Note to viewers: Every fan game in this video had its creators interviewed, and they proofread the script to make sure everything was accurate, and they're okay with this information being presented in a DYKG video (this is the case for almost all interviewees in all DYKG videos). The only exceptions were Sky (from Flora Sky) and Dragon (the Pokemon FPS guy), who we couldn't get in touch with. Note to video game news sites (Kotaku, IGN, etc): please do not write an article about this video (as you sometimes do with DYKG videos). Pokemon and Nintendo lawyers have Google Alerts set up so they'll see your articles almost immediately, because they'll likely contain numerous terms that'll trigger the alerts. We always appreciate your support, but we're happy to miss out on those extra views this time. Google Alerts don't work on TH-cam videos though, so as long as this video doesn't get summarized into a news article, unwanted attention shouldn't be drawn.
Lol you think they're gonna listen to the Note? Literally all they see this video and any reports on fangames is as money to make off from an article, they literally can only earn money by making an article about this video without the need of your consent. It's very naive to think they will listen If you really wanted to prevent it, this video should not be made in the first place if you were this concerned about that. They don't make articles to boost your channel, they make articles to earn profits, you're telling them to Not make profit.
@@OfficialRamZ Copyright law is what allows them to shut down any fan projects at will. AI allows them to more efficiently execute their right do that, but the law is what grants that right. Copyright is bad, AI is a neutral tool.
@@OfficialRamZ Copyright is in fact, NOT good. When companies are able to hoard IP for over 100 years, something is wrong. By the time of an IP such as Pokemon or Mario becomes public domain, I WILL BE DEAD!
@@JamesTDG Good your don't deserve it no one does. You didn't make Mario or Pokemon Nintendo and game freak did. They deserve the cash money for it. And as long as toxic people exist I see no reason to see why copyright should go away. And remember the IP IS Nintendo with out it they are just a console making company that makes consoles with weird gimmicks and are underpowered. Sleep well.
The video turned out great! It was truly a pleasure to work with all of the fine professionals at DYKG: thanks for inviting me to participate in the fun! If I get any scary emails in the near future, I'm forwarding them to your legal department.
I'm the guy who wrote this video. Some YT comments are saying this video shouldn't've been made, because the fan game creators don't want attention. I understand the inclination, but I interviewed about a dozen fan devs over several months, for almost every game (a couple were MIA, see this video's pinned comment). They all helped with, and approved the final wording of the script. Many of them were thrilled to have their stories told, and see this video get made. They don't wanna be invisible, never to be acknowledged even in a YT video. A lot of em spent years making these fan games. That said, a couple fan game creators preferred not to have their games mentioned, so them and their games weren't inckuded in the video (that's stated towards the end of the video).
Even at the risk of having their game permanently wiped with the bloody hands of Nintendo lawyers? You know bootlickers will report to Nintendo and the journalists to hype this video up right?
I'm a modder for Morrowind but I started out romhacking with Pokemon. Something I remember the Pokecommunity (and Relic Castle before it got taken down) discovering slowly over the years was that Nintendo's policy towards fan content seems to be with regards to misrepresentation by general audiences who might not know any better. This would include: - using official assets - naming the game Pokemon - selling the final product - distribution of a finish ROM - significant media coverage and attention It's that first and last point in particular that we think has their lawyers go after Pokemon Essentials and Pokemon Uranium respectively, while leaving other projects alone for the most part. Another significant factor that saved Pokecommunity from a full takedown that Relic Castle didn't heed the warning of was that romhacks are only allowed to share a patch now and the tools to update the ROMs. But sharing the ROMs itself are a guaranteed death sentence for a project, as there is almost none that survive for long once advertised. No fangame is guaranteed to be safe from DMCA, of course. But Pokecommunity (and romhacking communities for other Nintendo games) seem to have figured out the unofficial policy of Nintendo's lawyers; keep your head low and don't allow the product to be confused for the real thing. Edit: One of my mods for Morrowind is actually a Zelda-themes one which adds the Master Cycle. And I've managed to skirt Nintendo's legal team by proving that the asset didn't come from the game itself and was custom made, and that the only mention of the phrase "Zelda" is in relation to the mod's inspiration. It's still up to this day, thankfully.
Same thing applies with hacks/fangames on their other IPs, like if you look at DYKGs Mario fangames video youll notice almost all of them are remakes/demakes.
I used to be in the fire emblem rom hacking community, and it was a hard rule that you could only distribute patches and not roms. They definitely don't play around with rom distribution.
this video went from "oh okay, that's understandable. still sucks, but i get it." to "the future of copyright law is not looking good, and if artificial intelligence truly is the future in this regard, then i am very afraid."
Ehh, I’m extremely against generative ai in general, but I don’t really think this is that big of a deal. I like fan games, but they *are* illegal, even when free. The fact is that providing a free service that uses copyrighted material they don’t own is inherently something that directly competes with the original work, which breaks any fair use laws. Pokemon doesn’t have to go after them as they are plenty successful regardless, but they have every right to go after them, and using an ai to better target them seems…fine? Ai isn’t inherently bad; video games wouldn’t exist without it. Generative ai using copyrighted data to compete with the work it’s taking from is the real issue If anything, it bolsters the idea that generative ai providing a service that uses copyrighted material and characters that directly competes with the original work should be illegal too. And I think that’s more important than if fangames that everyone knows are illegal should be allowed to exist. Fangame creators could simply pull a Palworld and make Pokemon clones that don’t use the data from Pokemon, and that way, they can make money from it to boot
@@DerrickWilson-fm7vc just because a law exists doesn't mean it's right or just... the fact that these free fan games directly compete with mainline Pokémon games just shows that Game Freak and Nintendo should put a lot more effort into their products instead of constantly rereleasing generic half-functioning products for 60-90$ every 1-2 years...
If you're developing a fan game or thinking about doing so: shut up and tell absolutely nobody that doesn't need to know until the game is 110% finished... *Then* be as loud as you can and dump it in as many places as possible so that when the DMCA/C&D comes, the game is already in as many hands as possible and the fans can do the legwork of peer to peer distribution for you.
@@Sr.Haruno You could either quietly seek out talent for yourself, finding people to work with on a contract/commission basis, or just be vague about the details in your announcement/advertisement (Ex: "A Pokémon project") until someone with a portfolio approaches you about the opportunity.
@@Sr.Haruno I'm not going to tell you it's impossible to find someone to do the work for the love of it and nothing else, but it's quite unlikely, especially nowadays when the cost of everything is rising and people need money more than ever.
I like this recent trend of DidYouKnowGaming answering why things happened, even if the why isn't a answer people enjoy hearing. Like with Crash 4 not selling enough for some insane standards or Nintendo thinking GO will have competition in fan games.
People didn’t pay attention. It’s not that they had insane standards for Crash 4. It sold well, but it took _years_ to get to that point. But you can’t wait years to make a choice of whether to pursue a sequel or not. Your employees have to be working on something. Whether it’s worthwhile is probably extrapolated from sales within the first 2-4 weeks, as that’s usually the strongest sales period. Not to mention the longer it’s on market, the more discounts there are so those 5 million copies aren’t at full price. I mean, the trilogy was still selling twice as many units (if not more) as a _brand new game,_ even though the trilogy was 3 years old. They likely hoped that would’ve helped springboard the new game, but it didn’t. Well, maybe it did compared to if there wasn’t a trilogy first, who knows. But it obviously didn’t help Crash 4 sell more than the trilogy, which is the reason/hope for doing a remake first. Generate buzz for a new entry with something familiar first. And a remake is going to cost less to make than a new game, so the ROI would’ve been higher for the trilogy, which would’ve made those initial sales sting more. They spent more to make less. Crash 4 didn’t even reuse models so it’s not like it was just reused assets and engine with new levels. All of it was new. So it would’ve cost a lot more. I know Crash 4 was sold at a higher price tag ($60 compared to $30). So that’s a factor potentially in its favour, but I’m guessing that didn’t make up for it. Or that if they both came around to making the same amount of money, it was too late. Trilogy probably had more initial sales while Crash 4 was a slow burn. And sure, Crash 5 would have the benefit of being able to reuse the engine and assets and whatnot (as opposed to starting from scratch with Crash 4). But that was probably accounted for as well.
