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Well i’ve come to learn about this just now

I just got into the Pokemon Fangame/Rom Hack scene. It's a damn shame because the people who make fan games and Rom hacks spend AGES making these projects.
 
WillowHallows666 said:
Soo i've come to learn that Relic Castle has been taken down due to DMCA.

I don't know if i can still get pokemon essentials to make my pokemon project so i'm honestly worried now.

Side note: I've been feeling sick lately and having lots of rest (just annoys me someone in the house is drinking all the cocacola)
Click to expand...
There's probably like a billion mirrors of it, so you'll be fine on that front.

This still sucks though, it seems Nintendo has really been cracking down on fan games and emulators over this past year. Hopefully this site isn't next...
 
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Stuck a message on the website too. Quoted it below.
Relic Castle said:
Dear Pokémon fan game community,

It is with heavy heart that I announce that the Relic Castle website has been taken down following a DMCA takedown notice.

Relic Castle has always been a non-profit, ad-free, tight-knit community and we pride ourselves in what we have achieved. Members have felt at home, made friends, and even careers with us. It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that the forum part of this community, which was to turn 10 years old this year, has had to come to an end. With over 20,000 members and 65,000 posts, Relic Castle was a home to many of us.

The Discord server is not going anywhere, and the site is still visible as an archive using the Wayback Machine.

Thank you all for being with us this last decade, and thank you for making Relic Castle as awesome and life-changing as it has been for some of us.

Sincerely,
Marin
Owner
&
Andy
Manager
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It's a damn shame.

They're fan games/ROM hacks. I'm sure there are some idiots who'd try to make money from them, but the vast majority are just made for people to enjoy, totally for free.
So that's something to direct at Nintendo/Game Freak - "Just what the hell is so wrong with fans making fan games/ROM hacks of your 20+ year old games?".

And for the creators affected by DMCAs, I have to wonder… and this is my totally uninformed and ignorant curiosity here:
There's no money being made. For fan projects that get nipped, I'd just love to see the creator(s) scrub their names from the projects, but finish them anyway and release them anonymously. Let's say (knock-on-wood) Pokemon Gaia was to get hit by Nintendo. What if Spherical Ice just removed the credits from the game, finished developing it, then made a secondary Twitter, and posts it? Using a VPN if he wanted lol. I mean… what can they do, truly? They're just files, and again, there's *no money to be made*. Who is being hurt?
 
Didn't someone recently say in an interview
"No one likes to take down fan games"

Then you take down a whole arceusdamn site?
 
I think everyone should watch Moonie's video on Nintendo's policy towards protecting its intellectual property. It's valuable to understand what they do and why, even if you don't agree with it.

Galactidot said:
Didn't someone recently say in an interview
"No one likes to take down fan games"

Then you take down a whole arceusdamn site?
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That's an expression of regret, not a commitment to avoid taking action. The calculus for Nintendo's legal department is whether taking action against an individual or group outweighs the cost in goodwill from the customer base. Fun corollary: they're more likely to take legal action if the people committing copyright infringement, both creators and consumers, declare they're not buying Nintendo's current games, since now rather than fan works they're shutting down competitors maliciously using their intellectual property.

giradialkia said:
There's no money being made. For fan projects that get nipped, I'd just love to see the creator(s) scrub their names from the projects, but finish them anyway and release them anonymously. Let's say (knock-on-wood) Pokemon Gaia was to get hit by Nintendo. What if Spherical Ice just removed the credits from the game, finished developing it, then made a secondary Twitter, and posts it? Using a VPN if he wanted lol. I mean… what can they do, truly? They're just files, and again, there's *no money to be made*. Who is being hurt?
Click to expand...
What they can do is sue you, and who is being hurt is the property itself. A cease-and-desist letter is a legal warning, it's Nintendo saying "we know who you are, this is the law we believe you're violating, either you stop and we'll ignore the whole thing or you continue and we'll take legal action". Money doesn't have to change hands for it to be copyright and possibly trademark infringement.
 
