Pokemon Essentials Takedown

[Deo]

Alright, enough. I'll be deleting any future fear mongering, now isn't the time for it. It doesn't accomplish anything, nor does it help anyone. I know this is a sensitive topic, but it always amazes me how many armchair lawyers come out of the woodwork during these sorts of things.

 

[Simeo]

I'm sorry for getting in that state, but that matters a lot to me. Anyway, speak a little more about the actual subject, I'd like to make a suggestion.

Dueling Network was a yugioh dueling site online that was taken down as well, but that was because they used the pictures of the card, not because of the game itself. At first, they did have to remove the pictures of the game, and then they were taken down because they did find an alternative made in an emergency to use the pictures.

Could the take down be related to the things that Nintendo directly owns? Such as cries, battlers, and anything that is directly ripped from official games? What if Essentials would be a starter kit made of fanmade tilesets, fanmade characters, overworlds, and battlers? That could be a way to save the fangame community while staying inlaw?

 

[Mr42leon]

What if, instead of "pokémon" they would create their own characters?
Like, use the several Fakemons just for general purposes (as setting up the battlers and sprites) and different names for the moves, different sprites for the characters...
It would take a lot of time and hard work, but at least, it could be possible to remove every one of Nintendo's propierty without taking out the essentials itself.
Do you guys think it's possible?

 

[chikorita]

Could the take down be related to the things that Nintendo directly owns? Such as cries, battlers, and anything that is directly ripped from official games? What if Essentials would be a starter kit made of fanmade tilesets, fanmade characters, overworlds, and battlers? That could be a way to save the fangame community while staying inlaw?

Do you guys think it's possible?

Both suggestions (which are basically the same) are possible, but it'll take some time since you need to change scripts too. Just changing pokémon to fakémon should be enough where it applies.

 

[Dr. Pikachu PhD]

We kindly and desperately ask that you not turn your disappointment and anger towards Nintendo, TPCI, or anyone involved in this situation.

Too late for that! I have to admit I'm livid with Nintendo over this decision - not because it is the end of fangames or any sort of fear mongering, but simply because it is a crappy thing to do. I understand that Nintendo is totally in their rights to do this, but just because they can do it doesn't make it right/moral/justifiable. These projects are love letters to TPCI from dedicated fans who choose not to profit off of them out of respect, and Nintendo decides to spit on them by crushing their efforts. And I don't think upcoming game releases justify these takedowns; fangames are simply not a threat to Nintendo's sales, they never have the quality or audience size to hurt a AAA title. Actually, I'd assert that the thriving fangame community helps maintain engagement during the lull periods between official releases! How about NoA instead take some legal action against the dozens of obvious Pokémon rip offs in YouTube ads or on the app store, which actually are abusing their IPs to profit and attempt to usurp sales.

Overall, I think it shows a serious lack of respect for their fans. Pokémon Essentials was an awesome project with so much time and effort in it, the people that run it didn't deserve this and neither did the community who use it as the base for their games. I get that Nintendo has the right to do this, but I refuse to support their actions here.

 

[ChiNun]

Dang... That engine and the site has been up for like... a good 10 years? A long time coming :/

Anyway, the best 2cents I can offer here is that now's the time to silently distribute any updated copies of the engine if you have it, and there really isn't anything genuinely stopping you from pressing on, as others have mentioned. Nintendo is basically exercising what literally every company has to do in order to protect their copyright (not saying I agree with it personally, since in practice, fan games rarely affect the sales of mainstream titles let alone get anywhere near the amount of press anyway. Aside from copyright they're hardly a threat to anyone), so like, as a general rule, fan games are best kept underground to begin with.

Also, I recommend this community, and other communities that host fan games really come together to double-up on documenting Essentials features, because that was the biggest advantage the wiki offered and now all of that information is lost (at least in the sense that we can't really go to a designated page to find everything).

 

[Obermarschall]

Too late for that! I have to admit I'm livid with Nintendo over this decision - not because it is the end of fangames or any sort of fear mongering, but simply because it is a crappy thing to do. I understand that Nintendo is totally in their rights to do this, but just because they can do it doesn't make it right/moral/justifiable. These projects are love letters to TPCI from dedicated fans who choose not to profit off of them out of respect, and Nintendo decides to spit on them by crushing their efforts. And I don't think upcoming game releases justify these takedowns; fangames are simply not a threat to Nintendo's sales, they never have the quality or audience size to hurt a AAA title. Actually, I'd assert that the thriving fangame community helps maintain engagement during the lull periods between official releases! How about NoA instead take some legal action against the dozens of obvious Pokémon rip offs in YouTube ads or on the app store, which actually are abusing their IPs to profit and attempt to usurp sales.

Overall, I think it shows a serious lack of respect for their fans. Pokémon Essentials was an awesome project with so much time and effort in it, the people that run it didn't deserve this and neither did the community who use it as the base for their games. I get that Nintendo has the right to do this, but I refuse to support their actions here.