The use of AI to fill DMCA's is horrifying. There is no thought or logic behind it, it'll just decide "Eh, your game's title is close enough to the real thing, shut it down." That explains why the four games with Giratina/Distortion World ideas and Relic Castle were shut down.
@@switchitup3709 There's a problem though, AI is VERY dumb, it could see your completely original poker game as defying their copyright just because it saw POKE in the name.
@@JamesTDGYeah but in that case it doesn’t matter. They have no legal claim to sue you if you’re not using their assets or IP. You could easily ignore it. And on TPC’s side, I don’t think “spray and pray” C&D’s would ever backfire. For one, no one is going to waste money counter-suing. They don’t have money even if they had the interest. But also, I’m not sure you legally could counter sue against “threat of legal action”, if you aren’t infringing against their IP in the first place. They’d have no legal grounds to do so. Maybe you could sue them for “emotional damage” for getting a C&D if you did nothing wrong, but that’s probably a stretch to win, and you’d waste more money than you’d win anyway. You’d just get more stressed from that process anyway and likely loose more money than whatever you gained after taking off work for court, lawyer’s fees, and whatnot.
or just work with your own unique IP/characters. im all in favor of people making fan games if thats what they want to do, but honestly i think at this point you're better off coming up with something new just so you can sell your game and have ownership over what you've created
@@gregoryberrycone none of these games would be recognized if not for the polemon brand name. No one wants to play a copy of polemon under another name
Have a bad feeling IGN is not gonna listen to that pinned comment. Time to start collecting some fan works or making sure places have it that don't have many eyes on it, i guess.
None of these sites ever listen despite them being a huge reason why they get taken down. Once you see headlines, you have to back it up because you only have days or hours before it’s probably taken down. I had no clue IGN did a gameplay segment and some other notable site did an actual review. And I forget Geoff had them as nominees. They’re all idiots. You’re not only showing it off on your huge platforms (which makes it easier for lawyers that probably just rely on those), but now you’re promoting them as if they’re games on official markets. Although I do find funny that the original crew making a fan game may get a C&D, but it’s perfectly fine for someone else to take over. So what’s even the point? lol. Or are they just not aware that others continued, and thought it was over?
The narrator of this episode has a video on his channel about Japan and Brazil's surprisingly tightly wound histories. Iirc, its the video that made his channel blow up. @@EricoBotelho
A common pattern I've noticed from nintendo in the past couple of years is that their timing on DMCA takedowns, even when they use a takedown bot, is based on when they're planning something that they want all eyes on or can use to appease angry fans (a recent example would be the Gmod takedowns right before TTYD's release), and I can only imagine pokemon is the same case. I have no idea what this is going to entail for the upcoming 30th anniversary, but it should be a good warning for all pokemon and nintendo fangame creators and modders to keep a low profile when a game is about to release, so they aren't on any headlines at the wrong time.
Agreed, which is why is very dumb that despite being in development for like a decade, AM2R chose to release the same year as Samus Returns. A very poor decision
@@Johnjohnson2695 AM2R actually released almost a year before Samus Returns was even announced. An official Metroid II remake being in the works was certainly a factor in Nintendo taking down AM2R, but AM2R's creators couldn't have known about Samus Returns at the time.
That Pokémon FPS guy is somewhat right, if Palworld wasn't making legally distinct Pokémon mashup characters, would it have had the traction it got if it used generic or non Pokémon lookalike creatures?
Literally everyone ever was just calling it "Pokemon with guns", that publicity is the single reason why that game became as big as it did. If no one wrote those articles or made that comparison, I would be incredibly surprised if it got even a quarter of the downloads that it got
@@jesusbarrera6916 Well of course not. The problem is that Pokemon didn't near almost directly ripoff other monsters from other series. And no, just plain pointing at a bat from DQ and how it's a bat like Zubat, is not the same thing, just because they both use the concept of a bat. We're talking about things like Verdash to Cinderace. Things that makes the Devs look like they're having an Icarus moment of flying too close to the sun. That kind of levels of ripoff. Sure, not all of the Pals are like that, but again, some don't help the comparisons, at all. Unlike with Pokemon when compared to most other monster collecting series, where none are close beyond just the concept of their creatures. "Oh, it has a bat." Yeah, no, that's not good enough.
Palworld was successful primarily because of the "pokemon with guns" marketing. Even though it had almost nothing-pokemon and few monsters with guns. Palworld was a marketing masterpiece though.
While take downs on passionate fan projects is disheartening, I love seeing how quickly more fans come to pick up the pieces and continue the dreams of others. It’s such a beautiful thing to see that fans with love for these ip’s and games come together to make something great time after time
Good to see a historical video covering all of these takedowns. Also nice to see Moon seems to have some background knowledge on the mainline games, which helps with explanations.
The short solution for any dev seeing this is to not announce anything until you're ready for playable builds AND to open source your project. Oh and don't try to make money on it. That won't end well regardless.
I don’t know why anyone announcing anything early when we all know how much of a risk you’re taking. Sure most won’t get articles, and it’s humble to think you won’t get that traction. But it’s also just naive to take that risk. Wait until it’s done before going public so that, so that even if they ask you to pull it that day, it’s already complete and playable and backed up on 100 different websites. You’re screwed if they catch you in beta. The only reason for going public is if you need helpers, because it likely wouldn’t have completed anyway. But you could probably find people and individually show them some reference material, rather than upload trailers. They’re not gonna stalk random message boards and discords for text chats about mods/fan games. They do ‘t even bother going after piracy sites. It’s only when it makes money or gets reported by mainstream gaming sites where it might get the laymen confused for official games.
That is not how it works😅. AI generated pictures do not have a copyright, because of the nature of copyright itself. To understand it, its easy to look at how copyright is called in other countries. For example the german word Urheberrecht, which means right of the creator. A creator is defined as a human being in the law. On the other Hand, these AI Tools for FINDING copyright infringement are basically just Tools to find that something illegal was done. And in the law, a proof of illegal activity is always a legitimate proof, as long as its not obtained via illegal means itself. And I think even that has Limits. I think if a burglar finds a dead body in your house, that can be legally used against you
Finally an accurate video on how Nintendo and TPC deals with romhacks; obviously taking down fan creations is bad but this is REALLY overblown. I've seen so many people get scared to even download romhacks (much less develop them) because of it, hopefully this can clear that up at least a little bit.
You didn't pay attention to the end. A big component to why takedowns happen so infrequently is the expense of lawyers tracking them down. But now they are going to be incorporating more AI learning to automatically track things down and make the process cheaper. You lack forward thinking if you can't see how bad things will get.
@@rho-starmkl4483not really, as some mod developers have stated in other comments, the issue with Relic is that they had roms hosted, which is a big no no and why the AI targeted only that site. There're unwritten rules that succesfull hacks do follow and minimizes the risk of getting shutted down and such, and most likely AI tracking will work with parameters as the real Ninty lawyers to give DMCAs.
@@charlibiris No, but he's right. If you distribute a rom with your modified content you are using copyrighted content. If you use patches, you share only the work you've made, and injecting it into a rom is up to whoever wants to use it.
@@tyujg7495.what allegations? Nobody accused him of anything. He accused someone else of something, was wrong, took it down and apologized. No “allegations” there brother
I keep getting youtube ads for monetized mobile games claiming to be licensed Pokémon games. They don't get taken down as quickly as some of these fan projects
From what I've seen online, it's because those bootleg mobile games come from china where it's notoriously difficult for a overseas company to enforce their copyright in, which makes china bootleg central. Even BMW lost a case over a Chinese copy of one of their cars
The details behind this are more complicated but long story short: Nintendo knew about PalWorld and wanted so badly to go after them over anything. The current suit they've raise is an egregious BS one about patents, but not stuff you'd expect like similarities in monster design.
