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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Valve was at one time very likely to just hire you and your team to make a spiritual successor or sequel to your own game for them.
The devs for Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, Narbacular Drop (aka Portal), and, at least for a time, Turtle Rock Studios, were all working directly for Valve.
Dota as well, and IceFrog is still there, now leading development on Deadlock from my understanding.
Dota 2 was straight up Valve showing Blizzard how it's done. It's embarrassing.
Speaking from experience, there's a very different mindset between Japanese and North America in regards to fan made stuff, like mods, etc., to the point that I was told to stay absolutely shut about my love of emulation and fan games when having dinner with a certain JP dev friend of my wife's. By contrast, a US dev friend literally was showing me his emulator keychain, lol.
Sega is a weird case, though, because they're both US, European, and Japanese in equal parts (to the point that if one flops, they all feel it). Leads to some interesting debates across teams though, or so I'm told.
Can't speak of Nintendo of America, though. They're up in Washington iirc, so I've never met anyone from there.
I have been told that is shaped by IP law in Japan being extremely strict, but I don't know if thats true.
That being said, as someone who loves AM2R its my understanding that Nintendo had a remake in the works before AM2R was released or something to that effect. I'm glad they waited until it was released to get shut down, cause people reverse engineered it, and last I saw its still getting updates and has both a PC and android release. 10/10, highly reccomend
IP law in JP is absolutely atrocious, Japanalysis did a video a bit ago about it. Like, WIKIPEDIA can't even use official images or merch for their pages, so they just use shitty pics similar to the thing, like this pic of a dude cosplaying Squirtle:
Youtubers/streamers can get sued for revealing the whole plot of a game I guess, so don't play too much of an RPG or Visual Novel game... Actually, Atlus, a Japanese companu owned by SEGA, put a gameplay limit on Persona 5 when it first came out and told streamers that they couldn't stream past a certain date! Scarlet Nexus did similar "no streaming" shit but like, on the whole game and I think it flopped lol.
For some weird reason, Doujinshi (self published manga) is allowed and flourishes, despite it literally being just fan manga/comic/fiction of some other media. And like, WILD fan depictions too (All those yaoi doujin of Naruto, Ace Attorney, Hetalia, etc.). I love doujin but it's fucking hypocritical imo to get mad at people for posting official content on a damn wiki site but let them sell manga of characters fucking 😅 i should research the reason honestly.
Idk if it really does affect how these companies respond but it fucking sucks to keep killing fan projects, ESPECIALLY if they make no money. I get why anything that makes money shouldn't have a copyrighted IP or material in it but companies will be assholes.
Jesus Christ, thats way worse than I realized 😅
Thank you for explaining and providing so much context! Always love when I get to learn stuff from folks ☺️
I would imagine the doujinshi is allowed as long as it's still fan made. For instance the Wikipedia page has a fan made cosplay of Squirtle. By the same logic as long as the manga's depiction of Squirtle is also fan made (or drawn) then it also seems to get a pass.
It would seem the issue is less how their assets are used and more that their specific assets are used.
You can even get jail time if you stream or upload a video of the entire game.
The timing of AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) was unfortunate. Nintendo pretty much ignored the Metroid franchise, but they had done a remake of the first Metroid game "recently".
AM2R came out right around the time Nintendo was announcing their own Metroid 2 remake, and a solid one at that. (That same developer would next make Metroid Dread, which is excellent.)
Regardless Nintendo was going to takedown AM2R eventually, but they were particularly aggressive because they were also remaking Metroid 2.
But both games are excellent. You should play AM2R.
This is actually pretty weird because in Japan, fan-made manga/art is acceptable and even stuff you can sell at comic-con.
That is interesting, especially since manga piracy is such a big deal there. I wonder why there's a distinction in the laws in that and not with video games.
It could be because most independent Manga artist want the exposure and won't enforce their copyright as rigoursly. Whereas a publishing company already has the exposure and wants to control their IP and will enforce their copyright. Especially because to hold a copyright the owner needs to defend it.
Tell me more about this "emulator keychain" please!
Probably a Funkey? There have been various others (PocketSprite?). Anything smaller than a Miyoo Mini is really too small to practically play on, though. And even that is pushing it for my aging eyes.
Sega is only that friendly towards Sonic fanworks, otherwise they struck down at least a Streets of Rage remake.
