this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024

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The Palworld Pokemon mod is back, but without the Pokemon (www.pcgamesn.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Will...what's the point?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean, if it were me I'd isolate the copyrighted assets in a way that makes them really easy to add or remove, remove them from the official distribution, then plop a tarball and an install script of some sort onto all the most common piracy outlets. If people want it, they'll find it and legally I'm not liable because I'm just distributing a mod that has a place where you can put copyrighted assets

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Write a script that rips them from a rom in the structure you want.

[+] [email protected] -23 points 7 months ago (5 children)

It already was legally distinct since it wasn't made by the company behind pal world.

Go ahead and try to explain it using copyright and trademark laws all you want, but I don't understand how a MOD that isn't backed by a company can be arbitrarily blocked by another company.

Nintendo is cancer whether they make good games or not.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 7 months ago (2 children)

You can’t use Nintendo’s characters. Mods are not exempt just because they’re mods.

Not sure exactly what part of this is so hard to understand.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

All of it, all of it is hard for some people to understand.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago

You’re talking to the generation that puts entire episodes of tv shows on YouTube then writes “no copyright infringement intended”

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It already was legally distinct since it wasn’t made by the company behind pal world.

That's not the issue, or what that means here. "Legally distinct" in this context would mean that the product isn't infringing on the IP, copyright, or trademark of a similar product. "Yellow rat" is fine, "Pikachu" is not.

Go ahead and try to explain it using copyright and trademark laws all you want, but I don’t understand how a MOD that isn’t backed by a company can be arbitrarily blocked by another company.

If someone ripped a verse or a chorus from a song, and uploaded it to Spotify, you don't think that Universal could contact Spotify to take it down or block it?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Mods are free and community-driven. This situation is closer to someone using the chorus to a song in their own soundcloud track, which in my opinion should be completely fine

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You're also not allowed to use someone else's song to make your own soundcloud track.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I'm not familiar with soundcloud's TOS, which is why I noted that it's my opinion. When did people decide it's alright for multi-billion dollar corporations to dictate what people create for fun?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

When they're a company that provides something that specific person likes more than their spine, pride, or common sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It has nothing to do with anyone's TOS.

People decided that when they passed copyright laws and signed international treaties about it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

IIRC, the mod wasn't free. They were making money off of it using Patreon.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

It's this and the fact that Japan has no Fair Use of Copyright as well

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Ah, I didn't realize. That does make the situation a bit stickier, then

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Ignoring that this mod wasn't free, that's absolutely not in the neighborhood of legal.

Nintendo is fully within their legal rights to send a DMCA takedown to every single fan drawing of Pikachu on the planet if they so desire. It belongs to them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Nintendo is cancer. Few companies hate their customers as much as Nintendo (Capcom, I'm looking at you). If you want to have a smash brothers tournament, Nintendo will shut you down.

Can we get away with calling it something like a "Touch Fellows Tournament"?

I'm open to better names.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Using someone else's copyrighted assets or a facsimile there of is still a violation of copyright whether it's free or not. It being a mod makes no difference. It being free makes no difference. The only way it could be considered fair use is if it was kept for personal, private use by the creator.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

Because the guy had a Patreon charging for the mod. He was profiting from their IP, there are pokemon mods for hundreds of games and hundreds of fan made pokemon games that exist because they don't charge for them.