ROM Hacking, Patches, and the legal consequences

Alolan Marowak said:

God, I hope you're right.

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So it might not be the absolute end of Prism just yet after all, we can only hope.

I'm done with Nintendo's BS. https://www.change.org/p/nintendo-drop-cease-and-desist-order-of-pokemon-prism Help sign my petition. I'm sure I can get a million signatures seeing as this hack is so popular and people have waited for almost a decade.

1) Respect to Koolboyman and Prism, but he did too much to build up the hype. Should have released the game right after TPP, perhaps before it. Nintendo is not let a quality hack get too big.
2) I'm confident this will get leaked. Not gonna shelve all that work. They'll find a down low way to get it out there.

Lesson learned: Make crappy hacks that Nintendo doesn't care about. Wonder if something like the Community hack will be under threat if major progress is made. Meh, probably not.

Ammako said:

Oh boy, the overreaction.

...

How you bring glitch hunters into this and call it a giant mess is beyond me.

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Our disassemblies might be in jeopardy, because the content in them is unarguably Game Freak's and not a fan-work/fair-use sort of deal. Prism was built on PokeCrystal, a Crystal disassembly, and that is pretty well known if you're looking at Prism info, so Nintendo might be aware of them now. If our disassemblies go, glitch hunting will technically become more difficult. Likely, all of the people that rely on the disassemblies have them cloned on their own machines, but still.

I find it cute that fans are putting blame on Nintendo for this takedown when it's technically Game Freak and TPCi who are more protective with the Pok?mon property than Nintendo. Allow me to quote parts of comment a friend of mine from Disquis to those of who are considering on hating Nintendo because of this situation:

Second argument he poses is Nintendo's take down actions are adversely against gaming news media and fans.

Problem with this argument is: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Gaming news? We want to protect gaming news? The same people that killed the Dreamcast? The same people that have absolutely zero moral scruples slandering whatever game doesn't fit into their box, we want to protect them?! Sorry I don't swill piss. When gaming news media is actually worth a damned again, I'll defend it, but they've sold out lock stock and barrel and do more to harm the consumer than anyone with their slanderous finger wagging at the XBOne always online, but neglect to vocally real when Sony executive admitted PS4 could do the same, to spit in the Wii U's face yet praise the PS4 when they announced the Vita could be used as a controller, to not condemn Sony for not giving the Vita any real serious support efforts, for praising XBOX live long after consumers found out how little money it costs to use the superior server that people were paying a premium for and demanding Nintendo pay for the same treatment. One of the greatest things that'd come from the second great gaming crash will be those people will be gone and have to find new jobs. Because they certainly suck at the ones the have.
Also it's not against fans at all. Know what fans should probably do? Stop being so arrogant as to announce your fan game until it's finished and released you dingled berry brained morons. We should know by now that if they legally have to do something, they 9 out of 10 times will. And if they know about something, they legally have to act. We know that they are very protective of their IPs. So maybe, and I'm just spit balling here, maybe you shouldn't ANNOUNCE TO THE DAMNED WORLD THAT YOU'RE WORKING ON WHAT IS TECHNICALLY ILLEGAL! Jesus, like seriously what next? Rapists are gonna give their men/women victims a month's heads up before they do the deed? A car jacker is gonna leave a note on your windshield that they really like your car and are informing you that next Thursday they're going to abscond with your ride? If you're going to do something shady, do it shady and not in the light fools. I have no sympathy for them. None. And no gamer should because they make it harder for all of us to be normal fans. Nintendo has always been very grateful and appreciative to it's fans, maybe, if you're a real fan, you should understand that just cause they like you, doesn't mean they can't act when you tie their hands. And maybe, if you're a fan, you don't need money to show your fandom and you can respect it when they ask you please not to do something.