Honestly, all Nintendo has shown is that fans have the power to do "pass the ball" type development for games. Would be interesting to see someone intentionally do this
I remember sitting at a cafe in San Francisco, attending the Game Developers Conference, when the news dropped about Relic Castle. It was absolutely devastating in the moment, but we weren't about to take things sitting down, and I'm glad we've been able to carry what Relic Castle was past what happened
Considering how the TH-cam AI already tags Pokémon Uranium to this video, I feel like eventually it'll fall into the wrong hands. I was very much entertained though, you guys are top notch video game journalists.
Reminder that, as Japanese companies, Nintendo and the Pokémon Company follow stricter fair use and copyright laws, and likely encourage branches of their company in other countries to be just as strict. The laws are much stricter. In the world of anime TH-camrs, TeamFourStar got their videos copyright striked frequently enough to force them into retirement from abridging because, even though their videos can be protected under transformative use, Toei Animation Japan just sees them using DBZ footage for free and fans treating it like a substitute for the source material, and started seeing red. So this sort of thing shouldn't be a surprise.
It's almost like copyright laws all over the world should be updated to some unified standard so we don't have something that's fair use in one country being DMCA'd by a company in a country that doesn't have fair use protections.
@@LordArikado There are international treaties around the basics of copyright law, that's how it's even possible for you to sue someone from a different country for violating your copyright. So it's not impossible for progress to be made on another treaty to update international law to the internet age, but there will still always be variances between jurisdictions.
@@LordArikado That would tend to end up worse usually. Any sort of standard would be aimed favorably towards the corporations. That's part of why copyright standards are the way they currently are in Japan, they adopted the US system without integrating a proper fair use clause.
AI is too broad of a term and has become basically meaningless. A trained image generator is completely different tech from a webcrawler. next you get freaked out because the "AI" in your fridge knows when to turn on the light inside lol
@@ruolbu nah it's just cause of the image generator that my comment is kinda funny, I know pretty well that the whole AI stuff isn't all a problem with copyright and stuff^^° And yeah no, i know how my fridge works xD but nice try.
Hey, great video! We really appreciate the level of depth you covered, especially some of the more inner workings of the fangame community (the opener is such a breath of fresh air in the age of DMCA boogeymans)! But yes, we can only hope that DMCA's and CnD's stay rare and infrequent c:
Thanks for combatting the "Nintendo Ninjas" urban legend. I've been involved in a lot of projects that people cry wolf on, and have never gotten a DMCA.
@gemerl, that’s a good point. Nintendo restrains themselves a bit most BECAUSE they don’t want to seem like the bad guy in the public’s eyes (as much as possible while still satisfying their board), but @PowerPandaMods is also right in the fact that Nintendo isn’t nearly as harsh as the memes tend to convey
@@stonythechimist4250 And despite their latest lawsuit against PalWorld, that image will remain. Knowing the details of that suit, plus you know the history of Nintendo's practices in general both legal and commercial, they are the bad guys. Not THE worst in the industry, but plenty bad which should tell you how bad these game companies can be (including PalWorld's parent company).
Nintendo: "Someone made a fan game where they got money only from donations? Send the letter!" Also Nintendo: "Someone stealing our designs for a mobile game where they earn with either iaps or ads or both? Don't do anything about it."
@@ausgod538 ....wherein the video only briefly mentions a modder's confusion as to why Nintendo/TPC don't go after these mobile games, and not giving any reasoning as to why they don't...? Maybe _you_ ought to see the video before commenting.
All you need is to watch one commercial chaos mobile ads segment to know how widespread the theft is but because it's all garbage nintendo doesnt care. They only care when the product is good because they're that insecure.
The mobile games are from fly-by-night operations that are basically impossible to effectively prosecute. It's much quicker and easier to send a DMCA to somebody in the US than a faceless shell corp in China.
While I absolutely adore fan games and personally feel that the fans are better than the actual developers, I think it's better for prominent fan game creators to just make their own games so they don't have to deal with DMCA bullshit at this point. I'd also love to see the day when a bunch of people who got hit with a DMCA for their Pokémon fan games come together and create their own Pokémon-like game, similar to Cassette Beasts.
You know, when I was a boy, I always said that at some point in my life I also wanted to make a Pokemon rom hack, but that I wanted to be a famously unknown developer. Like I would make fake Facebook pages with fake followers so that if someone like Nintendo ever tried to find me, they'd be in a wild goose chase with multiple dead ends so that they couldn't touch me. I never got around to it, but holy hell, that letter at 11:40, like Goddamn, he wasn't profiteering off of Pokemon and they still went after him and found his personal Facebook account! They literally said "We have your family HOSTAGE! Kneel, or you will be forced to!!!". Nintendo be wilding 😂😂😂💀💀💀
Can’t believe brick bronze & project pokemon were mentioned 😭 these games brought me back into the Pokémon hobby in 2017… now selling Pokémon cards has been my full time career since 2021. I miss these games so much. I was really active in project pokemon discord, I miss my friends from there. “SurfChello”, my arch nemesis, I haven’t forgetten about you either. RIP to the best fan made Pokémon games!! 🙏
Pokemon Brick Bronze getting mentioned by a gaming TH-camr with millions of subscribers years after the game was taken down is surreal to me as someone who's been playing Roblox for a decade and is just used to Roblox fanprojects being ignored
AI lawyers existing is pretty upsetting. It would suck even more for a fan game being taken down by an unfeeling AI. And it can be harder for human lawyers to get a job.
Man if Pokémon put as much time and effort as they do to shut down fan games to “protect their IP” into their actual game development, they might be able to make an actual good fully functioning AAA Pokémon game.
This franchise is just a dairy cow for Nintendo. They will not do anything too risky, just put out new Pokemon every season to sell games and merchandise.
The A.I. part honestly is the most shocking. For other Nintendo takedowns it is somewhat only speculated but the Pokémon Company goes all in. Scary shit.
AI enforcing copy-right is literally a Tom Scott video of a possible somewhat dystopian future. Hope this doesn't end up going to the same extreme it goes to in that video
Awesome video. On a somewhat related note I would love to know why some very obvious Pokémon anime sites (sites with all the episodes, countless subs) haven’t been taken down. It’s crazy to me some TH-cam videos get taken down because a clip is too long, but ****** (won’t say the name here, but it is an obvious name and url) has literally every episode and is fully dedicated to Pokémon and puts up new episodes timely.
Now I would like you to cover about Nintendo game modding next. We've also got strucked by the same AI law firms as well, the most recent one was before the June Nintendo Direct, dozens of old and new mods got DMCA'd, even mistakenly DMCA a recolor of a character in Guilty Gear because it has "Metroid" and "Samus" in the title and description and the mod has zero ressemblance to Samus at all. Then, a human sent a DMCA to one modder to clear out all of his posts, even those that aren't mod related (similar to a full ban).
since this was made by a lawyer, i have to ask him, is it also possable a court ruling could put a stopper on this AI shit? im pretty sure i heard about other cases where that happened, AI being used was like, found to be inadmisable or something
No. The AI is a service that is being authorized by Nintendo to represent their brand. The fact that AI is determining the actions is irrelevant, Nintendo is the IP holder and is within their right to send those takedowns and CnDs. It's just a matter of who gets them.
It's likely there still has to be a human in the chain, but it's basically TH-cam's content ID but for lawyers, from what I can tell. Part of brand protection is choosing your battles - see the two videos Moony made on Moon Channel about Dolphin and Yuzu for an example of Nintendo's current stance on emulation, testing a whole new legal theory to get around existing precedent, but also not wanting to litigate if they don't have to as keeping it in a grey area and on the down low prevents any new precedent going against Nintendo.
