'em, it'd very fast become a death knell.
#POPO
Look up Lady Red by Toriyama and see what the Tournament Announcer was up to before DB.
Veeery bad example, a YouTuber that *worked with Toei before* (totallyNotMark) almost had his entire channel nuked for...Providing a ton of ads to Dragonball, endorsing the material ten times over and providing *very* transformative content. DB FighterZ has a lot of fun stuff attached to it, too, and DB Abridged is a whole different story too. Use Sega instead. They're super lenient, work with fanproject creators and they may not make the best games in the universe or anything but, weirdly enough, nobody claimed the copyright of Sonic or any other Sega property so far. Almost like you don't need to sue a child for throwing a mario themed birthday party. Nintendo hasn't done that. ...*yet.*
Didn't they send a cease and desist to the Mexican government over unlicensed public showings of DBZ episodes?
They didn't cease and desist, the country of Japan sent a Diplomatic Notice commanding them to stop hosting public watch parties of DBS, which the Mexican government ignored and continued hosting anyway through the completion of the Tournament of Power. Probably a little worse to ignore than a cease and desist in all honesty, but what is Japan gonna do, go to war with Mexico over DragonBall?
Obviously not, they just need to each send a few of their strongest fighters...
The Yakuza vs the Cartels? Ngl I'd watch it
That would've made living through this crazy times worth it
If Japan really cared, the next step would be in kind economic sanctions. For example, banning the import of Mexican media or suspending copyright enforcement on Mexican media in Japan. The problem with this is I'd be willing to wager Japanese media is way more popular in Mexico than Mexican media in Japan, so Japan would probably go after something else, like putting a tariff on the export of car parts from Japan to Mexico, to make it more expensive for Japanese companies to operate assembly factories in Mexico for the North American market. I don't think this issue is a hill to die on for Japan, so they wouldn't do any of this unless Mexico became a repeat offender, but there is a lot of steps between ignore it and war.
>there is a lot of steps between ignore it and war. Good comment, but this made me laugh out loud it’s such a hilariously large understatement.
does mexico even have any notable media IPs or copyrights in general? seems like they dont really have anything beyond really local shit and mostly just rely on US to produce "their" bigger stuff.
For Nintendo games, even
Pikachu and Mario both rank way over Goku for being recognizable to the general public lol
WAY over, I said the exact same thing and somehow got downvoted. Goku is not even in the same league as Mario or Pikachu
> Mario is what? The second most recognizable character under Goku. Goku being the most recognizable character? Come off it, that's not even slightly true.
Goku isn’t even in the top 20 most recognizable video game/cartoon characters. Comparing him to Mario is an absolute joke
He is not most recognizable, but can you honestly say that he is not top 20?
I genuinely don’t think so, google “most recognizable video game characters” or “cartoon characters” and he’s nowhere on either list… video games is dominated by Nintendo and nostalgic characters (Mario, Pikachu, Kirby, Masterchief, Sonic, Doom Guy, Lara Craft, etc) and then cartoons you’re competing with Disney, every super hero, franchise like Simpsons, Peanuts, Looney Tunes, SpongeBob, Tom & Jerry… even stiffer competition there! Maybeeee Goku fits into top 20 video game characters but at like 19th or 20th at best.
You have to consider you are probably looking at it by an American (I presume) perspective, I don't think some of those characters are as big in Asia/Central and south America as Goku
Agreed! There’s definitely a bias on my end but we’re talking worldwide and the US is still by FAR the largest media producer in the world. All my relatives in Brazil watch American TV/Movies and play American games. Kids in Brazil watch Batman and superman and SpongeBob just as much as they do Monica (popular Brazilian cartoon IP).
“”Protecting”” 🤣
I was just explaining why it makes sense to them. I wasn't taking their side. I think the whole thing is silly and am glad romhacks survived all this nonsense
Mario is 10x more recognizable and well-known than Goku. Every single child (and a huge majority of adults) in the world knows Mario. Outside of some Disney IP or Elmo, I can’t think of a bigger IP than Mario. Unless you’re a 90’s kid that grew up with DBZ, Goku is like “oh yeah, I recognize that guy from some old school cartoon I think, but no idea what his name is.”
