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Do you think a member of the development team will leak the game?
ROM Hacking, Patches, and the legal consequences
- Thread starter Mr.Mako
- Start date
Do you think a member of the development team will leak the game?
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This makes it hard to be a Nintendo fan imo, even though Pokemon is the only IP I like from them. Honestly I'm thinking of not getting the Switch now which I think is where the next generation will be on. I'm disappointed with Nintendo taking down fan games even if they have a right to.
Unown Seer
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I think it's fair to call it the biggest hack ever.
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This is a real, real bummer, especially considering the implications it could have on hacking going into the future. I'm glad the mods seem to be optimistic about the future of hacking in general.
That said, my plan has always been to not make a thread on my hack until the whole thing is done and the patch can be uploaded, and after this that plan is definitely not going to change.
That said, my plan has always been to not make a thread on my hack until the whole thing is done and the patch can be uploaded, and after this that plan is definitely not going to change.
Masterge77
Robot Mienshao
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And thus another great fan-game gets shut down like Uranium before it. 2016 just seems to be a really bad year for everyone, including fan-game makers. Personally, I think Nintendo was afraid that Prism would take attention away from the recent release and sales of Sun and Moon, just as Uranium was shut down not that long after Pokemon Go was released... as if an unofficial and unlicensed fan-game was going to take away attention from an official product that was already guaranteed to be a financial success.
I do feel bad for all those who wanted to play these games, but sadly, there's nothing we can do about it. It doesn't help that majority of those who wanted to play Prism had likely already finished Sun and Moon, and it's going to be a while (like, a year or two) before the next official main series Pokemon game comes out, so I dunno what can be a good substitute for Prism would be other than the recently released official Pokemon games.
Sadly, like I said earlier, there's nothing we can do about it, and that's just a sad fact about life.
So for those who were planning on downloading Prism and doing let's plays and nuzlockes of it and what not when it's final version was released, what can you do instead of playing the final version of Prism now that you can't play it? Well, there's obviously Sun and Moon if you haven't played those already, and even if you finished the two official Pokemon games released this year, there are still plenty of other Pokemon fan games and ROM hacks to check out. Though there aren't any Pokemon hacks I can think of that are Crystal ROM hacks like Prism was, since a majority of Pokemon ROM hacks on this site are of the Gen 3 games like Emerald and FireRed, especially given that Gen 2 doesn't have nearly as many tools available and is rather niche among the hacking community. Even outside of ROM hacks, there are still other fan-games to check out.
On a side note, one reason I think both Uranium and Prism got shut down was because of publicity, since Uranium had articles on gaming journalism sites when it was still being produced, and Prism was played on Twitch Plays Pokemon (which I am surprised was still going even though the golden days of Lord Helix are long over), so large amounts of publicity may be to blame for why both of these got shut down.
I do feel bad for all those who wanted to play these games, but sadly, there's nothing we can do about it. It doesn't help that majority of those who wanted to play Prism had likely already finished Sun and Moon, and it's going to be a while (like, a year or two) before the next official main series Pokemon game comes out, so I dunno what can be a good substitute for Prism would be other than the recently released official Pokemon games.
Sadly, like I said earlier, there's nothing we can do about it, and that's just a sad fact about life.
So for those who were planning on downloading Prism and doing let's plays and nuzlockes of it and what not when it's final version was released, what can you do instead of playing the final version of Prism now that you can't play it? Well, there's obviously Sun and Moon if you haven't played those already, and even if you finished the two official Pokemon games released this year, there are still plenty of other Pokemon fan games and ROM hacks to check out. Though there aren't any Pokemon hacks I can think of that are Crystal ROM hacks like Prism was, since a majority of Pokemon ROM hacks on this site are of the Gen 3 games like Emerald and FireRed, especially given that Gen 2 doesn't have nearly as many tools available and is rather niche among the hacking community. Even outside of ROM hacks, there are still other fan-games to check out.
On a side note, one reason I think both Uranium and Prism got shut down was because of publicity, since Uranium had articles on gaming journalism sites when it was still being produced, and Prism was played on Twitch Plays Pokemon (which I am surprised was still going even though the golden days of Lord Helix are long over), so large amounts of publicity may be to blame for why both of these got shut down.