Galactidot said:
Didn't someone recently say in an interview
"No one likes to take down fan games"

Then you take down a whole arceusdamn site?
Click to expand...
"They don't like to" =/= "They don't have to"
I've also heard that an AI algorithm authorized by The Pokémon Company is what flagged Relic Castle and sent the DMCA takedown, though I don't have any proof of this.

ThomasWinwood said:
I think everyone should watch Moonie's video on Nintendo's policy towards protecting its intellectual property. It's valuable to understand what they do and why, even if you don't agree with it.
Click to expand...
Honestly, I feel like this says more about the problems with copyright/intellectual property law (particularly in the US) than it does about Nintendo itself or whether it's right for them to take down fangames, or whether it's right to make fangames.

I'm not a lawyer, though, so I can't offer any solutions besides angrily yelling at the clouds that someone should change things so that they don't have to be the way they are now.

ThomasWinwood said:
Fun corollary: they're more likely to take legal action if the people committing copyright infringement, both creators and consumers, declare they're not buying Nintendo's current games, since now rather than fan works they're shutting down competitors maliciously using their intellectual property.
Click to expand...
So the "this is a nonprofit fangame, please support the official games" message that I've been putting in all of the fangames I work on actually helps because it makes it less likely that Nintendo's legal team will take notice?
 
catchneko said:
"They don't like to" =/= "They don't have to"
I've also heard that an AI algorithm authorized by The Pokémon Company is what flagged Relic Castle and sent the DMCA takedown, though I don't have any proof of this.


Honestly, I feel like this says more about the problems with copyright/intellectual property law (particularly in the US) than it does about Nintendo itself or whether it's right for them to take down fangames, or whether it's right to make fangames.

I'm not a lawyer, though, so I can't offer any solutions besides angrily yelling at the clouds that someone should change things so that they don't have to be the way they are now.


So the "this is a nonprofit fangame, please support the official games" message that I've been putting in all of the fangames I work on actually helps because it makes it less likely that Nintendo's legal team will take notice?
Click to expand...
This also =/= companies like sega are doing something wrong by supporting the love and labor of their fans rather than giving them the hammer.
 
Galactidot said:
This also =/= companies like sega are doing something wrong by supporting the love and labor of their fans rather than giving them the hammer.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying that it's good that Nintendo takes down fangames, or that it's bad that Sega doesn't. Honestly I think it's terrible that Nintendo is so ruthless with taking down everything their fans make. I'd love for them to be like Sega and support fan content.

The video that ThomasWinwood posted above is a great watch to explain it, and I'm mostly just paraphrasing some of the points in that video, but:

"Copyright law basically forces them to be highly defensive of their IP because they stand to lose a lot if the value of the brands that hold up their entire company weaken" is the *reason* they do it, and in their position is basically their only option. Pokémon is literally THE most profitable multimedia franchise of all time, and Nintendo is desperate to hold onto the exclusive rights to it, which means they immediately stamp out anything they see as threatening/competition, no matter how small, because they can't afford any damage to the value of their brand, which as a media company, is extremely valuable to them.
And Pokémon is the most profitable media franchise in the world *in spite* of everything they supposedly do wrong, even with the fans declaring every new game since... probably at least Diamond/Pearl to be the worst, most unforgivable games ever how could you do this to us wtf game freak i'm never ever ever ever buying another pokemon game ever again until the next one comes out, until the kids who grew up with those games get older and suddenly they're amazing underrated gems (The fanbase's general opinions of Generation 5 now vs back in like 2012 are VERY different), even with all the "wasted potential" the games have, it's outperformed *everything*. Nintendo doesn't view the community relations and free advertising to be worth the potential damage to their gold mine of a brand, and they don't have the resources to manage their fanbase. They've arguably pissed off the community plenty, and they still succeed despite that, so it's not really worth it to "love their fans" to them.

This was a bit of a ramble but tl;dr it's basically copyright law and capitalism's fault for making it more profitable for Nintendo to nuke fangames from existence and it's not just a simple case of "they want to be mean because they feel like it".
 
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