I still can't believe the guys who made Streets of Rage 4 got Sega to hand over the rights to some random french team.
(Well actually they weren't that random and iirc already made a ridiculously high quality modern release of some old Sega IP, I guess that's how they did it)
Japan has some of the most restrictive copyright exceptions among major developed countries. Unlike the U.S., it lacks a broad fair use doctrine, which leaves parody and transformative works with far less legal protection. The TeamFourStar situation is a good example of how that can discourage even highly transformative fan creations. Whether that's motivated by culture, business, or both, Japanese companies tend to be far more protective of their intellectual property than their Western counterparts, sometimes to a degree that feels excessive from an American perspective.
In Japan some guy got sentenced for two years for uploading a video of the entirety of a Steins;Gate game.
wait, got a link to the story behind SEGA's?
Sega's is oversimplified to the point someone who doesn't already know the story would be misinformed. Christian Whitehead was employed at Sega before this for porting classic Sonic games (1, 2, and CD) using his Retro Engine, and they later let him and his team make Sonic Mania after he presented a prototype to Takashi Iizuka.
That is, Whitehead intended from the start to bring it to Sonic Team, whom he'd already worked for, as a prototype to have it officially produced and released. Sega had a lot of influence over the broader development, mainly the inclusion of classic levels. They didn't just take a random fan game and slap a "SEGA" logo over it.
If anything, the image for Sega should be Sonic CD for iPhone, as he was just a fan at that time making a fan port. Sonic Mania is kind of a quasi-fan game, in the sense that Whitehead was a huge fan and did work at Sega in the first place because of his fan port proof of concept.
Edit: Also, here's what Sega thinks of its fans in 2026.
also for the context of AM2R, it released a year before Samus returns remake, so it was REALLY unfortunate timing to do a fan remake.
the positive outcome of that least was it gave Nintendo confidence in Meecury Steam to allow them to make Metroid Dread.
so it was REALLY unfortunate timing to do a fan remake
That's true, but I don't think it moves the needle at all; if anything, to me, it makes it worse.
It's still just as much of a dick move (part of a broader pattern of dick moves around the time) that shows utter contempt for fans. A smart company would've leveraged AM2R to create hype, because it was pulling a Game Boy game from 1991 out of obscurity. Personally, it got me excited even as someone who wasn't even a Metroid fan at the time, and I refused to buy Samus Returns solely because of what Nintendo did. It could've ridden AM2R's coattails and gotten a purchase from me.
AM2R is hardly a market substitute for Samus Returns in a way that hurts Samus Returns more than it helps (given most fans dedicated and knowledgeable enough to play AM2R were probably also big enough fans to want Samus Returns regardless), and I'd bet anything that if they reached out to the AM2R team, Nintendo could've done something cool with them to amplify the hype while stepping on Samus Returns' toes as little as possible.
You have my bless.
have my bless
I came here to point this particular embarrassment out.
on god, fr fr
Is that a creative and polished products based on my IP in MY community??? Oh hell no, reggie send the IP guard to this mf.
Are you telling me I could make a Sonic clone and Sega would be like "hell yeah brother"
They hired the guy who was making ports and recoding sonic games on other systems better than the official 'sega emulator on a console' game packages (Christian Whitehead). It was pretty great to see.
Sega released many "sonic clones" already, so probably.
Shhhh, Chris-Chan may hear you!
Is there more context for this?
One of Sonic mania's lead devs is a notorious romhacker IIRC, and some other members of the team are modders too. They were hired by the one guy who knows what they're doing regarding sonic at Sega (can't remember his name right now) because he saw their passion and talent. It's one of the few good modern sonic games imo
Black Mesa is a HL1 fan remake. They realized halfway though that very long project that they couldn't sell it so they went to Gabe and he gave them his blessing
AM2R is, as it's name states, another Metroid 2 remake made by a fan. It's very well made and free, but Nintendo hit it with a lawsuit like right after they released the trailer for Samus Returns, instead of, you know, hiring the guy to make great 2D Metroid games
What's worse is that nintendo likes to kill fangames shortly before announcing or releasing their own games that would be competing with them.
AM2R was killed for Samus Returns.
Project M for Smash Ultimate.
Pokemon Uranium for whichever pokemon gen was that year.
In each of these cases, it is my opinion that the fangame was the better game.
ASMR Samus?