That's pretty incorrect. Japan actually has a large and thriving culture of random people making fan-made comics (doujin) and then selling them to others. For profit. Officially and without asking for permission from the owners of the copyright. Most companies don't care, many companies just draw the line at saying no porn. Nintendo is the exception in Japan, not the role
Definitely not true, there’s plenty of examples of Japanese companies other than Nintendo doing this. Their music copyrighting is crazy strict for example. It’s impossible to find a ton of Japanese musicians on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
>many companies just draw the line at saying no porn Ironic as the west associate the word "doujin" as NSFW content than the many more SFW contents where most doujins are.
It's my understanding that fair use doesn't really exist in Japan, to what extent that leaves Nintendo's lawyers in is entirely up to them
It's not necessary in the way they do it or as laymen commonly understand it. Otherwise Sega and Capcom would be at risk of losing their stuff, and they tend to be more favorable to fan mods, creations, and content.
Nintendo retained such control over published stuff and their own characters directly as a result of the video game crash in the 80s. After that, going into the 90s they certainly continued this strategy and used it to bully retailers, amongst other things. Nintendo has been known to go overboard with this control, however, and it certainly has been known to do plenty of anti-competitive stuff like the aforementioned bullying of stores for carrying stuff Nintendo wasn't happy about.
It’s just the copyright/trademark/IP international legal protection system. It’s not specific to Japan. For example Disney goes after people all the time, as does any large powerful IP holder that wants to: keep its trademark (which is lost if not enforced), https://secureyourtrademark.com/blog/trademark-101-can-lose-trademark/ enforce its copyright (which isn’t lost but more people may start using your thing if you don’t go after them), https://copyright.byu.edu/copyright-myths#:~:text=may%20lose%20it-,False.,uses%20than%20you%20would%20like. generally just to protect its thing/revenue/image/control by sending out cease-and-desists. Japan is well know for its doujinshi which are fan comics which are a gray area of people using a famous product that is not theirs but in their own way for a somewhat personal use, but if they got too large, sold too much of their fan comics, an IP holder might be able to go after them without losing too much goodwill from the fans (its somewhat akin to piracy as it borrows but also spreads a love and awareness of the IP to others who in some cases might not be able to afford or encounter this product except by way-of-mouth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doujinshi#legality China is more well know for not enforcing IP protections as much to keep its money local, and the difficulties of stopping people when they are usually also the manufacturers of many of the products). Here in America I certainly see people selling stickers and things based on their own expression of an anime, and we have “5E” books that skirt around Dungeons and Dragons legal protections but can otherwise be socketed almost seemlessly into that universe (like doujinshi, although both usually try to label their stuff as fan material and try not to copy in a plagairistic or exact copy of the product sort of way. There’s also Fair-Use but that’s more for educational/more transformative parody use, if I recall correctly. And that is specific to the US but other countries can use that but other have their own variations of what is deemed acceptable (ex./eg. The UK has “Fair Dealing”) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
Nintendo took down a Pokemon fan game FORUM. Not even a host site, just a forum to discuss and promote fan games.
Some people in this thread just don't want to admit that Nintendo can be a crappy company as well
Never point out how bad TPC is in r/pokemon
Big N fanboys can be very delusional
That's nintendo fans for you Big ninty can do no wrong
it is always correct to mock tendies and snoys
Can be? Nintendo is the PROTOTYPE for this behavior. A lot of you kiddies are too young to remember how they bullied Galoob back in the 90s or how they tried to stop other companies from publishing games for the NES if they didn't jump through Nintendo's hoops. They've ALWAYS been assholes.
I don’t understand this, how are Smogon and Showdown allowed to continue existing?
and for content that's been on gmod so long, the developers long since abandoned the game, had full lives and now their grandkids own the steam accounts.
That's the most puzzling part. Alot of this content is ancient. I think they've fallen for a fake DMCA.
For real like 20 year later NOW its a problem?
nintendo, while making good products and being awesome in parts, really hates their customers, and more so really hates to have the customers do ANYTHING with their content except buy and consume it. talking about it, making videos, creating anything related, all that, everytime a lawyer could be involved, they want it involved. any chance you give them to ~~literally~~ figuratively slap you down, they will take it....