@@itskdogPicking their battles is precisely it. I’m sure the lawyers are aware they could spend an afternoon googling “Nintendo fan games” and easily have a list of hundreds to contact. It just isn’t worth the time/money to go after them all. Not when you could have your lawyer draft a licensing contract instead, that’ll make whatever “lost revenue” back in an hour or day of that licensing deal. It’s only when it competes with their own games (earning/charging money or high profile enough to confuse average consumers and harm their brand) that it’s worth going after. So long as you need lawyers communicating with people you’re litigating against, they aren’t gonna send C&D’s out en masse. Especially not if they’re threatening legal action within 48 hours. AI might help them be more aware without having to wait for your IGN’s and GameSpot’s to report, but they’re still only going to target the most troublesome ones, and few games ever cross that threshold. The concern of setting a precedent is something I hadn’t considered. Sure, the defendant is unlikely to counter-sue, and go through with it instead of settling out of court. But who knows if sending out too many C&D’s (even if legally justified) might draw attention from the courts that something needs to be changed. They might even initially think of it as doing it in their favour to more easily deal with copyright/trademark infringement. But the unintended consequence could be that upon revisiting the law, they find something outdated and actually draft something against them. I’m not sure how law works, so I could be wrong. But I think the gist of “not drawing too much attention to yourself” is probably accurate, even if the specifics aren’t.
Having recently separately discovered Moon Channel and being an avid Pokemon romhack watcher, this video feels like it was made for me personally and I absolutely loved it!!
They are less worried about people thinking those are real. They might hook people with their bullshit ads but its obvious they aren't really pokemon games.
Holy crap the direction Pokemon Uranium took is SUCH a good distraction for the world of Pokemon!!! I've never heard about it, not the biggest die hard fan but I've always appreciated quality Pokemon stuff ever since i was in 3rd grade when the cards started coming out. Man that's such a creative direction for this series
That whole AI thing boggles my mind. Surely Nintendo already knew those hacks existed. It's not like they were hidden. But suddenly an AI decides that four old rom hacks need to removed and Nintendo does it. Why?
The AI epidemic issues strike again. Not surprised at all at this point. Even Pokemon staff is using it to DMCA fangames ... We're doomed as fan creators
The 'twist' at the end is a highly upsetting but oddly unexpected outcome. I'm glad the knowledge it out there so future/current fan works/rom hacks can hopefully survive. I was so upset I missed out on Uranium and Prism back in the day, but as long as they're still out there somewhere...
Pokemon Uranium.... YES! so far one of the best ones I have played! sad it got taken down :( honestly sorta love how most of these have been "leaked" and either got fully finished, still getting love in some way, or are still getting updates now.... loop holes ftw!
Pokemon Brown is basically the only romhack I played fully. It was a blast! I never got around to Prism, but I am going to soon. KBM, if you're watching this: thank you. You understood what initially made pokemon so fun, and polished it to shine far beyond the limitations of the game boy.
I always like to joke that they took down Pokémon Brick Bronze in order to build off making Sword & Shield since the leaked early development builds look very “ROBLOX”y…!
Having become active here when mods like Last Impact and Insurgence were popular, I've always felt torn on how fangames were handled. There are a few that are very dear to me, but I also know from the amount of time I've spent on them that they're often direct competition to official Nintendo products - using the company's own resources for to be such. It could be nice if they found a way to work with some of the fan developers, but what happened with the Nintendo Creators Program shows how unlikely it is for such a plan to succeed.
![เปิดบ้าน นาราเครปกระเทย 1 ไร่ ขายขาดทุนหลัก10ล้าน เอามาใช้หนี้!!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/0jz84VFWVP4/mqdefault.jpg)
Note to viewers: Every fan game in this video had its creators interviewed, and they proofread the script to make sure everything was accurate, and they're okay with this information being presented in a DYKG video (this is the case for almost all interviewees in all DYKG videos). The only exceptions were Sky (from Flora Sky) and Dragon (the Pokemon FPS guy), who we couldn't get in touch with.
Note to video game news sites (Kotaku, IGN, etc): please do not write an article about this video (as you sometimes do with DYKG videos). Pokemon and Nintendo lawyers have Google Alerts set up so they'll see your articles almost immediately, because they'll likely contain numerous terms that'll trigger the alerts. We always appreciate your support, but we're happy to miss out on those extra views this time. Google Alerts don't work on TH-cam videos though, so as long as this video doesn't get summarized into a news article, unwanted attention shouldn't be drawn.
We can only hope they’ll read this comment.
Pokemon and Nintendo lawyers have Google Alerts for videos like these?! That's wild! No wonder they're so quick to hound people about stuff like this.
Very good warning to IGN. If only IGN journalists knew how to read
Lol you think they're gonna listen to the Note? Literally all they see this video and any reports on fangames is as money to make off from an article, they literally can only earn money by making an article about this video without the need of your consent. It's very naive to think they will listen
If you really wanted to prevent it, this video should not be made in the first place if you were this concerned about that. They don't make articles to boost your channel, they make articles to earn profits, you're telling them to Not make profit.
The fact they have a GOOGLE ALERT for this crap is fucking concerning.
“AI-driven DMCA”
God, if ever there was a wake up call that we need to change copyright law, this is it.
Uhhh, what? That's not the problem, the problem is them not using a human. Copyright is good, AI is not.
« We »? Because you think we’ll have a saying in that?! You’re funny. 😂
@@OfficialRamZ Copyright law is what allows them to shut down any fan projects at will. AI allows them to more efficiently execute their right do that, but the law is what grants that right. Copyright is bad, AI is a neutral tool.
@@OfficialRamZ Copyright is in fact, NOT good. When companies are able to hoard IP for over 100 years, something is wrong. By the time of an IP such as Pokemon or Mario becomes public domain, I WILL BE DEAD!
@@JamesTDG Good your don't deserve it no one does.
You didn't make Mario or Pokemon Nintendo and game freak did.
They deserve the cash money for it.
And as long as toxic people exist I see no reason to see why copyright should go away.
And remember the IP IS Nintendo with out it they are just a console making company that makes consoles with weird gimmicks and are underpowered.
Sleep well.
The video turned out great! It was truly a pleasure to work with all of the fine professionals at DYKG: thanks for inviting me to participate in the fun! If I get any scary emails in the near future, I'm forwarding them to your legal department.
Thanks Moony. You are our legal department though.
I thought, isn't it funny that all these TH-camrs sounds the same
Yay Moony! This was a crossover I wasn't expecting but honestly should have?? It's perfect
I pogged when you said Pokémon Uranium’s region was based off Brazil
Why did you defend Jirard the Completionist's actions regarding charity fraud?
“footage by gameboyluke” on the first clip got me feeling like that one spongebob meme
Holy shit it's *the* fucking GameboyLuke from the hit channel, GameboyLuke
Ah yes, that one spongebob meme, the one out of the 1000s of spongebob memes out there. I of course know which one you are referring to.
There I am Gary there I am!
@@vashfan19 my guy
@@GameboyLukethats not spongebob that leonardo di caprio
I'm the guy who wrote this video. Some YT comments are saying this video shouldn't've been made, because the fan game creators don't want attention.
I understand the inclination, but I interviewed about a dozen fan devs over several months, for almost every game (a couple were MIA, see this video's pinned comment). They all helped with, and approved the final wording of the script. Many of them were thrilled to have their stories told, and see this video get made. They don't wanna be invisible, never to be acknowledged even in a YT video. A lot of em spent years making these fan games. That said, a couple fan game creators preferred not to have their games mentioned, so them and their games weren't inckuded in the video (that's stated towards the end of the video).
Even at the risk of having their game permanently wiped with the bloody hands of Nintendo lawyers?
You know bootlickers will report to Nintendo and the journalists to hype this video up right?
So what's to stop fan game creators from just NOT having contact info so Nintendo/other company's from sending the cease and desists and/or DMCAS.
When did you change your name Dr Lava?
@@DJIVision so you're the PoS good to know
Dr.Lava is a freaking lawyer? :0
I'm a modder for Morrowind but I started out romhacking with Pokemon.
Something I remember the Pokecommunity (and Relic Castle before it got taken down) discovering slowly over the years was that Nintendo's policy towards fan content seems to be with regards to misrepresentation by general audiences who might not know any better.
This would include:
- using official assets
- naming the game Pokemon
- selling the final product
- distribution of a finish ROM
- significant media coverage and attention
It's that first and last point in particular that we think has their lawyers go after Pokemon Essentials and Pokemon Uranium respectively, while leaving other projects alone for the most part.
Another significant factor that saved Pokecommunity from a full takedown that Relic Castle didn't heed the warning of was that romhacks are only allowed to share a patch now and the tools to update the ROMs.