Exactly there are multiple apps and games, where they literally use the same CHARACTER DESIGN like for instance Pikachu, mix it with a Digimon on the other side and give it other names... + they make publicity and earn money from it. Now that is something where I'd say okay this needs to be taken down. Fan games on the other hand don't make a single cent profit and if they do...well look you are a big company, you meet some representatives of, say YouTube, politely tell them that x, y and z channels make money from playing or showcasting fangames and that YouTube should demonetize them. But taking down fan games costs them likely much more than anything else... They should also not underestimate this part of their fanbase, because if let's say someone initiates a boykott on their newest games... Nintendo might not make a loss (surely not) but have a smaller profit + YouTubers who play fangames might also tell their followers about it and in turn some might actually also boykott etc etc...

 

[_pheebs]

So, are we still allowed to make fangames? Or...?

 

[Deo]

So, are we still allowed to make fangames? Or...?

On Relic Castle? Yes, we just aren't allowing the distribution of Essentials itself. Business as usual otherwise though,

 

[Dragonite]

So first I was going to write some stuff about this, then I decided against it, then I remembered that this is the Internet and everyone has an opinion anyway. Unpopular opinion time!

Spoiler: References are at the bottom

1. Nintendo isn't even allowed to do this! They don't own the Essentials code!

Yes. Yes, they absolutely are. Pokémon is still their intellectual property, which they're allowed to protect. They could issue takedown notices on fanfiction if they wanted to.

2. It's not nice for Nintendo to do this!

This is probably the most common protestation. I actually don't have an opinion on it specifically. Even if I did, it doesn't change the fact that trademarks are "enforce it or lose it" (see: Band-Aid, Velcro, Aspirin, etc.) and Nintendo does NOT want that to happen to Pokémon, or any of their other franchises.

If you were in their shoes you would absolutely do the exact same thing as they are. The value of the Pokémon franchise is estimated to be upwards of ten billion dollars. If you think any businessman would let an eleven-digit figure slip through their fingers because an imperceptible (see below) fraction of their fans desired it, you don't know the first thing about business.

Believe it or not, if Nintendo lost their trademark for Pokémon that would probably be pretty bad for us as (part of the) Pokémon community because, among other things, then the mobile games industry would pick it up and drive it into the ground within days.

3. Making fan games is a great place to get started on your own game development career!

Sure it is. So is the officially sanctioned modding of games. Or Super Mario Maker. Or downloading cygwin/g++ and starting from scratch.

4. This will lead to massive backlash from the community and will hurt Nintendo in the long run!

Math time.

Pokémon Sun and Moon have sold a little over sixteen million copies. Let's say 25% of those were the same person buying both games—this is a preposterously high overstatement but as you'll see in a minute, that doesn't even matter. Either way, that gives us twelve million (12,000,000) active Pokémon players.

Pokécommunity is the biggest fan game community that I know of. They have about sixteen thousand (16,000) active users. Once again, let's be extremely generous and say that every single one of those members has a very strong opinion on this and are willing to never buy a Nintendo game for the rest of their life. But there are probably way more people who are up in arms about this who aren't registered on Pokécommunity and/or have an account but don't use it, so let's round up a bit and estimate that there fifty thousand (50,000) people boycotting Nintendo over this. Oh wait, it's not just Pokémon they go after, remember a few years ago when they came down on Super Mario fan games too? I don't recall nearly as much outrage then as I do now, seeing as most of the games they took down were pretty terrible anyway, but let's pretend there was. A hundred thousand (100,000) people will never buy a Nintendo game or console again.

So how does this affect Nintendo?

(12,000,000 active players - 100,000 active players) ÷ (12,000,000 formerly active players) × 100% = 99.17% of their player base remaining

Nintendo's sales team is laughing their asses off at this.

5. Exactly! So they shouldn't bother taking down fan games! It's not worth their time!

Whoever says this, please never become a trademark lawyer.

References

Value of the Pokémon franchise.

https://www.gamnesia.com/news/the-pokemon-company-generates-1.5-billion-annually
https://moneyinc.com/pokemon-franchise/

A vast majority of Pokémon fans don't care about fan games. Most of them probably don't even know we exist.

https://trends.google.com/trends/ex...n fan game,pokemon uranium,pokemon fanfiction

Oh no, I used Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pokémon_Sun_and_Moon#Sales (as of 30 June 2018)

Here's a list of games that support and/or encourage modding. You may have heard of a few of them.

https://www.nexusmods.com/games
https://minecraft.net/en-us/

I love what comes out of the fan game community and have even made a few things myself, but I recognize that it is and always has been risky business. And that there are bigger forces at play in the world than us.

To the "make your own monster catching IP" idea, I say that's an admirable goal and good luck, but be warned that there are probably already more of these than you expected and the Internet sometimes does not receive them very well. (Also if you're thinking of monetizing, remember that Maruno has said over and over that nobody's allowed to make money off Essentials so if you've still got a copy and plan on using it it'd be pretty neat if we could continue to honor his wishes.)

 

[Deo]

I want to clear a couple things up; specifically how this relates to the fan game community and Relic Castle itself.

