SpokenTruth said:
Most of us misunderstand teh reason for take down notices. There are 3 main reasons. |
I don't think any of these is a real problem.
1. Poor products won't get attention for long, and Nintendo could always just target the poor products instead of every single one. Fan-made products are sort of a niche thing anyway, and I bet that most people familiar with them know they're unofficial anyway. I can see some potential issues with trademarks, but I haven't really heard about that side of the argument much. I'm guessing it's not a huge problem when no one's profiting from the products.
2. Fan-made products are mainly targeted at fans anyway, and fans are probably going to prioritize official products.
3. I don't really see how this is different from #2, so nothing to add here. See my answer to #2.
I think the threats you mentioned are somewhat real, but I don't think any of them is a problem due to the benefits of fan-made products. You get bigger brand recognition for free, might attract new fans, and you end up looking cool when you have a relaxed relationship with fan-made products. On the other hand, it's not good publicity to ban these things, it can make you look anything from bad to evil.
As far as I know, Sega isn't doing too badly. Can't say whether there's any measurable benefit to allowing fan-made products because anyone's even tried to measure it, and it's probably very difficult anyway, but at the very least you gain some good publicity from it. I don't really see how this has harmed Sega. And I suppose bigger products like Total War or Yakuza could be different, but that's mainly because they're pretty huge titles and guaranteed to attract more attention. There, the drawbacks you mentioned could well be significant, but I don't see much point in discussing them because no one's ever going to create anything like that for free (and even if someone does, it's almost guaranteed to be of much lower quality).