BluRose
blu rass
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inb4 prism is released and becomes insanely popular anyways
pok?mon hacking will likely continue until the websites promoting the games themselves are affected. in a broad legal sense, pok?community and any other site which contains a thread for it can then be defined as an "assisting party" advertising its playability and can thus be sent a c&d as well if coolboyman doesn't show initiative in taking down his works, which he likely will~
i found it amusing that the nintendo staff is called "highly creative and innovative" when there's a reason that romhacks exist; a satisfying pok?mon game has yet to exist (i haven't played s&m tho), and romhacks are just the fanbase's way of trying to realize this goal imo
while i'm not necessarily saying that nintendo staff isn't creative/innovative (they are), this creativity has yet to make an appeal to the portion of the fanbase interested in romhacking, which is why i hack :P
pok?mon hacking will likely continue until the websites promoting the games themselves are affected. in a broad legal sense, pok?community and any other site which contains a thread for it can then be defined as an "assisting party" advertising its playability and can thus be sent a c&d as well if coolboyman doesn't show initiative in taking down his works, which he likely will~
i found it amusing that the nintendo staff is called "highly creative and innovative" when there's a reason that romhacks exist; a satisfying pok?mon game has yet to exist (i haven't played s&m tho), and romhacks are just the fanbase's way of trying to realize this goal imo
while i'm not necessarily saying that nintendo staff isn't creative/innovative (they are), this creativity has yet to make an appeal to the portion of the fanbase interested in romhacking, which is why i hack :P
pastelspectre
Memento Mori★
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this is pathetic, this is a nonprofit game that wasn't doing harm. nintendo did an immature move on their part. although this is the first time i've heard about this, i'm a bit disappointed that i can't play it. cool your chill, nintendo what the heck.
Unown Seer
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Wait for the next version of Polished Crystal (although I played the first one months ago) and hope for a secret, low-key release of Prism.
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Guy had it coming. PC has hosted hacks for 10 years+ and Nintendo has never cared for us. He should have known not to massively overhype it, that's the only thing that's gonna get nintendo to take notice. It's a shame but can't say it's entirely unexpected.
Masterge77
Robot Mienshao
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I doubt a secret release is likely since I remember that when the well-known Chrono Trigger ROM Hack "Crimson Echoes" was shut down years back, the creators deleted all the ROMs of the game that they had, and just like Prism, it was about 95% done when the C+D happened.
This does make me wonder something. With all three of the creator's Pokemon ROM hacks being taken down, I do wonder he is going to do now. Is he going to make an original game like the creators of the My Little Pony fan-game "Fighting is Magic" did when that got shut down by turning it into "Them Fighting Herds", or will something else happen?
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well, so much for this being the "legal gray area". Legal presedent has been set, and can really mess things up for romhacking. What a shame too, I was really looking forward to KBM's latest work, since IMO he is (or was, thanks nintendon't -_-) one of those guys who really puts out quality work. I wonder if this sudden draconian stance change has to do with the new president of nintendo....
Masterge77
Robot Mienshao
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I think it has to do with the recent regime change at Nintendo as well given the recent fallout over the death of the late, great Satoru Iwata. To be fair though, Nintendo isn't exactly the same company as it once was back when Gen 3 and 4 were still going, or even back in the NES/SNES days, and lately they've been seemingly ignoring their fandom, such as the backlash they received with the recent Paper Mario games, let alone the frequent shutdowns of fan works. That, and lately Nintendo has felt a lot more "corporate" than usual.
I mean, personally I think a fan-game should only be shut down if it is trying to profit off of the success of one of Nintendo's IPs, which neither Prism nor Uranium were doing, but like I said in an earlier post, I think it was because of the publicity both fan-games received that caught Nintendo's attention, and they went on a bit of a crusade.
Given the quality of KBM's work, he could make a completely original game that has no legal ties to a licensed Nintendo product. I mean, look at Toby Fox, who was well-known for creating EarthBound ROM hacks years before he created Undertale (though none of his hacks were shut down by Nintendo), but was heavily inspired by EarthBound to make the game. Could KBM do the same? Only time will tell...
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I don't get why Nintendo can't see the goldmine of opportunity with Hacks like these. It's not like it hasn't been proven that fan/company co-op games can't work(case and point Sega-Hatsune Miku Project Diva). If they were to actually try it, not only are fans pleased because they feel their voices have been heard, it also helps the company because they get a boost in sales, as people, regardless of Hacks will go try the original for themselves! When you treat fans like crap for basically giving you "fanart"(I'll loosely define it as that-very) it only turns them off from your product more. It's like getting upset if someone drew a Fanart or and OC for your series because they love it so much. It makes you appear to be immature. How Nintendo misses this point astounds me. For example, I love Dark Rising for it's challenge, but I'm always going to go back to Black and White. I don't just magically leave a regular game for a fan one. It just doesn't work that way. I might like the fan one better, but it's all preference in the end, and in most cases, people want the original games.
