Nintendo Shuts Down Tool Used To Build Pokemon Fan Games (arstechnica.com) 78
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since 2007, Pokemon Essentials has been a crucial part of the Pokemon fan game community. As a free mod for the paid RPG Maker software, Pokemon Essentials offers all the graphics, music, maps, and tilesets a fan game maker needs to craft their own Poke-adventure. Fans of the tool congregated around the PokeCommunity forums and a dedicated Pokemon Essentials wiki to download files, share creations, and discuss the scene. Earlier this week, however, PokeCommunity forum moderator Marin announced that "the Pokemon Essentials wikia and all downloads for it have been taken down due to a copyright claim by Nintendo of America." That means "we will not allow Pokemon Essentials or any of its assets to be hosted or distributed on PokeCommunity," the announcement reads. "We sincerely apologize that we have to do this, but there is no going around it." Fandom, the company that hosts the wiki, confirmed to the Verge that it had "received a DMCA notice on behalf of Nintendo notifying us of content that was in violation of its copyright holdings. After carefully assessing the violations in regards to the Pokemon Essentials wiki, we came to a decision to take it down."
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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The source code is up on ChubHub now!
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As Jim Sterling said regarding Nintendo copyright shenanigans:
"I'm not saying you should pirate Nintendo ROMs, but you should totally pirate Nintendo ROMs like a particularly plundery pirate."
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People don't own them all? Including foreign ones?
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Came here for the torrent, sauce me bro!
code audit time (Score:2)
code audit time
Working for free (Score:3)
Nintendo is just not thinking here. Basically, volunteers are working for them for free to create value that they can reap... and they want to shut them down?
Re:Working for free (Score:5, Informative)
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"We'll defend our IP even if we bankrupt ourselves doing it!"
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Nintendo is just not thinking here. Basically, volunteers are working for them for free to create value that they can reap... and they want to shut them down?
That's standard for Nintendo, always has been.
If you play one of their games and have the audacity to post a youtube video of you sitting in front of a camera talking about one of their games, they will claim that videos monetization at best and make a copyright strike claim at worse, depending how big of a channel you have.
Note this happens when the video is 100% free of anything Nintendo has copyright on.
I'm not talking about showing your play through of the game, or showing screenshots of the game, or us
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They've done worse than attacking videos.
https://arstechnica.com/civis/... [arstechnica.com]
Now with some tried to do this with QEMU / MAME? (Score:3, Interesting)
Now with some tried to do this with QEMU and / or MAME? Then the case will to go to court with a big legal team to stop any chilling effects
No one owns a ball sport (Score:2)
The difference between video games and ball sports is that ball sports aren't owned by anyone. The National Football League has never had a legal monopoly that gives grounds to prohibit USFL or XFL teams from playing and broadcasting their own matches. (Donald Trump did a good job of destroying the USFL all by himself, but that's beside the point.) Nor could the National League of Professional Baseball Players stop the rival American League from playing from 1901 to 2000 when it merged with the NL to form M
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This board is from a similar product ("retro trio", which also provides operation for Genesis/Master System), which is essentially the same concept. https://i.imgur.com/8B1lYQ0.jp... [imgur.com]
Why use an emulator with an authentic cartridge (Score:2)
Who the fuck would ever use a fucking emulator if you have the original game?
Plug an authentic game cartridge that you own into a Retrode or INL Retro cartridge reader and dump the data on the cartridge to a file (which is not infringement pursuant to 17 USC 117(a)(1)), and you can play it in an emulator. This lets you play on your phone or tablet with a USB or Bluetooth game controller, your laptop, or a PC connected to a television that isn't compatible with composite video at all or with the slightly nonstandard signal timing that third- and fourth-generation consoles produce. (N
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The 2-player mode in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is interlaced, as is all of RPM Racing (Radical Psycho Machines).
Not surprising. (Score:2)
Nothing of this was for making any money, just the work of dedicated fans with programming skills across several years
But of course, it being free is the problem.
Licenses matter. (Score:1)
When will people learn not to put their work into proprietary systems? If I at all gave a shit about this comment, I wouldn't put it here. The owners of Slashdot can take it all away any moment. If you care about the time and effort you spend on these games, then demand an open license and hold off your investment until you get it. Don't be someone else's gardener for free. Work on your own turf.
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Because people create because they want to create, the don't care that their time is wasted, they want to make something that they enjoy and are proud of.
I may go against the standard economic thinking that people will only create because there is money in it. That is clearly rubbish, true artists create because they are driven to create, they are quite willing to spend there own time and money on things that are very unlikely make them money.
It is quite clear by the way people spend that it is not bas
Stop having fun (Score:2)
Stop having fun with our games. They are serious business and we can't have you playing with them!
this is how it works (Score:1)
They were using the pokemon name and likenesses, if Nintendo, or game freak didn't come out to say, "Hey, knock that off" then they can't claim the trademark anymore. Use it/enforce it.. or lose it. Honestly I like this model (to a point of course). The outrage I'm seeing in the world just because "it's big mean corpo thugs!!!111" instead of indie du jour is dumb.
I do sort of which there was some form of statute of limitations on this sort of thing. Like if Nintendo goes under and doesn't pass off t
Re:this is how it works (Score:4, Informative)
Re:this is how it works (Score:5, Informative)
Name one trademark lost by non-enforcement in the last, oh... 80 years. 1948 or later. Not unenforceable against someone else who was using it due to laches -- totally expected and boring -- I mean lost as in unenforecable against everyone in the registered mark's jurisdiction.
Becasue let me tell you, my peers promulgating that meme, for a profit, keep using examples from the early 20th century, if not even earlier. May as well be warning the populace about marauding dire wolves.
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And of course, mental math error. Doii.
Re: this is how it works (Score:2)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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They were using the pokemon name and likenesses, if Nintendo, or game freak didn't come out to say, "Hey, knock that off" then they can't claim the trademark anymore.
That's not how it works.
Otherwise, for instance, companies who have lax policies wouldn't be able to go after infringers because of people fan-gamers and modders - SEGA, VALVe, etc, are clearly able to do this.
Seed corn (Score:2)
If you insist on eating the seed corn, don't be surprised when the next generation looks elsewhere.
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The Pokemon Company was created by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. Those companies collectively share the copyright on Pokemon products. The Pokemon trademark solely owned by Nintendo.
You get what you allow (Score:2)
If you don't like it stop buying their stuff. I have. It wasn't easy. I grew up with Nintendo. I love Nintendo games. I will not ignore the fact that they do ugly shit like this on a regular basis. They attack fans and abuse a broken copyright system. I won't support that behavior. Many do this but Nintendo is the most aggressive and abusive. If enough people said enough is enough and actually stopped buying. Nintendo's tactics would change. It always comes down to money and if it proves unprofit
The sooner we have a (Score:1)