Nintendo takes down Super Mario 64 HD fan project

That's what I asked about. Is it always about the idea, or is it usually about a case like this in which paid for assets are being released for free.

And yes I would argue that the idea is

0,0,0 3,2,4
0,10,7 6,2,1
//thousands of lines later
201,15,86 11,42,68

The idea is the information of the vertices and triangles and normals etc

 

Historically Nintendo has been very tolerant of fan projects, but I agree with them that this one was crossing the line a little and they have a legal obligation to protect their copyright.

If they were to allow a project like this one, it would be VERY easy for someone else to profit from the Mario IP and cite this project for legal clout.

It's not as simple as "The big bad corperation won't let us play". It's more like "This matterial is copywritten. To keep it copywritten, you must protect it by citing it whenever it is challenged. That means shutting down unauthorized projects that profit from it outside of fair use."

 

I think everyone would have been happier if instead they let Nintendo set a price for their project to sell and took 60%.

 

The catch, as @Not_Sure stated, is that they have to protect their copyrights or they lose them. It would have to go through them and at that point they can simply bundle the original game up in an emulator package, as they are already doing on their virtual console platform, and sell it. Why give this guy a cut when they can have the full thing themselves?

Not to mention the legal headache involved if this guy is using files, other than the obvious ones, that were not licensed for commercial use.

 

That is not true, you are thinking of trademarks.

 

I think some of you are making way more out of this than it is. Do the developers of this game work for Nintendo? Did they license the characters and game from Nintendo? Did Nintendo ask them to build the game?

It's simple. Nintendo found it (probably was an easy find due to all of the websites writing articles about it) and reacted. Just because there are other games on other websites that have not been taken down yet does not mean Nintendo won't attempt to do the same when it finds those too. This one hit the radar I am sure because of all of the publicity it was getting on Indy sites. Publicity for an unauthorized Nintendo game.

 

Not only indie sites but also sites like IGN.

 

It was definitely on the radar. Lol If it sat out on the web and few people knew about it the game would still be there. If it was very popular but no game sites covered it the game may still be available although it is still likely it would be removed. But when you have all of this publicity about a Nintendo game that nobody at Nintendo knows anything about I think the outcome is what should be expected. Lol. I can see a meeting over at Nintendo where someone asks "The N64 Mario remake is looking good. Who is heading that project?" Puzzled expressions around the table. Memo gets sent out later to all project managers inquiring about it. No. Not me. Never heard of it. "Well has anyone licensed the characters and game for this remake? Is it an external project?" Nope. "Call the lawyers!!" Lol

 

Ah, got it. Still the legal headaches involved in selling fan-made creations wouldn't be worth the hassle.

 

Except... the guy wasn't profitting from this like at all.

 

I'm pretty sure this applies to pretty much all forms of IP. If you don't defend it essentially becomes useless. A court will not uphold IP violations if you selectively choose who to take down. You could make a pretty convincing defence of saying "everyone else is doing it, and the IP owner didn't care. The IP owner is selectively discriminating against me".

 

That is not really the point, though. It does not matter if the guy profited or not. Nintendo needed to protect their IP.

 

Indeed. While you won't "lose" a copyright like you can with a trademark, it amounts to the same thing.

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Am I missing something here? Why the interest in that thing? It's not even a game really, it's an uber minimal implementation of a handful of things using ripped design/content? 10 years ago it would have been interesting, or if were done all in perl or something crazy. Or if it were a unique take on it or something.

 

The guy who made it admitted it's using models and animations ripped directly from Galaxy. So, by distributing it through Unity Web Player, as an executable, or a project file, he's distributing copyrighted materials acquired illegally. Do you think Nintendo is just going to let their assets be floated around to use freely in Unity projects?

Nintendo doesn't shut down fan projects. There's tons of them everywhere. And then look at how popular Project M is. But this is a clear case of copyright violation and you have to defend your IP every chance you get to set a precedent

 

I could be completely wrong here but I have seen this kind of thing happen so many times over the decades I think there is some confusion about this still. It seems like people are thinking it is okay to make a games based heavily on other games as long as you are not directly ripping graphics. Of course, actually stealing Nintendo's (or any) assets to use in a game is illegal. But beyond that it just shouldn't be done anyway unless you never plan on releasing it to the world.

