Yes. I know this doesn't have very much to do with hypnosis, but I thought I'd share it here.

For those of you living under rocks (albeit very nice rocks because they have internet connections), there's a Pokemon fan game that came out called Pokemon Uranium. Pokemon Uranium took 9 YEARS to make, and less than a week after it's official release, Nintendo DMCA'd it in an attempt to make it not a thing. In the process, however, it gained even more attention. This is where the Streisand Effect comes in. The Streisand Effect states that an attempt to censor a particular product/picture/"thing" will result in the increased awareness of it's existence, in effect causing the censorship to fail, because people will be searching for the thing that was censored.

[spoiler="Guidelines" for replies to this post]In your replies, go ahead and tell me your theories as to why Nintendo DMCA'd Pokemon Uranium.[/spoiler]

Gotta protect their IP, and considering how terrible copyright laws are, they have no choice. I would have more sympathy for the creators of Pokemon Uranium, if it weren't such a terrible game in the first place, for many reasons

Because they likely figured that it could hurt their products.

Also when I see the title Pokemon Uranium this just makes me think that team rocket is trying to steal some uranium to hold the region hostage with a dirty bomb and it's up to you to stop them. >_>

Here's the thing though: It wouldn't have hurt their revenue. It's not like people wouldn't buy Sun & Moon when they release simply because of a fan game existing. They'd still buy Sun & Moon because it's a Pokemon game. And honestly, if Nintendo really was protecting their IP, they'd have DMCA'd Hypnohub years ago. The FIRST image on this site was a Pokemon image, ffs.

IP law states that a trademark owner must make attempts to protect their trademarks or risk losing them. This why stupid lawsuits like the Bethesda "Scrolls" incident happen. Most of the time it's the company lawers keeping up appearances. "Look! We care about the trademark still!"

Thing is though, they only need to take legal action if a product that bears their trademark is making money off of it, with no revenue going to the trademark owner. Pokemon Uranium was completely free.

Basically this. Whether it really would have hurt sales or not, Nintendo is obligated by copyright laws to take action against games such as that. Honestly, if it weren't for the absolute flood of coverage it got from mainstream sites, they may not have cared enough to do anything. But when it started getting that much attention, their hand was forced.

That said, even though I downloaded Uranium, I lost a great deal of interest in playing it after seeing how ludicrously terrible the Pokemon designs for the game are. Over 9 years, you'd think they'd find some people that could actually come up with some cool Pokemon.

Oh, and fan art is a very different thing from a full fan game. So, don't bring up the two as if they're comparable.

Edit:



No. They don't. That's not how the law works.

It's NOT censorship. Nintendo has every right to protect it's copyright. Uranium is built from scratch and takes assets from various Pokemon games. That is straight up theft of intellectual property. Further Uranium released mere months before Sun and Moon, and Nintendo is rightfully concerned it could impact the success of the games.

ROMhacks get away with it for two reasons. They're built from the ROMs themselves, and they aren't distributed. A patch is released and you have to apply it yourself. You're taking a bit of code that does nothing on it's own and applying it to your own version of the game.

Yeah crying censorship (a word that has nearly lost all meaning thanks to angry internet people) is silly. This is an IP law issue though and though

I think the reasons are pretty well covered.

Though I have to agree that uranium's fakemon look really terrible by and large. Fakemon games are usually more miss than hit but not usually by this great a degree, and not usually after 9 years of work e___e;

Nintendo started following this model for the above reasons covered, but also because of flubs like Hotel Mario and the Zelda CD-i series. As a result, not only is Nintendo rather protective of their IPs, they also rarely allow developers that work directly and exclusively with Nintendo (like Monolith Soft does now) to touch their IPs. The last time I remember a third party developer being allowed to work with a Nintendo IP was when Team Ninja did work on Other M, and before that, Capcom did work on the Minish Cap and the Zelda Oracle games.

Considering that history, I don't blame Nintendo for taking such action.

Namco Bandai helped develop Smash 4.

Isn't Niantic a third party dev?

I gotta agree with the majority of people here.

It's all coming straight from a lawyer acting on behalf of Nintendo's general policies, but Nintendo didn't make the call. Nintendo's producers aren't sitting high up in their offices, sipping red wine, twirling their evil mustaches and seeking out projects to "censor and destroy" like most people seem to be assuming they're doing. Nintendo doesn't even really know this is going on and probably can't even be bothered with it. At least not until it's already happened.

