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Nintendo Issues Multiple DMCAs On The Modding Site 'GameBanana'
(www.nintendolife.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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Some of it is pure hubris. But some of it is American IP law, which will punish you if you don't zealously prosecute people in defense of your patents. Its sort of like laws on squatting. If someone is openly and notoriously using your IP and you don't try to sue them for a long enough time, they can claim the property as functionally abandoned.
For Nintendo, which hasn't had a particularly good new idea in 20 years, the idea of losing Mario or Link or Pikachu to a legal loophole like this would be devastating.
I'd agree with you, except Sony, another massive Japanese company operating in the same industry as Nintendo, doesn't lash out this aggressively at their own community that is just desperately trying to enjoy games in their own way.
Sony has left basically all emulation projects alone as well as modding projects like 60FPS patches (there was one emulator that they took to court in the 90s, Bleem, but Bleem was charging money for the emulator. Funnily enough, Bleem won the case and was allowed to continue existing, but the company went under due to the cost of the legal battle) .
Nintendo doesn't have to act out like this. They actively choose to stifle such products so that they themselves can offer tightly curated versions on their own schedule and at their own price. This isn't an IP protection strategy, it's an agressive cornering of their own market.
Sony probably just learned their lesson when they lost their case against the Bleem! emulator back in the late 90's/early 2000's. They were, originally, just as rabid as Nintendo against emulation. And perhaps they also learned that you attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Then again, while Sony isn't as aggressive as Nintendo, they are a bit slow on the up take and sometimes do really dumb things. Like their current strategy of releasing the first thing of a series on PC but the followups only on the PS5 to try and get PC gamers to buy PS5s. Why would I do that if my save isn't on that platform and there's no way to convert them?
The followups do usually come, just later. It's more like the GTA double dipping strategy where they get console users (and impatient PC users who buy a console) then PC users, both often paying at full price.
That's the thing though, they really were never as rabid as Nintendo. Bleem wasn't the first PS1 emulator, it was just the fact that it was a commercial product that Sony took issue with, honestly understandably so.
There are actually PS1 emulators from the pre-Bleem era that are still available. Sony did nothing to shut those ones down because they were being offered freely.
Piracy is a totally different deal. I'm not delusional, any company that owns an IP is completely within their rights to aggressively stomp piracy at every turn, and I think it's silly to criticize a company for trying to protect one of their main sources of income (I mean really, do people expect a company to spend billions on a product, then just be okay with the theft of that product?).
That's not to say I've never sailed the high seas, or think it's objectively wrong to do so no matter what, but I tend to save it for times where I really wouldn't be able to enjoy the product otherwise (abandonware, or in Nintendo's case, games they stubbornly lock behind ridiculous paywalls).
What IP does Sony hang its hat on? I'm hard pressed to name a uniquely Sony-esque title or franchise. They partner with Square Enix on the reg, but Square is also horrifyingly litigious.
No. There are proven effective ways to monetizing the modding community and exploit them for their free labor. And that's not part of the Nintendo business strategy, possibly because their creative directors' egos can't handle it or possibly because some bean counter thinks it'll hurt profits long term or maybe possibly even because Nintendo has a better-than-average work culture and the staff doesn't like the idea of being undercut at their jobs by hobbyists.
Idk. But I also just don't get the desire to bang your heads against this wall over and over again, on the modder side of the equation. There are other franchises and platforms to mod on. At this point, it feels more like a battle of wills than a rational strategy on either end.
Ratchet and Clank, Uncharted, Killzone, Sackboy, inFamous, God of War, The Last of Us, and if you want to go older, SOCOM, Syphon Filter, Spyro, Sly Cooper, I could go on.
I mean, I get what you're saying, they don't have something as iconic as Mario, but to say you're hard pressed I think is a bit of hyperbole. Sony has had a really well rounded line of exclusives for decades. Sure, some are on PC now, but they're expressly "PlayStation ports" not console ports.
I personally disagree with that attitude. If every consumer went along with that set of ideals, every studio, firm and corporation would be free to jerk us around willy nilly because we'd just move on to the next thing. There are people out there who really don't care about modding Skyrim, they want to mod BOTW.
They've all got their own boutique developers and were simply published by Sony at one point or another (not even exclusively). Insomniac Games seems to be the real owner of the IP for a bunch of them. Hell, most of these are just knock offs of other franchises. Sackboy is a very obvious Mario/Sonic analog that simply never got popular in the same way.
There are definitely some publishers more open to modding than others. Early on, you could accuse Nintendo of being a sleeping giant who failed to give modders warning or opportunity to compromise. But now modders are just trying to hug a very large hedgehog with it's spikes out.
It’s not patents, it’s trademarks. Kleenex is the best example: Overuse of it as a generic term leads the company to call it “Kleenex brand”. Lego has fought this for years, with the boxes promoting calling them “Lego bricks”, lest all building bricks become generic “Legos”.
Patents expire after 17 years regardless of usage, trademarks can last forever.
IP and copyright are two entirely different things.
IP stands for “intellectual property” as far as I know, and copyright is one form of that
Right, but when companies go after pirated games, they are going after them because of copyright, not patents or trademarks. The way copyrights are enforced and the way the law works is a lot different than how it works with patents and trademarks.
There is no "use it or lose it" clause for copyrights. If somebody is breaking copyright, you still have the right to enforce it for a long as the copyright is still valid, and don't have to vigorously defend it to keep it.