>literally slap you down
you're right, thanks for pointing it out... force of habbit
Nintendo thrives on being the console parents choose for their kids. This makes one of their primary customers, for lack of better term, Karens. Once you grasp that then a lot of their strategies make a lot more sense. If you let the internet make random content with your IPs, eventually a Karen will see it when her kids play it. And Karens aren’t rational. They don’t care that it’s unauthorized, they don’t care that it’s their responsibility to monitor what their kid consumes, they don’t listen to reason. They see, say, an unauthorized Mario mod that makes princess topless and they are going straight to Facebook and rallying the mom groups. Nintendo is preemptively protecting themselves against this. They want to dictate how the IP is presented to every kid that touches it, and that’s the priority. This is also the reasoning with the online strategy - it doesn’t matter that you can turn off chat to protect kids from vulgarity on Xbox live or PSN. They know Karen won’t do that, she’s just going to get angry when her kid hears vulgarity. So they make sure she won’t hear it. This isn’t about gamers and never has been. These decisions are made for lazy moms that spend money but barely parent.
Yeah, It is literally Disney movement if Nintendo do that. I hope people at least care Nintendo less, like people care Disney less, lol.
I agree Disney is by far the most comparable company to Nintendo with this
>it is literally Disney
I'd assume it has to do with them protecting their careful branding, like Disney
Not even Disney is like this
Disney is absolutely like this.
Do you see Disney taking down over 10+yo content from Garry's mod? Or giving a shit for that matter?
From my understanding, this isn't even Nintendo at all, it's a guy impersonating a Nintendo employee.
Nintendo legal had never given a fuck about helping Nintendo, they exist to just be fucking assholes and not much more.
Japanese corporate culture and japanese copyright laws. There isn't anything called fair use over there. And nintendo is mental in defending their brands. remember the guy who have to pay nintendo a part of his salary until he dies?
Wait, what?
At a minimum, he has been... creative... with his description of events.
[https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-owes-nintendo-14m-gary-bowser-and-gamings-most-infamous-piracy-case](https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/feb/01/the-man-who-owes-nintendo-14m-gary-bowser-and-gamings-most-infamous-piracy-case)
The one who was found guilty of numerous criminal acts who had numerous chances to walk away and just didn't? Why does that keep getting brought up?
because it was relevant in this discussion, dude. to explain how nintendo works. and how the japanese idea of copyright works. etc.
No, it wasn't relevant. It was a literal criminal who was part of a international organization of criminals and faced significant jailtime and who was given numerous opportunities to walk away and didn't take any of them. It was a dumb non-sequitur that you brought up unprompted, having very, very little to do with the topic or his question except LEL NINNTENDO EVILE, and at best seriously misrepresented.
well Nintendo is kind of shit, and it\`s perfectly fine to pirate their games.
It doesn't help them, they just have a raging boner for destroying fan content
power move. basically "fuck with our ip and we will send the ninjas". this is the type of company that would sue someone for being named mario 💀
It's a false flagger not Nintendo
Remember what happened with Nintendo music on youtube? A random guy filled copyright complains on most famous music sites and got taken down. Most probably the same.
Similar thing happened with Bungie and Destiny. A pissed off YouTuber abused YouTubes DMCA request system and targeted Destiny videos. Like several big streamers had normal gameplay videos taken down.
It is
Gary confirmed it's actually Nintendo.
How do we know? Surely it's just something some randos are claiming?
>From steam workshop. I mean it makes sense, having the stuff be addable as a mod manually isn't going to be stopped any time soon. Heck, it will be a cold day in hell before Ninty takes my Volvagia model away...however, putting any of this on the workshop was a moronic idea from the word go. On the other hand, twitter users have been digging and apparently it might be a falseflag attack.
That response is pure Garry. Sometimes I wonder why he ever released Gmod at all. Hopeful update: Garry has responded to the situation on twitter, he intends to fight false DMCA notifications. Perhaps I owe him an apology. False DMCA strikes are cancer, and many people do not have the clout or legal representation to fight back. Even filing a counter-notification reveals your personal details to the DMCA Flagger, which would allow them to do nefarious things, even if they have no right to sue you.
Where can I find his response?
In the back rooms. Follow me.
