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Nintendo Shuts Down Tool Used To Build Pokemon Fan Games (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Since 2007, Pokemon Essentials has been a crucial part of the Pokemon fan game community. As a free mod for the paid RPG Maker software, Pokemon Essentials offers all the graphics, music, maps, and tilesets a fan game maker needs to craft their own Poke-adventure. Fans of the tool congregated around the PokeCommunity forums and a dedicated Pokemon Essentials wiki to download files, share creations, and discuss the scene. Earlier this week, however, PokeCommunity forum moderator Marin announced that "the Pokemon Essentials wikia and all downloads for it have been taken down due to a copyright claim by Nintendo of America." That means "we will not allow Pokemon Essentials or any of its assets to be hosted or distributed on PokeCommunity," the announcement reads. "We sincerely apologize that we have to do this, but there is no going around it." Fandom, the company that hosts the wiki, confirmed to the Verge that it had "received a DMCA notice on behalf of Nintendo notifying us of content that was in violation of its copyright holdings. After carefully assessing the violations in regards to the Pokemon Essentials wiki, we came to a decision to take it down."
Nintendo has a history of being heavy handed when it comes to defending their IP, even when there is no real benefit to them for doing so. Not surprised in the slightest this happened.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Ugh, haven't you been on Slashdot long enough to see that 'can't claim trademark' argument debunked 50 times? Ignoring a tiny non-profit fan mod project would absolutely not trigger a trademark forfeiture. There's absolutely no requirement to go after every fan who dares to do something trivial. And even if that was a concern, they could instead offer a perpetual license for a penny.
Name one trademark lost by non-enforcement in the last, oh... 80 years. 1948 or later. Not unenforceable against someone else who was using it due to laches -- totally expected and boring -- I mean lost as in unenforecable against everyone in the registered mark's jurisdiction.
Becasue let me tell you, my peers promulgating that meme, for a profit, keep using examples from the early 20th century, if not even earlier. May as well be warning the populace about marauding dire wolves.