The Fan HD Remakes Yet To Be Banned (redbull.com) 50
An anonymous reader writes: While companies like Valve have given their seal of approval to HD fan remakes and re-imaginings of their classic games, many more are all too eager to wield the ban hammer and shut down these homebrew projects with legal threats. Not all, though, as one writer points out in a new article taking a look at the most promising unofficial remakes underway right now. Some companies see these projects as an opportunity — the creator of Shen Mue HD was recently hired by Yu Suzuki to work on Shen Mue 3 — while others choose to ignore them entirely. Surprisingly, one of these appears to be Konami, which despite a controversial 2015, has shown no interest in shutting down Outer Heaven, a remake of the very first Metal Gear game. As the author points out however, given "the fact that Konami shut down a similar project not long ago – one which had the involvement of original Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter – [it] doesn't bode too well for Outer Heaven's long-term prospects...but we're crossing our fingers that it makes it to the finish line."
Hey, if that's what you want to do (Score:3)
Hey, if you believe in a major project enough to work on it, knowing that at any time it could be quashed and never see the light of day--then I salute your passion.
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Defining originality (Score:2)
But how can someone determine what is original before publishing it and inviting the world to sue? The Simpsons: Road Rage was not a Crazy Taxi game but still got shut down by the makers of Crazy Taxi.
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But how can someone determine what is original before publishing it and inviting the world to sue?
First criteria is: Don't directly use the IP of a game company.
The Simpsons: Road Rage was not a Crazy Taxi game but still got shut down by the makers of Crazy Taxi.
It wasn't shut down. Sega sued them for patent infringement and they settled privately with Fox.
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Don't directly use the IP of a game company.
By "IP", I assume you didn't mean "Internet Protocol" address. Did you mean copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity, or something else? If "yes", which? because these are different areas of law [gnu.org].
How can a game company know whether it's unintentionally using the copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, right of publicity, or other exclusive right of some other game company? I have the feeling that refraining from using any character names, likenesses, locations, and events is not eno
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That and the Uniracers case, where Pixar sued Nintendo and successfully convinced a judge that Pixar had the exclusive right to the concept of a CGI animated unicycle.
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But how can someone determine what is original before publishing it and inviting the world to sue? The Simpsons: Road Rage was not a Crazy Taxi game but still got shut down by the makers of Crazy Taxi.
No, but it violated a Patent [wikipedia.org] not Copyright [wikipedia.org]. Patents are a whole different ball of wax, whereby if you have a patent on a specific method of doing something, anything that implements that method without your approval for the time period you have said patent, is in violation of your patent rights. Copyright, on the other hand, protects the story, artwork, music, etc against someone making a copy or derivative work.
(Standard IANAL disclaimers) As such, if I were to create a game that uses the elements (magic
Someone Enlighten us on the Copyright Details (Score:2)
Provided it's free and they don't distribute original content directly from the game (e.g if it extends the original content then they provide it as a patch or require you to have the original game to source the original content into a new engine or something)... how can this possibly infringe on copyright. On what bases have these remakes been "shutdown"?
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Provided it's free and they don't distribute original content directly from the game (e.g if it extends the original content then they provide it as a patch or require you to have the original game to source the original content into a new engine or something)... how can this possibly infringe on copyright.
Because copyright isn't limited to commercial infringement (in the U.S. at least). And you can't use assets from someone else's game in your own without their permission.
Maybe, but coming down like a ton of bricks on a bunch of fans improving your old games in their spare time would be just about the dumbest thing these game manufacturers could do. Antagonising your own fan base generally is a pretty stupid thing to do. Then again while most of these companies thrive on open minded talented people they are usually run by pretty conservative money men and women and the knee jerk reaction of such people is usually to regard everything as a threat rather than to embrace new tr
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Maybe, but coming down like a ton of bricks on a bunch of fans improving your old games in their spare time would be just about the dumbest thing these game manufacturers could do.
And yet they've done it countless times and people keep buying their games by the droves. So in the real world, it seems like the nerd outrage doesn't extend to most gamers.
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From what I understand, one of the problems that game companies face in these situations is that they're often not the only party involved. Many games have assets that require royalties be paid to third parties (music compositions, voice performances, etc.). So even if they want to "look the other way" and tolerate these remakes, they face legal action and sanctions from third-parties (like SAG-AFTRA and other representatives) if artists get wind that the publisher is allowing the unauthorized distribution
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I'm not suggesting there's something unusual about blatant distribution of the original work... that's piracy, but if you make a patch - that's not, that's original work, or if you use none of the original content and create a replica and release it for free that's original content, sure if you sell it there might be an issue but no original content was used and it's free?? or you create software that utilises the original content but don't distribute it and require the user to have a copy of the original??, please read all of my points before responding.
Sounds like you're describing derivative works [legalzoom.com], which requires the approval of the copyright holder under US (and many other nations) copyright laws.
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Provided it's free and they don't distribute original content directly from the game (e.g if it extends the original content then they provide it as a patch or require you to have the original game to source the original content into a new engine or something)... how can this possibly infringe on copyright.
This is a joke question right? Stories are covered by copyright. Characters can be both copyrighted and trademarked. And since this is a remake of the game using both the story and characters, they infringe Konami's IP.
On what bases have these remakes been "shutdown"?
Copyright and/or trademark law.
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You don't know how using someone else's copyrighted characters without a license can be an infringement of copyright? Umm, lol.
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I think tomxor might have been confused about the extent to which copyright covers characters as such. The statute itself (17 USC and foreign counterparts) is written to cover works of authorship.
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I think tomxor might have been confused about the extent to which copyright covers characters as such.
By being intentionally ignorant of many decades of statutory and case law? It's not some new thing that characters in films, games, TV shows, etc. are covered by copyright. It's in fact quite ancient by this point.
The statute itself (17 USC and foreign counterparts) is written to cover works of authorship.
Cool story. It has long ago been applied beyond that.
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To my knowledge there aren't many games that are overly reliant on a patent
The patented games I can think of are Dr. Mario, the loading minigame of Ridge Racer (despite prior art of Invade-A-Load), Dance Dance Revolution (in fact the whole rhythm genre is a patent minefield), Crazy Taxi, and Doom 3 (which contains a shadow algorithm licensed from Creative).
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no "fan"-game would ever pass the trademark test unless the game company went out of business, and the trademarks have expired.
Not exactly. The fan game can ask permission to use the trademark, then it need not be defended as it is a licensed use. This is how Coca-Cola Bottling companies (independent companies that mix soda and distribute it) are allowed to use the Coca-Cola name and branding.
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Slash Dot (Score:1)
It's actually "Shenmue".
Re:Slash Dot (Score:4, Insightful)
The correct spelling is whatever the official American publisher (Sega of America) decides it is, and it was released as Shenmue here.
Well (Score:2)
Konami shut down a similar project not long ago – one which had the involvement of original Solid Snake voice actor David Hayter
Hayter's haters gonna hate.
Always Metal Gear... (Score:2)
I'd like to see remakes of their other classic MSX titles: Penguin Adventure, Kings Valley, F1 Spirit, Space Manbow, etc.
And don't even get me started on Vampire Killer (aka Castlevania). It was hardly the best of the bunch, in the old days...