Nintendo Apologizes to SuicideGirls

As a follow up to the unfortunate incident on Wednesday, thanks to emfra (and others) who pointed out that BoingBoing has Nintendo's Apology Letter to the SuicideGirls site up. They even went so far as to offer up a free game system and game to the site owner. So alls well that end's well...but not before Penny Arcade had a chance to comment.

Comments

Makes perfect sense to me

[Phixxr]

I'm glad that Nintentdo is attempting to protect their trademarked property from mis-use by porn sites. Obviously they don't want you googling zelda and getting farmsex.com.

I think they've handled this in a most professional, and logical manner. Something that cannot be said for most large entertainment companies these days.

-phixxr

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[jdreed1024]

I think they've handled this in a most professional, and logical manner. Something that cannot be said for most large entertainment companies these days.

Seriously. They didn't even blame it on an intern, or outsourcing, or anything. They didn't try to pull the "Well, we know we were right, but we're going to do you a favor and back down anyway" thing. And in offering one of their products, they're letting the person choose what they want. As opposed to the RIAA, which dumps poorly selling albums in inner-city schools and calls it good.

Re:Makes perfect sense to me

[Lisandro]

Just what i thought. They did something perfectly understandable, fucked up in the process, realized it *and* apologized promptly. And make up for the hassle with a game system, which you might think (or not) that it's cheap, but again, no one forced them.

Kudos to Nintendo.

Re:I said it before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo, somebody makes a mistake and (when informed of it) both apologizes *and* offers to make it up to the offended. Now, I'm not one to shill for corporations, but how does this equate to "sleazebag company"?

Re:I said it before...

[fatwreckfan]

Except that the user that posted the names of those games was a guy. That doesn't meet my definition of a "hot goth chick."

Re:Nintendo

[MyLongNickName]

*SIGH* This really wasn't meant to be funny. Or at least it was only meant as a funny way to make a serious point. I am a skeptical personal. But sometimes, you just have to take something at face value. Accepting apologies allows reconciliation. Not accepting apologies means we will always be at war with each other... see 99% of the world. Nintendo did something stupid. They apologized and made an attempt at correction and reconciliation. I have a lot of respect for that. Yet, it seems like it is human nature to be vindictive. And it also seems to be in the nature of Slashdot to be vindictive even when folks here were not personally involved in the original wrong.

WARNING NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!

[minus_273]

The nintendo apology link goes to a site that carries pornographic ads. WTF is wrong with the editors and the MORON who submitted the story! Put a warning there at least.

Re:I said it before...

[SilkBD]

Profit is not a good reason to run a company, enhancing the overall good of society is.

Damn, I never laughed so hard in my life. I don't know what bizarro universe you live in... but companies exist to make profit, there's no way around that unless you're a non-profit company.

You see, they explicitly make a type of company called "non-profit" to destinguish them from all the other companies who exist for profit.

You, my friend, need to rethink your idealistic subjective reality.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Blame in the right place?

[SeanDuggan]

Bleh. It was probably some minor functionary overstepping their bounds who caused all this trouble. You'd might as well decide Walmart was evil because of a bad experience with a cashier. (Well, you'd be right about Walmart being evil, but for the wrong purposes)

Re:website

[bitslinger_42]

Granted, I am rather overtly paranoid, but did anyone else look at the last paragraph ("we would appreciate it if you could provide us with contact information for RuneLateralus") as a smooth attempt to get directly at the user without having to bother with a subpeona? I mean, come on. I'm Nintendo and I'm getting critized for attacking the website when it was an individual who posted (ignoring the context for a second here). So, I want to go after the user, but I don't know how to send the SaD letter. This looks to be a pretty cool way of getting the info without having to pay^H^H^Hcontact a judge.

/me adjusts tinfoil hat and shuffles off muttering to self

classy

[minus_273]

Reading the letter, i have to say that i like nintendo more as a company. Rarely do we see anyone thesedays admint a mistake apologize and then offer a jesture of goodwill to make amends. I think it was a really classy move on the part of Nintendo. I have alwasy liked their systems and games. It is nice to see that there are some reasonable people working there. I think nintnedo handeled this really well and in the end, people will either simply forget about it or bring it up when defneding nintendo instead of the other way around.
Kudos.

Re:Nintendo

[gamgee5273]

I think what's important to note is that it was Nintendo's lawyers who contacted SG, not Nintendo. My guess is that someone from Nintendo of America has chewed out someone at the lawfirm royally by now...

Re:Nintendo

[Ubergrendle]

Paraphrashing Ganhdi, "if we rely upon eye-for-an-eye justice, the whole world will end up blind."

Corporations are big, confusing entities. They're byzantine. Sometimes one individual, or team, or department, or DIVSION, exercise a strategy inconsistent or in competition with the corporation's main objective. How many times have you gone to work, looked at a project, and wondered "what the HELL are they doing?!?!?".

In this case, cooler heads prevailed and the situation was rectified. I don't think that Nintendo should be penalised for correcting a mistake. They were even gracious about it.

Just to summarize

[phorm]

Nintendo sends C&D nastygram to SG for use of various names of their games, where an SG member mentioned being a fan of said games

Coverage on Slashdot, Penny-Arcade, etc on this debacle

Nintendo goes "oh sh*t" at the negetive PR, fully owns up, and offers free (Nintendo brand) gaming system of choice to some of those involved at SG.

SO basically, SG comes up with a whole crapload of attention, extra site traffic, and some free gaming systems. Now, since the site didn't get nuked I'm assuming that a full slashdotting didn't happen. If at least some of the visitors end up signing up - offsetting the bandwidth cost - they benefit not only from the free systems but also from the free publicity/extra signups.

Heck, I sent me GF a link to this, she was looking up some girls' on SG and found their profiles rather cool, wanted to sign up herself. I'd say that I score this one:

SG:+2 (traffic/signups/game systems)

Nintendo+1: or 0 (no harm no fowl, but perhaps bonus points for owning up where few would)
Idiot IP lawers:-1 (for doing the right job in the wrong place).

Not perfect

[siskbc]

Yes, that people with money and power are frequently just indifferent to how their use of it affects people as long as they get what they want. Are you sure that's a step up from malice?

Take the tinfoil hat off. First, it was a fuckup. That's clear, they admitted it, end of story. Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids. I think I'm on board there. Third, there's no case for indifference because they did everything they could to fix the fuckup.

I know it screws up the schemas of the slashdot crowd, but there's really not this global conspiracy to screw you personally.

Re:Not perfect

[Maestro4k]

• Second, "what they want" in this case is for pedophiles to stop using Nintendo to screw up kids.

The AC replying to you said this as well but I wanted to point this out so it wouldn't get missed by others.

The jerks using Nintendo character names and stuff on porn sites to pull in links probably aren't pedophiles, and they probably don't give a shit that children get drawn in as well. They're just crooks hoping to cheat the system so they can pull in more money from their porn empire. Labeling this type of stuff as pedophilia hurts cracking down on the real problems by diluting what people think of as pedophilia and/or child porn. Frankly you're part of the problem, not the solution when you say things like this. We're all against child porn but most of us want to be helpful in stopping it, not mislabeling things to confuse the issue.

Re:Nintendo

[Anonymous Coed]

Paraphrashing Ganhdi, "if we rely upon eye-for-an-eye justice, the whole world will end up blind."

The reason I hate that quote so much is that it makes no sense. An eye for an eye means that everyone who goes around poking eyes out will be blind. Not the whole world. Just the eye-pokers.