Nintendo Shuts Down 'Pokemon Uranium' Fan Game After 1.5 Million Downloads (thewrap.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Wrap: The fan-made "Pokemon Uranium" game took a pair of programmers more than nine years to develop. Nintendo needed just about nine days to kill it. "After receiving more than 1,500,000 downloads of our game, we have been notified of multiple takedown notices from lawyers representing Nintendo of America," the creators of "Pokemon Uranium" said in a statement. "While we have not personally been contacted, it's clear what their wishes are, and we respect those wishes deeply. Therefore, we will no longer provide official download links for the game through our website," they continued. "We have no connection to fans who re-upload the game files to their own hosts, and we cannot verify that those download links are all legitimate. We advise you to be extremely cautious about downloading the game from unofficial sources." The role-playing game was free, though creators @JVuranium and Involuntary Twitch were open to suggested PayPal donations of $2-$10. Set in the tropical Tandor region, "Uranium" players can encounter more than 150 all-new species of Pokemon in their quest to collect all eight Gym Badges and triumph over the Tandor League, per the official description. Along the way, the players must battle against a sinister threat that's causing Nuclear Meltdowns.

Comments

Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was anyone surprised by this? If you use somebody else's intellectual property without first getting consent, it seems like you're dooming yourself to similar failures. I don't know what they were thinking using a heavily trademarked and copyrights franchise brand without first seeking legal advice. It's possible they may have been hoping for some "fair use" argument to prevail, but IMO that seems like a long shot.

Re:Surprised?

[quantaman]

Was anyone surprised by this? If you use somebody else's intellectual property without first getting consent, it seems like you're dooming yourself to similar failures. I don't know what they were thinking using a heavily trademarked and copyrights franchise brand without first seeking legal advice. It's possible they may have been hoping for some "fair use" argument to prevail, but IMO that seems like a long shot.

Yeah, I'm kinda shocked they didn't see this coming, this seems like a pretty clear case of trademark infringement.

They'd probably be fine if they just rebranded their pokemon as fairies or some kind of magical creatures, but calling them pokemon is asking for a lawsuit.

Re:Surprised?

[OverlordQ]

And the nail in the coffin was accepting donations

Re:Surprised?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they wanted to Streisand from the start?

Re:Surprised?

[Solandri]

Whether they gave it out for free is irrelevant. Pokemon is trademarked. If Nintendo doesn't shut them down, that could dilute their trademark and result in a judge tossing out a real trademark infringement lawsuit Nintendo files in the future.

While I agree the classy thing for Nintendo to do would be to give them a $1 license for the trademark so long as the game is free and they let Nintendo's lawyers scrutinize it before release. But the fact that they didn't reach out to Nintendo before releasing the game would mean Nintendo sets a dangerous precedent by licensing them. Basically Nintendo would be implying that anyone can use their trademark, and so long as they're giving the game away for free they'll retroactively license it.

Re:Surprised?

[WolfgangVL]

They DID get away with this. Sometimes its just not about the money. Good practice and massive exposure are a plus, but sometimes you just gotta make something you love.

Kudos to them.

Re:Surprised?

[gsslay]

Ah, the universal excuse for stealing other people's work; "free advertising".

What you are over looking is that a crappy "not as good as the paid version" game actually dilutes and damages the brand. It may advertise it, possibly, but not necessarily in a good way.

Why don't you come put a couple of weeks' work in for me? For free. But it will be excellent free advertising for your other work. The jobs where you actually get paid. I get your work for nothing, and I'll tell everyone what a great job you did and you might get paid work. Everyone wins! Then again, all you might get is more requests from tight-asses who think they can get your work for free, and the reputation you get is as "the guy who works for free". But those are the breaks.

Re:Surprised?

[Opportunist]

And it's The Doctor and not Doctor Who, but nobody ever gives a shit.

Checksums

[Anonymous Coward]

Checksums in case anyone wants to verify any downloads:
http://pastebin.com/QDgXsxmL

Re:Checksums

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but are they the *correct* checksums? You'll never know.

Malwares: gotta catch 'em all.

Well seems like the law works.

[future assassin]

I'm the first to say pirate on! But here you are using another companies product name and charging for it for commercial gains. What did they expect to happen?

Nintendo are only keeping up appearances.

[Anonymous_Coward_No1]

If Nintendo does not shut down these projects their ability to protect their products in the event of real theft vanishes. At face value it appears as though Nintendo is simply inept when they don't act until after these projects (Pokemon Uranium/Another Metroid 2 Remake) are released . However, I believe that they are willfully allowing these projects to complete and release before issuing legal threats with full knowledge that they will never really remove them from circulation.

Re:Nintendo are only keeping up appearances.

[bloodhawk]

until these games are released there is not much they can do apart from warn. It is also not Nintendo's responsibility to seek out everyone that may be thinking about infringing on their IP, it is up to the developer to do there own due diligence or suffer the consequences.

Rebrand and relaunch in 3, 2, 1 ...

[Qbertino]

What's the big deal? AFAIU the monsters are their unique designs. All they need to do is remove the Pokemon association and trademarks and all is fine and dandy.