Nintendo Mass DMCA Takedown Removes Hundreds of Fangames from Game Jolt

[Deleted User]

Nintendo Issued a massive DMCA Takedown with 379 Fan-Made games forcibly removed.
Nintendo’s legal department sent DMCA notices to the game publishing community Game Jolt.
The site, where hobbyists and indie developers share their creations for free, was notified that hundreds of fangames infringed Nintendo’s trademarks.
Game Jolt co-founder and CEO Yaprak DeCarmine released the takedown notice on the sites github page.
Nintendo says these games infringe trademarks owned by Nintendo and that Game Jolt allegedly profits from advertising banners displayed on the site and advertisements played while users wait for the games to load.
Some developer like Jeb Yoshi’, the developer of “Five Nights at Yoshi’s,” re-uploaded it with ads disabled.
“After looking into it, I believe the fact there was profit being earned from advertisements on the game page was the reason for the takedown of this game among countless others,” the dev writes.

Source:https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-m...s-hundreds-of-fangames-from-game-jolt-210105/​

 

[User199x]

Not this again. I still love Nintendo, but this in conjunction with the Smash fiasco, it's doesn't paint a good image on them.

 

[chrisrlink]

oh f*** off nintwit this is why so many hate you

 

[FAST6191]

I would say again Nintendo has a duty to protect their trademarks -- you can generally ignore copyright all day long (though some things can apply in odd circumstances) but if they allow trademarks to be misused (which would also speak to the ads thing for the person noted above -- ads might be an aggravating factor in things but far from the whole story) then they risk at least having to ask questions when they meet a true threat in the future.

 

[peteruk]

Noncetendo never learn do they ?! No wonder those Giga Leaks keep popping up ffs

 

[chrisrlink]

I would say again Nintendo has a duty to protect their trademarks -- you can generally ignore copyright all day long (though some things can apply in odd circumstances) but if they allow trademarks to be misused (which would also speak to the ads thing for the person noted above -- ads might be an aggravating factor in things but far from the whole story) then they risk at least having to ask questions when they meet a true threat in the future.

cough SEGA cough

 

[FAST6191]

cough SEGA cough

Sega have some interesting things in their past -- see them vs Shining Force a few years back.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...r-youtube-videos-old-shining-force-game.shtml

If you mean the thing they did on Steam and whatnot more recently by sanctioning various flavours of ROM hack then different matter. Equally Nintendo are under no real moral or ethical obligation to allow all and sundry to do what they will with their back catalogue, which is actually something of a serious feather in their cap.

 

[vaugerbird]

Omfg Nintendo, please just stop. Why the hell do they keep biting the hand that partially feeds them? I swear at this point the only people that actually defend Nintendo's decisions as a company are investors and fanboys.

 

[bobmcjr]

Fuck Nintendo.


At some point in my life I'd love to see Nintendo lose a trademark. Should really go back to calling every console a Nintendo.

 

[Bladexdsl]

nintenDMCA doing what they do best now instead of making actual games.

 

[JaNDeRPeiCH]

Fuck Nintendo.


At some point in my life I'd love to see Nintendo lose a trademark. Should really go back to calling every console a Nintendo.

Amen ,also disney needs some punishment.Old movies from mickey mouse need to be a public domain for everyone.

 

[Kwyjor]

I swear at this point the only people that actually defend Nintendo's decisions as a company are investors and fanboys.

There have been people screaming about how wrong Nintendo is for the last twenty years. And yet they're still going, so maybe they know what they're doing?

 

[Big Man Tyrone2]

Fuck that shit. Pokémon Insurgence is the best Pokémon game I played in years.

 

[Kwyjor]

I should add that all the games listed in the OP are Pokemon games, which suggests an action on the part of The Pokemon Company, which in turn is not quite the same as Nintendo.

(I remember when there was an uptick in Nintendo's stock price when Pokemon Go was catching on, and they had to say that no, Pokemon Go did not have much in particular to do with Nintendo.)

 

[Kioku]

Yeesh. The amount of money and time they've wasted on these endeavors could fund a good log of First Party titles on the Switch. Entering its fifth year and it's still pretty shallow. But, yeah... Ninty... Keep chasing fan games like they're threatening your poodle.

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I should add that all the games listed in the OP are Pokemon games, which suggests an action on the part of The Pokemon Company, which in turn is not quite the same as Nintendo.

(I remember when there was an uptick in Nintendo's stock price when Pokemon Go was catching on, and they had to say that no, Pokemon Go did not have much in particular to do with Nintendo.)

I mean... They represent NOA..

 

[FAST6191]

I should add that all the games listed in the OP are Pokemon games, which suggests an action on the part of The Pokemon Company, which in turn is not quite the same as Nintendo.

(I remember when there was an uptick in Nintendo's stock price when Pokemon Go was catching on, and they had to say that no, Pokemon Go did not have much in particular to do with Nintendo.)

They are owners of the US trademark, which is presumably what most of these are based upon (even if they did rip sprites that is just another arrow in the quiver)
http://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4802:7x7mn3.2.2
It is then considered rather bad form (granted phony DMCA seems to be a thing I have seldom seen anybody get slapped for) to file such paperwork if you don't have permissions from the holder.

Yeesh. The amount of money and time they've wasted on these endeavors could fund a good log of First Party titles on the Switch.

It is not like these ever go to court. Getting a lawyer to file some paperwork is likely more money than you or I might care to chuck away and would probably suck to have vanish from a wallet but I can't imagine it getting anywhere near funding a single game (in the millions). If this is outside lawyers hired in then it is probably a standard service or done to eat up the allotted billable hours/service contract, and if it is in house then probably falls under busywork when things are slow. Probably have some bored intern, maybe an investigator, running a search for fan games, or indeed having alerts on popular game "news" websites (many of these do seem to come only after rising to prominence, though that is also somewhat of a standard -- no judge is likely to rule generic trademark if it is on some proboards forum that 10 people frequent, rather more of it appears on the front page of IGN and they are routinely not seen to do much about it), and then rubber stamping a generic form filling in some blanks for the particular IP infringed and some IDing information about the claimed infringing act.

 

[the_randomizer]

Never heard of it

 

[Deleted User]

I should add that all the games listed in the OP are Pokemon games, which suggests an action on the part of The Pokemon Company, which in turn is not quite the same as Nintendo.

(I remember when there was an uptick in Nintendo's stock price when Pokemon Go was catching on, and they had to say that no, Pokemon Go did not have much in particular to do with Nintendo.)

The Pokemon games are only a small part. There are also Mario, Metroid, Yoshi games on the list.

 

[Kwyjor]

There are also Mario, Metroid, Yoshi games on the list.

Fair enough. But there is some speculation at https://torrentfreak.com/nintendo-m...s-hundreds-of-fangames-from-game-jolt-210105/ that the inclusion of ads was problematic.

But I will readily admit it is pointless to speculate - and people will speculate anyway, and say "WTF is Nintendo doing?", and yet other people will keep buying Nintendo's products. Because really, I'd never heard of gamejolt.com until now, and the vast majority of Nintendo's consumers probably haven't either.

 

[Bladexdsl]

they definitely need to change their name to: nintapple! all they need to do now is release a new revision of the switch every year and over charge for it