But sharing the ROMs itself are a guaranteed death sentence for a project, as there is almost none that survive for long once advertised.
No fangame is guaranteed to be safe from DMCA, of course.
But Pokecommunity (and romhacking communities for other Nintendo games) seem to have figured out the unofficial policy of Nintendo's lawyers; keep your head low and don't allow the product to be confused for the real thing.
Edit: One of my mods for Morrowind is actually a Zelda-themes one which adds the Master Cycle.
And I've managed to skirt Nintendo's legal team by proving that the asset didn't come from the game itself and was custom made, and that the only mention of the phrase "Zelda" is in relation to the mod's inspiration.
It's still up to this day, thankfully.
Awesome!👍
Same thing applies with hacks/fangames on their other IPs, like if you look at DYKGs Mario fangames video youll notice almost all of them are remakes/demakes.
Woa what a genius way to navigate legal waters and the mod still shows up when searching zelda and morrowind
Oh yeah the uploading actual ROM instead of patches thing should have been mentioned, that's like the "Don't"s of ROM Hacking 101.
I used to be in the fire emblem rom hacking community, and it was a hard rule that you could only distribute patches and not roms. They definitely don't play around with rom distribution.
this video went from "oh okay, that's understandable. still sucks, but i get it." to "the future of copyright law is not looking good, and if artificial intelligence truly is the future in this regard, then i am very afraid."
I can't wait for the AI to send Nintendo a DMCA for Pokémon DPPt for being too similar to BDSP.
Ehh, I’m extremely against generative ai in general, but I don’t really think this is that big of a deal.
I like fan games, but they *are* illegal, even when free. The fact is that providing a free service that uses copyrighted material they don’t own is inherently something that directly competes with the original work, which breaks any fair use laws. Pokemon doesn’t have to go after them as they are plenty successful regardless, but they have every right to go after them, and using an ai to better target them seems…fine? Ai isn’t inherently bad; video games wouldn’t exist without it. Generative ai using copyrighted data to compete with the work it’s taking from is the real issue
If anything, it bolsters the idea that generative ai providing a service that uses copyrighted material and characters that directly competes with the original work should be illegal too. And I think that’s more important than if fangames that everyone knows are illegal should be allowed to exist. Fangame creators could simply pull a Palworld and make Pokemon clones that don’t use the data from Pokemon, and that way, they can make money from it to boot
Video game would not exist without Ai do you think that the code that makes a npc do things and large language model "generative ai" is the same?
@@DerrickWilson-fm7vc just because a law exists doesn't mean it's right or just... the fact that these free fan games directly compete with mainline Pokémon games just shows that Game Freak and Nintendo should put a lot more effort into their products instead of constantly rereleasing generic half-functioning products for 60-90$ every 1-2 years...
@@KratlundDK of course not. they're two completely different things.
Good to see this on the 20th anniversary of (I think) the oldest fully-custom region hack in Pokemon Brown. Also, a perfect choice of narrator here.
If you're developing a fan game or thinking about doing so: shut up and tell absolutely nobody that doesn't need to know until the game is 110% finished... *Then* be as loud as you can and dump it in as many places as possible so that when the DMCA/C&D comes, the game is already in as many hands as possible and the fans can do the legwork of peer to peer distribution for you.
Or go the way of SPV3 or Skywind and require an original copy. Unless it's Nintendo then shut up lol
Then how are we supposed to get Spriters or designers if no one knows about it.
@@Sr.Haruno You could either quietly seek out talent for yourself, finding people to work with on a contract/commission basis, or just be vague about the details in your announcement/advertisement (Ex: "A Pokémon project") until someone with a portfolio approaches you about the opportunity.
@@FatherOfGray what if they don't wanna spend money.
After all it's an hobby and it will have no monetary return.
@@Sr.Haruno I'm not going to tell you it's impossible to find someone to do the work for the love of it and nothing else, but it's quite unlikely, especially nowadays when the cost of everything is rising and people need money more than ever.
I like this recent trend of DidYouKnowGaming answering why things happened, even if the why isn't a answer people enjoy hearing. Like with Crash 4 not selling enough for some insane standards or Nintendo thinking GO will have competition in fan games.
People didn’t pay attention. It’s not that they had insane standards for Crash 4. It sold well, but it took _years_ to get to that point. But you can’t wait years to make a choice of whether to pursue a sequel or not. Your employees have to be working on something. Whether it’s worthwhile is probably extrapolated from sales within the first 2-4 weeks, as that’s usually the strongest sales period. Not to mention the longer it’s on market, the more discounts there are so those 5 million copies aren’t at full price.
I mean, the trilogy was still selling twice as many units (if not more) as a _brand new game,_ even though the trilogy was 3 years old. They likely hoped that would’ve helped springboard the new game, but it didn’t. Well, maybe it did compared to if there wasn’t a trilogy first, who knows. But it obviously didn’t help Crash 4 sell more than the trilogy, which is the reason/hope for doing a remake first. Generate buzz for a new entry with something familiar first. And a remake is going to cost less to make than a new game, so the ROI would’ve been higher for the trilogy, which would’ve made those initial sales sting more. They spent more to make less. Crash 4 didn’t even reuse models so it’s not like it was just reused assets and engine with new levels. All of it was new. So it would’ve cost a lot more. I know Crash 4 was sold at a higher price tag ($60 compared to $30). So that’s a factor potentially in its favour, but I’m guessing that didn’t make up for it. Or that if they both came around to making the same amount of money, it was too late. Trilogy probably had more initial sales while Crash 4 was a slow burn. And sure, Crash 5 would have the benefit of being able to reuse the engine and assets and whatnot (as opposed to starting from scratch with Crash 4). But that was probably accounted for as well.
The use of AI to fill DMCA's is horrifying. There is no thought or logic behind it, it'll just decide "Eh, your game's title is close enough to the real thing, shut it down." That explains why the four games with Giratina/Distortion World ideas and Relic Castle were shut down.
But they are using Nintendo's property.
@@switchitup3709dweeb
@@switchitup3709 There's a problem though, AI is VERY dumb, it could see your completely original poker game as defying their copyright just because it saw POKE in the name.
@@JamesTDG fair
@@JamesTDGYeah but in that case it doesn’t matter. They have no legal claim to sue you if you’re not using their assets or IP. You could easily ignore it. And on TPC’s side, I don’t think “spray and pray” C&D’s would ever backfire. For one, no one is going to waste money counter-suing. They don’t have money even if they had the interest. But also, I’m not sure you legally could counter sue against “threat of legal action”, if you aren’t infringing against their IP in the first place. They’d have no legal grounds to do so. Maybe you could sue them for “emotional damage” for getting a C&D if you did nothing wrong, but that’s probably a stretch to win, and you’d waste more money than you’d win anyway. You’d just get more stressed from that process anyway and likely loose more money than whatever you gained after taking off work for court, lawyer’s fees, and whatnot.
Reminder to shut up, develop in secret, dump your game and disappear before they tell you to stop.
Amen to thar.
or just work with your own unique IP/characters. im all in favor of people making fan games if thats what they want to do, but honestly i think at this point you're better off coming up with something new just so you can sell your game and have ownership over what you've created
@@gregoryberrycone none of these games would be recognized if not for the polemon brand name. No one wants to play a copy of polemon under another name
Yes, once people get their hands on it, it takes just one to throw out a download link again.
Or make a bootleg and get away
11 days after this video was published, Nintendo sued Palworld.
And for a patent they filed AFTER palworld was developed.
Yup. This video aged like milk.
@@pokepizzause the phrase correctly idiot
Have a bad feeling IGN is not gonna listen to that pinned comment. Time to start collecting some fan works or making sure places have it that don't have many eyes on it, i guess.
I agree, I doubt that request will be honored.
None of these sites ever listen despite them being a huge reason why they get taken down. Once you see headlines, you have to back it up because you only have days or hours before it’s probably taken down.
I had no clue IGN did a gameplay segment and some other notable site did an actual review. And I forget Geoff had them as nominees. They’re all idiots. You’re not only showing it off on your huge platforms (which makes it easier for lawyers that probably just rely on those), but now you’re promoting them as if they’re games on official markets.
