Honestly, a bit surprised by this. It wasn’t even on Steam. Hopefully switching to an open source SDK will get this back up.
It sucks but I also wouldn’t want to get involved with Nintendos lawyers so I can’t blame Steam.
Valve has been quite supportive of fan projects like Black Mesa and Delta Particles and only demanding to remove Half-Life from the name to protect their trademark. But I guess they don’t want to risk involving Nintendo.
So because it depends on Nintendo libraries, valve wanted it taken down, but valve doesn’t represent nintendo and the project isn’t by them or on steam, so who’s actually at risk of being sued and why?
If Nintendo asked the developer to stop using Nintendo stuff I’d get it, but in that case it was never legal to begin with and the developer knew they had no license to use those libraries, so why all of a sudden does the developer not want to continue at the request of valve, are they an employee of valve or something? This is super weird, its not even a nintendo IP
Pure speculation:
Nitendo is one of the most notorious copyright litigators in the industry, it would not surprise me if they objected to the use of their libraries and pressured valve to exercise their ownership of the IP to shut it down
I know nothing about this, so honestly don’t listen to me. But Nitendo is a huge joykill so I’m happy just assuming it’s at least partly their fault
Stop with the fan projects already.
These companies don’t give a shit and will just squash any project that they can’t milk for funding.
Best case scenario you never release your work in fear of getting sued and nobody gets to play your game.
Make new projects inspired by these games and actually build your own fanbase instead of being at the behest of greedy corporations.
You know, you chose a bad post to get edgy.
Valve is actually one of the companies that treats fan projects very well, sometimes they’ll even let you sell your project on Steam (see Black Mesa remake).
Valve is actually one of the companies that treats fan projects very well
Well, not this fan project…
Yes, but Valve didn’t block it based on their own IP. The focus really should be on the fact that Nintendo is so litigious. This was a fan project of a non-Nintendo IP. Their reputation is preceding them.
I think people are missing the fact that most fanmade content that Valve has historically been ok with is all original material. Black Mesa, Portal Stories, and others all used the Valve IP but were all original content. This port actually uses Valve-created content so, regardless of Nintendo’s involvement (although it makes the demand for this action stronger), they legally have to enforce it or risk losing the legal protections for that property.
Nintendo just gave them a convenient way to stop it before they needed to do it anyways.
I don’t think thats how it works for copyright. You have to defend your trademarks to keep them but for copyright, you can decide who can use it rather arbitralily.
Especially allowing a release of an old game on platform you don’t support which would not really compete with you.
It’s not about whether it competes. It’s about whether a “reasonable person” could confuse it for being an authorized product of the IP owner. In this case, people could confuse it with both a licensed Nintendo product (since it runs on original hardware) and it could be confused with an official Valve release (since the content is an exact (as possible) recreation of the levels and assets from the original game.
So you are clearly talking about trademark. A game design can’t be trademarked. Only the name. Yes, if the name could be confused, that could be an issue. Maybe the cover art to some extent, if it is trademarked.
But if the game origin can be confused, so what? No law against that.
“Hey, don’t use code for our dead game console we stopped manufacturing 22 years ago and don’t support anymore!”
Who gives a fuck, Nintendo?
Wasn’t it taken down at Valve’s request, not Nintendo’s demand?
Officially yes. We have no idea if Nintendo sent a private email saying “please figure this out before we do.”
Yes, but mainly because Valve doesn’t want to deal with Nintendo’s lawyers since it used their libraries.
I really wish they would and set a precedent for Nintendo’s anti-consumer tactics.
It wasn’t Nintendo, it was Valve taking preemptive action because of how Nintendo has acted in the past…
It’s unfortunate, but it’s pretty reasonable given how Nintendo is.
Nintendo could benefit greatly by just allowing these kind of projects, but that would be out of character and we can’t be having that.
It’s a bit like if Metallica had just embraced Napster
It was Scorpions that went after Napster, no?
It was primarily Metallica.
It’s a shame, but their request doesn’t seem unreasonable. No one likes dealing with Nintendo’s lawyers. I hope switching SDKs works out!
Apparently even Valve’s lawyers don’t like dealing with Nintendo’s lawyers.
I mean… Tbf, they are kinda dicks, so yeah, I get it.
if nintendo has the potential to take legal action against valve for this I dont blame them for doing this. Nintendo has some fucking balls to the walls lawyers that will do anything to protect their IPs. Valve has every reason to be afraid of nintendo
I don’t think Nintendo would have a case against Valve, only against the developers of the demake. It looks more like Valve wants to maintain a good relationship with Nintendo, given Valve has ported Portal to the Switch and may intend to port more of their back catalog.
Some people are also saying valve gave the guy a friendly warning about using the Nintendo sdk rather than sending a cease and desist, and the reporting on it was misleading
They also likely have a touchy relationship right now considering the removal of dolphin.