When me and Atomic Reactor started Relic Castle in 2014-2015, it was a different landscape for fan games. These types of take downs were incredibly uncommon, and you could count how many had happened on one hand within the past decade. We created Relic Castle thinking we would just have around fifty members.

That's not the case, and times are different. I want to make it very clear that if Nintendo or someone representing Nintendo went after Relic itself, we'd have no choice but to fold. The idea that we would be willing to risk the livelihood of the staff members and or members of this community is absolutely ridiculous and incredibly short sighted of what that would achieve. It doesn't matter if you don't like that answer, "fighting back" would accomplish absolutely nothing besides potentially ruining the lives of those involved with legal fees and other ramifications. We dearly hope it never comes to that.

You may disagree with our stance in the first post, but it should be pretty obvious why we took it. It's the same stance we took when Uranium was taken down. I would rather this community stick around for another ten years than be taken down in two years because we decided to turn a blind eye to any potential consequences, especially ones we receive because of a decision we made in the first week or so after a take down like this.

We aren't doing this because we've received any communication from Nintendo or a lawyer representing Nintendo. Don't get me wrong, I find this situation incredibly frustrating and wish that Nintendo saw things differently. They don't, and they can ultimately do as they please. That's reality, no amount of wishful thinking or armchair lawyering will change that. The idea that we're somehow doing this out of paranoia or cowardice astounds me with how oblivious it is to the bigger picture and how serious things like this can get.

The fan game community will get through this, it isn't the end. Things may appear unclear and volatile at the moment, but with some time everything will settle into place again. This happens when a big event sends ripples through out the community, and the hysteria always dies out eventually and we readjust. This is no different. I've seen confusion whether or not we're allowing demos, completed games, resources and more on Relic Castle going forward: of course we are. I apologize that this hasn't been clear. It's business as usual for the most part, but we are considering future options with how to proceed as future take downs occur and how to keep the longevity of this community going.

Regarding Essentials, we've never hosted it on our servers in the first place, and I don't think choosing not to host it is detrimental to the fan game community. For the record, we have no idea what the future plans for Essentials are either; we know as much as you do, but do keep in mind that Maruno hasn't commented on his future plans for the project as of yet. Please do not spread false information about what he's choosing to do, nor should you hound him to announce anything as I'm sure he will when he's ready to.

At the end of the day, we're all just a handful of hobbyists working on these projects for fun. I'm supportive of anyone who chooses to continue to do so, or anyone who feels as if they need a break or wants to move on to original game development. Whatever the case, know that I'm looking forward to playing your next fan game. I always will be.

 

[Yodelhoo]

If relic castle were asked to shutdown, do you think we could make a new discord server for the community to go to. It would mean no fan games but at least we could discuss them and the official games and talk to the other members we've met over the years. It really would be a shame if relic castle shut down.

 

[Deo]

If relic castle were asked to shutdown, do you think we could make a new discord server for the community to go to. It would mean no fan games but at least we could discuss them and the official games and talk to the other members we've met over the years. It really would be a shame if relic castle shut down.

We've taken this sort of thing into consideration. Don't worry too much about it!

 

[Anuran]

Really disappointed. Big franchise like GTA too allow modding. They even have a entire modding section in their official forum. As far as I am concerned the creators of big mods were even interviewed by Rockstar. I see no point in sutting the Essential.

 

[Marina]

The Pokémon Essentials Wikia was taken down by Nintendo. Now, people aren't able to visit the Pokémon Essentials Wikia for help or for looking at the threads there.
Now my idea is that we should make another Wikia about Pokémon Essentials, just with the tutorials and the informations but without those download links. This, until Nintendo reconsider their DMCA. What happens to other people, who want to download Pokémon Essentials v.17.2 or 16.2?

 

[EpiQ]

Hey! Maybe this theme is actually out, but what this mean for us? Is this end for pokemon fan game development? Will be created some warez version of Pokemon Essential Wiki? What do you think about it?

 

[_pheebs]

Really disappointed. Big franchise like GTA too allow modding. They even have a entire modding section in their official forum. As far as I am concerned the creators of big mods were even interviewed by Rockstar. I see no point in sutting the Essential.

I know right.
It's like Sonic Mania, that originated from a fan game.
And now Sega are making stacks off of it.

Imagine if instead of shutting down Uranium, and Prism, Nintendo adopted them, and gave the creators funding and resources too make it vastly better. Fans would be super pleased, Nintendo would be making cash money.
Win-Win situation imo.

 

[Aki]

Hi everyone, I've updated the main post in this thread but I'm also bumping so everyone can see the update:
Distribution of Pokemon Essentials is still not allowed, but if you have copies of the wiki's documentation then please feel free to share that information.​

 

[J.Dreamer]

Though I recently joined but I heard this all over other sites about Essential taking down. It's kinda disappointing but understandable since Ninentdo has strict protection on their copyrights. I only wonder if we cannot use Essential anymore, then can we at least still design our custom maps, character sprites or other content? It will take time but will bring originality to the game.

 

[Vexarian]

My timing to come back to fan game creation has been pretty poor too yeah.
Even tho the future may be uncertain right now, that wont stop me from continueing to create fan games.