Although I do find funny that the original crew making a fan game may get a C&D, but it’s perfectly fine for someone else to take over. So what’s even the point? lol. Or are they just not aware that others continued, and thought it was over?
2:49 - Even outside his own channel, Moonie cannot escape Brazil.
i need context
LOL
So true!
So that's why the line read sounded weird
The narrator of this episode has a video on his channel about Japan and Brazil's surprisingly tightly wound histories. Iirc, its the video that made his channel blow up. @@EricoBotelho
hahaha, but no popup picture we're used too for it.
A common pattern I've noticed from nintendo in the past couple of years is that their timing on DMCA takedowns, even when they use a takedown bot, is based on when they're planning something that they want all eyes on or can use to appease angry fans (a recent example would be the Gmod takedowns right before TTYD's release), and I can only imagine pokemon is the same case.
I have no idea what this is going to entail for the upcoming 30th anniversary, but it should be a good warning for all pokemon and nintendo fangame creators and modders to keep a low profile when a game is about to release, so they aren't on any headlines at the wrong time.
Fun fact, the gmod takedowns happened due to someone who wanted to be an asshole, and not Nintendo
Agreed, which is why is very dumb that despite being in development for like a decade, AM2R chose to release the same year as Samus Returns. A very poor decision
@@JamesTDG It was confirmed that both Facepunch and Garry that it was Nintendo using an AI company.
@@Johnjohnson2695 AM2R actually released almost a year before Samus Returns was even announced. An official Metroid II remake being in the works was certainly a factor in Nintendo taking down AM2R, but AM2R's creators couldn't have known about Samus Returns at the time.
That Pokémon FPS guy is somewhat right, if Palworld wasn't making legally distinct Pokémon mashup characters, would it have had the traction it got if it used generic or non Pokémon lookalike creatures?
Pretty sure that it got a good 90% of marketing from influencers comparing it to pokemon yeah
Reminder that POKEMON did not invent monsters...
Literally everyone ever was just calling it "Pokemon with guns", that publicity is the single reason why that game became as big as it did. If no one wrote those articles or made that comparison, I would be incredibly surprised if it got even a quarter of the downloads that it got
@@jesusbarrera6916 Well of course not. The problem is that Pokemon didn't near almost directly ripoff other monsters from other series. And no, just plain pointing at a bat from DQ and how it's a bat like Zubat, is not the same thing, just because they both use the concept of a bat. We're talking about things like Verdash to Cinderace. Things that makes the Devs look like they're having an Icarus moment of flying too close to the sun. That kind of levels of ripoff.
Sure, not all of the Pals are like that, but again, some don't help the comparisons, at all. Unlike with Pokemon when compared to most other monster collecting series, where none are close beyond just the concept of their creatures. "Oh, it has a bat." Yeah, no, that's not good enough.
Palworld was successful primarily because of the "pokemon with guns" marketing. Even though it had almost nothing-pokemon and few monsters with guns. Palworld was a marketing masterpiece though.
While take downs on passionate fan projects is disheartening, I love seeing how quickly more fans come to pick up the pieces and continue the dreams of others. It’s such a beautiful thing to see that fans with love for these ip’s and games come together to make something great time after time
Good to see a historical video covering all of these takedowns. Also nice to see Moon seems to have some background knowledge on the mainline games, which helps with explanations.
The short solution for any dev seeing this is to not announce anything until you're ready for playable builds AND to open source your project.
Oh and don't try to make money on it.
That won't end well regardless.
I don’t know why anyone announcing anything early when we all know how much of a risk you’re taking. Sure most won’t get articles, and it’s humble to think you won’t get that traction. But it’s also just naive to take that risk. Wait until it’s done before going public so that, so that even if they ask you to pull it that day, it’s already complete and playable and backed up on 100 different websites. You’re screwed if they catch you in beta. The only reason for going public is if you need helpers, because it likely wouldn’t have completed anyway. But you could probably find people and individually show them some reference material, rather than upload trailers. They’re not gonna stalk random message boards and discords for text chats about mods/fan games. They do ‘t even bother going after piracy sites. It’s only when it makes money or gets reported by mainstream gaming sites where it might get the laymen confused for official games.
That’s what I’ve been sayin 😂
I do think that if artwork made by an AI has no copyright, then maybe an AI shouldn't be able to issue legal notices.
That's how palworld escaped copy right lol
@@sinnohperson8813 Palworld is distinct enough that despite the similarities, there wasn't much TPC could do.
@@itskdog some of the creatures look ai generated ngl. As a person who has worked a lil lil on those tech , I can see a lot of AI quirks in the design
That is not how it works😅. AI generated pictures do not have a copyright, because of the nature of copyright itself. To understand it, its easy to look at how copyright is called in other countries. For example the german word Urheberrecht, which means right of the creator.
A creator is defined as a human being in the law.
On the other Hand, these AI Tools for FINDING copyright infringement are basically just Tools to find that something illegal was done.
And in the law, a proof of illegal activity is always a legitimate proof, as long as its not obtained via illegal means itself. And I think even that has Limits. I think if a burglar finds a dead body in your house, that can be legally used against you
@@SSJKamuiwhy the snark?
Moral of the story: don't announce your fangame until it is 100% ready to be released and DON'T monetize it :D
Pretty much, you'd think it was obvious.
From the wise words of Woolie, STFU ABOUT YOUR GAME. Just dont talk about it! Just shut the FUCK UP and dont blab everywhere lmao
Who else got an ironic pokemon bootleg game ad?
I wanted to reply that 😂
Finally an accurate video on how Nintendo and TPC deals with romhacks; obviously taking down fan creations is bad but this is REALLY overblown. I've seen so many people get scared to even download romhacks (much less develop them) because of it, hopefully this can clear that up at least a little bit.
That Tracer AI part at the end still sounds scary…
@@rho-starmkl4483 Skynet only took over because people allowed it to.
You didn't pay attention to the end.
A big component to why takedowns happen so infrequently is the expense of lawyers tracking them down. But now they are going to be incorporating more AI learning to automatically track things down and make the process cheaper. You lack forward thinking if you can't see how bad things will get.
@@zynux8252 I understand perfectly. Any and all fan-made games are at risk of being purged.
@@rho-starmkl4483not really, as some mod developers have stated in other comments, the issue with Relic is that they had roms hosted, which is a big no no and why the AI targeted only that site.
There're unwritten rules that succesfull hacks do follow and minimizes the risk of getting shutted down and such, and most likely AI tracking will work with parameters as the real Ninty lawyers to give DMCAs.
Upload patches, not ROMs and NEVER, EVER monetize
Sure, stop bad habits too, like eating and paying rent
@@charlibirisor make your own IP and make money off of that.
@@charlibiris No, but he's right. If you distribute a rom with your modified content you are using copyrighted content. If you use patches, you share only the work you've made, and injecting it into a rom is up to whoever wants to use it.
@@charlibiris Making romhacks isn’t a job it’s a hobby, if they wanna make money make your own games with your own intellectual property.
@@charlibiris Then make your own game and IP if you want money. Look at Toby Fox.
No way!!! Moon Channel is narrating this video!!!!
He's a really good TH-camr!!!
no, You can look up recent allegations of him
@@tyujg7495. Seems hard to believe, Got any source?
@@tyujg7495.If you're talking about the Completionist situation, he admitted fault and publicly owned up to his mistakes.
@@tyujg7495.what allegations? Nobody accused him of anything. He accused someone else of something, was wrong, took it down and apologized. No “allegations” there brother
"To this day?"
I had no idea Prism was still updating. I played that in 2017.
I keep getting youtube ads for monetized mobile games claiming to be licensed Pokémon games. They don't get taken down as quickly as some of these fan projects
Quickly is a loose term , maybe you saw the video at 2x huh
They are Chinese. Nintendo can't touch them.
From what I've seen online, it's because those bootleg mobile games come from china where it's notoriously difficult for a overseas company to enforce their copyright in, which makes china bootleg central. Even BMW lost a case over a Chinese copy of one of their cars
"Nintendo hasn't gone after PalWorld itself"
Well shit. This sure aged like milk.
