Nintendo Is Now Going After YouTube Accounts Which Show Its Games Being Emulated

26 pointsposted 8 hours ago
by thunderbong
(timeextension.com)

21 Comments

seanw444

8 hours ago

Nintendo and Sony have ended up as some of the most dislikeable companies due to how aggressively they prevent anyone from doing anything outside of the very carefully curated bounds that they allow. It's sad.

suddenclarity

8 hours ago

I had a quick look and apparently it started when he made a video on how to dump Switch games to ROMs and he showed 30 seconds of footage from Super Mario 3D World. Beyond that, almost all of his most recent video thumbnails contain emulators with Nintendo games on them.

The legal question aside, he's obviously trying to drive engagement by using Nintendo IP and it's no surprise that they eventually noticed him with his half a million subscribers. The risk taking surprises me considering what we know about Nintendo and that YouTube is awful do deal with. They even gave LTT a strike despite almost 16 million followers.

lousken

8 hours ago

At this point I am surprised we don't see large legal battles like between epic and apple, but maybe there's a chance with Astro Bot and Palword, I really want to see nintendo getting destroyed

Iulioh

8 hours ago

I WANT Nintendo to fail at this point but i honestly can't imagine it happening.

For a pokemon game they have 200 employees (including managment and other projects) and sell 25+mil copies, if they could have used less they would have.

Iper trigger happy with lawsuits and overall hostile to its own community.

I don't see. Its just cute monsters? thats all?

mattl

8 hours ago

Who has 200 employees on Pokemon? Nintendo? Game Freak?

Iulioh

8 hours ago

Game Freak, the developer of a big part of pokemon games

antisthenes

8 hours ago

I guess I'm lucky in the sense that I never found Nintendo franchises appealing enough to care about things like this (e.g. emulating some old nintendo game) or play their games longer than half an hour.

But good luck in your war against your own fanbase, Nintendo. I really hope you lose.

ravenstine

5 hours ago

They haven't really made anything I've wanted to play in the last few decades, but having grown up in the N64 era, it is continuously sad to see Nintendo behave this way. I've seen them go after YouTube channels that have gameplay walkthroughs with commentary for old games. To say that this or even footage of emulators is a serious threat to them is laughable. Make your games easily accessible, don't treat your customers like crap (for effectively advertising your products for free), and people will buy your games.

AStonesThrow

5 hours ago

I agree, as a matter of taste. I was raised on Atari 2600 and Commodore, really exciting, seminal platforms.

I believe that our NES belonged to my sister and I only borrowed time on it. I found the game carts mostly lackluster and not too compelling. Graphics and sound were meh. For that era/generation I greatly preferred Sega, such as Genesis and Dreamcast.

But it wasn't long before I became totally occupied with multimedia PC games, and there was no reason to maintain a dedicated console at all.

I do, however, completely support Nintendo and others who defend their IP and customer experiences, because otherwise we get utterly indiscriminate crap shovels for platforms who don't do this.

user

8 hours ago

[deleted]

deafpolygon

8 hours ago

Not surprised. If they don’t protect their IP, then they don’t have a ground to stand on. It’s basic IP law.

WithinReason

8 hours ago

> Not surprised. If they don’t protect their IP, then they don’t have a ground to stand on. It’s basic IP law.

That's trademarks

deafpolygon

7 hours ago

Trademarks is a part of your IP... [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property#:~:text=...

ravenstine

5 hours ago

Merely showing something that is trademarked is not a trademark violation.

Glant

5 hours ago

Is that the case in Japanese law? I don't know anything about Japanese law, but I've heard they don't have an equivalent "fair use" law which results in much stricter control.

ravenstine

5 hours ago

Good question. I don't actually know, although I'm not sure how Japanese law would extend to a multinational social media platform that happens to be headquartered in the United States.

deafpolygon

5 hours ago

Showing Nintendo's own software running on hardware that is not licensed for use can be considered a form of infringement. Displaying their logo while engaging in certain types of (illegal) activity can be considered infringement. This has been tried before.

While it may seem "unfair", it's entirely within their rights to do so.

ravenstine

4 hours ago

I don't think it's so much about whether Nintendo has the right as opposed to whether one should do business with them based on how overly defensive they are. There are other gaming platforms in town, and none of them (not even Sony) are as needlessly defensive of their IP as much as Nintendo, so it isn't obvious that Nintendo is just doing what it takes. They go above and beyond.

Also, whether a crime is being committed at the same time as displaying a trademark shouldn't matter unless the trademark is actually being violated. Since trademark today is effectively being enforced by multinational corporations scratching each others backs, we may never actually know whether Nintendo's lawyers could convince a judge or jury.

user

8 hours ago

[deleted]

wasteduniverse

8 hours ago

Ah yes, ground to stand on for when you continue to not sell these products that people are emulating. Marketing has determined that our public image is too positive, deploy the lawyers.