this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
147 points (94.5% liked)
Games
16651 readers
923 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Nintendo is infamously litigious and basically always has been; in 1987 they threatened to sue the developers of The Great Giana Sisters for publishing a game that wasn't dissimilar to Super Mario Bros. No lawsuit was filed but the game was withdrawn from production. They've issued cease and desist letters to makers of fan games, other game developers, fanartists, hell I'm surprised anyone anywhere even tries to work with them.
Given the substantial resemblance of Palworld's creatures to Pokemon and their "No Unapproved Fun" stance to everything I am not alone in being surprised Nintendo hasn't tried anything.
The one thing that connects all those points and examples is that Nintendo has not sued anyone, non of that was ever taken to a court. Because in a lot of this cases the chance to loose was substantial bigger then zero and a ruling against them would have had major implications.
So yes, they bully, they use the tools like DMCA (and EUCD in Europe) claims and takedowns, and stern letters from their lawyers but only when the chance for winning is really high they will go to a court to sue. Why go to a court when you know that the person on the other side will cave in, not because you are right but because the costs for them to get right would be way to high.
The chance for loosing in this case is really high and the last Nintendo/Pokémon Company wants is a judge to rule that the designs are not that distinctive or "original works" at all.
In 1987, we were much shorter on legal precedent for video games. You'd be here all day listing games similar to Metroid, let alone Mario since 1987.