This wasn't an attempt to cash in on the Pokemon franchise(the game was made for free and would've been downloaded FOR FREE), fans weren't trying to "slander" Nintendo or hurt their business. In fact, it was the complete opposite. They wanted Pokemon to grow. The reasons why games like these even exist is because people love the franchises and BECAUSE people want to improve them. I could get Nintendo more if these people were making a profit off their own game and just stealing stuff and calling it their own, but they weren't. All these fans were trying to do was pay homage to their favorite franchise and they got punished for it.
In all honesty Nintendo has the legal rights to take the game down, no if's, and's, or but's, the problem is that they really shouldn't. Rom Hackers put plenty of time into their games and I can say they deserve a lot of credit for what they have to do to make a decent Hack. How does Nintendo think that these same people who make the games are going to say anything nice about them at all after this now? Did they just forget that these hackers are people who also sometimes spend free time developing games? Seriously.
It's a shame because Nintendo is a group of people too and I'm sure their not "conniving evil businessmen" who twirl their hands looking to make more money. I'm sure they put a lot of effort into the products they release and I want to hope they see this is a gold mine for them, but at the moment they really appear anti-consumer, which is not a good thing in the slightest.
This wasn't an attempt to cash in on the Pokemon franchise(the game was made for free and would've been downloaded FOR FREE), fans weren't trying to "slander" Nintendo or hurt their business. In fact, it was the complete opposite. They wanted Pokemon to grow. The reasons why games like these even exist is because people love the franchises and BECAUSE people want to improve them. I could get Nintendo more if these people were making a profit off their own game and just stealing stuff and calling it their own, but they weren't. All these fans were trying to do was pay homage to their favorite franchise and they got punished for it.
In all honesty Nintendo has the legal rights to take the game down, no if's, and's, or but's, the problem is that they really shouldn't. Rom Hackers put plenty of time into their games and I can say they deserve a lot of credit for what they have to do to make a decent Hack. How does Nintendo think that these same people who make the games are going to say anything nice about them at all after this now? Did they just forget that these hackers are people who also sometimes spend free time developing games? Seriously.
It's a shame because Nintendo is a group of people too and I'm sure their not "conniving evil businessmen" who twirl their hands looking to make more money. I'm sure they put a lot of effort into the products they release and I want to hope they see this is a gold mine for them, but at the moment they really appear anti-consumer, which is not a good thing in the slightest.
icomeanon6
It's "I Come Anon"
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Hate to say it, but Pokemon Prism may have opened a Pandora's Box with that trailer. The reason that no romhack had ever gotten a cease-and-desist letter had nothing to do with the technical difference between a romhack and a fan-game, and everything to do with the fact that so far every romhack had been relatively obscure and had never come across as a serious alternative to the original. The reason Nintendo always looked the other way for romhacks was because they were too small to matter, whereas something as big as Pokemon Prism was prominent enough to send the message to the world that Nintendo doesn't care if you make and mass-distribute games with their intellectual property.
Also, here's something that fan-creators need to hear: companies don't care whether you yourself are making money off their intellectual property, they care whether a lot of people are going to you to get stuff involving their intellectual property. It makes no difference to their bottom line that you're giving it away for free. If your souped-up bootleg is free, that just means they can't compete with you on price. And let's be real: if Nintendo put out Crystal on virtual console at the same time as Prism was released, a lot of people would decide to play Prism instead, and might not ever get around to buying Crystal. That's called opportunity cost for Nintendo, and as much as I wanted to see Prism reach the light of day, I can't blame Nintendo for nipping this in the bud while it was still manageable.
Really wish Prism could have stayed low-profile (and that I would have been lucky enough to hear about it regardless). It looked like they were doing some seriously impressive gbc coding on that thing, and who knows, it might have been legitimately better than the actual Gen II games. So please, if you're a fan of a fan, and that fan is doing good work that the official sources aren't, don't make them go viral.
tl;dr: Prism looked good, so this is sad. Also, this isn't due to a change in how Nintendo operates but rather in the scope, popularity, and impact of a particular romhack.
Also, here's something that fan-creators need to hear: companies don't care whether you yourself are making money off their intellectual property, they care whether a lot of people are going to you to get stuff involving their intellectual property. It makes no difference to their bottom line that you're giving it away for free. If your souped-up bootleg is free, that just means they can't compete with you on price. And let's be real: if Nintendo put out Crystal on virtual console at the same time as Prism was released, a lot of people would decide to play Prism instead, and might not ever get around to buying Crystal. That's called opportunity cost for Nintendo, and as much as I wanted to see Prism reach the light of day, I can't blame Nintendo for nipping this in the bud while it was still manageable.
