Looks Like Nintendo Accidentally Used A Fan-Made Mario Render On Its Website

I hope they issue a takedown

How is it that not every computer or mobile device owned and used by Nintendo for graphic design not have a folder dedicated to Nintendo characters?

Left Mario be like RTX ON

Hope the creator sues them for using his artwork.

I'm not in graphic design or anything, but while they're posed pretty much exactly the same, aren't there quite a few differences still? The lighting is different, creases in Mario's glove, eye iris patterns, ear shape, button texture, waistline, etc.

Obviously, if Nintendo did take it, it's wrong and it should be removed, but do those kinds of differences not mean anything? I.e. it's a pretty generic pose of a simple character; could their image just have been similar?

@Tourtus
It probably wasn't created by someone at Nintendo, since it's apart of the larger Universal Studios Japan website. Still they should've sent the needed art assets to the team at Universal Parks and Resorts that created the website.

Its okay because they have the right to use their ip anyway they fit . They are allowed to use other peoples fan art for their website, you see, so it must not be a accident .

Will they do a DMCA takedown on themselves? 😜😜😊😊

This is a nonsense story. Yes, Nintendo are using someone else work, but it is based on their own work and an accurate representation. It's not like they used a Mario with a completely different look like say, for example, Rasta Mario.

This more sounds like a Universal Studios mistake to me, Nintendo needs to get em.

Hasbro's marketing teams have stepped on this rake before, and likely many other companies before them. Hastily googling stuff before a deadline is understandable but can backfire.

Lazy media team. Probably just Googled it.

To be fair, it's a good fan-made render, but come on Nintendo/Universal, you could have done two seconds of research and found out that it was an unofficial model.

The lighting and nose look different. Also not sure it can be copying when Mario is owned by Nintendo and Mario is in a basic pose.

@nhSnork your PP made me laugh thinking hasbro need to be careful what MLP fanart they use in an official capacity.

Not gonna lie - I like the fake one better.

I would have thought recreating someone else's render to that degree would be just as illegal as outright using it lol.

They really need to stop Google searching their own characters and start using an archive of official promotional renders. This happened with the Masked Man from Mother 3 in Smash Bros. Ultimate, where they accidentally used an edited sprite of the character for his Spirit. How could you tell the difference? One pixel was a different color.

Decided to make a account for this.. the image is still up on the website. It's shown right when you click on the link for the website.

@uJidow ah, you're right! I'll update it now

Well, well, well.... How the turntables....

The hands look off on the unofficial one, but otherwise I imagine this was an easy mistake to make if they went to Google.

Reminds me of the time Capcom published Okami with the IGN watermark on it.

@Ardisan I don’t think that’s how it works

@Minfinity

Th long and short of it is, that neither party legally owns the image.

At least it looks like Mario, the mistake in Sega All-Stars Racing had someone confuse Sonia for Amy.

@Mr-Fuggles777 Can't. As Mario is the property of Nintendo, Nintendo could issue a counter suit. A fan can't copyright fanmade work, therefore the law is never on their side.

@glenny3214 Not to mention the fan version is likely a recreation of the official render in the first place.

@Dr_Lugae Exactly. The fan created a render that looks almost exactly like official Mario. I see no way in which the fan would win any kind of takedown suit.

@glenny3214 I was just being facetious in response to how happy Nintendo are to sue and shut everyone else down.

@Mr-Fuggles777 They are quick to do that, aren't they? I do see your point.

The differences between these two renders are so minute, especially when cropped to just the head and shoulders of the icon in question, that I'm trying to come up with any plausible chain of events that would've led to this actually being noticed and drawing a blank.

I know, "because the internet," but that's not enough. Does this guy spend his days poring obsessively over every scrap of Mario media released in furtherance of his craft? Is he regularly running image searches to try to catch anyone using his renders, that are such faithful reproductions of copyrighted works that there's not a chance in hell he'd ever be able to claim any royalties from anyway? It doesn't make any sense.

Wrong title, it is Universal not Nintendo using this image.... poooooor clickbait title NL.

Did they just grab the first photo from google?

@Tourtus I work for an advertising agency...I do not understand how this happens. You NEVER EVER pull anything off the internet, even if you think it's a client owned asset. You have an Art Buyer who manages client approved assets, or you work with a folder of client direct, supplied assets. I think maybe someone bopped this in as a placeholder while waiting on an official asset, and it accidentally got pushed out thru production when someone got laid off or something.

