@LegzRwheelz The big difference between this project and the SM64PC projects is that The Missing Link is billing itself as a fanmade midquel to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, whereas Super Mario 64 pc is essentially a reverse engineering project, which has a carveout in copyright law.
To the best of my understanding (and I could be wrong on this), the fact that the fan game is packaged as a rom hack doesn't materially change the fact that it is a fan game.
But suppose I'm completely off base on this. After all, there really isn't much in the way of case law that can clarify how copyright regards game modifications. Nor is there much incentive for either companies or modders to take a gamble on the court system defining the boundary in an unfavorable way.
Anyway, even if Kaze Emanuar were able to successfully establish that The Missing Link didn't infringe on the Zelda copyright, it would almost certainly run afoul of trademark law. It's called The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link, with the Zelda logo and everything, and that is a big no-no.
@smashandbash Nintendo isn't the one who gets to decide whether or not it's Fair Use. If this dispute were to make it into a court of law, then it would be up to the author of the romhack to establish Fair Use as a defense.
Unfortunately, this work falls well outside of the safeguards of Fair Use.
@BAN Idk if it's a conscience, so much as an understanding of IP as a concept and why this is an example of a legitimate defense.
Furthermore, I am arguably a hypocrite on this matter, as I'm actually selfishly glad that stuff like A Missing Link, AM2R, Project M, and other fan games/rom hacks have made it to the Internet before they were taken down. I know they aren't legitimate, and can potentially get the creators in some very hot water, but since the cat is already out of the bag, I may as well enjoy them.
Still, I think it's good to be honest and inform people of what this stuff entails. I imagine that it's all too easy to get caught up in a feeling of inspiration when making one of these fan projects without realizing the liability one is exposing themselves to.
@Abeedo As Crono1973 mentioned, being arbitrary in selecting which infringing works get legal action and which do not can undermine claims for damages. And that doesn't even get into the issue of trademark violation, which this fan game also commits.
But to your broader question, "how does this fan game hurt Nintendo," the answer is that it hardly does... by itself. By itself, maybe it kind of competes with some hypothetical rerelease, or maybe it does things that Nintendo does not approve of for one reason or another, but at the end of the day, it's simply an innocuous passion project.
But this romhack, and other unauthorized fan projects, do not exist in a vacuum. They are drops in a veritable ocean of IP infringements, most of which lack the quality control and/or good intentions of the fan games we hear about. That ocean is what poses a threat to Nintendo's business interests.
@ThomasBW84 Thank you for responding to me! And I apologize for my harsh tone in my earlier post; clearly you did do research, and this rabbit hole goes pretty deep, so I was out of line on dismissing you like that.
You're right in that Nintendo has the ability to mitigate exploits through system updates. This alone has made hacking the 3DS much more complicated, and you're right in saying that this keeps the hacking scene fairly niche. However, it is NOT typical in the 3DS scene to just have a second console to keep offline for homebrew. That's an extravagance, and it hasn't been necessary for quite some time now.
If you're interested, I can go into further depth. I like talking about this stuff
@ThomasBW84, you've made a few errors in your article that betray how little research you did on the topic.
"Nintendo often moves - rather effectively - to shut exploits down, meaning that in this generation homebrew has been far more niche than in the past, mainly because users mostly need to keep their systems offline."
Um, you do realize that the biggest draw to FreakyHax is that it does work on the latest system software version (11.0), right? That means that you can have homebrew AND go online, at least for now.
But yeah, I'm more inclined to blame Nintendo for their hypocritical actions towards indie developers than I am towards hackers who release this stuff into the public.
@Igetin It's pretty bad. If you're at all interested in some of the technical stuff, check out Yifan Lu's article titled "The 3DS Cryptosystem." It's really accessible even if you don't write assembly code for fun.
@Tobias95 Given that Ocarina of Time 3D has been the go-to entry point ever since the free methods were patched out, I wouldn't bet on it.
@jimi You do realize that Nintendo can't magically detect every user who did something unexpected with their 3DS right?
Comments 8
Re: Nintendo Lawyers Hit Fan-Made Zelda Game With Fatal Copyright Claim
@LegzRwheelz The big difference between this project and the SM64PC projects is that The Missing Link is billing itself as a fanmade midquel to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, whereas Super Mario 64 pc is essentially a reverse engineering project, which has a carveout in copyright law.
To the best of my understanding (and I could be wrong on this), the fact that the fan game is packaged as a rom hack doesn't materially change the fact that it is a fan game.
