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
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.
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?
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
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"?
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.
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.