Nintendo: "Oh sorry! was this your render?, we are terribly sorry, here let me give you one of this, I'm sure this is what you came looking for here", **Hands over cease and desist letter**

How can you tell? The eyebrows?

@Mr-Fuggles777 actually they can't cause it's not his artwork, that character belongs to Nintendo, even if it's render, Mario Never belong to that person. He is distributing a character that doesn't belong to him and is lucky Nintendo didn't bring the hammer on him. =

@Tourtus sorry for being dumb. Is this sarcastic or you really mean it?

Sorry to break out to you all but the real thief here ain't Nintendo, Mario is a copyrighted trade mark and upon using any imagery of said trade mark without Nintendo's permission is stealing. This ain't Deviantart is the real world and this is how you truly protect your art and properties. There is nothing the other artiest at play can do, is not his character or art despite the work he put in. You don't praise another artist for tracing someone else artwork and admire how alike and talented that person is, right??? Like someone said, this is most likely a Universal mistake not Nintendo, probably had the intern do it, but non the less an honest mistake, if you want to call it that, Mario is Nintendo's no matter how you paint em or render for that matter. =:3

@Bl4ckb100d Haha, that's actually far more accurate =XD

@Screen Not true at all, Mario is copyrighted protected , anything with Mario on it belongs to Nintendo, this ain't Deviantart, just because you made doesn't necessarily means it belongs to you especially if said art represents a characters that's is pretty much the Face of video games. Making art of someone else art without permission is stealing isn't not??? =:3

@Minfinity I think you're misunderstanding the issue. The image on the right, the official Nintendo one, is not the problem. Nintendo made the official image on the right before uJidow ever did anything. It's a NSMBW render. However, uJidow did a render recreation of it and "enhanced" it with different lighting and textures. What most likely happened is Boss A told Employee B to use Image C of Mario. Employee B lazily Googles it instead of finding it in their archives and accidentally gets someone's customized render rather than the original official one. Does that clear it up?

Since uJidow used an official render as the basis for his recreation, he likely has no legal claim to it, yet the alterations mean that Nintendo probably doesn't either.

That artwork fooled me at first. It looks really close to the Original the first time you look at it

You can see it in the hands, not quite up to snuff with the official art.

Isn’t it always the hands...lol

@eshtebala I mean it, Nintendo has a marketing team, everyone who does graphic design or artwork on that team should have all the assets necessary for whatever promotion they're currently working on. They should never have to pull images off the internet like what happened here. Granted this was probably the work of Universal and not Nintendo but they should still have the assets they need.

This actually reminds me of the the time Namco accidently used a fanmade Pac-Man render to promote something.

@4by3 an artist spent time on that piece of work. You are essentially arguing that as long as a company owns an IP, they never have to pay an artist for their work.

reminds me of something...

@Quix no it's not stealing or Nintendo would issue takedown notices?

Have you not been paying attention? They issue takedown notices about everything!

Also it's no surprise. Nintendo steals quite often and has even been know to release roms downloaded from the Internet due to laziness and greed.

The only surprise here is that it's still surprising to people that they steal.

@Quix By your definition of copyright, you're a thief. How dare you use copyrighted material on your profile pic.

It's almost identical. Who cares, really.

@Fath they probably noticed because they spent hours working on the model and when you spend hours creating something you notice the details really easily. Add the fact that it was on a big nintendo/mario thing and someone who would take their time to improve an official mario mod probably really likes mario and it seems much more plausible than you seem to have thought.

@Richnj it's taking advantage of a dedicated fans work so clearly immoral, but wouldn't hold up in court because the original creator wasn't asked to produce work. Nintendo will eventually rectify the outcome by removing the artists work from their material.

So the way you can tell is the texture on the moustache and the awful colouring around the eyes? Otherwise it's a direct copy.

What I find hilarious about this is that Nintendo (and other companies that have also done this) don't have a local server with all their images on. They just go on Google images and go, 'yeah I'll use that one' and not even care where it comes from. I guess it's their copyright really so there's not much artist can do I'd imagine.

It smarts a little though when you consider Nintendo take down all the fan created games and then go 'we'll take that and use it on our website thank you very much'.

@4by3 and if you produced an authentic Mario sculpture and left it in your front garden, could Nintendo come and claim it as theirs?

It's their IP after all.

"But when we do it, it's cool."

