Hand-Drawn Game Guide Kickstarter Taken Down Following "Legal Trouble"

Very nice. Actually hand drawn with physical media, which is refreshing given that everything nowadays is digitally drawn and something gets lost in the process.

I cemented my bundle order as soon as I could. It reached it's funding goal before I could even finish the promo video!

Tempting, but I'll pass. I already have a gorgeous Zelda bible sitting on my shelf. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81DCd3lfQDL.jpg

I already have softcover Zelda one - had no doubts over ordering all three on this…

Love this sort of stuff.

I’d gotten the Zelda version digitally and it was really nice. Gives off vibes of the old school manuals that used to be included with the NES games.

I was on the artist, Phil's, mailing list and heard about this kickstarter project on Wednesday. I own his LoZ softcover guide and was delighted to back this kickstarter and reserve hardcovers for the bundle (LoZ, Metroid, Contra).

Metroid and Zelda really benefit from having a physical map to refer to when needed! The Zelda guide will be a great coffee table companion to the Zelda Game & Watch coming out this fall.

Physical guides are so much more fun to use than going online. Yeah it was just all a masterful plot to get us to buy a guide but you still got a cool book with art and lore.

And if I had a dollar for every time someone's called my hands gorgeous, I'd have two dollars.

Happy to support this project and grab all three books. You cannot beat that hand-crafted touch from someone who clearly knows the source material.

@Purgatorium I agree it’s such a shame physical guides have all but died out for new games.

This is awesome, very tempted to grab the Metroid guide.

I am getting these. The love, art and attention to detail is astounding. Kickstarted!!

Already had one of the softcover Zelda ones, but I backed for all 3; they all look gorgeous, so I’ll be getting them while I can.

I want the Zelda and Metroid ones but it's about the same price to buy the bundle, so I might as well do that.

I was thinking how cool it would be if a game was made today that needed a guide to go with it. From memory I think Ni No Kuni for DS was the last game to try something like this.

I am going to be that guy and say the last poster with Ninja Gaiden means he will be in Smash.

Take down in 3... 2....

I really miss the manuals that came with Nes, snes and N64 games. Character bio's, tips,beutiful art work.. etc. Im so glad im from a generation where i got to appreciate this. It balances out the fact i feel old as hell now 😂

My God that is just beautiful.

Edit: Well, I bought the digital Zelda, Contra and Ninja Gaiden ones, but I never got the Metroid because it doesn't seem to be an option. I meant to just get the three as shown above (with the contra and gaiden combined into one) but it wasn't like that on the site so I got a little duped. Still, I only paid a few quid for the three I got so can't really complain. I want the Metroid one now too though.

Can anyone explain the comment about Mario being made of eggs? Was that a joke that I missed?

where's the something something "That'll teach them to just copy and paste something that isn't theirs" crowd at
edit: there they are! Hooray!

WHY MUST YOU TAKE EVERYTHING I LOVE

I wonder if the digital versions of these guides are affected too. I was interested in seeing how the Metroid Guide would of been.

This is odd because where I live in Japan unofficial game guides are a very real thing. Even hand-drawn guides like this with no licensing what-so-ever have a long history in Japan.

I hate Nintendo so much right now. This is an absolute moronic move by them. They actively hate their fanbase.

@niner If it’s a fan game. I understand that more but why a game guide?

At this rate, Nintendo will send a cease and desist to all fan art relating to Nintendo content

@anoyonmus Maybe because it was still technically being profited off of in a way?

@niner I'd hate my fans too if they were so annoying

Back in the day Unauthorized printed guides were a thing, why would this be illegal?

Seriously, he should have pitched the idea to Nintendo to license their characters for this project rather than plow on ahead and hope Nintendo would close an eye to such a high profile Kickstarter that directly makes money from their IP

The cover on the Zelda guide looks dope.

How does stuff like this work? Do the backers get their money back? Is phil now $322,337 richer since he can't go forward with the guides?

@jsty3105 Lol, Yeah like Nintendo would have given him a thumbs up. It would have been dead regardless of which route he took.

He raised over $300K from this.

Sounds like mission accomplished to me.

Oh and thank you @KateGray for reporting on the takedown. This sort of thing should have a big spotlight on it.

I was putting off playing these titles on VC until the guides were released. I hope they could revive this project.

@Vexx234 that is incorrect (sorta). If the campaign wasn't finished before they pulled it down (which is the case here) then the people who donated won't lose their money as money isn't taken until the campaign ends.

Ugh it was too good to be true...
Of course they had to desist with one day to go.

I guess the moral of the story is keep it small scale or daddy Nintendo is going to shut you down.

I better not leave my softcover Zelda guide out in the open, or they may swoop in and take that, too! Or my daughter’s drawing of Kirby!! 😱

@SilentHunter382 Thanks for the clarification. Well as long people can get their money back it's all good.

@TsukiDeity
No, since Phil cancelled the drive before it could end, none of us backers’ credit cards were charged yet.

Just poof! Game Over.

No way Nintendo was gonna let this fly when dude was about to walk away with Six figures using their IP. That said this could be a good marketing stunt for future opportunities for the artist.

As a backer, I'm disappointed. (Granted, making $300k in sales on their IP is not something companies generally permit...) I'd like to believe Nintendo would be interested in licensing it, but I know that is wishful thinking. Sigh. Nintendo doesn't make anything even remotely comparable to these guides.

At this pace it won't be long before Nintendo starts shutting down nintendolife and every other site that dares to report on any Nintendo related franchises.

Seriously I hope their next console is gonna be a huge failure, Nintendo is always at its best when they're strugling.

@The-Nate So what, unauthorized guides were around in the '90s, and as long as they didn't use exact art like the official title logos, Nintendo couldn't stop them. What changed?

@dBackLash Today, Nintendolife shutdown by Nintendo citing infringement of their IP by including the word Nintendo in the title of their website.

@KingMike Maybe they see Kickstarting them as allowing more money in than just selling them in book fairs

I actually hope tha they release them free of cost.
That is not me being selfish, but rather me hoping that work does not go to waste.

i know i'm the bad guy saying this but I think this is right. if I would be an IP owner I would do the exact same. doing something like hand drawn booklets for free is one thing or for a small price with a very small amount but this is a huge campain.

Normally I'd be on the side of the artist, but in this case what Nintendo did was perfectly fine. It's one thing doing out the kindness of your heart for free, it's another to start a line of merchandise using someone's work without giving them a percentage of it.

If this guy was doing it for fun I'd be fine with it, if he was taking commissions, that would be ok too. However I am pretty sure this guy being an artist himself was well aware of what was going to happen, and there's a high possibility it was for clout.

I don't believe he was that naive enough to start this campaign thinking Nintendo would be ok with it.

@KingMike That's what I was wondering. Maybe it's the logos? They're pretty similar to the official ones, and maybe that's all that need to be changed? He doesn't say the project is dead in the water, so it may not be the idea of an unauthorized guide that's causing the problem.

I had just ordered the triple pack as presents, now I'm sad. :c Stupid Nintendo, those guides are beautiful

Nintendo stopped making media like this on its own... so no one else can? Lame, Nintendo. I have some of his illustrated manuals, they're beautifully done

@Frailbay30 Yeah, this. But in will charge the people once again, ringing their bells and sharpening their pitchforks ready to storm the mansion of the evil dictatorship that is Nintendo in a vain effort to burn it to the ground.

Just kidding..... This is a shame, but pretty much everyone (well, the smart people anyway) knew this was likely to cause some trouble for the creator for this very reason. Hopefully he can salvage something from the ashes, it would be a shame if all of that beautiful work went to waste.

@sleepinglion Not that no one can. He didn't bother trying to license their characters for this project with an official pitch and was hoping to make some money out of it. Once the Kickstarter blew up it was only a matter of time before Nintendo (or pretty much anyone else if the example was different) stepped in.

There's no major company who would turn a blind eye to anyone making six figure sums from their IP.

Other fan guides didn't quite earn as much as this one (by some margin I think!). The creator acknowledged it was a risk, meaning he knew he was using their IP for such a large project without permission.

The concept seems good enough that he might have gotten somewhere with an official pitch but since he decided to try sneak under the radar it doesn't make for a good first impression.

@Xiovanni This was a commercial work (that became major). Was always going to be hard to argue in court without an army of very good lawyers.

The characters are the same so fair use is far less likely to apply. It's not like they were drawn in different scenarios/settings.

