Devs behind Pokemon Uranium fan game remove download links after takedown notices

[Goodnightmoon]

spemanig said:

I feel like people are missing the bit where Nintendo let this game get downloaded 1.5 million times before it got taken down. Same with AM2R. Nintendo doesn't care about good fan games existing. They care about maintaining the right to take down actual egregious infringements on their copyrights. They're only doing this to flex their muscles. The more games like this they let go by, the harder it is to protect their IP because they'll be seen as too lenient.

Neither AM2R or Uranium were secrets. If Nintendo actually wanted to, they could have taken these games down ages ago before they were even close to completion. In fact, I'm 100% sure that the only reason they even had to step in was because of the real media coverage those games have been receiving. Uranium is far from the first Pokemon fan game, but I can't remember a single one that was completed and then covered by a site like IGN immediately after. Almost none of those other ones got shut down. Do the math.

People who create fan games don't care that they have to remove download links to a game that has already been torrented. They just want people to be able to play their games. That's still going to happen in both cases. All Nintendo did was take out a figurehead. No real damage has been done to either of these games or their creators, and Nintendo knows it.

This makes sense.