All sorts of things get made over the process of a game jam, and occasionally some of them are hilariously great. That was the case for No Mario’s Sky, which ended up being something like a basic platformer that let you fly off world so you could stomp more goombas.
But as they are want to do, Nintendo quickly moved to shut the project down. So the creators responded with a new game: DMCA’s Sky.
The developers announced on itch.io that the online marketplace had received a takedown notice from Nintendo of America for the Ludum Dare project, which was uploaded last week.
Nintendo’s lawyers have been on the warpath of late. In August alone, representatives for Nintendo of America issued takedown notices to Project AM2R, a fan remake of Metroid 2, and Pokemon Uranium, a game that was in development for nine years.
Just last week Game Jolt was asked to take down hundreds of free fan-made creations for infringing on Nintendo’s trademarks and copyright.
To comply with Nintendo’s legal department, ASMB Games have changed Goombas have been changed to Moombas and a few other references. Coins now look like green shields, and the question mark blocks now look a little more like an aged computer screen.
You can download DMCA’s Sky for Windows, Mac and Linux here, although Linux users with NVIDIA cards should download the latest binary drivers to avoid crashes.
Comments
13 responses to “No Mario’s Sky Taken Down, Replaced With DMCA’s Sky”
Listening to the last Splitscreen podcast that the US team puts out, they equated games made using Nintendo’s IP like this to “fan fiction” or some dude who reads their articles aloud on Youtube. They/other companies don’t pursue those infringements, so why should Nintendo (because Nintendo) is basically their line of thinking.
That’s where this whole issue diverges and splits out into so many different questions, I think.
Theoretically everyone should be pursuing fan-fiction. If it can be proven that you were aware of other people using your trade marks but you took no action against them then people can claim that you’ve allowed your mark to slip and they have a right to use your property in their own products.
It’s tricky and messy and not at all as simple as “I’m a big meanie, stop playing with my toys”.
This whole line of argumet is simply wrong. See, for example, https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not-require-companies-tirelessly-censor-internet Failure to pursue every single alleged trivial “breach” of a trade mark is so far away from anything close to trade mark abandonment that this is nothing but a red herring invented by self interested lawyers to generate business for themselves.
Interesting. Because, as you say, I’ve heard a couple of lawyers who specialise in the games industry mention the enforcement thing. That’s where I got it from.
My limited understanding was that registering a trademark gave you more protections, so you didn’t have to be as vigilant, but if you were trading with an unregistered property then you needed to be fairly draconian. Not that that fully explains Nintendo, they would obviously register their marks, but the whole issue seemed murky enough to warrant monitoring all use of your property.
Back the carriage up a moment.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/stopping-internet-plagiarism/your-copyrights-online/3-copyright-myths/
My main takeaways from these (very interesting) resources:
The “Fair Use! How dare you do this Nintendo!” crowd don’t seem to understand that games like Metroid 2 and Pokemon Noun in the _damn title_ really aren’t trying to be new works or trans-formative at all. They are pretenders, pure and simple.
But to the point of this article and the ‘pursuing the breach’ stuff, we have to understand the difference between a DMCA notice and actively going after the people responsible for attempting to profit off something they absolutely shouldn’t be:
As far as I understand it, the DMCA is the warning shot across the bow.
If, if the game is served from a website that runs ads, and that website profits off clicks, Nintendo/whichever company legally owns the property can sue for damages, that’s what I’m gleaning here. How much damages would be owed rests upon how much protection has been provided in the past.
There’s what’s wrong, and what’s right. Then there’s interpretation of the laws involved.
Nice opinion piece
Nit-pick: It’s “as they are wont to do”.
This looks cool, though.
Thank you!! That was bugging me.
at the end of the day, these fans are creating something that nintendo isnt doing.. so instead of doing the smart thing and supporting them and licensing it, they’re just being cunts.
Here we see the guest comment in its natural and irrational habitat.
So Nintendo should buy someone’s copy of their work when they would have to start from scratch for their own version?
There are proper ways to go about wanting to do something like this officially, just ask Taxman.
Nintendo arent being cunts. Nintendo owns the copyright to those things, they worked hard to build them to what they are to this day. This guy just comes in and uses an existing item without putting any original work in.
Nintendo are perfectly entitled to take this shit down.
You mean “wont”. Nintendo are wont to issue takedowns. Wont = habit or custom