Nintendolife needs stop reporting on fan projects. You’re just throwing fuel on the fire, the equivalent of narking. Nintendo’s lawyers don’t even need to scour the Internet, they can just keep this site bookmarked.

@sleepinglion This isn't fan art. This is blatantly stealing Nintendo character designs for profit. There are no two ways about this.

They could've gone to Nintendo and ask them to allow them to use Nintendo IPs in their work.

@Fangleman32 nonsense.

@jsty3105 Those are some great points!

@sanderev A good point

@Vexx234 Approach a large company with an official licensing proposal with a slick pitch and there's always a chance. He would probably have needed to demonstrate how he'd handle distribution logistics and outline what the profit share might look like so there's some extra legwork involved.

He would need to 'work' the channels to get to the right person/place but it's the professional way to do things.

Nintendo has already said they wanted to expand their licensing and the past couple of years has seen more and more licensing arrangements done.

Bottom line, he didn't and, as an artist himself, he already knew the risks of going down the unauthorised route.

@sanderev but that yummy yummy click-driven ad revenue

@stipey the moment it went on Kickstarter it ceased to become a fan project

@KingMike What changed was the volume of sales and the amount of money being made. Those unauthorised guides didn't become unlicensed commercial works by becoming mass produced.

So gamefaqs etc will always be ok but not this project.

@jsty3105 yeah, I was just about to write something similar. There are probably hundreds of companies making officially licensed Nintendo merchandise. And Nintendo doesn't seem to be picky at all. I've seen everything from Kinder eggs to toys in cereal boxes to "buy three products from this candy brand and get a Mario figure for free".

Even the official strategy guides back in the day weren't made by Nintendo themselves.

@anoyonmus @niner fan art didn't become huge commercial projects like this one.

@Xiovanni Are there any examples of commercially mass produced unlicensed fan art making six figure sums from non original IP? I don't know but I highly doubt it.

All the other printed and mass produced game guides didn't go down the unlicensed route as far as I know. I could be horribly wrong and end up being embarrassed by my claim but I think it's unlikely.

@countzero Yeah! This guy had a good idea and a good starting product. Instead of going to Kickstarter he should have gone straight to Nintendo (or one of Nintendo's licensing partners).

We could have had a very different story.

I would hope that Nintendo would offer him to make it official, so they can profit and the fans can have this wonderful product. But I can imagine that sends an unwanted message out: "if you use our IP without permission and it's cool enough, we'll award you". That would encourage more people and companies to go even further with this.

More ***** caused by terrible IP laws. Under this system, money CAN ONLY be made by huge corporations that own old ideas.

That money was not coming out of Nintendo's pocket. That was new value being created.

IP law in its current form is terrible for almost all humans.

How dare Nintendo claim ownership of their property

@BreathingMiit I wonder. Are you in favour of comic character creators getting fair money from their creations? Cos it doesn't sound like you do.

Marvel movies are making big bucks at the moment but due to a lack of the right agreements, the creators aren't getting much.

So yeah, technically, big corporations are making money from old ideas.

@basswitch I guess it depends on how he approaches any discussions. Arguably he already got off on the wrong foot by showing disrespect (not asking permission) but I don't think it's unsalvageable.

Who could have seen this coming?

@jsty3105 Or alternatively get in touch with smaller developers/indies who'd be more likely to give permission.

I think one thing people miss out for stuff like these is that there's a lot of value from Nintendo's branding. That this Kickstarter would clearly be several times more popular with Zelda and Metroid than it would be with Oceanhorn or Axium Verge.

But by the same merit that's exactly why you should get permission from the copyright holder. You shouldn't be allowed to just make $300k drawing someone else's IP without permission, otherwise every artist would just be drawing whatever is most popular(and they already do).

@jsty3105 Tis was joke yes?

@Xiovanni Again, im fine if he was doing this as a commission thing, but he was trying to start a line of merchandise by using already owned IP's. The artwork is his original idea, the characters the artwork are based on however isn't.

I'm sure you'd do the same thing if you found someone was making millions based on your creation while you were getting nothing out of it.

All the people defending him, would do the same thing Nintendo did if they found their creations were being profited by others without their knowledge.

Heck, I'm positive the artist himself would do the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot.

@Fangleman32 Nintendo's boots must be made out of chocolate the way their fans love to licks them. Contrast this with the Horizon fiasco where Sony reversed course on a decision because the fans didn't like it. You never see that kind of engagement from Nintendo fans.

@Dr_Lugae yeah. And for that matter, small companies would be even less interested to allow someone else to make more money from their IP than they do 😬.

People appear to have forgotten the courtesy of asking for permission.

@Ambassador_Kong Sony broke a clear promise and got rightfully lambasted for it. Microsoft have an even stronger position for cross generation purchases now thanks to that misstep since there's little to differentiate the two systems. Convenience becomes a bigger purchasing factor.

This was a case of someone else commercially profiting off Nintendo's IP. There's no chance of anyone or any other company, including Sony, being cool with this.

@Frailbay30 Do you think Robot Chicken asks permission everytime they used Nintendo characters in one of their sketches? How about all the Sonic fan games? Or the Skyrim mods? How about all those "unofficial" game guides? Nope, Nintendo is bullying the "little people" because they can. Stop defending them, they have lawyers for that.

@Ambassador_Kong none of them are the same scenario as this.

There are exactly zero unofficial commercially mass produced game guides in existence.

Unless there are, in which case I'm happy to be embarrassed but I doubt it.

@jsty3105 No, they didn't. People misunderstood a promise that Sony made about "launch titles." Sony, decided it was better to listen to their users than spend a bunch of time questioning their reading comprehension.

Go to Amazon, look up "unofficial" game guides, and come back here and explain why this is substantively different. You can't because it isn't. Nintendo gets away with it because they are bullies, because their fans are pushovers, and no one wants to spend years in litigation over "fair use" with a company that will attempt to bankrupt them.

Yeah, this doesn't look like a good argument for fair use

#1 - Commercial use instead of reporting, educational, or parody. Very different than fan guides on gamefaqs
#2 - The character designs are Nintendo's IP. Looking at the covers they're extremely close. Also different than fan guides on gamefaqs (text only).
#3 - I don't know this, but if they're using in game-art, including maps, that's protected IP too. Again, you don't see that on fan guides.

@Ambassador_Kong The little person who is banking $300k using somebody else's creations?

For everybody talking about other unofficial guides, just because someone else has been breaking the law and other companies don't challenge it doesn't make this legal or right.

@Ambassador_Kong The unofficial game guides there are not legal (and the reviews for a few guides mention it). The big difference here is simple.

Those on Amazon maybe made less than a hundred.

This guy made a few hundred thousand.

Surely that difference is clear?

@jsty3105 There is an unofficial game guide on Amazon for Link's Awakening that uses the box cover game art as the front and back cover. Please do a bit of research before making assertions. A game guide is educational and absolutely covered by fair use. Using his own illustrations instead of "official" art would actually insulate him even more. Nintendo is just a bully.

Just educate yourself about their lawsuits in the 80s and 90s against video stores. They asserted all sorts of protections back then that were absolutely not legally entitled to.

@Ambassador_Kong I asked for commercially produced unofficial game guides and you show me independently published scam listings. Several reviews call them out on it. Facepalm.

Fair use doesn't cover works that benefit commercially. Well, not that it's an automatic fail but it certainly doesn't help.

Realistically speaking, these guides on Amazon are small fry compared to a Kickstarter. There'll always be illegal activities. No point trying to stamp them all out.

Didn't some establishments in the UK get around not having an alcohol licence by selling crisps at a marked up price and throwing in a free pint?
He could try that. Sell "I ❤ Nintendo" badges for the price he wants and throw in a free fan made Game guide.

@jsty3105

https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2010/02/what-every-writer-ought-to-know-about-fair-use-and-copyright/

Scenario 7 probably fits this situation best. Thing is the author was not using any official media and the fact that these were game guides puts them in the educational category. Making a profit is not the only test for copyright violation and that is something that seems to be lost on people. In the same way people seem to think that they can have ROMs if they aren't using them for profit. Profit or no profit are not "necessarily" measures of fair use

@Ambassador_Kong There is YouTuber by the name of Angry Joe (Not a fan). He wanted to mass produce a board game using characters from street fighter. He, unlike the guy in the article went through the proper channels and was granted permission by Capcom. The board game is his original idea, but the characters aren't which is why he went through proper channels to secure rights to use them.

