[A.D.R.I.A.N]

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/08/nintendo_enforces_takedown_of_fan-made_game_creator_pokemon_essentials

I love Nintendo, but I hate when they do this.

Understandable, they are the IP owners, but it's kinda unfair that (excuse me for the strong language) those bastards take down Fan tributes that make no money from it at all. Of course, if they were using ads, then Nintendo would've been obviously taking action. But what if the fangame in question was making no money at all (no ads)?

Sorry for the long rant, but Nintendo needs to respect it's fans better. As long as they are no making money out of it, fangames and the like are fine IMO.

P.S.: Hey Isao, saw your comment and made the topic myself.

[Jorpho]

I was just reading about that.  People were quick to point out that Square forced the takedown of a whole bunch of similar RPG Maker asset kits in the past.  It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do – you might say it dilutes the market, or creates brand confusion, or something.  (Please don't bring up trademark genericizaiton again.)

My thought is, is it just a coincidence that this is following so quickly on EA forcing the shutdown of a SimCity 2000 remake for using copyrighted assets?  (Of course, in that case EA had the very legitimate point that they're still selling SimCity 2000.)

Also, the word is "essentials".

[FAST6191]

If they had made something called monster capture essentials and not copied... most assets (maybe there would be a nice external pack that conveniently did the rounds) then I would be upset at the takedown.

This seems like a straight up case of infringement though. Nothing to get particularly upset about.

If they wanted to get a bit hazy and start something for copying mechanics then that could be fun. Doubt they would risk having that come back to bite them though.

[Bonesy]

As I've said in the past elsewhere, I'd care more if there was a genuinely GOOD game made in the engine, not a bugfest like some I've seen or a 2edgy5me game like Insurgence or Reborn.

[A.D.R.I.A.N]

To tell the truth, some of you are right. They're using assets made by Nintendo. Had they used custom ones, no problem.

Also, some companies like Sega actually encourage fangames. But of course, this is Nintendo we're talking about.

[Bregalad]

I find that perfectly normal. The fans were apparently making a "Pokémon" game, when this belongs to Nintendo. Nobody wants someone else to release fan games using the same name as yours, creating possible confusion this would be a geniune "Pokémon" game and not a generic, fan "Pokémon-like" game. Had they used a different name and different assets, it would have been fine. Again, this is perfectly normal, and there's nothing new about this - Nintendo had acted like that since the mid 1980s.

[Chronosplit]

The GitHub is still up, but honestly I find this a pretty cut and dry case.  It was named Pokemon, everyone was making Pokemon out of it (PokeCommunity has a whole fangame subforum dedicated to it), it was using Pokemon's assets, and not one thing could've changed that.

The only thing new here is that they made a claim on the Wiki too, as if they're attempting to erase knowledge of how to make Pokemon games on RPG Maker in general.  Nope.

[KingMike]

Did they include the graphics, etc. with the program?
If that is the case, they probably could've gotten around that by asking users to supply ROMs that it could rip the data from.

[danke]

Did they include the graphics, etc. with the program?
If that is the case, they probably could've gotten around that by asking users to supply ROMs that it could rip the data from.

They included graphics, fonts, music, sounds, scripts, etc.

[Tyrantnyx]

It seems pokecommunity is down now as well.

Edit: Apparently it just had some heavy traffic and is working again.

[gamingcat02261991]

To tell the truth, some of you are right. They're using assets made by Nintendo. Had they used custom ones, no problem.

Also, some companies like Sega actually encourage fangames. But of course, this is Nintendo we're talking about.

It's a surprise Nintendo hasn't swung their legal hammer on a website/game featuring Pokemon. Not going to mention what its name is for legality reasons, but I will say that the Pokemon sprites outside of both custom-made Pokemon and Pokemon from Gen VI and onwards use sprites taken directly from Gen V.