If Pokemon Uranium was anything to go by, Nintendo hasn't had the best past in regards to fan games using its intellectual properties. In a jarring but not so surprising turn, the company has sent a takedown notice to a Pokemon fan game maker tool, Pokemon Essentials. This tool, an add-on script to RPG Maker, originally released in 2007, was particularly popular in the community of fan game creators, as it allowed users to easily create area maps thanks to its included graphical assets, which offered tilesets, music, sprites, and more. These very same included assets are reportedly why Nintendo issued the notice, as it has copyrighted graphical assets within the program. Nintendo went so far as to also delete Pokemon Essential's wiki, taking out the largest repository of guides and information on how to use the program. Maruno, the developer of Essentials was given a DMCA notice, issued from Nintendo's legal team, to which he obeyed, and took down all things regarding the tool. Essentials is no longer allowed to be distributed on many sites, though many know the dark recesses of the internet to be an immortal repository, especially when it comes to such cases like these.

Source: Pokecommunity

 

[ken28]

"It's okay when it's Nintendo"

if you cant say anything against them just lay words in their mouths, a classical tactic.

IF someone pirates a game he/She shouldnt be suprised to be caught.
If someone steals he/she shouldnt be suprised to get caught.
If someone steals your art/writing/music they shoudlnt be caught.

If thats the case i wonder why so many people freaked out about the stolen ign review?
Why where they mad? Where they just blended and defended the youtube for no legit reason but just cuase they where fanboys of him?

 

[AkikoKumagara]

And people keep defending them... Pathetic...

If someone took my art, put it into their project without my permission, then distributed it to thousands of people, I would be mad, too. Easy to hate when you only look at things from one side, though.

 

[kingfrost]

B

if you cant say anything against them just lay words in their mouths, a classical tactic.

IF someone pirates a game he/She shouldnt be suprised to be caught.
If someone steals he/she shouldnt be suprised to get caught.
If someone steals your art/writing/music they shoudlnt be caught.

If thats the case i wonder why so many people freaked out about the stolen ign review?
Why where they mad? Where they just blended and defended the youtube for no legit reason but just cuase they where fanboys of him?

I think that it's funny you mention the IGN because a large amount of people did defend him and supported him. I saw it on a lot of gaming sites and he actually stole for profit.

Of course people are going to take Nintendo's side here because they're fanboys but the interesting part here is that this had been happening for over a decade and no one did anything. Nintendo had sent cease and desist to other rom hacks so it is unlikely they just didn't know.

I think it's.bad to go after your own fan base even if a vocal group will defend you for it no matter what. This wasn't even piracy but more like game fanfiction.

I guess some people even think that's theft though

 

[bobmcjr]

If you actually care, stop buying Nintendo products. Begging won't accomplish anything. They don't care. Their lawyers and shareholders don't care. Like most corporations, financial pressure is the only language they understand.

And for the people saying "they are allowed to protect their stuff", that doesn't change that takedowns of fan projects like this are undeniably a dick move.

 

[ken28]

B


I think that it's funny you mention the IGN because a large amount of people did defend him and supported him. I saw it on a lot of gaming sites and he actually stole for profit.

Of course people are going to take Nintendo's side here because they're fanboys but the interesting part here is that this had been happening for over a decade and no one did anything. Nintendo had sent cease and desist to other rom hacks so it is unlikely they just didn't know.

I think it's.bad to go after your own fan base even a vocal group will defend you for it no matter what. This wasn't even piracy but more like game fanfiction.

I guess some people even think that's theft though

the problem is twofold.
For one parts it looks bad to go after them on the other hand where do you draw the line between a fangame and copyright infringement?
Imo Essential went to far towards an infringement not only did it replicate all game mechanics it also provided resources from all 2d pokemon games, They may would have gotten away with just replicating the mechanics but the use of arts put them in a dangerous gray area which now nintendo acted on.

Like i mentioned before nintendo doesnt seem to be persay against fangame or games obviously inspireted by their game as seen with legend maker (before dmca zelda maker) or games like ocean horn, blosom tale and crystal monster. The later being a total pokemon clone. All of those but legend maker are on a nintendo platform.

But speaking about legend maker, it will be interesting what will happen if they remove all ripped assets and change the name in a way thats it still clear what it is about.

 

[FancyNintendoGamer567]

Even though Pokèmon Maker did technically rip off assets from FR/LG. It's still sad to see even old plugins like this get DMCAd.

 

[Alex4nder001]

I no longer like Nintendo

 

[Noctosphere]

watcha, theyll take your signature down

 

[Kurt91]

Oh my God, this is so easy to fix.

Step 1: Go on 4Chan. They do "Fakemon" designs all the time. Throw a message up there stating what's going on, and request a handful of replacement designs. I'm certain that there's enough people who would be sympathetic enough to the cause to come up with a decent number of new copyright-free critters.

Step 2: Replace all of the Pokemon sprites with the new designs. Replace all of the overworld graphics with some generic RPG tileset. If I recall correctly, Pokemon doesn't do any weird perspective stuff like the 2D Zelda games do, so any generic tileset should suffice.

Step 3: Rename any reference to Pokemon battles and call it something like "Monster Trainer", or "Monster Battler".

There you go. Pokemon Essentials is saved, Nintendo has no leg to stand on legally as far as taking something like this down, and anybody who wants to make a Pokemon fan-game is still fully capable. Adding ripped tilesets is not difficult at all, just slightly time consuming if you go any further than just copy-paste from Spriter's Resource. Even then, adding graphics back into the engine is still a drop in the bucket compared to how much work it would take to do the rest of the fan-game.

Hell, it's not even too late to do all of this. We just need somebody with an existing copy willing to go through all the steps. I don't have a copy myself, and I haven't been able to get RPG Maker XP to work on my computers last time I tried. I got a crash every time I hit the play-test button. (Oddly enough, MV works fine, and I can get 2k3 to work well enough.)

 

[the_randomizer]

I've never heard of this before, so..

 

[Noctosphere]

I've never heard of this before, so..

I downloaded it maybe one or two month ago
Still have it

 

[the_randomizer]

I downloaded it maybe one or two month ago
Still have it

Okay...? But I still never heard of it, so yeah.

 

[Noctosphere]

Okay...? But I still never heard of it, so yeah.

ok... so i guess you dont want to test it?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

ok... so i guess you dont want to test it?

unless its now considered warez?

 

[the_randomizer]

ok... so i guess you dont want to test it?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------


unless its now considered warez?

I don't know...

 

[bluhacks]

First Pixelmon and now this?

 

[Xandrid]

I hope it doesn't accidentally leak or something /s

 

[Jayro]

If anyone needs v17.2 of Pokemon Essentials, the link is on my Twitter.

I'm @jayroscha

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I was really worried for a second thinking that was AdvanceMap.
Still sucks to see a tool like that be taken down though.

Archive it, if you want to preserve it.

 

[The Catboy]

Oh no, how am I going to find this old as dirt tool now? It's not like there isn't a million mirrors for it or something

 

[ut2k4master]

If anyone needs v17.2 of Pokemon Essentials, the link is on my Twitter.

mega shows it as a 0 byte file

 

[Darth Meteos]

jesus christ, nintendo
what a fucking shitshow
i almost wish they'd just released the wii u2 instead of the switch so they can just die already