Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-48285-20161205164344/@comment-26871067-20170211052502

Jaadowgg wrote: How do you (briefly) feel about Nintendo DMCA-ing fan-made Pokémon games, such as Pokémon Uranium? Mixed feelings. That's as brief as I can get.

To expand on it a little more, because I do feel it's complex... I think it's a dick move re: crushing the souls of the people who were working on said games, particularly as I'm a creator of transformative fiction as well. But Nintendo has always had this kind of approach to protecting their brand integrity/IP (they'll get blamed for it if something in the fan game is shitty or inappropriate, despite their complete lack of involvement) and they have every legal right to shut down a fan project that might threaten this. It's nothing new, it's just that bigger projects have gotten squished lately. Nintendo's pretty well-known for taking down LPs of their games as well, I honestly don't understand how these fans didn't see this coming.

I do feel Nintendo has an itchy trigger finger when it comes to shutting down fan content. But at the same time, I don't feel like these fan games have protection under parody clauses of copyright law. Obviously, I'd have a completely different perspective if these games were being sold, which would be "dude uncool, that's not your IP and you deserve this", but AFAIK they would have been freely distributed. I guess it's just "Nintendo is not treating these fans as fans, but rather potential liabilities to their brand integrity and financial success". Which, again, is shitty and at odds with how most creators view their fans, but well within their legal rights.

It's mean, but it's legally and IMO morally sound. The whole point of copyright law is to protect your property, even if it's from harmless fan content. It's yours, that's the point, so you should be able to act however you see fit when fans are producing non-parody content using your IP. I do think these fans overstepped a little in their enthusiasm. I have sympathy, but maybe they should have spent a little of the mindboggling time and effort they put into making the game into some cursory research about how Nintendo deals with fan content before putting their hearts and souls into their projects.