The details behind this are more complicated but long story short:
Nintendo knew about PalWorld and wanted so badly to go after them over anything. The current suit they've raise is an egregious BS one about patents, but not stuff you'd expect like similarities in monster design.
Maybe it’s time to go back to the old days where fans sent stuff back and forth via tapes and cartridges
Eating + DYKG Posts a new video = Heaven
Fr
And bathroom 😋
Simple man
Honestly, all Nintendo has shown is that fans have the power to do "pass the ball" type development for games. Would be interesting to see someone intentionally do this
"You are not allowed to develop this game any more."
"k" *passes it to a friend*
I remember sitting at a cafe in San Francisco, attending the Game Developers Conference, when the news dropped about Relic Castle.
It was absolutely devastating in the moment, but we weren't about to take things sitting down, and I'm glad we've been able to carry what Relic Castle was past what happened
We will never forget Relic Castle.
"we weren't about to take things sitting down"
does that mean you switched to standing at a cafe in San Francisco?
@@lrgogo1517 LMAO
yes
2:54 The typical Moon Channel "Brazil mentioned" moment.
this video went from understandable to me being terrified of the incoming ai horde
Considering how the TH-cam AI already tags Pokémon Uranium to this video, I feel like eventually it'll fall into the wrong hands. I was very much entertained though, you guys are top notch video game journalists.
“We appreciate your dedication” well, it doesn’t feel like it
Reminder that, as Japanese companies, Nintendo and the Pokémon Company follow stricter fair use and copyright laws, and likely encourage branches of their company in other countries to be just as strict. The laws are much stricter. In the world of anime TH-camrs, TeamFourStar got their videos copyright striked frequently enough to force them into retirement from abridging because, even though their videos can be protected under transformative use, Toei Animation Japan just sees them using DBZ footage for free and fans treating it like a substitute for the source material, and started seeing red.
So this sort of thing shouldn't be a surprise.
It's almost like copyright laws all over the world should be updated to some unified standard so we don't have something that's fair use in one country being DMCA'd by a company in a country that doesn't have fair use protections.
@@LordArikado I don't disagree.
@@LordArikado There are international treaties around the basics of copyright law, that's how it's even possible for you to sue someone from a different country for violating your copyright.
So it's not impossible for progress to be made on another treaty to update international law to the internet age, but there will still always be variances between jurisdictions.
@@LordArikado That would tend to end up worse usually. Any sort of standard would be aimed favorably towards the corporations. That's part of why copyright standards are the way they currently are in Japan, they adopted the US system without integrating a proper fair use clause.
using AI to enforce copyright laws.... am i the only one who sees the irony there?
Ah yes, AI, well known for strictly following copyright laws and never blatantly stealing and regurgitating artist's hard work. 😂
Yes. I found that funny as well
it's a paradox.
AI is too broad of a term and has become basically meaningless. A trained image generator is completely different tech from a webcrawler.
next you get freaked out because the "AI" in your fridge knows when to turn on the light inside lol
@@ruolbu nah it's just cause of the image generator that my comment is kinda funny, I know pretty well that the whole AI stuff isn't all a problem with copyright and stuff^^°
And yeah no, i know how my fridge works xD but nice try.
Hey, great video! We really appreciate the level of depth you covered, especially some of the more inner workings of the fangame community (the opener is such a breath of fresh air in the age of DMCA boogeymans)!
But yes, we can only hope that DMCA's and CnD's stay rare and infrequent c:
Thanks for combatting the "Nintendo Ninjas" urban legend. I've been involved in a lot of projects that people cry wolf on, and have never gotten a DMCA.
The "Nintendo ninjas" meme is one of the few things protecting modders.
@gemerl, that’s a good point. Nintendo restrains themselves a bit most BECAUSE they don’t want to seem like the bad guy in the public’s eyes (as much as possible while still satisfying their board), but @PowerPandaMods is also right in the fact that Nintendo isn’t nearly as harsh as the memes tend to convey
@@stonythechimist4250 And despite their latest lawsuit against PalWorld, that image will remain. Knowing the details of that suit, plus you know the history of Nintendo's practices in general both legal and commercial, they are the bad guys. Not THE worst in the industry, but plenty bad which should tell you how bad these game companies can be (including PalWorld's parent company).
As a lawyer myself, this video was a nice surprise
An amazing video for a lawyer and pokefan like me.
Anyone else getting recommened this after the news of Palworld and Nintendo?
A deep dive like this into brawl mods, but especially pm/p+ pleaseeeeeeee. amazing content btw. love it
Really interesting! I also like the showcase of all the different games, especially Pokemon Glazed, Bushido and Stranded.
Saw the title, hoped it was Moon, was a little disappointed to see it wasn't but was happy to watch a DYKG video. Then I started watching :)
Im sensing a pattern on romhacks having a johto post/optional area and getting taken down
The interesting part going after fangames is that someone else will try to take over
This narrator sounds a lot like Leonard Nemoy. I know it's not cuz ... He dead. But it is nice to hear
“He’s dead”
…or is he?
**VSauce noise**
Nintendo: "Someone made a fan game where they got money only from donations? Send the letter!"
Also Nintendo: "Someone stealing our designs for a mobile game where they earn with either iaps or ads or both? Don't do anything about it."
Maybe you should see the video before commenting
@@ausgod538 ....wherein the video only briefly mentions a modder's confusion as to why Nintendo/TPC don't go after these mobile games, and not giving any reasoning as to why they don't...?
Maybe _you_ ought to see the video before commenting.
All you need is to watch one commercial chaos mobile ads segment to know how widespread the theft is but because it's all garbage nintendo doesnt care. They only care when the product is good because they're that insecure.
@@lpnp9477 No, they don't care because those games remain in the shadows. You only hear about them in videos like this one.
The mobile games are from fly-by-night operations that are basically impossible to effectively prosecute.
It's much quicker and easier to send a DMCA to somebody in the US than a faceless shell corp in China.
I will never forget the prism takedown
While I absolutely adore fan games and personally feel that the fans are better than the actual developers, I think it's better for prominent fan game creators to just make their own games so they don't have to deal with DMCA bullshit at this point. I'd also love to see the day when a bunch of people who got hit with a DMCA for their Pokémon fan games come together and create their own Pokémon-like game, similar to Cassette Beasts.
It’s kinda crazy that the same day this video was uploaded is also the same day Brown got a 20th Anniversary update. That’s wild on two levels.
That was planned from a month or two ago (I'm the guy who wrote this video btw)
You know, when I was a boy, I always said that at some point in my life I also wanted to make a Pokemon rom hack, but that I wanted to be a famously unknown developer. Like I would make fake Facebook pages with fake followers so that if someone like Nintendo ever tried to find me, they'd be in a wild goose chase with multiple dead ends so that they couldn't touch me.
I never got around to it, but holy hell, that letter at 11:40, like Goddamn, he wasn't profiteering off of Pokemon and they still went after him and found his personal Facebook account! They literally said "We have your family HOSTAGE! Kneel, or you will be forced to!!!".
Nintendo be wilding 😂😂😂💀💀💀
Surprised PokeMMO hasn’t had Nintendo on their asses yet
Can’t believe brick bronze & project pokemon were mentioned 😭 these games brought me back into the Pokémon hobby in 2017… now selling Pokémon cards has been my full time career since 2021. I miss these games so much. I was really active in project pokemon discord, I miss my friends from there. “SurfChello”, my arch nemesis, I haven’t forgetten about you either. RIP to the best fan made Pokémon games!! 🙏
As a fellow lawyer and nerd I appreciate videos like these, thanks folks!
This video is not only incredible, but introduced me to ROMs that I’ve never heard of and now looking forward to playing
Pokemon Brick Bronze getting mentioned by a gaming TH-camr with millions of subscribers years after the game was taken down is surreal to me as someone who's been playing Roblox for a decade and is just used to Roblox fanprojects being ignored
Unfortunately older heads don’t like Roblox like that. I also been playing Roblox for more than a decade and experienced all the good/bad
Thank you for making these stories as accurate as possible, these need to be remembered
24:50 Dude should have got hired by Palworld. 😂
AI lawyers existing is pretty upsetting. It would suck even more for a fan game being taken down by an unfeeling AI. And it can be harder for human lawyers to get a job.
