Forum - View topicINTEREST: Metroid II Remake Shut Down After DMCA Copyright Claim
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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The suspicion is dawning on me that 'DMCA' really stands for "Don't Make Content, Alright?".
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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However, that's because American copyright, in general, is a lot more strict than Japanese copyright, at least in the sense of the requirement to defend it.
If this is available on the Virtual Console already, then it makes perfect sense why this was taken down. I don't know how much they decided to modify the game, but I don't think it would've been enough to operate concurrently with the original work for sale .
Yeah, that was basically what Nintendo's statement was about this incident: I interpreted it as, "We're sorry we have to take this one down, but if we don't, we lose some of our legal rights to take down the truly guilty." I feel like American copyright law is the way it is due largely to lobbying.
I've read about cases where if it gets bad enough, you lose your ability to defend the copyright completely and it's no longer legally yours. That being said, there are many ways a big company can approach it. Hasbro takes a much different path, simply pretending to not know fanworks like these exist, or at least avoiding any evidence they know about it so they can have a legal defense of "We didn't C&D because never knew about these." That's why people who work at Hasbro get so angry if a fan of My Little Pony or Transformers at a convention attempts to push fanart or fanfiction onto them. SEGA's induction of Christian Whitehead into the company indicates an American company is at least allowed to hire a creator of works violating that company's copyright, and now his Sonic stuff is no longer illegal because he now works for SEGA. Trademarks can be lost too, which happens if enough people use the trademarked word or phrase as if it were a normal word. That's known as a "genericized trademark," and it happened to words like "zipper," "elevator," "yo-yo," "cellophane," and "aspirin." Google is fighting hard to prevent the word "google" (to mean usage of a search engine to obtain information, regardless of if it's Google or not) from becoming genericized, as it's dangerously close to that status. I am not a lawyer either though. I'm just taking incidents in the past as examples. (And as far as I can look up, a patent expires after a set time regardless of how much or how little was done of it unless the owner renews it.) |
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GrayArchon
Posts: 393 |
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This is incorrect. You have no obligation to defend your copyrights. You can defend, or not defend them as you see fit. No matter what you do, you will not lose the copyright. Hence why you can buy Metroid doujins (pornographic and not pornographic) at Comiket, Metroid games being played are regularly streamed online, either by individuals or for charity marathons, and countless fan art and fanfictions exist, all with little to no legal issue; yet a fan made game like this gets taken down. Trademarks being more limited are something that can be lost through lack of use, or lack of defense. That does not mean they must be defended every single time. Nor does the form of defense need to be a Cease and Desist order that destroys a work like this. If you are okay with it, you could explicitly grant permission to continue using your trademark. Flat out ignoring it is also an option. The only risk that carries is that ignoring it too often could potentially result in you losing the trademark. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6081 |
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They have virtually no reason to back it they're not Sega or Capcom after all.
They played it up because Mario is a pretty well known and popular franchise considerably more so than Metroid is it also didn't have bad game that put the franchise it an awkward position like Other M did.......though weirdly Starfox had Adventures, & Assault and Nintendo still felt the need to churn out Zero which did nothing to benefit the series's reputation. |
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JoeQ
 Posts: 77 |
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Business as usual. The guys who made it knew it would happen, but they still wanted to get the game out for Metroid's 30th birthday. Mission accomplished and you can still find the game easy enough.
And who knows, there's always a chance that this could lead to a similar case what happened with Sega and Christian Whitehead (The guy responsible for Sonic CD rereleases and now Sonic Mania): First slap them with a standard C&D to protect your IP, then secretly recruit them to work on an official remake. Big corporations move slowly and even if they wanted to back this it's going take time and money to iron out all the kinks. I'm not holding my breath though... Nintendo's treatment of Metroid lately is disappointing, but yeah, unfortunately it's pretty standard for them. They have loads and loads of lesser franchises and series that they'll let lie for ages and only occasionally dust them off for a new entry. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 908 |
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But it's also a game Nintendo didn't want to make, and any potential loss of sales is calculated assuming people playing it didn't already buy the VC version in the vain hope that their support might count for something. I know I've paid about as much for Metroid II as Nintendo has let me in the past 10 years, which is one tiny purchase on my 3DS. Seriously, though. Nintendo should run a Metroid kickstarter, and that would clear up any doubts they have as to the loyalty of the fans. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5419 |
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Do people not know about IPs? Do they really think they can just make a game for an IP, THEY DON'T OWN.
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wolf10
Posts: 908 |
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Touhou Project would like to have a word with you. |
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SpeckTech
 Posts: 195 |
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If you're curious how much is different (from someone who's completed both): spoiler[ -added new enemies (some based on metroid fusion because it's a replica of SR388 organism wise), others are original -added new bosses, some based on metroid fusion with twists while others are 100% original -added 5 more energy tanks for a total of 10 (and you definitely need most of them) -there were super missiles in the original right??? I don't think so. -redesigned each internal area and made them unique/larger with their own puzzles/hidden areas (hydroplant, chozo ruins, science lab, water ruins) instead of the same cavern copy pasted 4 times. -added Galactic federation elements (ship of a missing crew on the surface, underground outposts) -shortcuts for backtracking -added speed booster and implemented many puzzles requiring speed boost skills -added other powerups like ledge grip, powerbombs, and gravity suit. -added new mechanics like aim lock, climbing small ledges (1 block higher), and straight morphballs (no crouching required) -added a logbook/scanning feature for lore (reading it can give hints on how each area is connected/what it's purpose is) -reworked the metroid AI (they charge, dodge missiles) and metroid fights -replaced Zeta metroids with much larger and more deadly omega metroids (drastically different from metroid fusion gameplay wise) -original music -queen metroid boss fight reworked ] tl;dr superior in every way to the original. |
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ScruffyKiwi
 Posts: 690 Location: New Zealand |
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The owner of Touhou's IP explicitly allows 3rd party works. He still owns the copyright though. He's also not keen on people making commercial works. https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki:Copyrights |
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nhat
Posts: 922 |
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He said "some" fan projects, not a lot |
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Ah, all right then. I've never played a Metroid game, but I get the idea. (I guess it's more like the difference between Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire and Pokémon OmegaRuby and AlphaSapphire?) In that case, I'm going to guess that one major reason Nintendo took this one down is because Nintendo (America and otherwise) is a company very protective of its brand images. They aren't going to take chances with fan-works as they have no control over how the finished product will look and play, whereas when its an official project done by a 3rd-party company, Nintendo can exercise as much control as they want. At the very least, if a Nintendo game is done by a 3rd-party company and it isn't a new IP, it almost always looks and plays incredibly similar to something Nintendo would put out itself, stuff like Square-Enix's Mario Hoops 3-on-3 to SEGA's Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games to Capcom's The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages to Retro Studios's Donkey Kong Country Returns. So I would guess that Nintendo has very tight, very demanding control over these projects to make absolutely sure it looks and plays exactly like how Nintendo's people want. (Metroid Prime looked like something drastically different from Nintendo's normal output though.) |
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Levitz9
 Posts: 1022 Location: Puerto Rico |
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Yep! Disney's worked tooth and nail to keep copyright laws on their side so as to keep Mickey Mouse out of Public Domain, courtesy of the Sonny Bono act in 1998. You can bet they'll scramble to "correct" it once again in 2019 when they start running out of time again. 
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13583 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Outside of individual cases like the original "Happy Birthday" song being in public domain, the USA won't have a massive collection of works hitting the public domain until 1/1/2019.
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