The guy says he didn't know who Yoshi was, he just bought the 3D model from a website - but even that website states it is a Nintendo character...
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Botond Kopacz, the developer behind Era's Adventure, has gotten back to Ars Technica, saying that the use of Nintendo's IP was unknowing and inadvertent. "Actually this is an indie game developed by one developer, so due to the limitation of effort, I purchased a cute character from TurboSquid, one of the biggest 3D asset stores, without knowing the background story of the character Yoshi, since I'm not a Super Mario fan," he said in an e-mail.
Indeed, the model from Era's Adventure does seems to show up in a quick search of Turbosquid's database. Turbosquid representatives weren't immediately available for comment on their hosting of this royalty-free 3D model of Nintendo's copyrighted character.
"Once the game was released on the Play Store, after spending hundreds of hours in making the game, I started receiving 'kind' mails from Super Mario fans that I stole Yoshi, etc. So I started Googling and I realized that the character is really from the Super Mario series," Kopacz said.
But even after hearing about the problem, he says he didn't find anything related to the specific 3D model of Yoshi in the US copyright, trademark, and pattern database. "Since no assets are stolen from any Nintendo game or website and the Yoshi's name is not present anywhere, there is no copyright violation. [There would be] at least pattern violation if the 3D model is detailedly registered in the US pattern database."
Still, Kopacz says he's working on modifying the character to be less similar to Nintendo's iconic dinosaur. "I know that, even if I modify the character a little bit, that this will still be a big problem for the Nintendo fans, but I'm making the game alone so I have really limited time to do some changes. And I still hope that many people will find the game great and many people will enjoy it."
