Before stepping back into the world of PC gaming, there was an extensive period in my life where I played nothing but flash games through a variety of websites. For those who remember a time when Nick.com and Cartoon Network were the places to go for great games, we could not have been born at a better time.
And as the mainstream gaming industry evolved, so did online games. One could access fan made games of “Super Mario”, “Sonic the Hedgehog”, or the ever-popular “Super Smash FLASH”. It was an outlet for some of us to see our favorite characters put in different situations…for better or worse. Since then, fan games have become stronger and more prominent thanks to the rise of YouTube.
This all has come to screeching halt. In past couple of months, a number of developers have been issued cease-&-desist orders from games they have based on already owned IP. “Galaxy in Turmoil” was to be a spiritual successor to the cancelled “Star Wars Battlefront III” before Electronic Arts put the brakes on days before release. A “Metroid II” remake was released, dubbed “AM2R”. Nintendo ordered the devs to shut it down before launch before finding yet another fan game to confront.
As one could expect, fans are not happy. I’ve seen insults hurled towards Nintendo for these actions, calling the company stupid and incompetent for not letting these games roam free to “generate public interest”.
If this is the argument here, you may as well be firing blanks.
This is, perhaps, the most contradictive all year, especially with how big copyright infringement has been in 2016. I remember back in January when the movie critic Doug Walker of Channel Awesome started the “Where’s the Fair Use” campaign. It was an issue I refused to ignore, going so far as to cover it on The Odyssey and helped spread the word. Granted, YouTube’s algorithms are more screwed up than a lie detector, it was enough to get YouTube’s attention. This was a campaign to help defend people who were clearly under protection of Fair Use law. Many of the victims were small-time content creators, bullied by businesses for speaking negatively of their products or using their content for review and education.
While I’m not usually one to support Electronic Arts, I want to bring this question up again for both Nintendo and EA; where’s the Fair Use? Just in this screenshot alone, "Galaxy in Turmoil" is clearly infringing the Star Wars copyright. Some of the defenders for this game have complained, trying to justify that because the game would be released for free, that makes it okay.
No. It's not okay. A free game means free labor from someone else, but this isn't the case. "Galaxy in Turmoil" uses assets from a scrapped game that is placed under a franchise owned by another company. The only difference is the updated graphics on models and textures. Being "free" does not excuse any amount of copyright infringement. Keep in mind that these are full-fledged games of material owned by other people, not the simple flash games you can find on Y8 or Addicting Games.
Why are people bullying Nintendo and EA for shutting down these fan games when these developers are clearly in violation of copyright law? “Galaxy in Turmoil” blatantly used Star Wars assets, and didn’t even try to hide it. “AM2R” stands for “Another Metroid 2 Remake” and is using an intellectual property owned by someone else. And now, “Pokemon Uranium”…is it necessary to continue?
What confuses me about the situation is the fact that when the smaller people are in trouble, we light our torches. Nintendo and EA are in a similar situation now, but get no right to be in the right, apparently.
This is not me playing Devil’s Advocate. Nintendo and EA are indeed the victims in this situation. Their IP was being infringed upon. Just because you make a game free and are doing it from passion doesn’t make it okay. Nintendo and EA don’t need these fan games to “generate public interest”. At the end of the day, Pokemon and Star Wars will make sales as they have done time and time again. While it would be nice to see another developer be given the IP, this is not the way to do it.
Whether a company supports fan games or not, Nintendo and EA are simply protecting their IP and ownership, and that’s fine. Personally, I would support fan games. I still play games I used to love in my middle school days because I admired the ideas and work. However, if someone calls for copyright infringement, we need to understand and respect that. Companies like Nintendo and EA aren’t about to go to war with fan games. It’s just business…and law…mostly law.
