ive been seeing a pokemon ad for a ‘new’ game thats on app store. i wanted to see what this advertisement was actually advertising. I get it quite often and said ‘ah what the hell’. so i clicked on in.
it led me to a strange website where you could “enter your email now for a ps5 and iphone”… umm okay. im just curious about the game. i end up clicking the link to show me the appstore page and not a sketchy safari link.
the appstore page is a 3 image god awful sort of ‘monster fighting upgrade’ game where nothing is correlated with pokemon whatsoever other than a single rendering of a bulbasaur inspired creature that was just slapped on the cover but not even in the game.
does anyone know. ANYTHING about this? its so weird to me.
by hiemlol
16 Comments
It’s not legal.
Sometimes people do things that are against the law.
Mobile app stores are a wild west of plagiarism, copyright infringement, and exploitative microtransaction gambling (for kids!). Neither Apple nor Google give a single fuck unless it starts to affect their bottom line, and constantly scanning for this sort of thing has little ROI. Removing these apps unprompted by the copyright holder only serves to reduce app count and revenue for the store hosting them. Hell, mobile games aren’t even required to have an esrb rating (USA specifically).
it is, in their view, unlike pokemon enough to get around copyright infringement
e: why is this being downvoted? lmao this is literally the reason there’s a clone lookalike of the pokemon and not the actual pokemon. same way there are clones of mario side scrollers on the appstore but not actually mario. idk if it’s the subreddit or just a symptom of reddit hive mind disabling critical thinking
e2: here is a link to the policy so you guys can stop spouting random alternative facts at me: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
there is nothing about this app’s design that is against policy. there is nothing about it that is illegal. is it sketchy? sure, of course. illegal or against policy? not so much.
also, please check the source too. this is an app available for pre-order, not launching until the start of january 2024. there is no money to be gained by pre-ordering an app. all of these assumptions about how these guys are after a quick buck and just trying to sell and run is founded in not being aware of the two aforementioned components, app store policy and the review process.
e3: even furthermore, there is a reason the android version of this app is the only one you can find available and the artwork is purposefully not showing any copyrighted images of pokemon assets. http://monsterworld3d.com/index_mobile.html
the android marketplace is flooded with copyright infringement and app straight up cloning other ones (do a search for ‘pokemon’ or ‘mario’ on it to see examples), whereas the ios appstore isn’t — the ios appstore is typically “close” but not exact. take a bet what you imagine is being changed in the next four months to make sure the app isn’t immediately removed from the appstore.
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Short answer, yes it is not legal.
Long answer, in the beginning of time…
Essentially it’s too much of a hassle for legal teams to go after every single one. If it gets popular enough or raises enough cash flow, then without a doubt it’s getting taken down. Until then, nothing much.
For Apple to continuously defend their ‘walled garden’, they sure are awful at enforcing copyright and trademark laws when it makes them a buck.
Here’s the really disappointing thing you learn as you get older if you are a very rule-abiding person:
“Illegal” doesn’t mean people get in trouble for it. Someone has to have the gumption to try to do something about it. And they have to see it through, and there have to be people who CAN do something about it.
In this case, these companies are betting that by the time Nintendo does find them, track down what country they are in, and find out which team of lawyers to send, they will have made a few thousand dollars off of silly people who spend money on stuff like this and, in the end, they will likely face far less financial penalties than the money they will make.
It happens a lot. Some people stand up on TV, brag openly about committing their crimes, and in the end nothing happens because nobody has the gumption to do something about it. My state’s governor is a human trafficker. The only person who might do something about it is the Attorney General, who has been facing federal charges for securities fraud for almost a decade and using his position in the state to delay that trial. The only thing the people in my state are willing to do about the governor is pull down their pants, bend over, and say “Come and take it.”
The moral of the story is: it is illegal to steal from corporations. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
Because they can’t catch ‘em all
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From what I can tell, these things are usually poorly thrown together cash grabs that use pokemon or other mascots that are just altered enough that they can dodge an immediate lawsuit. They usually are based in a country where it would be difficult to make them face legal repercussions. I don’t think many of them stay up on the store long, but they probably make just enough money and/or harvest just enough data that they keep doing it.
To quote Jeremy Clarkson – “It seems, then, that the expression ‘copyright infringement’ doesn’t translate terribly well into Mandarin.”
when people say things like “is this legal?” I’m not sure what to make of that.
1. People do things that are illegal all the time.
2. This isn’t like a criminally illegal thing. Police aren’t monitoring facebook and ad providers for nintendo’s copyrighted materials. The only person enforcing this sort of illegality is nintendo themselves.
When companies choose to do things that aren’t illegal, it isn’t because they’re thinking “we can’t physically do that.” It’s more like “we could do it, and we could get sued for a lot of money.” Companies just generally choose to enact the policies that avoid the most lawsuits.
It’s not, but people in China don’t care about your laws lol
It’s not legal. Also, if the design is a little bit more removed, it can be legal even if it’s a blatant ripoff. It can fall under parody laws at that point, but this looks far too close.
There was one “illegal” pokemon game that changed its name every 2 weeks. So you basically had to redownload the game every 2 weeks. You could keep your stuff if you created an account on their website. No shit that was the best pokemon game i ever played on the phone. Had some gatcha elements but you could make ez progress without spending money.
Nintendo doesn’t care enough to do anything about it. Kinda like Smogon