I could care less if this was a side hustle, but the artist in the article wanted to start his own brand using someone's else IP.

@jsty3105 Are we talking about unlicensed guides in the '90s?
You could go to any game store (there was even several to choose from, and I think GameStop was even the least-known among them) and find those right next to the licensed ones.

I think it's that Nintendo is being predatory, knowing it's far easier to shut down a single person, that what were no doubt companies with some ability to respond to Nintendo's threats. (BradyGames and also Prima, who I understand only became licensed after Nintendo sued them for copying GoldenEye maps from Nintendo Power. Nintendo couldn't stop them from writing about GE but could stop them because maps printed in NP could be considered copyrightable images not in fair use.)

@Ambassador_Kong I actually
mentioned your point about profit in my comment.

Fair use is case by case and this guy doesn't have great grounds to claim fair use. ANY company, big or small, would stop him in his tracks for proceeding without a licensing agreement. In fact, the small company would stand to lose more.

The scam listing is one of the things the law is meant to protect against but Amazon's slack publishing policies mean anything is fair game

@countzero I believe at least the American "Nintendo Player's Guide" books were written by Nintendo Power staff, when it was written in-house at Nintendo of America.

I think it was after the reported GoldenEye lawsuit that Prima became a licensed publisher and I'll assume then Nintendo started to push duties over to them.

@jsty3105 I'm not exactly being a cheerleader for the guy. If it helps, I'm actually laughing at some of these comments here. It's easy to see Nintendo as a bully when you don't own anything and therefore think people should be free to do whatever.

@jsty3105

"Fair use is case by case and this guy doesn't have great grounds to claim fair use. ANY company, big or small, would stop him in his tracks for proceeding without a licensing agreement."

In fact, there are countless examples of Nintendo NOT doing this. Creating a guide for a game, that you intended to sell, did not used ro require rights from the game company. There are countless examples of books and magazines published back in the day that prove this, far too large to be unknown to Nintendo.

@Crono1973 Pretty sure they were illegal back then too, just that they weren't caught til later. Those that were legal got permission from the game companies to do so like GamePro, EGM, Game Informers, and Tips and Tricks. Some such as Brady Games guides are unofficial guides and didn't last long due to the same thing this Kickstarter got. Unofficial guides that got the boots use their own artworks and playthrough but still use in-game screenshots to make maps and such. Those that make their own maps using graphs or charts weren't taken down but those were confusing to follow as without using in-game screenshots most of the things present in the game are difficult to pinpoint so most customers just go for the official ones instead which result in those unofficial ones being taken off the market too due to low sales numbers.

One good thing about some of the unofficial ones were that they sometime contain glitch or secrets that the official ones can't give out due to partnering with the companies for example Brady Games guides for Pokemon Red and Blue posted a way on how to debug the game to get Mew but this trick is risky and could crash the games or erase game data so it was look down by Nintendo and Ninty encourage all of their official publishing partners not to post the trick on their official guides though most players who did the trick found out it's really not as risky to do and Mew play just fine as if you got it from a Pokemon event (which is the only official way to get Mew), Game Genie, or Game Shark.

@Ambassador_Kong just read the link. Erm I cannot believe you (or anyone else) would consider game guide information to be of "tremendous public importance" as per scenario 7 which you say fits this best

@Specter_of-the_OLED Any evidence that unofficial guide writers were sued?

I know we don't know for sure if it was Nintendo who did this yet or not (Konami can be pretty awful at times too), but imagine taking Nintendo's side on this. And this is coming from someone with a massive Nintendo bias.

@jsty3105 It is very important. After all, knowing where the next item is located in a Zelda game is crucial to getting a medical degree.

@EmmatheBest I want you to create a character, I'll then "borrow" said character, go on to make bank from it while you get to sit , watch and get nothing.

After all it's it's fair use and therefore I wouldn't need your permission.

@Crono1973 Probably not your intent but this effectively argues that Nintendo and other IP rights holders need to take a more active stance in enforcing copyrights with legal action to prevent future occurrences.

I don't want this either but arguing that others didn't get sued/dealt with for wrongdoing isn't a great argument.

@Arawn93 Nah this doesnt make sense. Nintendo is just picking on a little guy since they know its hard for him to fight back. Major corporations published unlicensed unofficial guides for 40 years. To this day there are major corporations printing magazines and guides with Nintendo’s IP, and Nintendo cant do anything about it. But when a single individual tries to do something, Nintendo knows they can scare them off, because even if Nintendo loses in court, they know the individuals project will be shut down, because the legal defense will be so expensive.

Not surprised to see it pulled. I suppose Disney wouldn't be cool with someone making money off of their own illustrations of Mickey Mouse. Still, can't we just let this stuff go? It's not like if I buy this Zelda guide, it's going to cause me to not buy an official Zelda artwork book at the same time.

@duffmmann What about comic book creators who haven't made much money off their creations?

@jsty3105 Nintendo Force Magazine has over 4000 subscribers plus an online shop. Safe to say they are probably pulling in over 10k a month. This isnt something new or just a little secret in the dark part of the internet. Major corporations have been printing unlicensed guides for over 40 years. Nintendo didnt go after them, they went after an individual with no legal team. $300k would easily be eaten up in years of court appeals by Nintendo, and Nintendo knows this. Fair Use is a legal defense, meaning you have to defend it in court. The Hand Drawn guide guy would almost 100% win a court case, because guides would definitely fall under fair use, and because theres 40 years of legal precedent, which judges always look at when deciding these things. But financially the dude would lose.

That is a major problem the legal system is grappling with. The victor of the court case is the loser in the real world.

@Tim_Vreeland frankly, the independently published scam game guides on Amazon illegally using Nintendo IP for profit are easier and smaller targets. This guy made over $300k

@jsty3105 I'm personally fine with all of them existing. But at the same time, I also can't say that Nintendo is in the wrong to pull any of them.

Nintendo is already on record as being more open regarding licensing. He really should have asked for permission as I feel there's a win-win scenario here:

"To be more precise, we will actively expand our character licensing business, including proactively finding appropriate partners. In fact, we have been actively selling character merchandise for about a year in the U.S.

Also, we will be flexible about forming licensing relationships in areas we did not license in the past, such as digital fields, provided we are not in direct competition and we can form win-win relationships."

@duffmmann oh I was referring to comic character creators who haven't seen much of (or in some cases, any) the Marvel movie money

@jsty3105 I mean that ***** sucks, though I'm not entirely sure what it has to do with Nintendo in this situation. Ultimately whoever owns the IP is who gets to give these kinds of things clearance or not. And I get that. Were it my IP, I'd be completely OK with these kinds of things existing, but I'm also not thinking huge picture here either, I can see how even when the fans have the best of intentions that the IP holder still thinks that such a release could be somewhat "damaging" to the brand in one way or another, and as such I can see how and why they might pull such things.

@jsty3105 $300k is small potatoes. Its not enough to go against Nintendos lawyers and Nintendo knows this. The guides on Amazon are not selling enough for Nintendo to pay someone to write a cease and desist. If one does sell enough, Nintendo will go after them. Nintendo just wont go after anyone that can defend themselves. Thats the point. That is the exact definition of a bully.

@Tim_Vreeland Lol. Then all the police are bullies (probably a separate discussion). All those guides (that are being sold for profit without a licensing agreement) are breaking the law. Several reviewers of those guides even point that out and highlight the shoddy quality of the content that gets overlooked by the initial purchaser because the cover 'looks' official and uses Nintendo artwork

@duffmmann Actually you wouldn't. It's easy to say things when you don't have an IP , it's another once you become a owner and see it from a new perspective.

Your team of lawyers would give you a full run down of IP laws and why you shouldn't just let people do whatever they choose with your IP.

The keyboard champions here think by reading small passages in the law and watching YouTube videos, they are on the same level as a real lawyer and therefore their opinions should be taken as facts.

@GoshJosh The crux of the matter is that the keyboard champions haven't created anything of their own.

That's not a bad thing considering not everyone is up for creating stuff but if they did then they might have a different perspective.

@Tim_Vreeland "The Hand Drawn guide guy would almost 100% win a court case, because guides would definitely fall under fair use, and because theres 40 years of legal precedent, which judges always look at when deciding these things. But financially the dude would lose."

LOL - He personally acknowledged it was a risk so he knew it wouldn't definitely fall under fair use.

Anyway - you continue arguing you as some of the arguments are tenuous.

