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Nintendo DMCAs Project AM2R and 562 smaller fangames

C

C.Olimar788

Member
Project AM2R had previously had DMCAs applied to its download hosts, but as of this morning has also had such a notice pointed at the lead developer's personal inbox. As a result, the game will no longer receive updates. So that's fun.

As a bonus, indie and fangame site Fireside was yesterday hit with a DMCA that covered a grand total of 562 Nintendo-based fangames, forcing their removal. The full list can be found at their link.

In other words, it's not a great time to be a fangame maker for Nintendo property right now. Nothing quite like a company deciding to squash the goodwill of their fans by targeting freely-made, freely-available fanworks.

Thanks to Shardwing and Sabre230 on reddit for the heads-up.
 
M

McDougles

Member
mshckd.gif
 
NOLA_Gaffer

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
The creator of AM2R had to know this would happen. Personally I'd go through and scrub any official assets and re-release it as an original game.
 
M

Mivey

Member
NOLA_Gaffer said:
The creator of AM2R had to know this would happen. Personally I'd go through and scrub any official assets and re-release it as an original game.
Click to expand...
Why? For all intents and purposes it is Metroid 2. It updates its controls to a Zero Mission style and brings it in line with Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. It feels like a proper replacement, really. Nintendo should work with the guy and porting this thing to 3DS and WiiU. Free money and especially lots of free good will.
 
V

Vuze

Member
What's their problem with fangames anyway? I'm totally aware it's their right to get these fangames removed but... why?

As somebody who loves modding and appreciates people dedicated enough to pull through and do game conversions or whatever, this just makes me lose the little respect I had left for them.
 
G

Green Mamba

Member
NOLA_Gaffer said:
The creator of AM2R had to know this would happen. Personally I'd go through and scrub any official assets and re-release it as an original game.
Click to expand...
Considering how heavily the game is based on Metroid II that's an awful lot of work for something that Nintendo could still potentially DMCA.

---

Oh well, the game is already out in the wild and is a better Metroid game than Nintendo's made in the past nine years, so they can take their Federation Force bomba and shove it. Combined with other trash like Star Fox 64 With Worse Controls, Super Mario Maker with no online sharing, and Paper Mario Sticker Star 2 this company has done a lot this year to get on my bad side.
 
Dsyndrome

Dsyndrome

Member
Green Mamba said:
Oh well, the game is already out in the wild and is a better Metroid game than Nintendo's made in the past nine years, so they can take their Federation Force bomba and shove it.
Click to expand...
Amen to that.

Best case, they're talking behind the scenes to pull a Sega. Worst and most likely, Nintendo being Nintendo.
 
E

epmode

Member
It's a good thing Nintendo did this. Just think about how many IPs were about to be declared null and void if these games continued to exist! It would have put them out of business!
 
A

Azure Dream

Member
Good thing they spent years ignoring these, only to suddenly freak out and try to wipe them from the internet.

I mean, the alternative is that they didn't know fangames existed, which would be impressive.
 
T

TheDinoman

Member
No way Nintendo would work with DoctorM64 on making AM2R official, lol.

It's just a pride thing. They most likely think that "Grr, Sakamoto-san is the only man that can make 2D Metroids!".
 
K

KingBroly

Banned
NOLA_Gaffer said:
The creator of AM2R had to know this would happen. Personally I'd go through and scrub any official assets and re-release it as an original game.
Click to expand...

Well, yeah. He's also been saying that Nitnendo's well within their rights to be doing what they're doing (although some people I've come across think that the guy should be able to make money off of it). Even scrubbing all of the assets and re-releasing it basically...yeah...not good, since you know where the source material came from.
 
T

Torokil

Member
Some old guy in Kyoto probably woke up one morning, loaded up his windows XP machine, and shit himself when he somehow stumbled upon the amount of Nintendo fan tributes on the web. Thus we get this mess.
 
P

Pop-O-Matic

Banned
OK, someone explain to me why Zelda Classic (a straight freeware port of Z1 to PC) didn't get DMCA'd years ago while AM2R does despite being way more unique from the original.
 
Z

Zubz

Banned
udivision said:
This is the 3rd version of this thread, lol.
Click to expand...

At least it's a topic worth discussing? I mean, on the one end, Nintendo is in their rights on sites where creators are paid for fan games. On the other, most of these were harmless.