Next point he argues other companies blatantly rip off Nintendo's IPs and he doesn't get why Nintendo doesn't go after them. *sigh*

You know what happened during much during the "golden age of gaming"? Clones. Know why no one was sued? Because the games were different enough to legally get by. That's what these other companies do. Those other companies don't use the same DAMNED CODE OR SPRITES as Nintendo things, or blatantly copy large swaths of their worlds. Ripoff is a rip off, but guess what? They have different enough everything to legally get by. You want your tribute to get by then damn it can't you put in as much work as the ripoff artists? If I'm not suppose to care what happens to a company that doesn't listen to me, why should they care about a fan who doesn't listen to general business practices? That's only fair.

And now he's martying himself for "taking a stance against Nintendo's practices against fan games"

Then he deserved to be removed from the program. You're a bad ambassador if you can't see things from both sides. You're supposed to be their voice to the consumer and the consumer's voice to them. The fact that he did that without terminating his contract himself, and expected/hoped they'd keep him on, shows his sever hypocrasy in wanting to be able to say and do what he wanted, while ignoring Nintendo that same privalage. That sweet money he got from his views (I'm assuming he monetized his views) or those sweet freebies and exclusive releases, and the chance to meet legends, should just keep rolling in for him while he insult Nintendo and praise copiers. He sounds an awful lot like a machine that only loves Nintendo when they're doing what he wants, and that's giving him freebies and exclusive sexy products early.

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The full comment can be found here as the highest rated post in the comment section.

Just in case, I have begun archiving some of our most important resources into the Wayback Machine. Even if nothing happens, it'll be nice to have our legacy preserved somewhere off of PC.

If you would like to help, preface your PokeCommunity link with https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/

So this page would be https://web.archive.org/save/_embed/https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=385958&page=3

I've already gotten the full threads for stickied threads in the Research and Development subforum. Make sure that the page loads fully before moving on to archive another.

Deokishisu said:

Our disassemblies might be in jeopardy, because the content in them is unarguably Game Freak's and not a fan-work/fair-use sort of deal. Prism was built on PokeCrystal, a Crystal disassembly, and that is pretty well known if you're looking at Prism info, so Nintendo might be aware of them now. If our disassemblies go, glitch hunting will technically become more difficult. Likely, all of the people that rely on the disassemblies have them cloned on their own machines, but still.

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I think this bears repeating: Nintendo doesn't care about the particulars of hacking techniques; they care about numbers. If you put your hacking stuff on a few forums and don't go advertising it in a youtube video that ends up getting over a million views, Nintendo isn't going to bother. They're not thinking "Hey, these guys reversed our code!" They're thinking "Hey, this guy's promoting his bootlegged version of our game to millions!" The only way the disassembly crowd would get a C&D would be if they pulled a Prism and gave it a flashy website, promoted it like a product instead of a coding exercise, and got glowing articles on every gaming/tech site on the web. Nintendo leaves the low-profile stuff alone because it's low profile, not because they don't know about it.

Nintendo has a legal and financial obligation to protect its intellectual properties.

Especially in the case of someone throwing their fangame around god knows everywhere.

I have just finished archiving the entirety of the Research and Development Subforum. All 7 pages, all threads, all thread pages. Will do important tutorial and resource threads tomorrow.

You can find the archived threads on the Wayback Machine.

Incineroar said:

So the game recently leaked. I wonder what this will mean for Koolboyman now that it's out there while this is still on his back...

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It's a (n early) Christmas miracle! :happy2:

(Take that, Nintendo! You can't stop us!)

FWIW, if anyone posts the link to Prism on this website they will receive an immediate infraction on the par of linking to ROMs.

Ammako said:

A non-profit absolutely can take away from Nintendo's profits on their newer games.
The fact that Crystal is 17 years old is irrelevant. Prism was a new game set to be released in 2016.

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Unless Nintendo are still selling Second Gen games to a sizable market this would not have touched their profits. I'll tell you who would of played it, Nintendo's long term fans who for years have supported them and their products almost without question even when they were absolutely awful (see: Wii). If you honestly think anyone was saying "Well I do want to buy Pokemon Moon but I won't now because of an amateur fan hack of Pokemon Crystal" then you have a very warped grasp on how the entertainment market works.