I've spent a lot of time studying IP law and fair use (even though I don't do law) because I create things so they're good to know. I've also done branding work and on the other side of the coin, corporations CAN'T go around using other people's creative work willy nilly without proper licensing arrangements unless the creative work was released under an Attribution creative commons license.

All this talk about a big corporation beating on a little guy are ludicrous. Copyright and IP law works BOTH ways. So companies can't use what YOU create for their own commercial activities without YOUR express permission.

@duffmmann If it was your IP I imagine you'd think differently if you were earning peanuts while your personal creations were earning hundreds of millions of dollars/pounds for someone else (and you get nothing). That's not the case in this particular case with Nintendo but in this instance we're talking about comic book characters.

@GoshJosh You're absolutely right, and I support your decision. People in Japan do it all the time, in the form of doujin. We have every right to criticize which ever publisher for making decisions that hurt individuals that aren't affecting their income in any way.

@duffmmann Trust me mate, You would not be as ok if you created a happy go luck rabbit to appeal to children and only earned 10k a month while chuck down the street is using your character and making 100k by having him appear in adult movies.

@jsty3105 I am arguing that I don't think there is anything illegal about writing a game guide without Nintendo's permission.

@Crono1973 You are correct. The game guide itself is not the problem. The text in them have never been the problem. Heck, I've written a couple in the past.

The visuals are the problem. Specifically, the use of Nintendo's characters as the primarily selling point. Would his game guides sold as well without that artwork? No.

@EmmatheBest Why can't these individuals be creative enough to create something original? Why must they using an existing IP to make sales?

The dude could have just as easily pitched his idea to Nintendo. He just wanted to avoid paying a license fee. He's not hurting at all.

@Bratwurst35 - Has Nintendo ever done something like publishing strategy games for old games in the past? Like, REALLY old games? No? Yeah, there's no reason for Nintendo to have taken up the idea, due to the fact that that's just not a product that would have THAT big of a financial gain for them, and you know it. They haven't made fluff pieces for very specific niche gamers in ages. The closest you could probably argue would be Labo, and that was a direct tie-in to Switch hardware, and of course, it was made of cardboard, so I'm sure it made...SOME money in the end.

But people have offered to do incredible things with Nintendo over the years, with things like trying to get a new F-Zero game out there, and been denied, so do you REALLY think they would have entertained this niche AF product coming from literally just one really dedicated fan? Wake up. That's not how Nintendo works, and you know they would have turned him down instantly, so why are you so shocked he went the Kickstarter route instead?

@EmmatheBest Probably, probably not. At the end of the day we don't know what Nintendo would have done. Point is, Nintendo is well within their right to shut down ideas. We can hate it, but it's their characters.

The guy didn't even try to ask Nintendo or else he would have mentioned it. Even if Nintendo did say no, he made it worse for himself by going ahead anyways, well aware enough of the risks involved.

If he was that naive, then he doesn't need to start a business doing anything.

@EmmatheBest They are on record about wanting to expand their licensing including being "flexible about forming licensing relationships in areas we did not license in the past, such as digital fields, provided we are not in direct competition and we can form win-win relationships" so it's completely false to say they would have turned him down instantly.

He went kickstarter because he simply didn't want to go through the work of producing an official pitch (which to be fair, would be a ton of work) and finding out how to get in touch properly because Nintendo won't accept cold calls.

@jsty3105 > I wonder. Are you in favour of comic character creators getting fair money from their creations? Cos it doesn't sound like you do.

Yes I am. But I think you and I would disagree on our definition of "fair".

Copyright should last twenty years or so. That's enough time to make a nice big wodge of money from something popular. After that, it's open slather.

The owners of the Batman franchise don't deserve buckets of money just for owning Batman. They didn't come up with Batman. They didn't finance anyone to come up with Batman. They probably weren't alive when Batman was created. So why do we have to pay them money if we want to sell pictures of Batman? What did they do to earn that?

If they want money from Batman, they can sell pictures of Batman like everyone else, and may the best Batman win.

If they want money for creating a character, then they can damn well earn that money by creating characters! Maybe then we'd have something better to watch than increasingly dull Batman movies.

O
=+=
/\
Batman.

@BreathingMiit Doesn't matter if they deserve it or not. They purchased the rights to own Batman and therefore you have to pay them to use Batman. Regardless of anything earned.

If you created a superhero tomorrow and sold all rights to Disney, then Disney is entitled to any and all profit. Even you the creator, would have to pay a fee to use your own creation because you don't own him anymore.

@BreathingMiit I'm talking about the creators specifically, not the corporations https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/marvel-and-dcs-shut-up-money-comic-creators-go-public-over-pay-1234983043/

@GoshJosh Like I said, I'm not thinking bigger picture, but if I do I can easily see how my personal stance would align more with what Nintendo does do in these situations.

To your last point, if you sell the rights of your IP to Disney, then Disney becomes the owner of the IP and as I said, they would get final say on such matters.

@jsty3105 Like I said, I'm not thinking bigger picture, but if I do I can easily see how my personal stance would align more with what Nintendo does do in these situations.

@Bratwurst35 lol that isn't even close to the situation happening here. You think Nintendo isn't making millions off of Zelda?!?! This small town indie dood, is fine in my book to make a few thousand while I continue to net millions.

But again, as I've said, I'm not thinking bigger picture, but if I do I can easily see how my personal stance would align more with what Nintendo does do in these situations than my personal preference.

@Tim_Vreeland “Little Guy” my ass. He was about to walk away with over 300k without even talking to Nintendo

This is obviously different then a small time artist selling guides at Artist Alley and might barely make over $100

@Tim_Vreeland "Nintendo Force Magazine has over 4000 subscribers plus an online shop. Safe to say they are probably pulling in over 10k a month. This isnt something new or just a little secret in the dark part of the internet. Major corporations have been printing unlicensed guides for over 40 years. Nintendo didnt go after them, they went after an individual with no legal team"

Nintendo Force ACTIVELY worked WITH Nintendo on it's creation (in fact, one of the original crew now works for Nintendo) so your claim is a bit of an own goal.

The people who set it up were industry veterans so doing Nintendo Force without permission/involvement from Nintendo could be seen as bad form - which is a problem when magazine work often relies on keeping good relationships with the companies providing you with content.

I've worked for a magazine before dealing with music labels - you WANT to keep relationships positive.

Strange that they would go after this, of all things. Hopefully we'll see them publish these guides on their website for free or something, though.

@Gauchorino it’s not that strange. He was making over 300k on KS a well known platform which would more likely blip on Nintendo’s radar as opposed to barely making $100 at a local Artist Alley. The dude knew he wasn’t being subtle about it and admitted there was risk.

@Tim_Vreeland Id like to add that Nintendo Force was asked to change their name to NF magazine by Nintendo to which they complied. Not only that, Nintendo has actively worked with them on occasions sending free copies of games.

Not quite the rebel company sticking it to Nintendo!

@Vexx234 Hah! Good addition! Which makes his example not just an own goal but a pretty spectacular own goal.

@Bratwurst35 I know what the rules are, and the rules suck. Given that the rules are made by humans for humans, and the rules are bad for humans, humans should change the rules.

But they don't and that sucks too.

What makes this entire thread funny? The artist himself and his co-worker have both defended Nintendo's stance on the matter!

Oh this is sweet!

Maybe one of these days, people will finally realize that you can't profit off of some else's intellectual property without the right holder's permission.

@GoshJosh Lol! That's quite funny really considering how many here were angry about the whole thing

@Mountain_Man I don't hold up much hope. Which actually makes me nervy about developing my own written fiction characters further (have had several in the back burner)

Why is it when it reaching critical mass that these projects get a Cease Order? Is Nintendo getting afraid that someone will do a better job then they would. I would say YES to that and to squash it before it happens is their plans.

If these were parodies, I suppose this could be feasibly challenged, but when it otherwise comes to profiting from using characters from copywritten and trademarked intellectual properties without rights holders' permission this outcome is an almost certainty.

@Mountain_Man Maybe if the rules weren't so ***** stupid then people would have more respect for them.

I was really excited to get the 4 book set, but alas. I'm glad I didn't sell my physical softcover copy of the Zelda guide, as it might be the only physical version for awhile.

@BreathingMiit the rules work BOTH ways. Without the rules, corporations would happily use content without licensing it from the person who created it.