And either way, after AM2R, Uranium, and... Well everything this year except BotW previews, Nintendo is absolutely in no place to piss their fans off.
 
F

Formless

Member
Mivey said:
Why? For all intents and purposes it is Metroid 2. It updates its controls to a Zero Mission style and brings it in line with Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. It feels like a proper replacement, really. Nintendo should work with the guy and porting this thing to 3DS and WiiU. Free money and especially lots of free good will.
Click to expand...

If he fixes those Metroid fights..
 
D

Dario ff

Banned
DMCA'ing his personal email just seems like petty revenge. I don't think there was any need to do that since I doubt he was using it to distribute updates of the game.

I understand performing takedowns on sites that have ad revenue along with downloads for the project, but a personal email is another thing.

EDIT: Probably not understanding his message correctly. Figured he was talking about a request to his mail host if he had any.
 
V

Vena

Member
Dario ff said:
DMCA'ing his personal email just seems like petty revenge. I don't think there was any need to do that since I doubt he was using it to distribute updates of the game.

I understand performing takedowns on sites that have ad revenue along with downloads for the project, but a personal email is another thing.
Click to expand...

They didn't DMCA his email, they sent him a DMCA notice to stop updating/supporting the project.

I don't think you can DMCA an email...
 
M

-Mutsukki-

Member
I think it's really naïve to think Nintendo know nothing about fan projects that weren't taken down already. They sure knew exactly when the Mother 3 patch got released and never did anything to it. Other big games like Waluigi Universe and stuff are fine. I'm pretty sure they have their reasons for doing this, since they targeted a specific website. They could have very well done this to Newgrounds first. The AM2R case though is a real shame.
 
T

thefro

Member
-Mutsukki- said:
I think it's really naïve to think Nintendo know nothing about fan projects that weren't taken down already. They sure knew exactly when the Mother 3 patch got released and never did anything to it. Other big games like Waluigi Universe and stuff are fine. I'm pretty sure they have their reasons for doing this, since they targeted a specific website. They could have very well done this to Newgrounds first. The AM2R case though is a real shame.
Click to expand...

There's a difference between people in the Treehouse who probably ignore these things (so that legal doesn't nuke them) and legal reading an article about an illegal fangame.

Pop-O-Matic said:
OK, someone explain to me why Zelda Classic (a straight freeware port of Z1 to PC) didn't get DMCA'd years ago while AM2R does despite being way more unique from the original.
Click to expand...

AM2R/Pokemon Uranium got heavily reported on by the gaming press. Kinda hard to ignore that. Probably popped up in one of the Lawyers' google news feeds.
 
D

Dario ff

Banned
Vena said:
They didn't DMCA his email, they sent him a DMCA notice to stop updating/supporting the project.

I don't think you can DMCA an email...
Click to expand...

I figured it was something like blocking the account due to DMCA complaints (e.g. When Dropbox disables account sharing). Can the DMCA block an effort to support a project? This only is relevant if he doesn't host his own email obviously.

I think I misunderstood it as the DMCA was for the account instead of the entire project I guess. The details for the takedown are probably in the email he got.
 
K

KingBroly

Banned
-Mutsukki- said:
I think it's really naïve to think Nintendo know nothing about fan projects that weren't taken down already. They sure knew exactly when the Mother 3 patch got released and never did anything to it. Other big games like Waluigi Universe and stuff are fine. I'm pretty sure they have their reasons for doing this, since they targeted a specific website. They could have very well done this to Newgrounds first. The AM2R case though is a real shame.
Click to expand...

When's the last time major gaming sites (IGN, Gamespot, etc.) covered fan games before AM2R? Because that game was, and I can't recall a fan game before that covered on those sites. I think that had to have made an impact on Nintendo's decision making, since the game was getting a lot of major press.

Remember that Nintendo did take down the Mario World level creator right before Mario Maker's release too.
 
N

Nachos

Member
Torokil said:
Some old guy in Kyoto probably woke up one morning, loaded up his windows XP machine, and shit himself when he somehow stumbled upon the amount of Nintendo fan tributes on the web. Thus we get this mess.
Click to expand...
Poor man will die of a heart attack when he discovers fan art.
 