Really wish Prism could have stayed low-profile (and that I would have been lucky enough to hear about it regardless). It looked like they were doing some seriously impressive gbc coding on that thing, and who knows, it might have been legitimately better than the actual Gen II games. So please, if you're a fan of a fan, and that fan is doing good work that the official sources aren't, don't make them go viral.
tl;dr: Prism looked good, so this is sad. Also, this isn't due to a change in how Nintendo operates but rather in the scope, popularity, and impact of a particular romhack.
Deokishisu
Mr. Magius
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First off, sorry mods for trying to post a thread about this, I didn't see this one.
Secondly, it was foolish of Koolboyman to partner with TPP and release a trailer and then delay release several months after the hack was finished to build hype instead of releasing the patch the moment they finished the Twitch run. Prism was sure to be great, but I care less about one hack than I do about our whole community.
Nintendo must know that Prism was built off of PokeCrystal, which will lead them to PokeRed and PokeYellow. The content in those disassemblies is legitimately and unarguably all theirs/Game Freak's. There may be a gray area with patches, but the content in the disassemblies are not fan works by any stretch of the imagination. I'm concerned that our resources will be gutted soon, and our existing disassemblies will get C&D'd, as well as any future effort to disassemble the other games. Nintendo has been ravenous toward the community since the Sun and Moon leak, the rampant pirating of 3DS/WiiU games (that can be downloaded right from their servers with a hacked 3DS), the current console generation hacking and modding, etc. They're losing real money off of those pirates, and I think that ROMHackers are getting caught in the crossfire. Sure, we don't technically pirate (but let's be honest, I didn't dump my Emerald cart to get my ROM and neither did you), and we don't technically release assets that aren't ours with patches, but none of us have the legal power or money to face Nintendo in court and protect our rights as fair-use derivative "fan artists" or "parodists". We are effectively powerless against any legal posturing (legitimate or not) by a giant like Nintendo. And that's what worries me about this whole debacle.
Secondly, it was foolish of Koolboyman to partner with TPP and release a trailer and then delay release several months after the hack was finished to build hype instead of releasing the patch the moment they finished the Twitch run. Prism was sure to be great, but I care less about one hack than I do about our whole community.
Nintendo must know that Prism was built off of PokeCrystal, which will lead them to PokeRed and PokeYellow. The content in those disassemblies is legitimately and unarguably all theirs/Game Freak's. There may be a gray area with patches, but the content in the disassemblies are not fan works by any stretch of the imagination. I'm concerned that our resources will be gutted soon, and our existing disassemblies will get C&D'd, as well as any future effort to disassemble the other games. Nintendo has been ravenous toward the community since the Sun and Moon leak, the rampant pirating of 3DS/WiiU games (that can be downloaded right from their servers with a hacked 3DS), the current console generation hacking and modding, etc. They're losing real money off of those pirates, and I think that ROMHackers are getting caught in the crossfire. Sure, we don't technically pirate (but let's be honest, I didn't dump my Emerald cart to get my ROM and neither did you), and we don't technically release assets that aren't ours with patches, but none of us have the legal power or money to face Nintendo in court and protect our rights as fair-use derivative "fan artists" or "parodists". We are effectively powerless against any legal posturing (legitimate or not) by a giant like Nintendo. And that's what worries me about this whole debacle.
So it's alright to have crappy Pokemon knockoff games and plushies, to have stuff like Pocket Monster for the SNES and Mewtwo Strikes Back for the GBC, but it's not ok for people to make a fan game or a ROM hack of a game that they technically own as long as they have the cartridge? How's that fair? If somebody was to make a fan manga of Pokemon Adventure or a remix of a Pokemon song are they gonna get smacked with the desist-hammer too? Yeah never mind the pirates selling bootleg versions of Pokemon Ruby and Pokemon Gold on the NES, (they do exist, go look them up) it's those pesky hackers and fans causing them to bleed money.
Thank the lord Mojang isn't this aggressive about modding. We'd really have a problem then.