In my previous line of work, I've had to stop internal people sometimes from using other people's work internally and also work out what the feasible alternatives were

@SwitchForce Nintendo afraid of this? That's a ludicrous suggestion.

@jsty3105 I think so....a startup can scare a big giant with fan art is scary....

@SwitchForce Saying that Nintendo is scared kinda sounds like (not necessarily saying this to you personally) like one of those scenes where one fella is trying to get a reaction out of another fella to do something silly - "What are you? Chicken?".

This article is old - from 2006 - but an interesting precedent in the selling of unofficial guides. It's basically about a guy who was making World of Warcraft guides and selling them on Ebay. Blizzard sent heaps of takedown notices to Ebay. The guide maker counter-sued Blizzard claiming he wasn't violating copyright.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/warcraft-maker-sued-for-blocking-sales-of-unofficial-guide/
A snippet: "In effect, if the video game industry's actions are upheld, 'then selling a how-to book about Microsoft Word would infringe Microsoft's copyright, especially if the book contained one or more screenshots of Word's user interface,'"
"The case points to a broader problem, Levy said: large companies that send takedown notices with abandon to eBay and jeopardize the prosperity of smaller sellers."

So I've been reading through a portion of these comments on this discussion, and I still come away with one big question: if it's either illegal or undesired by companies for these unofficial guides to exist, why have they not only existed in great quantities over the last few decades, but are sold openly? As it was pointed out by some earlier, every game shop in the past had stacks of guides for sale and every unofficial video game magazine traded in copyrighted intellectual property. Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition has had Mario or some other Nintendo character on the cover since 2008.

Moving beyond just video game guides being sold online, there are unofficial guides for almost every form of media out there that are sold online and in bookshops. I work in a library and we have heaps of books from huge publishers that are publishing unofficial guides to TV shows, video games, and software. They all contain copyrighted material by way of screenshots. Like the above quote pointed out, if it was illegal, then wouldn't a guide on Microsoft Word also be illegal?

Maybe it really all just boils down to which companies decide to pursue certain authors/publishers. Maybe it's like some have said that it's all a copyright violation, but Microsoft decides not to shut down the "For Dummies" series on all of its Microsoft guides. ¯(ツ)/¯

How about a kickstarter to fund the artist's legal costs for challenging Nintendo's cease and desist in court?
(doesn't look like the artist would be interested, though)

@Pascalkw Ha! Whatever he would raise would be pocket change compared to Nintendo's legal team. It would be a battle lost before it even begun.

Huh, would have thought this was was 'fair usage' case given there's all manner of unofficial guides and such out there. Maybe those other guides have the blessing of the company though?

@Pascalkw That would be a poor choice if the artist wanted to take the opportunity to try to work with Nintendo on licensing these guides

@Ogbert No they don't have the blessing. You've brought up a point though that actually supports stricter enforcement that nobody really wants - the excuse that others did it without trouble, why did this one get in trouble?

@Nitwit13 It's a fine line I think. Ultimately, I think this product grew too big for Nintendo to ignore (other unofficial guides were wayyyyy less popular). There's a lot of ifs around this since we readers only have part of the story.

My own take on it is that something this big should be worked on in collaboration with the company.

Imagine if Nintendo Force magazine didn't work with Nintendo on it's creation. It would be short lived and the people working on it might find it harder to get access to Nintendo for interviews etc. I've worked for a music magazine in a past and it was critical to maintain relationships with the music labels even if there were disagreements around reviews etc.

@jsty3105 some may well have the blessing of their studio and/or publisher for the game they're making a guide of. I don't think we can make the blanket statement that no unofficial guide has any forms of thumbs up.

You are right though on the other cases of unofficial guides that are out there, making this something they could argue if they wanted too.

Based on that update, tweet and backer update... looks like sites like NintendoLife got called out. I thought it was a little odd to cease and desist an unofficial guide and that it was being blamed on Nintendo when nothing in the tweet mentioned as much... I think it is just a case that the company in question wants to review the art and make sure it is of a specific standard or has copyright concerns and wants to work out the legal terms.

So alls well that ends well. Hope this gets worked out and reminds everyone in this comment section to hold onto their pants before flying off the handle.

@Wexter Netizens LOVE flying off their handles where Nintendo is concerned though! .... The ROMuniverse case was the best recent example. Plenty here and elsewhere were raging against Nintendo. Some changed their tune after learning the key facts that many outlets didn't include in their article but others were more interested in continuing to rage.

@jsty3105 Legally you dont have to work with the company at all. And legally speaking you cant just wait 40 years until you pick on project you think its “getting too big”. You are clearly not familiar with how the law works in this area. Precedent is a huge part of how rights work in these cases. You cant just cherry pick your claims, you have to show a history of claiming your rights.

Thats aside from the fact that you keep putting up the straw man of “this one is big and some others have been small” yeah some others, but not even close to all others. This is by no means the biggest sale of an unofficial Nintendo guide. Its not even close. Major publishers have released these things for decades.

As I type this im at my bookshelf holding an unofficial Nintendo guide from 1990 with pictures of Nintendo owned characters. This was published by Prima Games and was on retail shelves across the world at $10 a pop. You dont think it sold 30k copies? Or the hundreds of other unofficial guides this company put out, or other companies like Brady Games. Were you around in the 90s when there was like 50 different gaming magazines all using Nintendo characters?

Like I said before this is not some little thing hidden in the corner of the internet. This was big business for years, but you gonna try to straw man some randoms on Amazon.

@Vexx234 I didn't say Nintendo Force was a rebel company sticking it to Nintendo. I said they were and unofficial magazine. Sure they work with Nintendo. Thats how you get stories and interviews. But Nintendo doesn't license the magazine or have a legal agreement with them. Nintendo Force uses Nintendo art on their covers all the time.

@jsty3105 Also curious as to the source of your comment that Nintendo worked with Nintendo Force to create the magazine. I looked at a bunch of stuff and couldn't find anything to corroborate that. All the origin articles and sources from NF themselves, just say that they were a bunch of writers from different websites that came together to make a magazine because they were sad that Nintendo Power was ending. Apparently the first issue was the best selling magazine ever on MagCloud. Went back and google searched interviews and articles about the magazines launch, and NF staff just say stuff about being fans of Nintendo Power. Nothing about them sitting down with Nintendo to create a magazine.

Also I'm trying to understand your comment that "someone who worked for Nintendo Force, went on to work for Nintendo". What are you trying to say here... it doesn't make any sense in the context of anything discussed here so far. Are you trying to infer some deep hand in hand partnership because an employee went to work somewhere he was a fan of? I mean Xbox employees go to Nintendo and Playstation all the time and vise versa. It literally has nothing to do with anything at all. You know how many Google employees have gone to work for Apple? Rival companies have employees going in between them, what more for a fan magazines employees?

Also I'm a subscriber to Nintendo Force Magazine. I have their most recent issue in front of me. Inside the magazine they still refer to themselves as "Nintendo Force". Their website is Nintendo Force. Their Twitter is Nintendo Force. I'm inclined to believe NF is just an abbreviation.

If Nintendo was helping in the creation of this magazine and using the word "Nintendo" was an issue, then why would the first issue have "Nintendo Force" on the cover? Also to be noted the "NF" logo abbreviation was also present on the first issue. So they haven't really changed anything, that was always their logo, and at times they printed "Nintendo Force" in and on the magazine.

@Tim_Vreeland NF did an AMA on Reddit some seven years ago - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/20egah/im_lucas_m_thomas_the_leader_of_the_nintendo/cg2fbpu/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

"Nintendo has been incredibly supportive, helping us out with art assets, review codes for games and invitations to press events as with any of the other Nintendo-focused journalistic outlets out there. And why not? Our team is made up of the people who cover the company for those other outlets too, from GoNintendo to Nintendo World Report to Destructoid and many, many more. They were familiar with all of us as individuals before – now, we've simply come together to join forces and offer our coverage of Nintendo's games in a different format.

I think it's important to point out, too, that the people who work directly at Nintendo and Nintendo's PR were just as bummed when Nintendo Power was unplugged – maybe even moreso. These are individuals that love the Big N so much that they rearranged their lives and moved to Seattle (or elsewhere) to be able to work directly for the company. They're huge fans! And we've heard from many of them, on a personal level, that they're happy that coverage of the company is continuing in magazine form. "

With my comment, yeah, I was trying to infer some deep hand in hand partnership because an employee went to work somewhere he was a fan of. Was probably a reaching comment tbh

@jsty3105 GOT EM!