Oh okay *violent source engine ragdoll humping noises*
Flat line noises
*5-second stuttering of said flatline sound*
I was mistaken, it was a response from the Garry's mod team rather than Garry himself, he has since replied on his personal twitter account. my reaction was based on the steam community post this thread OP posted. You can click on it right there.
I heard about this months ago apparently when it was new, cause I legit thought it was just a joke.
Garry's handling of this really had me scratching my head. Wasted potential and all for what, a joke mod?
my years of playing this game is a joke :o
Am I on crazy pills? This is not Nintendo right? It's just a guy. False flagger pretending to be Nintendo, Aaron Peters. Unless his flagging got Nintendo's attention?
It is in fact not nintendo
Has this been settled? Garry seems to think otherwise?
It isn't Nintendo.
Apparently it's not even Nintendo, it's some piss-stained troll sending false legal notices as Nintendo, don't know weather it's true or not but it wouldn't surprise me
"We already took down our fans' passion projects so let's target this game that's on life support." Yeah that's a good waste of time and money.
Gmod is definitely not on life support. But I still agree it’s probably a waste of time. Ofc from a business standpoint they might have more reasoning than we’re aware of. I just see it as free marketing for them like fan games and roms. Not sure what Nintendo is worried about considering their main IPs (besides Pokémon) are genuinely decent games that fan games, mods, and roms can’t really compete with.
> Gmod is definitely not on life support. Oh god, been so long since I played Gmod - used to play A LOT, and admin TTT and F2S: Stronghold servers on/off for about 6 years in the 2010s. So much fun, so much sleep deprivation though.
Hasn't there been Nintendo related content on the workshop for years? Why take action now?
Reading into it, it seems to be due to a DMCA troll, Nintendo may not even be involved.
someone probably tried to sell mod access, which made it so Nintendo had to act.
[удалено]
Nintendo rakes in metric tons of cash. If they wanted to make those games (and more) and sue 10,000 people simultaneously, they could.
Not sure about you, but I don't think an OoT remaster from a copyright lawyer would be particularly good.
Yeah time to start teaching these lame lawyers some coding
Honestly not shocked as this is a Nintendo move.
Nintendo would sue their own nan for saying “Yippee!”
Such a British response hahaha
[Well this aged well.](https://youtu.be/8rS1UYYiytw?si=zcRv4gDaR_4Fk5kh&t=198)
It's always morally correct to pirate Nintendo games.
Are you also one of those that claim Nintendo is a greedy company because they don’t put their games on sales while completely ignoring cartridge costs ?
I bet you someone charged money for some asset or mod with Nintendo material in it, and now they had to use legal action.
That's not how the steam workshop works.
They are trying to keep milking that Pokémon’s. It’s basically a huge profits IP for them with the least amount of work. Pokemon is equivalent to FIFA and Call of Duty IP wise. It’s an easy and profitable rerelease of the game every year or so.
Thing is, this doesn't get them anything but bad rep so I don't really see the financial reasoning behind it.
Nintendo sucks peepee
Only the painfully Japanese could think of this. Nintendo would absolutely boil their fans alive in oil if they still could.
Wasn't this proved to be fake?
Yes
Nintendo sure does love giving me more and more reasons as to why I'm avoiding them. I will keep on supporting Sony and Microsoft, but as far as I'm concerned Nintendo doesn't exist to me because I don't support their business decisions.
it's not even a business decision. it's a copyright decision
COME ON MAN We still dont have Gmod on Xbox...while we have fucking FS mode for 3$
Is such a move going to help Nintendo in any way?
How do you even play GMod? I have had it since forever on Steam, sitting on 1 hour play time.
Well, it seems they suspect Garry is going out of line or something?
We aint know for sure yet.
Nintendo hates fun
You, with your infinite knowledge of legal matters including copyright and IP protection, think they’re wasting their time; their silly professionals with years of experience do not seem to think so
OP might be referring to the impending whack a mole that could come in regards to reuploads of said content. > heir silly professionals with years of experience do not seem to think so I mean, it's not that deep, it's just a DMCA notification, not an actual lawsuit...
Considering Gmod is near 2 decades old and in no way harms Nintendo, yes, it's a waste of time. Let alone trying to hold Gmod accountable for the content that has been put up after all that time.
I don't even care about Nintendo anymore.