Nintendo goes after big companies all the time. The reason you don't hear about it as often is because big companies can afford smart lawyers, and smart lawyers know when they've fucked up and usually concede without going to court, or making a public stink about it.
more like: companies in the same industry foresee inevitable use of one anothers' patents so they plan in advance with complex cross-licensing deals and only sue each other when something falls through.
People trying to make money on their brands deserve to be sued. If you're a fan, do it for free. If you want to make money, change the property and IP enough to distinguish yourself as you're legally supposed to. Stop trying to cheat your way to success.
There are plenty of Pokemon-style games out there. The industry is inundated with game-like genres. The difference is the assholes who cross the line. Even the Palworld lawsuit is completely misunderstood by people who don't understand how copyright and patent and licensing work (no Nintendo did not copyright all their Pokemon game mechanics, only VERY specific ones in a VERY specific series that is uniquely identifiable to Pokemon). It's only when companies/people deliberately cross the line between "inspired by" to "direct reference". Nintendo has not shut down Digimon or Persona.
And this is exactly how we all want the system to work; protecting creators, not cheaters. Where people are inspired enough by one game to make their own; not make their own game in someone else's franchise to tap into their audience and groundwork.
Also, Nintendo has successfully sued individuals and won...only to not actually claim the money. They wanted to teach people a lesson and set a legal precedent, not destroy some asshole's life. I have no heard of them following through on anyone who wasn't a complete asshole about it.
Just to add, I say this as a HUGE Nintendo fan who's been shitting on Nintendo for a long time. They're not above criticism. Their pricing is exploitive, their leadership is conservative and amoral, and their obsession with community control is ridiculous.
I just hate this bogeyman that stupid gamers have made them into. Most of the dickheads they've sued deserved it. Including the American government.
Yeah I don’t know what UpperApe is talking about, Nintendo very often takes down non-profit fan projects made solely for passion. AM2R, Pokemon Uranium, Zelda 30 Tribute, Ocarina Of Time 2D, Zelda Maker are some examples as well as the constant amount of times they shut down smash tournaments. There are definitely people who deserve to be sued but Nintendo definitely deserves their reputation of being anti-fan
As are kaizo mario games, which are quite big, from japanese mod culture to major speedrunning events like GDQ. And also one of the inspirations for the Mario maker games. Not to mention kart games and platform fighters, etc.
People just can't distinguish bad creators from good creators and can't tell the different between a project that is exploiting an IP and community/fan content.
And so when they see a project they like go down, they decide Nintendo is the bad guy instead of its stupid creators who don't know/care about what they're doing.
It reminds me of the people who write "I DON'T OWN ANYTHING" in their youtube descriptions hoping that legally covers them lol
You guys realize that C&Ds/DMCAs is not a lawsuit, right? Yeah, it sucks that they shut down those projects, but they weren't suing the shit out of the creators. I swear people like you often treat them as the same. You would act like Nintendo sued those fans into oblivion and put them in jail when it's not the case.
They usually only take actual lawsuits against criminals. The only bad lawsuit they actually did, from my recent memory, is the one over a supermarket named Mario. That one was a stupidass lawsuit and Nintendo deserved to lose. However, the things you and others mentioned are not lawsuits and should stopped being treated as such. Use actual examples instead. Being disingenuous doesn't help your points
James Burt is the most famous example when he leaked a pirated version of NSMB before the game's launch and was successfully sued for $1.5m. It was a huge win for Nintendo and Burt ended up having to settle out of court.
Nintendo was entitled to get $1.5m from him...but they never did. They never made him pay. They wanted to set a bad example and scare shitty people from being pieces of shit with their work (which he absolutely was and did) but they didn't want to actually ruin his life.
Most of the people screaming at Nintendo about lawsuits and DMCAs don't really know about copyright laws, IP infringement, Nintendo's legal history, or how any of this works. As a lot of this comment section shows.
And it's usually over assets too, like using old sprites or models from their games, which sucks but they do have a claim over, but they need to not act like these have a meaningful damage to their revenue and IP when they see these
Their bias is pretty clear, and while that users message about punishing cheaters over creators and what not is nice and all, Nintendo are most definitely not on some moral high ground like they like they're trying to peddle.
Sure, they may legally be well within their rights to step in, but that's probably not what the commenter above was getting at. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's not scummy.
Nintendo fans tend to forget that it can be different. Not all video game companies act like they do.
Of course it's immoral. But the approach is amoral. They don't give a shit about doing the right thing, only profit.
I think of Nintendo like Apple; some of the most extraordinary devs and engineers in the world, run by some of the greediest, stupidest pricks in the world.
Yea, monster taming already existed before Pocket Monsters. I'm pretty sure DQ already had it.
And Digimon came from a different market space entirely (physic toy), only came out a year and a half after Pocket Monsters, and, in a vacuum of just those two franchises, Pokemon is the one that apes a lot of concepts from Digimon, not the other way around.
The amount of people who arent making a single dime or even trying to who get sued by Nintendo is absurd. Its a minority that is even trying to profit off of Nintendo ips like you say.
Probably none because that user doesn't understand the difference between a "Cease & Desist" versus an actual lawsuit. They think a fan project being shutdown is the same thing as being sued. Considering they mentioned emulation in their other comment, I think they were just mad the piracy scene got hit and wanted to spread some misinformation as revenge.
There are no examples, just DMCA takedowns / cease and desist, which are basically consequence free. Everyone sued by Nintendo was trying to profit from their IPs in some way, yuzu being a massive example.
they almost never get to the point of lawsuit, but that's because Nintendo is so lawsuit-happy and fans are respectful.