I had gone in on all four books, already own the soft cover of Zelda and it’s lovely. I wish them well and will back them again if I get the chance. Not sure how an unofficial guide gets taken down - you used to get them in shops and with magazines free. Dunno how this is any different. I own a ton of unofficial guides

@jsty3105 So they didnt help create the magazine? They just sent them stuff to use in the magazine. Readers send in fan art and it gets published. Readers are supportive. Art submissions arent creating the magazine. Game companies send YouTubers review copies of games. The game publishers didnt create the Youtube channel. This is how the media works in general.

I think it’s important to note the irony of all this in the comments section of an unofficial Nintendo based media website where they constantly use Nintendo art as the cover photo for a story, and where the owner of the site has photos of himself with Nintendo top brass. That doesnt mean this is an approved or licensed Nintendo product. They even criticize Nintendo. They make enough money here to pay a full staff of workers. Im willing to bet Nintendo Life makes more than $300k a year.

But no one can legally take down NintendoLife, because its fair use.

Hand Drawn dude isnt even using Nintendos art. Hes using his own art if Nintendo characters.

@Tim_Vreeland He is using his own art but with characters that he doesn't own in an attempt to start his own line of merch.

Kind of weird. How does all of the walk-throughs on websites not fare the same fate? Is it the art work?

@Bratwurst35 yep under fair use in a guide. A practice that has legal precedent for decades. Not something new or underground. Business as usual for major publishers.

Go look up thousands of cases where ip rights are involved in conjunction with precedence. The law is very clear.

Ill remind you, you are on a for profit site that uses Nintendo art to make money.

@Arawn93 High profile, sure, but was it affecting sales or the image of any of their properties?

Ha! Well you know what they say when you assume.

“I’ve pulled the plug on this for exactly the reason you think”

“Just to clarify it’s not the reason you were thinking.”

@BreathingMiit "Maybe if the rules weren't so ***** stupid then people would have more respect for them."

Without those stupid ***** rules, there would be nothing to stop Nintendo from stealing the work of others to use in their own products. Imagine a Stardew Valley remake but set in the Super Mario universe. Or a note-for-note remake of Ben Prunty's Into the Breech soundtrack in the next Starfox. I'm sure in those scenarios you would love the law to step in and help the little guy, wouldn't you? Well, those same laws also protect the big guys.

The actual art is entirely your own to use even if it's a tribute to existing designs. If it's the naming of the titles or whatever that's catching you out, however, which Nintendo has of course Trademarked, then I'd just change them and sell the books again. Based on what I know about copyright and Trademark law, Nintendo does not own the copyright to original artistic creations like paintings and so on that use literally zero of their own art and are not basically exact copies of their own designs, even if said artistic creations are derivative of Nintendo's IP. I mean, you can surely go out and scribble and image of Mario in crayon and sell it all you want, so long as you don't label it something Nintendo has Trademarked, like Super Mario Bros., and don't use any official art assets or basically exact lookalike art in your own art. Don't let Nintendo [or the random lawyer, who I'm supposed to believe isn't acting on behalf of Nintendo or whatever] bully you for the wrong reasons here and take money it doesn't actually have the right to take. If it were me and what is happening is what I think it happening, I would challenge this based on what you're drawn (after removing the Trademarked names from the covers of the guide books, if that's what's causing the issue).

@Mountain_Man Eh, there is literally no reason Nintendo couldn't go make a version of "Stardew Valley" right now but using its own characters and a different name for the game. And it could even make it look and play and sound almost identical, within reason, so long as it didn't actually using any of the copyrighted and Trademarked material of the original creator and its own versions of the designs and names weren't so close as to basically be indistinguishable from the originals and thereby up for a challenge in relation to copyright and Trademarks and the like. As far as I'm aware.

@impurekind "...it could even make it look and play and sound almost identical, within reason..."

It's the "within reason" caveat that'll get ya. Fair use laws do allow people to use copyrighted work "within reason", and Nintendo obviously does not feel that these books whose sole purpose is to capitalize on Nintendo's intellectual property fall within the exceptions allowed for by fair use.

Dang, now he's got my hopes up that a licensing agreement may be reached after all!

Wow, I can't believe people are still upset with Nintendo despite a commenter already pointing out that the artist and his friend having taking Nintendo's side on the issue and agree with their stance. They are fine with it and ya'll still angry with Nintendo.

Some people are hopeless haha.

@Mountain_Man A 20 year copyright limit like I'm proposing wouldn't harm any of those situations.

@impurekind Except we have no idea if the company in question is Nintendo, Koei or Konami as there is also a guide for Contra and Ninja Gaiden. So until we have all the facts it be best to go take a chill as it could be something as simple as the creator needing to put a legal disclaimer in the book or even put unofficial in a prominent spot.

@BreathingMiit The reason they do not do that is because of examples like A Song of Ice and Fire. George R.R. Martin is still writing the last two books in the series and under your proposed copyright law he would had lost the rights to his books in the middle of writing the final books. That means anyone who wants some attention could take A Song of Ice and Fire and claim their work is the authentic ending and syphon off Martin's work both present and future. That and if a company wanted to make movies off his works instead of working out a deal with him they'd just wait 20 years then flood the market with cheaply made films without compensating the original rights holder. Under your system, it would only benefit companies and not the original authors at all.

That scenario is not uncommon either as works like One Piece have been in existence for longer than twenty years with Oda still happily writing his series. That is why copyright law was originally supposed to last the life of the author so they can benefit from their work and continue working on it even later in life. Like how Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings as he first published the Hobbit in the 1930s (1937) then published Fellowship in the 1950s (1953). So in your proposed copyright scenario, Tolkein would have lost the rights to Middle Earth before he even published Two Towers.

@Wexter Fine by me. You know how people are interested to see how GRRM finishes his opus having already seen how the TV series turned out? In the same way, people would be interested to see how GRRM finishes it even with all the fan fiction that would exist under my rules.

If those authors had wanted to finish their stories during the copyright period, IMO 20 years is enough time to ***** or get off the pot. Maybe under my rules they might have.

@BreathingMiit Obviously fine by you as a consumer and not as a writer or content creator.

@BreathingMiit So J.R.R. Tolkien who wrote probably one of the most influential trilogies of books and basically singlehandedly invented the modern-day high-fantasy genre and the foundation of modern-day fantasy should have written his trilogy faster to fit within an arbitrary deadline... Or Eiichiro Oda who has been publishing chapters of his groundbreaking manga weekly since 1997 and is widely considered the highest-selling and most popular manga of all time should have just... finished One Piece faster...

Dude you have to be a troll as no copyright lawyer or even fiction writer of any worth would agree with that non-sense. I have a challenge for you I want you to write a trilogy of books about as good if not better than Lord of the Rings and I want it done within 4 years. And let me pull my complete copy of LoTR off the shelf here... it has to be at minimum 1100 pages at 8pt font, oh and before I forget single-spaced, please.

You have fun with that. If you get that done and the book has success at the same scale as LoTR then I will take your opinion seriously as that level of trolling is art. Or maybe after realizing creating art is far more difficult than you think your opinion could change.

@jsty3105 They just do not want to admit his take is bad when someone calls them out on it. The idea of writers should just write faster is the key giveaway they have no real response as I doubt they have ever written a novel of any kind.

@Wexter 🙂 anyone who says that doesn't understand writing at all. It takes a long time to do good writing.

@Mountain_Man Well, for the most part, I would say they actually do. I can, for example, make a platform game that plays basically identically to say Super Mario Bros. (so long as the source code is not directly copied), with functionally similar kinds of blocks and enemies and power-ups and so on, and so long as I don't use direct Nintendo assets (be that sprites, background tiles, music or sound fx, or official character designs and poster art and so on), I could release my own "Great Gianna Sisters" for example (see Google/Wiki for more on that)--and Nintendo ultimately couldn't do anything legitimately legal to stop that.

I think the exact same thing is true of this guy's guide books, so long as he maybe changes the names, which are indeed Trademarked, or puts something along the lines of UNNOFICIAL blatantly on the cover (like UNNOFICIAL Metroid Guide--which, to be fair, he already has done).

I'm not 100% sure on how close fan art can get to the original source in terms of the actual design elements, but I expect 99% of the guy's art here is likely totally safe (the Link he drew is not actually Nintendo's Link art for example but rather a fan interpretation of it), and maybe only a couple of bits could do with a small change if totally necessary, like say the cover art of Samus on one of the guides for example. Although, I honestly think even that might be safe if push comes to shove and he actually bothered to fight his case.