Hands said:

Unless Nintendo are still selling Second Gen games to a sizable market this would not have touched their profits. I'll tell you who would of played it, Nintendo's long term fans who for years have supported them and their products almost without question even when they were absolutely awful (see: Wii). If you honestly think anyone was saying "Well I do want to buy Pokemon Moon but I won't now because of an amateur fan hack of Pokemon Crystal" then you have a very warped grasp on how the entertainment market works.

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What if Nintendo decides to release GSC on the Virtual Console like they did with RBY? It's quite possible that they could see a hack of a 2nd gen game as potentially cannibalizing sales. The bottom line is that KBM should have released it sooner. He acknowledges this but wanted to make everything perfect.

zealot said:

What if Nintendo decides to release GSC on the Virtual Console like they did with RBY? It's quite possible that they could see a hack of a 2nd gen game as potentially cannibalizing sales. The bottom line is that KBM should have released it sooner. He acknowledges this but wanted to make everything perfect.

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Then people would still buy it, just like people who physically own R/G/B/Y still purchased the VC versions. Pokemon Prism would not damage those sales, if anything, the vanilla ROMs would.

Alolan Marowak said:

God, I hope you're right.

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Well, I was right about it leaking. Playin' it right now.

hashtag said:

FWIW, if anyone posts the link to Prism on this website they will receive an immediate infraction on the par of linking to ROMs.

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So.. now that distributing Hacks through patches seems to be as illegal as sharing the ROMs themselves seeing this whole situation, what will happen from now on, sharing ROM Hacks in any way over here will be absolutely forbidden? How can this whole situation affect PokeCommunity and the fact that people like to distribute their ROM Hacks over here?

Lunos said:

So.. now that distributing Hacks through patches seems to be as illegal as sharing the ROMs themselves seeing this whole situation, what will happen from now on, sharing ROM Hacks in any way over here will be absolutely forbidden? How can this whole situation affect PokeCommunity and the fact that people like to distribute their ROM Hacks over here?

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Discussions are happening backstage, but that won't change anything. Prism was targeted because of the way it marketed itself with twitch and its trailer. That was going to get it taken down regardless of Patch/ROM/.exe distribution.

Man I feel bad for dude but it was his own fault you don't put up a trailer of your fan game and than do a twitch about it and expect Nintendo to turn a blind eye to it. From what I heard the game was already done but for some reason Koolyboy right? with held the game for a month, if he kept it under wrap and released it on Christmas he would of been good, no trailer and no twitch. I have the leaked game and it pretty fun just wish rare candy cheat would work lol they work around the cheats pretty well.

Logged in again after years just to say that I feel very sad about this :'( Seriously. I've been in the ROM-hacking community for more than a decade and I've been following Prism since the start. I was really (and I mean REALLY) looking forward to it. And now one of the best hacks ever will probably never see the light, and that's such a shame :(

This is very bad news, not only because of Prism specificaly, but because of the implications. Now we know for sure that ROM-hacking isn't a safe alternative either, not even when working with old platforms. I also feel bad for Koolboyman...

That said, as many other people have mentioned, I'm afraid that it's the developer's fault for leaking too much info, particularly the trailer, before the game was released. When I first watched the trailer, I had Uranium very fresh in my mind and I remember thinking: "Gods, they shouldn't have done this. It won't end well". I'm sorry to see I was right.

Damn, I'm so disappointed...

Edit: Oooh, the game has leaked? Awesome! :DD I'll get it right away! (although I hope this isn't bad for Koolboyman...)