There are plenty of cases of Nintendo (and many other companies) shutting down other so called "fan projects" over the years. I have gathered some of the cases in hope it will help to provide a better understanding of the real issue (making and publishing a game/movie/whatever based on games, characters and so forth owned by someone else) and even publishing videos showing footage of their games.

All Your Nintendo Let's Plays Are Belong To Nintendo?
Note: I think Nintendo of Japan does allow (an even encourages) fans to record and publish footage of them playing Nintendo games as long as it is on a certain video site. Nintendo of America does not.

Nintendo Copyright Claim Kills Metroid Fan Film on Kickstarter

The fangame Pokemon Evoas has been shut down by Nintendo

Nintendo Shuts Down GBA4iOS, The Popular Game Boy Advance Emulator

Nintendo Kills Fan-Developed Pokémon MMOG

THE HERO OF TIME (movie) shut down by Nintendo

Yes, these are all about Nintendo but trust me Nintendo is not the only one doing this. Sega has done the same thing. Many other companies have done the same thing. What I do not understand is why people would think they can make their own Super Mario or Streets of Rage video game and share it with the world.

I mean do you honestly think you could do a remake of Disney's Aladdin for Genesis/SNES and put it online and Disney would be completely cool with it? Don't get me wrong. Of course you can do it as in yes you can spend the time and effort to do it. And you could play it every day for hours. Let your friends play it too. But when you move from that to publishing it (releasing it whatever you want to call it) to the world (basically placing yourself in competition with the IP owner serving their market while actually using their IP)... and then popular sites start writing about it... you should expect to hear from their lawyers.

I am really curious if I am the only person who sees it this way?

 

It certainly seems that it is increasingly getting rarer that people understand copyright or trademark. I worry that I am walking a fine line with Imperial Nostalgia, and with another game I am working on. The model I created of the Goldeneye 64 level "The Facility" however, is staying on my computer for my use only. To some people there is no line. It reminds me of the people who post copyrighted material on Youtube, in its entirety, and then say 'no copyright infringement intended'. Which is a bit like stabbing someone to death and then saying 'no murder intended.' The gray areas regarding non-exact clones with similar mechanics may be murky, but anything that involves the actual intellectual property is pretty clear cut. I'm surprised how few people get it.

 

The internet these days certainly has skewed peoples understanding of IP law. Mario is owned by Nintendo. Doesn't matter if the asset is ripped straight from the released project, if you model him yourself, or even if you independently conceive of an Italian plumber without ever encountering the actual IP.

 

It's the seen vs the unseen. It is true that it doesn't cost anything to copy a digital file. It is not true that it did not cost anything to make said digital file. People only see the first.

 

@HemiMG , @GarBenjamin , @BoredMormon

Maybe we're all faking delusion about copyright and trademarks so that we can continue to pretend that it won't be the case that 1 day every type of original character will exist and be illegal to use and the indie industry will stop short & die.

Those quotes together sum up my concerns for IP.

 

If that day comes, it is at least several thousands of years off. Video games may be new, but the written story has been around since the days of Homer. Authors still manage to create original work after thousands of years.

 

There's always a cost... you need to buy a computer, electricity bill, have an Internet connection to grab / pirate / share / host something etc...

 

You may as well not factor in that cost though because you need all of that to be legit too.

 

I think what people aren't getting is the most obvious reason this was shut down:

If you were to download the .exe or project file for this thing, you'd be given direct access to Nintendo owned assets ripped from a Nintendo product. That simply can't be happening

 

That might be the concern people have with it but I cannot see that happening. I could be very wrong but I think there would be no problem with a game having a clean shaven Italian plumber named Adamo who wears black overhauls. Such a character could probably even appear in a platformer. The game itself shouldn't place much, if any, emphasis on Adamo smashing blocks to release coins and powerups. Being a plumber maybe giving him a plunger and some unique things to use it for would be cool. Enemies should probably not include turtles that can be flipped upside down and sent flying as projectile weapons and so forth.