Really even though we mostly don't dump our own ROMs a lot of the time we own the games anyway. For all the Pokemon ROMs I have nearly every one of them is of a game I already own, and while there's definitely cheapskates and pirates out there a lot of the times people would be more than happy to buy the game off a Virtual Console and patch it that way if it were possible. We love Pokemon; that love is the sole reason we create hacks and fan games. Why throw the book at something that could rejuvenate the old games and make them more popular? If Nintendo gave us the means to buy the games and patch them ourselves with whatever game we wished, more people would likely buy them, just like Minecraft and Skyrim are bought just as much for the mods as they are for the base games. As bad as this affects hackers the ramifications of this could go a lot further; most of the glitches found in the last couple years in Gens I, II, and III were possible because of people disassembling the code. Are they gonna get affected too? What's gonna happen to people like Chickasaurus and ZZAZZ and everyone over at Glitch City Labs who disassemble the code as a hobby to find glitches Game Freak overlooked? Is Nintendo gonna go after those guys too?
It's a giant mess.
Thank the lord Mojang isn't this aggressive about modding. We'd really have a problem then.
Really even though we mostly don't dump our own ROMs a lot of the time we own the games anyway. For all the Pokemon ROMs I have nearly every one of them is of a game I already own, and while there's definitely cheapskates and pirates out there a lot of the times people would be more than happy to buy the game off a Virtual Console and patch it that way if it were possible. We love Pokemon; that love is the sole reason we create hacks and fan games. Why throw the book at something that could rejuvenate the old games and make them more popular? If Nintendo gave us the means to buy the games and patch them ourselves with whatever game we wished, more people would likely buy them, just like Minecraft and Skyrim are bought just as much for the mods as they are for the base games. As bad as this affects hackers the ramifications of this could go a lot further; most of the glitches found in the last couple years in Gens I, II, and III were possible because of people disassembling the code. Are they gonna get affected too? What's gonna happen to people like Chickasaurus and ZZAZZ and everyone over at Glitch City Labs who disassemble the code as a hobby to find glitches Game Freak overlooked? Is Nintendo gonna go after those guys too?
It's a giant mess.
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Masterge77
Robot Mienshao
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Reading all this reminds me of an Adult Swim bumper I once saw that talked about piracy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4kqp9mutPQ
That being said, KBM was not making money from his product, he was not making it because he thought he could do the franchise better, he was creating his ROM hacks because he, like almost everyone else on this forum, was passionate abut Pokemon, he wanted to see it grow and help it grow, contributing to what was already there rather than stealing it. Numerous times our wishes for how the future of the franchise should be have been shown, with us getting certain features like customization, or us getting remakes like HG/SS and OR/AS. So contrary to popular belief, Nintendo DOES listen to it's fans, it's just... very selective as to what it listens to.
If anything, this gives them free advertisement, because it encourages people to play the originals, to buy the originals, to support the official release. The creators of ROM hacks and fan-games (and other fan projects) aren't claiming the franchise as their own, and the same goes for ROM hacks and fan-games of any other franchises (you wouldn't believe how massive the "Super Mario World" ROM hacking community is). They are doing this out of respect for the franchise, because they love it.
On the other hand, it is still Nintendo's property and they still have final say as to what goes in official works, though lately it just feels like Nintendo is dictating it's fandom and how it's franchises go, especially when it comes to how certain franchises have been going (such as Paper Mario and the controversy that has caused with it's fandom in the past few years, but that's another topic). It is not wise to ignore customers though, but as for me, while I appreciate fan-games and other fan-works, I would never use them as substitutes for official works.
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Definitely upset and disappointed over all of this, just like the rest of you. And I definitely feel bad for Koolboyman, too. All those years of work only to have it all go down the drain.
No doubt that he ultimately shot himself in the foot with the trailer, the TPP run, and sitting on the finished product for at least a month instead of releasing it as soon as the TPP run ended. If he had kept the hack at a lower profile, he would've been able to release it without incident.Though even then I think Nintendo could have and should have handled the situation much better than they did. They pretty much handled it in the poorest possible way.
Kind of a learning experience for all of us, admittedly. Don't over-promote/over-hype your hacks, and release them as soon as the're finished. Too bad we all had to learn it the hard way, though.
I just wish there was some way that we could show Koolboyman that we truly appreciate all the work he put into this and that it wasn't a total waste...
No doubt that he ultimately shot himself in the foot with the trailer, the TPP run, and sitting on the finished product for at least a month instead of releasing it as soon as the TPP run ended. If he had kept the hack at a lower profile, he would've been able to release it without incident.Though even then I think Nintendo could have and should have handled the situation much better than they did. They pretty much handled it in the poorest possible way.
Kind of a learning experience for all of us, admittedly. Don't over-promote/over-hype your hacks, and release them as soon as the're finished. Too bad we all had to learn it the hard way, though.
I just wish there was some way that we could show Koolboyman that we truly appreciate all the work he put into this and that it wasn't a total waste...
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God, I hope you're right.