I was looking so forward to playing Pok?mon Prism on my emulator. I had a feeling this was going to happen. But I'm gonna say exactly what I have said on other sites:

The sad moment of when Nintendo destroys hopes and dreams, as well as a fan?s imagination. It?s not an easy task for anyone to publish a game in order to get a Nintendo NDA developer?s licence. It?s extremely hard, people have to be extremely wealthy enough to create a business that can publish a game. When Nintendo or any gaming giant takes away a person?s imagination, that?s exactly how creativity is lost and destroyed.

That?s why I?m gonna say this: Don?t ever give up on your ROM Hacks or any fan projects. No matter even if Nintendo issues a cease and desist notice or any DMCA notice, don?t ever give up ensuring that your fan project has a future. We have to fight on, make sure that it will spread throughout the internet, no matter how many authorities come running after us. We have to fight on, no matter what. We know all too well that gaming giants will try to use everything in their power to ensure they dictate over their IP. They won?t accept ideas from people that are not on their team. All we can do, is defend ourselves!

Also, I completely understand copyright law and know how it all works. But the way I see it is that it?s designed so that only the wealthiest of companies can survive. It?s pretty much survival-of-the-fittest when it comes to companies abiding to copyright law. Is this really the kind of world we want to see?

It doesn't even matter what a person does, any lawyers of a gaming giant (such as Nintendo) will always try to find every opportunity they can to try and eliminate any competition, such as ROM hacks or any fan-made creativity (unless their directors are okay about any fan-made stuff, but even when they do, they will only limit it to things like drawings or some kind of artwork).

No ROM/ISO/hardware hack was ever safe from any gaming giant. Not even a Windows executable fan-game was ever safe. Nintendo is not the only business that will try to take down fan projects. Sony and Microsoft also do the exact same thing. They have also been widely criticised for their stance on patching exploits in their hardware to prevent any Custom Firmware or Homebrew stuff (which again, is another form of reverse engineering). Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) goes to great measures to even ban users from their PlayStation Network. Microsoft also bans users from Xbox Live if they find any evidence to believe that the person has either reverse engineered their hardware or a game. Even gaming giants that don't develop consoles also have issued Cease & Desist notices on various websites, including Google. There was one case on the Dolphin Emulator website in where they heard that Google had delisted one of their pages, just because Capcom's file detection bots detected a small 128KB .zip file containing a name "Monster Hunter Tri", which was a name of a trademarked game, in which had no copywritten material at all.

So... the end result? There really is nothing we can do about trying to fit into abiding copyright laws. Businesses will always try to find loopholes in the legal system in which they can use against individuals as well as other businesses, they will always try to find a way to eliminate any kind of competition and choice. It doesn't even matter how loyal a person may be, and it doesn't matter how much a forum or website encourages people to dump their ROMs or ISOs, they will still find a way to eliminate the competition. In this case, we know all too well that Nintendo goes after three things: fan-games, game dumps and emulators (and they don't care what emulator it is, either). Heck, in countries where emulation is prohibited, Nintendo's lawyers (or any lawyer of a gaming giant that hates emulation) will go after those people who make it in that country or even order the courts to block overseas websites that host such material (in countries with internet-blocking Internet Censorship, such as France or even the UK). With some businesses, they can get greedy and think they can abuse their power by using their country's copyright law or any related laws against those people, just so it can lessen the competition. And their only purpose, is to generate more money, so that the shareholders and the owners can use it to either gamble it away or buy very expensive stuff.

But like I have said, don't ever give up on your ROM hacks, try to ensure that your ROM hack survives, no matter how much legal issues it gets. If you're worried, perhaps you could send it to someone you can trust, so that person can then release it elsewhere? All of us ROM hackers and researchers will do what we can to defend ourselves against any legal issues. And if I was developing a ROM hack and ever get into any legal issues, I'll certainly do my best to defend myself and ensure that my ROM hack has a future, I would never let anyone down.

I care for every ROM hacker and researcher out there, and I will always do my best to support every ROM hacker and researcher out there. Let's ensure that ROM hacking and any reverse engineering will always have a future!