SEGA & Nintendo – Fan Games & Reaction to Them
The topic of fan games is very interesting, as they walk on very grey and murky grounds. They are ‘illegal’ by technicality and many companies have the right to shut games down if fans are using IP they don’t legally own. But there is SEGA and how they handled fan games; outside of the infamous situation with the Streets of Rage Remake & take down of YouTube content around the Shining Force series, they are very open to fan games.
Instead of rallying lawyers or striking the Game Grumps and Green Hill Paradise Act 2’s team with a copyright claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, official Sega social media outreach actively encouraged fans to make more games and content.
SEGA gave the thumbs up to GameGrumps when they played the fan game Green Hill Paradise Act II through the official Sonic account on YouTube. Nintendo is more aggressive toward fan productions however.
On the other side of this coin is Nintendo. They took down Metroid 2 remake AM2R, were hitting enough download sites that the creators of Pokemon Uranium felt they needed to take their game down, placed a strike against the fan mash up No Mario’s Sky and even removed hundreds of fan titles from Game Jolt. Now, the Game Jolt matter was a bit fraught. The site was making advertisement revenue while hosting those particular games. Still, the difference is night and day when it comes to fan games overall.
Nintendo has the right to be protected, but other people explained this situation regarding Nintendo & fan productions very well. Will be listing them below the source link.
Source: Kotaku