That's why they have the lawyers doing this for them, and occasionally have to make a statement when word gets back to them that people are bitching about something that Nintendo probably didn't even know about until their legal team tells them they simply did their job.

And that's the thing. The lawyers and legal representatives have generalized instructions to be on the look out for unauthorized IP use in illegal projects and to merely inform the makers their their project violates the law and Nintendo's general policies, and remind them of the legal punishments they can face if they don't.

Likewise, DMCA notices (which are pretty much the same thing, just a reminder of the law on this particular issue) are sent to a file hosting service, and the file hosting services are the ones to take the links down, because it's THEIR hosting service, and THEIR policies are also explicitly to cooperate with takedown requests from legal IP holders.

There's also a huge myth that has been perpetuating for a long time that if something "isn't making money", is "non-profit", or "isn't a harm to financial gain" that it's somehow ok, and there's some kind of exception in the copyright law, which there isn't.

Here's how that breaks down....

Companies aren't concerned with direct money being taken from them, they are concerned with their overall brand recognition, and unauthorized connections to works that the rights holders did not commission, license or give an ok to, free or not, hurt that brand identity in the long run.

It can easily be confused for an official product from someone who simply didn't know any better, and even if they did, still dilutes the IP a bit. and it sets a precedent in the public's mind overall.

To put it another way, Nintendo believes that if they wanted this game to exist, they would be the ones to make it. By letting a fanwork blur this line of a high profile, professional work, demeans Nintendo's importance and ability to make and enforce a creative direction on how their trademarks and franchise is being used. And when you have a company that much of it's financial viability is determined by how shareholders or investors view Nintendo's direction, things associated with them like this, factor into how they're seen as well.

THIS is why they run the risk of losing the viability of their trademarks if they let this go. It's entirely possible that a fangame creator can claim everything else BUT the trademarks and become a competitor by essentially taking trademarks without permission. It's seen as an unfair advantage, and can hurt Nintendo's image, hence why they take steps to protect what's theirs.

Adding more to that, It's not just about one fangame here and there, it's basically having to put their foot down and realize if suddenly HUNDREDS, or even DOZENS of fan projects all came out one after another, to make video games directly competing with Nintendo and using their own trademarks and IP against them as leverage to do it, and Nintendo does nothing to stop it, that could severely cripple their company. Even if every single one was free. Brand identity can be eroded and devalued. So, if TONS of fan-projects are not ok, then neither are ANY of the ones that could lead to this, if Nintendo suddenly decided to let water seep through the cracks.

So Nintendo puts a blanket policy in place, hires lawyers and a legal team and tells them to look out for it. It's nothing personal and too many people take it personal and claim it's "censorship". It isn't. It's Nintendo protecting themselves as a business that could be held responsible for damages if they don't. It's also not a "theory", it's a fact. This is literally why DMCA's happen.

People on the internet are too quick to jump to all kinds of inaccurate assumptions and act like Nintendo are a bunch of big mean, bullies who "hate their fans" when A. Nintendo only takes legitimate copyright law into their policy and B. tells that policy to their legal team to take care of it so it never comes across their desk for a single moment. It's not Nintendo's fault the Digital Millennium Copyright Act even exists in the first place. Blaming them makes zero sense.

Likewise, every single instance of these lawyers sending a cease and desist notification to both the creators and the file hosting servers that have the infringing content up on it, not only both the Metroid 2 fangame, and this game have been blown way out of proportion. It's not censorship. It's not personal. It's not even their fault. It's only fair, legitimate, normal, sensible business.

What's more, both of the creators, for Pokemon Uranium and the Metroid 2 Remake have even made statements on their sites and social media as well, urging people not to blame Nintendo and saying THEY respect and abide by their wishes, too. If they aren't mad, no one else should be.

Besides, It already got released and copies are already circulating anyway. Nintendo enforced their legal protective rights and the game is still out there, if you decide to unlawfully track it down anyway, and none of the people that do are are gonna face any punishment for doing so. So even complaining about it is a moot point.

And to add to what others have said... and I realize this has no bearing on anything I just said, I wanted to point it out... I too, looked at it and I also thought Pokemon Uranium kinda looked like crap, anyway. Not like that matters, but there you go. I mean I know they worked hard on it, but if this WAS Nintendo official, i'd think it looks like one of the worst things they'd have done in years.

Well I'm sorry for their 9 years of work. They could have spent them on another original game instead on an unofficial Pokemon game with no permission from the owners. They may admire Pokemon but they're hurting the franchise and stealing from it with this project. What did they expect, to be welcomed with open arms?