H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Pop-O-Matic said:
OK, someone explain to me why Zelda Classic (a straight freeware port of Z1 to PC) didn't get DMCA'd years ago while AM2R does despite being way more unique from the original.
Click to expand...
When Zelda Classic was released, Nintendo's current console was the Nintendo 64. This was long before fan projects got the kind of attention on the internet and social media that they do now. It was also released a good 4 or 5 years before Nintendo had started to monetize its old NES games again with the NES Classics series.

Also technically Zelda Classic is a tool that lets you build and play fanmade Zelda quests, not just the original Zelda. The full original game wasn't even complete until a year after ZC released, according to their website.

Compare that to now, where AM2R gets lots of attention on gaming websites and social media, and Nintendo is currently selling Metroid 2 on the Virtual Console.

Basically Zelda Classic worked because it came out 16 or 17 years ago, before anyone cared.
 
M

MoogPaul

Member
KingBroly said:
When's the last time major gaming sites (IGN, Gamespot, etc.) covered fan games before AM2R? Because that game was, and I can't recall a fan game before that covered on those sites. I think that had to have made an impact on Nintendo's decision making, since the game was getting a lot of major press.

Remember that Nintendo did take down the Mario World level creator right before Mario Maker's release too.
Click to expand...
The last big covered fan game was probably mother 3 and they still havrn't hit that one yet.
 
T

Twiforce

Member
I know that Nintendo is within their legal rights to do these things, but I don't agree with the law. It seems to me that intellectual property rights just give big corporations a monopoly on ideas for decades on end and prevents anybody else from competing with a higher-quality take on the same ideas. Such a shame to see so many projects get taken down. :(
 
C

Coffee Dog

Banned
The scale of this is just so unprecedented. Was AM2R that distressing to them?
collige said:
I thought Mother 3 was just a translation?
Click to expand...

You can definitely DMCA fan translations. Tomato spoke about the possibility around the time of the patch's release, and the translation includes an ass covering disclaimer when you boot it up.
 
K

kaioshade

Member
Sometimes i swear Nintendo pulls this nonsense because someone much smaller than them made a game that pretty much shits all over their recent efforts.
 
LordRaptor

LordRaptor

Member
Twiforce said:
It seems to me that intellectual property rights just give big corporations a monopoly on ideas for decades on end and prevents anybody else from competing with a higher-quality take on the same ideas.
Click to expand...

a "higher-quality take on the same ideas" like Axiom Verge is legally untouchable, but games using actual assets made by Nintendo is subject to copyright claims.

There is a huge difference between a homage and outright asset theft.
 
CaptainLoveline

CaptainLoveline

Member
MoogPaul said:
The last big covered fan game was probably mother 3 and they still havrn't hit that one yet.
Click to expand...

I don't think Nintendo can touch Mother honestly, I'm pretty sure Itoi holds the rights to it. Otherwise M3 translation & the 4 fan project would of been hit by now (Especially now that M3T has been out for 7 or 8 years now, and M4 has been in development for some time also)
 
Z

zeelman

Member
LordRaptor said:
a "higher-quality take on the same ideas" like Axiom Verge is legally untouchable, but games using actual assets made by Nintendo is subject to copyright claims.

There is a huge difference between a homage and outright asset theft.
Click to expand...

By that logic all the fan art and unlicensed clothing needs to be taken down as well.
 
M

MoogPaul

Member
LordRaptor said:
a "higher-quality take on the same ideas" like Axiom Verge is legally untouchable, but games using actual assets made by Nintendo is subject to copyright claims.

There is a huge difference between a homage and outright asset theft.
Click to expand...
This actually might be why mother 4 is kind of safe-ish for now. Besides the name and some music, the game, from what I've seen, is basically built from ground up.
 
K

KingBroly

Banned
Coffee Dog said:
The scale of this is just so unprecedented. Was AM2R that distressing to them?

You can definitely DMCA fan translations. Tomato spoke about the possibility around the time of the patch's release, and the translation includes an ass covering disclaimer when you boot it up.
Click to expand...

I think he also presented it to Nintendo for them to use if they wanted. Or something like that.
 
T

Twiforce

Member
LordRaptor said:
a "higher-quality take on the same ideas" like Axiom Verge is legally untouchable, but games using actual assets made by Nintendo is subject to copyright claims.

There is a huge difference between a homage and outright asset theft.
Click to expand...

I don't just mean gameplay ideas but the idea of certain characters, worlds, "IPs" if you will. I understand your point and you are absolutely right in legal terms. I just don't agree with the legal doctrine currently in place.
 
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