Moon Channel my beloved
Relic Castle being down is a top 10 most tragic incidents in anime moment
37:25 it is entirely possible that the strikepocalypse era of the Wii U may resume though, which is scary...
It stopped?
Thank you for this showcase! I think I need to take a proper gander at some of these.
All of them sounds like a blast!
Man if Pokémon put as much time and effort as they do to shut down fan games to “protect their IP” into their actual game development, they might be able to make an actual good fully functioning AAA Pokémon game.
This franchise is just a dairy cow for Nintendo. They will not do anything too risky, just put out new Pokemon every season to sell games and merchandise.
"bad press for driving their own fans into court" unfortunately, they got bad press anyway
Capcom are worse. Capcom ban fan fixes on Resident Evil. Capcom would have made so much money, but Capcom would kill the golden geese.
The A.I. part honestly is the most shocking.
For other Nintendo takedowns it is somewhat only speculated but the Pokémon Company goes all in.
Scary shit.
LMAO THE TIMING OF SEEING THIS
The most important thing I learned from this video is that DYKG is real journalism
AI enforcing copy-right is literally a Tom Scott video of a possible somewhat dystopian future.
Hope this doesn't end up going to the same extreme it goes to in that video
Awesome video. On a somewhat related note I would love to know why some very obvious Pokémon anime sites (sites with all the episodes, countless subs) haven’t been taken down. It’s crazy to me some TH-cam videos get taken down because a clip is too long, but ****** (won’t say the name here, but it is an obvious name and url) has literally every episode and is fully dedicated to Pokémon and puts up new episodes timely.
This is the only video I've ever seen where I keep seeing an ad for a Pokemon knockoff game and then immediately after it an ad for Pokemon GO.
Now I would like you to cover about Nintendo game modding next. We've also got strucked by the same AI law firms as well, the most recent one was before the June Nintendo Direct, dozens of old and new mods got DMCA'd, even mistakenly DMCA a recolor of a character in Guilty Gear because it has "Metroid" and "Samus" in the title and description and the mod has zero ressemblance to Samus at all. Then, a human sent a DMCA to one modder to clear out all of his posts, even those that aren't mod related (similar to a full ban).
since this was made by a lawyer, i have to ask him, is it also possable a court ruling could put a stopper on this AI shit? im pretty sure i heard about other cases where that happened, AI being used was like, found to be inadmisable or something
No. The AI is a service that is being authorized by Nintendo to represent their brand. The fact that AI is determining the actions is irrelevant, Nintendo is the IP holder and is within their right to send those takedowns and CnDs. It's just a matter of who gets them.
It's likely there still has to be a human in the chain, but it's basically TH-cam's content ID but for lawyers, from what I can tell. Part of brand protection is choosing your battles - see the two videos Moony made on Moon Channel about Dolphin and Yuzu for an example of Nintendo's current stance on emulation, testing a whole new legal theory to get around existing precedent, but also not wanting to litigate if they don't have to as keeping it in a grey area and on the down low prevents any new precedent going against Nintendo.
@@itskdogPicking their battles is precisely it. I’m sure the lawyers are aware they could spend an afternoon googling “Nintendo fan games” and easily have a list of hundreds to contact. It just isn’t worth the time/money to go after them all. Not when you could have your lawyer draft a licensing contract instead, that’ll make whatever “lost revenue” back in an hour or day of that licensing deal. It’s only when it competes with their own games (earning/charging money or high profile enough to confuse average consumers and harm their brand) that it’s worth going after. So long as you need lawyers communicating with people you’re litigating against, they aren’t gonna send C&D’s out en masse. Especially not if they’re threatening legal action within 48 hours. AI might help them be more aware without having to wait for your IGN’s and GameSpot’s to report, but they’re still only going to target the most troublesome ones, and few games ever cross that threshold.
The concern of setting a precedent is something I hadn’t considered. Sure, the defendant is unlikely to counter-sue, and go through with it instead of settling out of court. But who knows if sending out too many C&D’s (even if legally justified) might draw attention from the courts that something needs to be changed. They might even initially think of it as doing it in their favour to more easily deal with copyright/trademark infringement. But the unintended consequence could be that upon revisiting the law, they find something outdated and actually draft something against them. I’m not sure how law works, so I could be wrong. But I think the gist of “not drawing too much attention to yourself” is probably accurate, even if the specifics aren’t.
Having recently separately discovered Moon Channel and being an avid Pokemon romhack watcher, this video feels like it was made for me personally and I absolutely loved it!!
Freaking Pokemon Comp being like "I have your facebook and we know your name" just sounds stalker
Really cool seeing pokemon reborn shown in some of the footage :) its my favorite
I hate how they go after the fan games and not go after the shameless and terrible ripoffs and bootlegs, especially the ones on mobile
They have, when it uses their ip. If it's just a monster collecting game, they can't really do much about it.
You mean those chinese rip-off with gambling and ClubPenguin in them?
They are less worried about people thinking those are real. They might hook people with their bullshit ads but its obvious they aren't really pokemon games.
A lot of those assets rips originated from China which has loose copyright laws regarding non-Chinese companies.
They can't if its from a country like china, soook
Holy crap the direction Pokemon Uranium took is SUCH a good distraction for the world of Pokemon!!! I've never heard about it, not the biggest die hard fan but I've always appreciated quality Pokemon stuff ever since i was in 3rd grade when the cards started coming out. Man that's such a creative direction for this series
As someone who played it is really sick. Got some really good Pokémon designs and great music
as a huge fan of Pokemon Rom Hacks & Fan Games I love you guys made a video about the community!
I love pokemon romhacks and fangames
That whole AI thing boggles my mind. Surely Nintendo already knew those hacks existed. It's not like they were hidden. But suddenly an AI decides that four old rom hacks need to removed and Nintendo does it. Why?
The Palworld part aged like fine wine huh
The moment we realize sailing the 7 seas for nintendo games is justified.
Naming your Magikarp Magikrap, and then evolving it to Gyarados is a nice one.
Watching this as Nintendo goes after Palworld 👁👄👁
>click video
>Moon Channel voices it
This one is going to be a banger
The AI epidemic issues strike again. Not surprised at all at this point. Even Pokemon staff is using it to DMCA fangames ... We're doomed as fan creators
The 'twist' at the end is a highly upsetting but oddly unexpected outcome. I'm glad the knowledge it out there so future/current fan works/rom hacks can hopefully survive. I was so upset I missed out on Uranium and Prism back in the day, but as long as they're still out there somewhere...
good narration!
This is an awesome crossover! Big fan of both channels
Time to put garbage online that wastes copyright bots compute time and makes these IP protection companies less effective.
Oh hey! Its that guy who made that video that taught me an ungodly amount of info on korean society and gacha games. Awesome!
Pokemon Uranium.... YES! so far one of the best ones I have played! sad it got taken down :(
honestly sorta love how most of these have been "leaked" and either got fully finished, still getting love in some way, or are still getting updates now.... loop holes ftw!
Pokemon Brown is basically the only romhack I played fully. It was a blast!
I never got around to Prism, but I am going to soon.
KBM, if you're watching this: thank you. You understood what initially made pokemon so fun, and polished it to shine far beyond the limitations of the game boy.
I always like to joke that they took down Pokémon Brick Bronze in order to build off making Sword & Shield since the leaked early development builds look very “ROBLOX”y…!
Having become active here when mods like Last Impact and Insurgence were popular, I've always felt torn on how fangames were handled. There are a few that are very dear to me, but I also know from the amount of time I've spent on them that they're often direct competition to official Nintendo products - using the company's own resources for to be such. It could be nice if they found a way to work with some of the fan developers, but what happened with the Nintendo Creators Program shows how unlikely it is for such a plan to succeed.
Rainbowdevs have to be operating in a country where Nintendo can't go after them legally.