I think there is a lot more life in the Indie industry than just making knock-offs of existing IPs. To me Indie means bringing some originality to the industry. Indie devs don't need to focus on making Mario game #100 or Halo 12 because the AAA developers already have those covered. A good example is Shovel Knight which is very true to the 8-bit NES style of games yet stands on its own despite having the same kind of play mechanics shared by many other games. Here instead of jumping up hitting the bottom of blocks to smash them and release items the player uses their shovel to dig the ground and smash blocks. The game could be seen as sort of like SMB and Mega Man yet nobody would confuse this character with either of those other two characters. Clearly the game is inspired by popular games of old yet it is not a knock-off of any of them.

 

That's a valid reason to shut it down and at first glance, I missed this. My concern is that fan art models apparently would also violate the laws.

@GarBenjamin and what happens when Adamo is trademarked? I'm hoping we change the laws before we reach the point where Adamo fan games get take down notices.

I realize that a lot of my concerns probably won't be realized in my lifetime / the fall of civilization, but idk. I like to think long term about everything. Even breakfast.

If I lived in early America, I'd tell Jefferson that capitalism is a bad idea as is because eventually 1% of the population could own >90% of the wealth. Most people would tell me it would probably never happen. And now in 2015, it kind of has. Finite wealth, uncapped population... what did they think was going to happen?

Also, why can't I stop worrying about silly things like this? What evolutionary benefit does such thinking provide?

 

You name your character Ralph and put him in jeans and a t-shirt instead of overalls? You are making this out to be far more difficult than it is.

 

@HemiMG beat me to it but yes that is it exactly. There are very specific traits to characters such as Mario, Sonic or whatever. The same as there are very specific mechanics and even a "feel" to games. When people set out to just blatantly copy those things as closely as they can that is where the problem is. When you really think about it what are the odds of someone coming up with an Italian plumber for their games if they were not familiar with Mario? What about a blue hedgehog? People do these things, I think, because it is simply a whole lot easier to just copy a cool popular character than it is to think up their own. Character design is an art in itself. What people such as Shigeru Miyamoto would do is to create another strong character. Same for Yuji Naka and Naoto Ohshima. If there had already been a popular blue hedgehog they would have come up with something else. Perhaps a silver armadillo or heck maybe even a golden moose. Who knows really but they would have designed a new character of some kind.

 

I dunno... Ralph isn't the most italian name that comes to mind

'swhat I do, man.

This thread was about a fan game, haha. There would be more to discuss if the art wasn't ripped from another game.

I give up. If there's ever an issue, people in the year 9924 can deal with it.

 

Sorry to shift gears, but I just wanted to throw one more thing out there.

I think that the vast majority of the back-lash here is that it has Nintendo's name on it. And, I'm sorry, but Nintendo has some MASSIVE biases against it in the media since they stopped advertising on those media outlets. And that bleeds into consumers.

But the part that is really ridiculous is the notion that "Nintendo took this down" when in reality it's more like "Nintendo keeps some lawyers on staff and they took it down".

It's not like Reggie or Miyamoto saw the page and contacted them personally.

 

No, it's exactly like that, otherwise when S*** hit the fan, it would be rectified and formal apology from a person like Iwata or Miyamoto would be issued, because if they can't see it now, they're obviously blind or live in a cave. Possibly both.

 

It's not that Nintendo is mean, it's that people work there, a ton of them. And it's easy to use their name and IP, but what IF a popular Mario clone has a negative impact? Just like that, someone out there might lose their job. In that sense it's very risky to allow people use their name, and their IP.

Maybe they should have made a game based on Mario, similar characters and aesthetics. But making a clone without consent, and even profit from it, probably was asking to be taken down.

 

Ha ha! True. We started down a rabbit hole.

The Super Mario 64 game looks well done to me based on the video. I think most of us (or at least many) have a reasonable understanding of why it was taken down.

I just think it is important to realize there is more to it than simply stealing the assets themselves.

I don't want to derail this thread but I kind of thought the OP was to try to understand why it was taken down. We could just say "stolen assets" and call it done.