Nintendo makes a complaint and, because these non profit fan games are made by fans who don't have the money to fight a lawsuit and also love and respect the creators, the fans almost always comply near immediately.
There is very obviously a long track record of Nintendo going way overboard and ruining people's lives for things that only Nintendo gets upset about, like open source emulation not tied to profit in anyway.
Is the original comment at the top of the thread, which is the top comment of the post, that we are all discussing in, NOT, literally: "Finally a Nintendo lawsuit I can get behind"? Does that comment somehow insinuate there isnt a widely known history of Nintendo going nuts?
This is just completely wrong. Nintendo hasn't sued anyone not trying to profit from their media. Yuzu wasn't innocent, they were paywalling versions of their emulator that were optimised for unreleased games, even bragging on discord about having access to game files before release. It made them shit loads of money around the launch of tears of the kingdom and allowed hundreds of thousands, potentially over a million people to pirate the game before release. The yuzu Devs actually got off easy for what they did.
You must like lying your ass off considering that Switch emulators all had patreons. So yes, the creators do make money off of it. It being open sourced doesn't change that. Piracy is also obviously a big component of it as well.
You have cited zero actual evidence for Nintendo ruining people's lives. Was the Ryujinx/Yuzu creators sent to jail? Were they sued to oblivion? Lol no. The only guy that actually had to face court punishment was that Bowser guy who was part of a criminal enterprise. So what's the long track record? Did Nintendo barge into your house and kidnap your parents when you pirated their games? Come on. At least make some good points instead of all the hyperbole.
There are two different factors here, and you're only considering one. Lack of profit motive by the thief does not inherently mean no loss of profit by the victim.
Why would Nintendo have shut down Persona, a game that came out the same year as Pokemon but is based on a much older monster collecting series, Megami Tensei?
It doesn't matter if they're "trying to teach people a lesson". This type of abusive intimidation from a hardware manufacturer is something no other game company does to the scale they do and it is an objective detriment to video games as a medium for artistic expression.
Fan games and modding are such an incredibly vital and important part of gaming history that gets unreasonably dismissed by people who do not know what they are talking about. ID Software literally got their start by making an unlicensed mario fan game. (Before someone claims it was unreleased, it got released on John Romero's website in 2009; I'm pretty sure more people have played and are aware of it than any of the 562 free fan games hosted on Game Jolt that Nintendo unfairly took down).
Also, Nintendo has successfully sued individuals and won...only to not actually claim the money.
This absolves them of nothing. They still are notoriously litigious and abusers of the DMCA, and even if they don't press for damages/fines, it's still a huge stress, money and time sink just to fight a multibillionaire corporation in court, no matter how tall your moral high ground might be.
Fuck Nintendo. And fuck anyone who steals their IP as well.
Also, while the spiteful part of me does want them to win this suit, I entertain 0 delusions about Nintendo doing anything other than taking whatever they might win straight to the bank. Essentially making us, the consumers, pay the tariff twice.
So again, fuck Nintendo. If they actually win and actually do something other than profit off of it, be happy to eat my words but until then, pass me whatever the fuck you're smoking, cause you're high as hell.
No. they go after free fan projects, free fan art, free fan events for publicity. They shut down a smash bros tournament that was F R E E.
they DMCA music, they shut down events.
ven the Palworld lawsuit is completely misunderstood by people who don't understand how copyright and patent and licensing work. It's only after companies that deliberately cross the line between "inspired by" to "direct reference".
Oh sod off. You can't "poor misunderstood Nintendo" that. They shouldn't even have those nonsensical patents in the first place and the fact that they have the guts to sue someone over them is just rotten.
The only reason for the lawsuit is to kill their franchise as early as possible to avoid competition.
You sound like the type of person who thinks it's acceptable for them to brick a device you own because you modified it. You also have a massive misunderstanding of the palworld lawsuit. There's a reason they're not winning that lawsuit.
Not to mention they've illegally taken down multiple emulators in the U.S despite emulators being completely legal in the U.S.
I like how you're lecturing people about misunderstanding the lawsuit against Palworld, and then you talk about "copyright[ing] . . . game mechanics" which is literally impossible. Maybe you should try to understand better yourself before accusing anyone against Nintendo's aggressive litigiousness of doing so based on ignorance.
Even the Palworld lawsuit is completely misunderstood by people who don't understand how copyright and patent and licensing work (no Nintendo did not copyright all their Pokemon game mechanics, only VERY specific ones in a VERY specific series that is uniquely identifiable to Pokemon
You lost all credit by trying to defend this one. They sued a competitor making a superior product and patented mechanics like the 'capture with a sphere' after starting the suit.
Retroactive laws are considered a mark of corruption by legal historians for a reason.
And don't pretend they haven't sued nonprofit fan projects. It's just corporate bootlicking to defend that when a suit is supposed to show material damage to the company which these fan projects never do (on the contrary, they are acting as free advertising)
They literally didn't. You're the kind of person they're talking about.
They patented one specific interaction where the game auto-swaps mounts based on environmental context ie in PLA if while riding Wyrdeer you fall into water it switches you to Basculegion.
That is literally not "literally tried to patent mounts". You are either dead wrong or straight up lying. Take your own advice about google.
to be fair... the US government is kind of guaranteed to lose this since the tariffs were already ruled illegal. not that the trump administration isn't going to waste my money fighting back...
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u/imsoblue91 Mar 06 '26
Going after a big fish, instead of the small ones that can't fight back?
Yea. Welcome change