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A very common theme I see among groups who commit time to these game remake/remaster/port passion projects is that they seem quite willfully ignorant of what th

A very common theme I see among groups who commit time to these game remake/remaster/port passion projects is that they seem quite willfully ignorant of what the law is and shocked when the obvious outcome comes to pass. And then some site like Kotaku picks it up and frames them sympathetically, so Nintendo becomes “draconian” when it is doing exactly what it needs to do: protect its IP and business. What I’m fascinated by is just how much free work people throw into obviously doomed projects. And now they’re doing all kinds of acrobatics hoping to find some loophole. I think this suggests just how strongly emotionally attached people can become to games they grew up with. I can definitely sympathize. But also… if you’re this talented… make the world a new game. Make A Hat in Time if you love Banjo Kazooie so much. Make Stardew Valley if you love Harvest Moon so much!

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> A very common theme I see among groups who commit time to these game remake/remaster/port passion projects is that they seem quite willfully ignorant of what the law is and shocked when the obvious outcome comes to pass. [..]I think this suggests just how strongly emotionally attached people can become to games they grew up with. I have also seen it in non-game projects, e.g. retro OS reimplementations. I am not even sure where this misconception comes: that you can just decompile the original software, rearrange the source files a bit and that's it! . Even otherwise smart people actually believe this. It's incredibly damaging and pervasive thinking; by now I have to mistrust all new "miracle" contributors that come up with significant amounts of code.
lukeschlather 4y ago
The DMCA explicitly says you're allowed to do this sort of thing for interoperability. IP law is very complicated. Really, as long as you have a license for the game this doesn't seem like it ought to be any different from time-shifting with a VCR. You buy an N64, you buy the game. You copy the game to another medium, decompile it, make it work on a different machine. Your N64 and the original cartridge are inoperable due to age but your license is still good. This does not give you a license to distribute, but at the same time the law is somewhat contradictory on this point, and it makes sense that it is contradictory because it's obvious that a strict interpretation would make it practically impossible for anyone to retain the license to the game, and the license is supposed to be perpetual. Nintendo of course, wants to "sell" you the same game more than once, but it's also obvious that this is not consistent with the intent of the law.
- AshamedCaptain 4y ago
  > The DMCA explicitly says you're allowed to do this sort of thing for interoperability It simply does not, specially in the US where EULAs can force you to sign away rights you may otherwise have e.g. https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq But this is not reverse engineering, this is outright decompiling the copyrighted code, and then distributing it.
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HiccupJul 4y ago
>A very common theme I see[...] is that they seem quite willfully ignorant of what the law is and shocked when the obvious outcome comes to pass.[...]obviously doomed projects I'm skeptical about this idea that these people are ignorant and that these projects are doomed. Where have you seen this?
- Hamuko 4y ago
  re3/revc was pretty doomed and ended up with Take-Two taking down the repositories with a DMCA claim, which a couple of people filed counter-claims against and Take-Two took them to court. Although it seems that Take-Two has since settled out of court.
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  - HiccupJul 4y ago
    While that's unfortunate, the project doesn't look doomed to me. But they should have been more careful given Rockstar's reputation.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago

> A very common theme I see among groups who commit time to these game remake/remaster/port passion projects is that they seem quite willfully ignorant of what the law is and shocked when the obvious outcome comes to pass. [..]I think this suggests just how strongly emotionally attached people can become to games they grew up with. I have also seen it in non-game projects, e.g. retro OS reimplementations. I am not even sure where this misconception comes: that you can just decompile the original software, rearrange the source files a bit and that's it! . Even otherwise smart people actually believe this. It's incredibly damaging and pervasive thinking; by now I have to mistrust all new "miracle" contributors that come up with significant amounts of code.

lukeschlather 4y ago

The DMCA explicitly says you're allowed to do this sort of thing for interoperability. IP law is very complicated. Really, as long as you have a license for the game this doesn't seem like it ought to be any different from time-shifting with a VCR. You buy an N64, you buy the game. You copy the game to another medium, decompile it, make it work on a different machine. Your N64 and the original cartridge are inoperable due to age but your license is still good. This does not give you a license to distribute, but at the same time the law is somewhat contradictory on this point, and it makes sense that it is contradictory because it's obvious that a strict interpretation would make it practically impossible for anyone to retain the license to the game, and the license is supposed to be perpetual. Nintendo of course, wants to "sell" you the same game more than once, but it's also obvious that this is not consistent with the intent of the law.

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
> The DMCA explicitly says you're allowed to do this sort of thing for interoperability It simply does not, specially in the US where EULAs can force you to sign away rights you may otherwise have e.g. https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/reverse-engineering-faq But this is not reverse engineering, this is outright decompiling the copyrighted code, and then distributing it.

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HiccupJul 4y ago

>A very common theme I see[...] is that they seem quite willfully ignorant of what the law is and shocked when the obvious outcome comes to pass.[...]obviously doomed projects I'm skeptical about this idea that these people are ignorant and that these projects are doomed. Where have you seen this?

Hamuko 4y ago
re3/revc was pretty doomed and ended up with Take-Two taking down the repositories with a DMCA claim, which a couple of people filed counter-claims against and Take-Two took them to court. Although it seems that Take-Two has since settled out of court.
- deleted 4y ago
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- HiccupJul 4y ago
  While that's unfortunate, the project doesn't look doomed to me. But they should have been more careful given Rockstar's reputation.