Not just Nintendo, it’s a Japanese thing. (Not to suggest it’s unique to them, just look at Disney.)
It sounds from the article like the ultimate issue is use of Nintendo IP, not Valve’s.
Though I’ve never understood why Nintendo is so authoritarian about its IP.
Soggy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
creditCrazy@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The ridiculous thing is that if I recall correctly this game isn’t using Nintendo IP. It’s just trying to run on outdated Nintendo hardware.
yaaaaayPancakes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
From what I read, the codebase is using Nintendo proprietary sdk libraries in its codebase. So that is technically Nintendo IP. The fix is to switch to open source implementations of those libraries. But the dev is hesitant to put in that work without Valve’s approval, because if he does that work Valve can still fuck him over for using their Portal IP, and an n64 game isn’t distributable on Steam, so there’s literally nothing in it for Valve to support it. So he’s worried that all that effort would be for naught.
Now, we can ask ourselves why almost 30 year old sdks are still valuable to Nintendo, but unfortunately copyright law being what it is, it’s technically illegal to do what the dev did. He should have seen this coming and used the open source libraries instead of the Nintendo proprietary ones. But I say this not knowing how good those open source libraries are, they could have problems, be incomplete, etc., or maybe not exist when he started the project. But either way a dev should have known using Nintendo IP in any form is fraught with peril.
fidodo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Valve doesn’t want their IP associated with Nintendo modding because they don’t want that legal trouble, but remove valves IP and then they have nothing to worry about. Obviously you can’t remove Nintendo’s IP in this case since it’s for the N64, so the only other option is to remove valves.
Walop@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
Because that is all they got. Even if they make some profit on the sale of the hardware, it is peanuts compared to the game and tie-in sales. Losing control of even a single IP would be a serious hit to them.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It sounds from the article like the ultimate issue is use of Nintendo IP, not Valve’s.
But it wasn’t Nintendo of America who issued the takedown. It was Valve and they don’t represent Nintendo.
Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Nintendo is scared shitless of getting their IP rights taken from them by allowing general usage. For instance, they absolutely hated that old thing where any old person would call any game console a Nintendo because if Nintendo became a generic word for console they’d lose protections for it.