But suppose I'm completely off base on this. After all, there really isn't much in the way of case law that can clarify how copyright regards game modifications. Nor is there much incentive for either companies or modders to take a gamble on the court system defining the boundary in an unfavorable way.
Anyway, even if Kaze Emanuar were able to successfully establish that The Missing Link didn't infringe on the Zelda copyright, it would almost certainly run afoul of trademark law. It's called The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link, with the Zelda logo and everything, and that is a big no-no.
Re: Nintendo Lawyers Hit Fan-Made Zelda Game With Fatal Copyright Claim
@smashandbash Nintendo isn't the one who gets to decide whether or not it's Fair Use. If this dispute were to make it into a court of law, then it would be up to the author of the romhack to establish Fair Use as a defense.
Unfortunately, this work falls well outside of the safeguards of Fair Use.
Re: Nintendo Lawyers Hit Fan-Made Zelda Game With Fatal Copyright Claim
@BAN Idk if it's a conscience, so much as an understanding of IP as a concept and why this is an example of a legitimate defense.
Furthermore, I am arguably a hypocrite on this matter, as I'm actually selfishly glad that stuff like A Missing Link, AM2R, Project M, and other fan games/rom hacks have made it to the Internet before they were taken down. I know they aren't legitimate, and can potentially get the creators in some very hot water, but since the cat is already out of the bag, I may as well enjoy them.
Still, I think it's good to be honest and inform people of what this stuff entails. I imagine that it's all too easy to get caught up in a feeling of inspiration when making one of these fan projects without realizing the liability one is exposing themselves to.
Re: Nintendo Lawyers Hit Fan-Made Zelda Game With Fatal Copyright Claim
@Abeedo As Crono1973 mentioned, being arbitrary in selecting which infringing works get legal action and which do not can undermine claims for damages. And that doesn't even get into the issue of trademark violation, which this fan game also commits.
But to your broader question, "how does this fan game hurt Nintendo," the answer is that it hardly does... by itself. By itself, maybe it kind of competes with some hypothetical rerelease, or maybe it does things that Nintendo does not approve of for one reason or another, but at the end of the day, it's simply an innocuous passion project.
But this romhack, and other unauthorized fan projects, do not exist in a vacuum. They are drops in a veritable ocean of IP infringements, most of which lack the quality control and/or good intentions of the fan games we hear about. That ocean is what poses a threat to Nintendo's business interests.
Re: Nintendo Lawyers Hit Fan-Made Zelda Game With Fatal Copyright Claim
@MetaRyan Even if they didn't, there is no universe where this fangame would come anywhere close to being protected by a fair use defense.
Re: Talking Point: 3DS Homebrew Development Causes Another Game Takedown as Nintendo Maintains Its Tight Grip
@ThomasBW84 Thank you for responding to me! And I apologize for my harsh tone in my earlier post; clearly you did do research, and this rabbit hole goes pretty deep, so I was out of line on dismissing you like that.
You're right in that Nintendo has the ability to mitigate exploits through system updates. This alone has made hacking the 3DS much more complicated, and you're right in saying that this keeps the hacking scene fairly niche. However, it is NOT typical in the 3DS scene to just have a second console to keep offline for homebrew. That's an extravagance, and it hasn't been necessary for quite some time now.
If you're interested, I can go into further depth. I like talking about this stuff
Re: Talking Point: 3DS Homebrew Development Causes Another Game Takedown as Nintendo Maintains Its Tight Grip
@ThomasBW84, you've made a few errors in your article that betray how little research you did on the topic.
"Nintendo often moves - rather effectively - to shut exploits down, meaning that in this generation homebrew has been far more niche than in the past, mainly because users mostly need to keep their systems offline."
Um, you do realize that the biggest draw to FreakyHax is that it does work on the latest system software version (11.0), right? That means that you can have homebrew AND go online, at least for now.
But yeah, I'm more inclined to blame Nintendo for their hypocritical actions towards indie developers than I am towards hackers who release this stuff into the public.
Re: Homebrew Vulnerability Discovered In 3DS Version Of Citizens Of Earth
@Igetin It's pretty bad. If you're at all interested in some of the technical stuff, check out Yifan Lu's article titled "The 3DS Cryptosystem." It's really accessible even if you don't write assembly code for fun.
@Tobias95 Given that Ocarina of Time 3D has been the go-to entry point ever since the free methods were patched out, I wouldn't bet on it.
@jimi You do realize that Nintendo can't magically detect every user who did something unexpected with their 3DS right?