I think whichever company this is--and I still put my money on it being Nintendo--they are pushing their luck in terms of how much of the law is actually truly on their side when it comes to fan interpretations and creations like this imo.

@Wexter No need to get cross, you've got it all your way. Current mickey mouse copyright law (Google it) is under no threat from people like me. Save your ammunition for fights you can't win by just ignoring them.

@impurekind The Great Giana Sisters for the Commodore 64 is a good case study here. It was essentially a clone of Super Mario Bros. using original artwork and was pulled from the market by the publisher after Nintendo "suggested" that it could lead to legal action due to obvious copyright infringement. Apparently the publisher agreed.

@Mountain_Man The developer/publisher of Great Gianna Sisters chickened out because it was scared of the big bad, which in no way proves Nintendo was even remotely in the right, and, as it turns out, Nintendo actually didn't have a legal leg to stand on: Later cases proved without a doubt that the Great Gianna Sisters would have won any legal battle if it had actually went to court (because you [mostly] cannot copyright game ideas or mechanics*). But, just like the examples above, everyone gets scared simply because some legal person basically threatens them, and they often pre-emptively shut themselves down because they're worried about any potential legal action, and then they never really get to find out the truth of the matter.

Me . . . I'd challenge this lawyer (whichever company they're from), just as I did when Warner Bros. took legal action against me for my company name, iNCEPTIONAL (similar to the movie name INCEPTION)--and I won: https://www.scotsman.com/news/games-firm-boss-legal-battle-bullying-warner-bros-over-business-name-1603183

*https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2016/06/texas_court_ruling_states_that_game_mechanics_cant_be_protected_by_copyright (The Great Gianna Sisters passed this test on every single front yet the company that made it lost all potential sales and profit on their creation and Nintendo got exactly what it wanted because the developers/publishers involved with The Great Gianna Sisters were too chicken to actually stand up for their own rights under the law)

@impurekind Yeah, they "chickened out" because they couldn't deny that their game was a blatant ripoff of Super Mario Bros.! It wasn't just game mechanics but the level design and artwork that at a glance could be easily mistaken for Nintendo's own game.

@Mountain_Man Not a single asset was stolen from Nintendo and every single part of their game was protected under the law just as Nintendo's creation was.

The Great Gianna Sisters developer and publisher lost out simply because they were too ignorant and chicken to actually stand up for their own rights under the law, which they and we are all entitled to just as much as Nintendo is. But so long as people like you keep fighting in Nintendo's corner and ultimately the corner of all the other mega corporations out there no matter what . . .

This game might seem very similar to Super Mario Bros. in your eyes, but the law doesn't actually look through your eyes (thankfully): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8teXm6723-g

These days it shouldn't even be debatable that Nintendo was in the wrong regarding The Great Gianna Sisters.

@impurekind You're right that Nintendo's artwork wasn't directly stolen, but the art style and level design are so strikingly similar that at a glance, the two games are almost indistinguishable. This was not a coincidence. You accuse the publisher of being "too ignorant and chicken" to fight it, but, no, they knew exactly what they did, they knew they could not credibly deny ripping off Nintendo's design, and they knew Nintendo was going to crush them in court for blatantly copying their work. Pulling their game from distribution was the smart thing to do in this case.

Now the reason you won your case despite your company having a strikingly similar name to a popular movie is because nobody is going to mistake a video game company for a movie. There's actually precedent here. A blanket trademark can not be given to a common word or phrase. It's why Apple Records was not able to stop Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs from naming their computer company Apple. If, on the other hand, you made your own movie, or even a television show, and called it "Inceptional", then Warner Bros. would win the case easily because a good argument could be made that consumers would find the similar names confusing.

@BreathingMiit Dude copyright law is a mess everyone knows that. It is just what you are suggesting underestimates the amount of work that actually goes into writing which is why I challenged you to put your money where your mouth was. Can you write something the size and quality as Lord of the Rings in four years? You can't! No one can! Not even Tolkein could! it took Tolkein over a decade!

How I would structure copyright law is simple it is the lifespan of the author plus twenty years. So the author has time to profit off their work and twenty extra years so their children or spouse can still benefit from that work for a limited time. It was actually originally structured like this until lobbying happened. But, just 20 years is WAY, WAY too short. That is basically a sneeze when it comes to reaping the benefits of your work as it can take years before your work gains momentum or if a newer work of yours attracts people's attention to your older work. It also means after 20 years corporations can just cut you out from adaptations or even publication of your work and not even compensate you for it despite you creating the work.

Yes, corporations can take the protection of their work too far. But, that is their right as the copyright holder. Same way if you wrote a book you have the right to decide what studio adapts it or even a say in who represents your characters in that adaptation. It also protects your work from being pirated by corporations who want to make a buck off your hard work. Copyright is meant to protect both your interests and the corporation's interests equally. Does it always work that way? No. But, is it better than a free for all system like the one you propose which will only harm the creator and not the corporation? YES. I'd rather have my interests in my work protected so that way I have a say in how my work is treated and distributed, even if it means fan works are cancelled. Is that selfish? Sure it is! But, it also means that I will be the one in control of my intellectual property as I'm the one that put in the blood, sweat and caffeine-induced sleepless nights to create it in the first place.

@Mountain_Man You are ignorant of the law here: Not only are none of the gameplay mechanics Nintendo's to exclusively copyright or patent in this case, but, again, there is zero art, audio or code that is a direct copy of Nintendo's or even close enough looking in The Great Gianna Sisters for Nintendo to claim copyright on. Looking "strikingly similar" in your opinion means nothing here, and I can just as easily say it looks and sounds very little like Super Mario Bros. when you look beyond the similar gameplay design and mechanics. The developer/publisher would have absolutely obliterated Nintendo in court if they'd actually bothered to challenge it on this.

And I won ultimately because Warner Bros. was just abusing its position and didn't have a leg to stand on when all was said and done, but it was hoping I'd be too ignorant and chicken to actually stand up to it--see the common link I'm getting at here?

@impurekind Again, the fact that The Great Giana Sisters uses original artwork is irrelevant when that artwork is a virtual carbon copy of Super Mario Bros. to the point that the two games can easily be mistaken for each other (for that matter, some of the levels in The Great Giana Sisters are exact duplicates of Super Mario Bros. levels). ​The key phrase here is "strikingly similar", as in it can't be dismissed as a mere coincidence. This is not a trivial point. The publisher knew it, and they knew they didn't have a leg to stand on if it went to court, so they did the smart thing and conceded the debate before things got ugly.

With regards to your case, again, you had legal precedent on your side in that a blanket copyright can not be granted for a common English word or phrase. Warner Bros. couldn't legally stop you from using the word "Inceptional " any more than Apple Records could stop a computer company from naming itself Apple Computer because the similar names are unlikely to cause confusion — nobody would mistake a computer company for a music label, just as nobody would mistake a video game company for a popular movie.

Now suppose a new software company came around and decided to call itself "Inceptional Games". You could (and should) sue them for ripping off your company name, and you would easily win.

One example of copyright law being bull is when the Attack on Titan games in Europe had to be renamed because it was contested by a gambling company because they trademarked Titan for gambling games and they're classed in the same category as videogames.

@Mountain_Man I honestly cannot fathom how you still don't get it--there is no legit case of copyright infringement to be made with the whole The Great Gianna Sisters debacle and there never was.

There is no "strikingly similar" except in your head and the heads of people who are similarly ignorant of such things.

Again, break it down:

Gameplay/mechanics: Can't be copyrighted or patented [for the most part], so no case there.

Art: Every single asset in The Great Gianna Sisters is an original creation, and, looked at individually, bear no "striking similarity" to any of Nintendo's art assets: They do not have green pipes; they do not have Question blocks; the diamond pickups don't look like coins; the projectile weapon looks nothing like Mario's fireball; they do not have characters that look like Mario; they do not have enemies that look like Koopa Troopas or Goombas or Bullet Bills or Piranha Plants, etc; there are no bosses that look like Bowser; etc, so no case there on any single asset and therefore no case on a bunch of them together either. And just because it's overall a platformer where you hit blocks and jump on enemies, that does not mean Nintendo owns the copy rights to it.