Or we could take a look at other cases and if these did not have stolen assets we can conclude there is more to it than taking assets from the target game and using them. Does that seem reasonable? And if we get to that point perhaps we can then look for the common denominators for all of these cases and get a better understanding of how the decision is made to issue a C&D or not.

I'll include the cases again here:

All Your Nintendo Let's Plays Are Belong To Nintendo?
Note: I think Nintendo of Japan does allow (an even encourages) fans to record and publish footage of them playing Nintendo games as long as it is on a certain video site. Nintendo of America does not.

Nintendo Copyright Claim Kills Metroid Fan Film on Kickstarter

The fangame Pokemon Evoas has been shut down by Nintendo

Nintendo Shuts Down GBA4iOS, The Popular Game Boy Advance Emulator

Nintendo Kills Fan-Developed Pokémon MMOG

THE HERO OF TIME (movie) shut down by Nintendo


Then we should probably take a look at sites such as the two below and try to understand why they are still online:

PC Mario Games
Note: Although it says PC these games appear to all be playable in browser.

Mario Games

I think it could take a lot of time and maybe we will never have a clear answer. Perhaps no big sites have provided publicity for them. Perhaps the two sites above have not been found yet. Perhaps they are "out of reach" (the USA makes this kind of take down thing quite easy... send a C&D to the web host and the odds are high they will suspend the users account and contact them about it. It may not be that way in other parts of the world). Or perhaps... just maybe... there is some other reason.

Not sure we have enough time to find the answer.

 

It was stealing the assets from 1 paid game, using them to recreate another paid game, and then release the final product for free. Right?

I'm surprised they killed a gameboy emulator. There's hundreds of those.

 

Actually the answer is much simpler than you might imagine. It is "resources". An important thing to bear in mind just because a site/project/game has not received a notice or C&D does not mean a decision was made to NOT to take action, is only means action has not been taken YET.

It is an important distinction, you see a lot of sites/projects/etc, using that as a rational or excuse. "They have haven't sued me, it must be fine". Lack of negative response is not equivalent to consent.

So a company a like Nintendo (or any other large company based heavily on IP), is going to have a decent sized legal team, but not of infinite size. And it is not going deal just with game clones like this, it is probably a very small part of what is done, and probably not even a dedicated area/staff. Everything legal surrounding IP is very time consuming as it is civil. Each case has to be researched, documented, etc, before action is taken. Add to that prioritization and dealing with responses and of course much bigger issues/cases and that new cases appear all the time (it is an ongoing task). It is a safe bet that all those other sites/projects are on a list or being actively looked into, which is due diligence.

Why did this one get acted on quickly? Very easy answers:

1. He stated very clearly that he ripped the assets
2. He provided the source for download, making it very simple to verify without digital forensics.
3. He ripped assets, not just make them look similar. No longer a civil matter, it is now criminal. DMCA violation means allows for takedown without having to be civil case as the source content is not in question.
4. Even if it weren't a source issue, he is clearly stating it use is for profit.

So... he not only admitted to it, but provided proof that had done it. Minimal expense required by the Nintendo legal team, probably got bumped to the front of the queue.

It would be like robbing a bank, taking selfies while doing it, then blogging about where you hid the money. You are kind doing all the work for the police.

 

Additionally he had extensive media attention. At the time a search for "Super Mario 64 Remake" on Google News turned up numerous news articles covering it. Combined with the take down announcements we are now at ~140 articles.

 

The only question now... will this help his resume or destroy it?

 

Only Nintendo knows for sure.

Very well said and this is very much the same way I see it. However, there seem to be many people who do not see it this way and think it is wrong for a company to not let "fans" do whatever they want. I agree completely that just because other games are out there probably does not mean anything more than Nintendo hasn't got around to them yet.

I also think people are taking the whole "fan" thing way too far with this stuff. There is a "thing" known as fan art. But is there really a thing known as fan games? Nintendo seems to have no issue with fan art. Even in video format as long as it is tiny clips. Like you could show 30 seconds of game play in a Nintendo game and no problems. I think these games are just abusing the whole idea really. Going from a drawing of Mario or Metroid to a clone of one of their games is a massive difference.