The artist should sue them, would serve Nintendo right with their litigious ways.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”- Oscar Wilde

@Richnj that's different. His image is easily copied/duplicated as it's just a picture file. But if I was using the Mario sculpture as an attraction for financial gain Nintendo would no doubt try and shut the enterprise down seeing how they react to people using their properties all the time.

@4by3 How's it different?. Digital or not, it's not theirs. Just because something is easy to steal doesn't make it right.

And we're not discussing whether or not the sculpture was used for monetary gain. As far as I know the fan render wasn't, so neither is the sculpture.

Many of the fan games aren't for monetary gain, but Nintendo still shuts them down.

What Nintendo is doing is pushing the boundaries for what is acceptable when it comes to claiming ownership to anything and everything with their IPs.

This is why I'm using the sculpture analogy. We all 'know' that it would be wrong for Nintendo to take the sculpture but the way their IP "protections" are going, we aren't far off from that scenario.

It doesn't matter how similar they look, why is someone creating official material just googling for images? They should have access to official Nintendo art assets.

The webpage in question states the site is owned and controlled by "NBCUniversal" in the Privacy Policy. NBCUniversal is solely responsible in ensuring the assets used to represent Nintendo was sourced directly from their partner.

@Ardisan copyright applies to fanart and transformative work as proven in precedent over previous cases, this guy is well within his legal right to issue a DMCA or sue for any reprimands should Nintendo make money on the park using his work.

Guess what? Nintendo owns it. Sorry dude. You don't own ANY art you do of NINTENDO'S IP. Besides, you literally copied theirs.

I get that Nintendo owns Mario, but using unofficial artwork instead of one they actually made is unprofessional, though I’m pretty sure Universal made the website

Looks just like an older render.

@Richnj is actually my own fan art and I'm not distributing it, my profile pic is the only instance you will find this pic. Never did I claimed that I owned Goku or attacked Tobi animation or Toriyama for using my art based on their well respected trademark that they ligaly owned. If I did, then yes I would be a thief. Nice try =

@lordzand You guys just don't get it, just because you take some else's work and add your own Jazz doesn't make it yours. Nintendo taking their IPs away from fans or people who took it in the first place without permission isn't stealing. There is a reason non of this perpetrators can't do anything about it. For all you know they did send a cease and desist, or probably will once they find out someone is messing with their IPs. By law is theirs and they can take it back, whither you like it or not is facts no argument here =:3

@Richnj what part of Nintendo owns this trademarks that they pay millions to protect you aren't getting. Yes, if Nintendo so choose to they can take it, what ever they want that has their property or likeness on it, they have every right, is why they crack down on anyone using their IPs or messing with there image, which they almost always win. Make all the conveniently well made analogies all you want, but you can make 1+1=5. Learn a bit about art and law fallowed by copyrighted infringement before opening your mouth, this ain't Deviantart kiddo =:3

@Quix "Mario is a copyrighted trade mark and upon using any imagery of said trade mark without Nintendo's permission is stealing"

These were your words. You are using Goku's image without permission. That's stealing.

@Yorumi Seems your highly miss inform and really twisting my words, and nobody forced the artist to creat the art piece belonging to someone else, so that doesn't apply, not to mention he uploaded it online, he was no right to claim this character as his own no matter the amount of work he put in it, it's not his. =:3

@Quix

The render is fanart because it was not made by Nintendo, and based on my own personal research (Which I admit could be wrong) Nintendo does not have the right to use fanart however they please, conversely the person whom made the art also can't disperse it because it's copyright protected like you said.

This is what is known as Seppuku in Japanese culture. Rip Nintendo, they should've never messed with Nintendo's ip.

XD that's awesome.

@Minfinity Yep. I've noticed the nonofficial has more details then official.

Oh the irony. Wonder what they have to say about that.

@Quix I see you're one of those people who feels more intelligent the more people disagree with them.

You're wrong. No point in explaining why anymore because other people have.

The fanmade model looks better tho xd

"Accidentally"

The main difference is the golden buttons on the fake one shine

@Tourtus this is Nintendo, they probably still use the SGI workstations from the N64 era, they simply don't have a network capable of sharing resources.

@Menardi Its not Nintendos IP, Mario belongs to the people.

@Menardi it's a grey area.

@Quix We all know Mario is property of the people, not Nintendo... I'm more interested in finding out why does ur user icon feature Goku surfing on a massive sperm? 🤪😂😂