Sound: All the music is wholly original and does not sound like the Mario music. So, once again, no case. The coin pickup sounds a little bit like Mario, but if it's a different sound then it's not protected by copyright, especially a single generic sound like that.

Level layouts; Nintendo can't copyright the position and layout of a few background tiles, only the specific tile/sprite art used on said tiles--otherwise no one would be able to make any platform games that have similar level layouts, which would totally destroy any fail and legal competition in the space and is just ridiculous (Christ, even I released a game with a nigh-direct copy or Super Mario Bros. 1-1 in layout)--so no case there.

Etc

There is no legitimate copyright case except in your imagination.

@impurekind "I honestly cannot fathom how you still don't get it..."

I obviously get it, and I have explained things as clearly as I can. The question is why you still don't get it. I know you think you're an expert just because you had a dissimilar case decided in your favor, but the situations are not parallel, so your personal experience is irrelevant here.

As for your insistence that the two games are not strikingly similar, I'm sorry, but that's not open for debate. In fact, they are strikingly similar as the following screenshots demonstrate:

https://i2.wp.com/www.arcadeattack.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/levelcomparison.jpg
https://fictionalcrossover.fandom.com/wiki/Giana_Sisters_X_Mario?file=Giana-Mario.png
https://forallnerds.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/The-Great-Giana-Sisters-and-Super-mario-bros-comparison.jpg

Put those screenshots in front of any reasonable person, and they could easily think it's the same game. It's that potential for confusion that gave Nintendo legal leverage, and the publisher knew it. This is the same reason you can't, for instance, copy a competitor's packaging and marketing style to sell your own products. There was a case some time ago where a private flashlight manufacture sold his products in packaging that was almost identical to that used by Maglite for their own flashlights. Maglite sued claiming that, despite minor differences, the striking similarity could cause confusion, and they easily won the case, just as Nintendo would have easily won if the publisher of The Great Giana Sisters had imprudently taken the matter to court. Heck, Nintendo's case could have been won with a single question put to the developer: "Did you knowingly design The Great Giana Sisters to appear strikingly similar to Super Mario Bros.?" Come on, it's not like they could have denied it!

@Mountain_Man No, you don't get it.

You can't put in a few screenshots--of which literally hundreds of thousands that weren't even close could also be compared--and claim your case won. That's what a rank amateur would do and/or exactly what some sleazy Nintendo lawyer would do to get someone like you to give up out the gate.

You can send as many pictures are you like, and I could go take every single element and breakdown how not a single one is actually the same--not even the "exact same level layouts" you previously claimed were there.

There is no legitimate case, and the fact you keep banging on like this is one, shows you don't get it.

Again, you are confusing the fact there are similar mechanics and a similar genre depicted on screen (which you have prior knowledge of and clearly see the connection in your mind regardless of what's actually the same there in terms of copyrightable material) with these games actually being so close that copyright has been infringed. If a game has say fifty levels, and a couple of those fifty levels happen to have layouts that are nothing more than basically nods to another game (but not direct copies in terms of layout and literally zero assets used from the other game), that's not an infringement of copyright. If there is no direct use/stealing of copyrighted material then you have to look to the whole rather than one or two random screens in among literally millions you could grab from tens of levels and billions of combinations of player and enemy placements and so on.

Basically, your playing Nintendo's hand (probably just as it did back in the day), which of course it's going to try and manipulate to look a certain way that distorts the bigger picture to entirely favour its own argument (again, probably just as it did back in the day), and calling it a day. But you're not Nintendo, that I'm aware of at least, so it's just strange imo.

The only real fact here is that if you were in this situation you would clearly immediately give up, so automatically lose (no matter the actual legal truth here), and I wouldn't, so I'd at least have a case to fight--and I'd win.

And the reason I bring up Warner Bros. is precisely that: To show how it could have been easy to just give up and bend over in the face of literally six ring binders full of clear "evidence" to support their claims of Trademark infringement and "passing off" and so on, all neatly put together by their thousand-dollar-per-hour lawyers, but I didn't because I don't just take it up the hooha because a lawyer tells me to. And the rest is history.

@impurekind "No, you don't get it."

You can keep telling yourself that if you wish, but we both know it's not true.

And I have no idea why you keep going on about gameplay mechanics since I never mentioned it. The sticking point here is the strikingly similar art styles such that a reasonable person could easily mistake one game for the other. I honestly don't know how much simpler I can make this for you.

@Mountain_Man You couldn't be any simpler . . . and you couldn't be any more wrong and easily manipulated into spewing the corporate line probably verbatim.

@impurekind "...you couldn't be any more wrong..."

If I'm wrong, then legal precedent is wrong. ¯\__(ツ)__/¯

@Mountain_Man Look, Nintendo should sue!

Because "striking similarity"--copyright infringement right there!

Also:

@impurekind Still going on about game mechanics when that was never a point of contention. Hoo boy...

Confused about all this talk about game mechanics. It's been established for a couple of decades or more that game mechanics cannot be protected by legal means. You can't trademark it and neither is it something you can claim copyright on. Examples of that go back as far as the 80s as far as I recall when clone games were the rage.

@Mountain_Man The point of me mentioning game mechanics at any stage is to 100% eliminate game mechanics entirely from the discussion so it's clear that all that is left is the actual copyright-related stuff to debate (basically the art and music). And, when you get down to that, there's simply not a legit case here. The videos I provided are great examples of where someone just like you could make the same claim of copyright infringement based on nothing other than your misguided interpretation of "strikingly similar" and your apparently blinkered devotion to protecting Nintendo's interests at all costs, which is clearly not at all based on genuinely looking at and properly comparing the art or music or even level designs here, since in every example they are clearly different, if you bother to take more than a cursory glance at a few very deliberately chosen images picked for a very specific purpose of manipulating the opinions of the people who see them, including your examples with The Great Gianna Sisters vs Super Mario Bros. So, again, no legit copyright infringement claim.

@jsty3105 I reached out to Nintendo Force on Patreon. This was their response:

“ We work with Nintendo's public relations team from time to time. Nintendo does not have creative control over the magazine. We have the same permissions to use their characters as any other journalistic outlet: in the capacity of presenting previews and reviews of their new titles, etc.”

@Tim_Vreeland What from my previous statements made you think Nintendo had any sort of creative control? Wouldn't it have been better to ask how or whether they worked with Nintendo to launch Nintendo Force?

@jsty3105 You said using Nintendo’s characters on a media publication wasnt legal. Nintendo Force replied that they use those characters as they have the same journalistic freedoms as everyone else. So you were wrong there.

You said Nintendo helped create Nintendo Force. If you have no creative control over something, you therefore arent creating it.

Thats like me donating a brush to an art institute and then claiming I helped create a painting.

You can super stretch things. Or just admit you are human like everyone else and sometimes make mistakes or are misinformed.

@Tim_Vreeland Think you've stretched my comments somewhat and misinterpreted them to be more than they are. With regards to Nintendo helping to create Nintendo Force, I believed it was more of helping hand thing and I probably shouldn't have made that assumption (!) based on a single reply in an AMA that wasn't even referencing whether NintendoForce had deeper conversations with Nintendo. That's one of my character flaws so will heartily admit to fashioning connections where there might be none. I had based those assumptions purely on how magazine publishing works and I fully imagined multiple conversations between NF and Nintendo about the creation of the magazine. So I also believe there was 0 chance of Nintendo getting surprised by it's publications and made the connection that Nintendo not getting surprised is a good thing when dealing with its IP (also it feels respectful to avoid such surprises anyway).

Saying that you need creative control over something to be able to say you created it seems like an odd stance but perhaps understandable. I'd had a few creations not attributed to me in the past because of that so I've been more careful since then.

I wouldn't actually have said that using Nintendo characters on a media publication wasn't legal as I'm well aware of fair use. I know I said using them for commercial purposes without permission wasn't legal. You've got good points about derivative works so maybe this one will pass.

Ultimately though, NintendoLife and Kotaku jumped the gun with this piece. We're both arguing over a silly thing and while IP rights can be an interesting topic, I think it's run it's course here and I might end up making even more spurious connections to further points which don't really matter anymore.

So, apologies for riling you up unnecessarily.

Edit: I should also clarify that I HATE occasions where companies abuse trademark law to stamp out other companies efforts. Like when Edge Magazine took on everything with the word Edge in it (Including Mirror's Edge), when Titan Bet filed a dispute against Atlus for Attack on Titan (which is why it's called something else in Europe) and, more recently, when Red Bull sued Bullards.