After nearly 5 years, Nintendo updated their”Nintendo Game Content Guidelines for Online Video & Image Sharing Platforms”
Here the link: [https://www.nintendo.co.jp/networkservice\_guideline/en/index.html](https://www.nintendo.co.jp/networkservice_guideline/en/index.html)
Here the old version (archived): [https://web.archive.org/web/20230117093517/https://www.nintendo.co.jp/networkservice\_guideline/en/index.html](https://web.archive.org/web/20230117093517/https://www.nintendo.co.jp/networkservice_guideline/en/index.html)
I went through it and there are several editorial changes and some different wording, but the two proper changes are…
1. referring to those Community Tournament Guidelines
2. The section A11 to the Q11 “What do you mean by content that is “unlawful, infringing, or inappropriate”?”
|*Old Q11*|*New Q11*|
|:-|:-|
|Violates applicable laws;|Violates relevant laws;|
|Infringes the intellectual property rights of Nintendo; and/or|Infringes the intellectual property rights of Nintendo (including but not limited to the unauthorized use of copyrights in the game characters, story, visual elements and music and/or registered trademarks);|
|Features pirated Nintendo software.|Involves illegally copied or modified game software, game software produced using Nintendo’s copyrighted material without Nintendo’s authorization, or game software obtained illegally.|
||Shows *how to use software* and/or devices that circumvent security measures deployed by Nintendo to protect against infringement of its video games and console systems, such as emulators and/or other circumvention software;|
||Features graphic, explicit, harmful, or otherwise offensive content;|
||Interferes with the proper operation or impairs the safety of Nintendo’s products or services;|
||Involves cheating, cracking, unauthorized access, circumvention of technical restrictions, unauthorized modification, or use of objects, tools, or services that enable such cheating, cracking, unauthorized access, circumvention of technical restrictions, or unauthorized modification;|
||Features unauthorized game consoles and/or software not licensed by Nintendo; and/or|
||Features video, images, sound sources, etc., that cannot be used in regular gameplay, extracted through game software via data mining or other methods.|
It seems, that instead of only going after pirated games (fair I guess), they also now want to be able(!) to take down content/videos about modding, hacks, emulators and news and rumors through datamining.
by Mazzle5
23 Comments
All of those restrictions are ridiculous but not allowing you to report on data mined information when you’re not even the original source is asinine.
Oh boy. Here we go.
Nintendo is somehow able to be the biggest advocate against IP laws, whenever they put out shit like this
Not my fault.
Im pretty sure they have always gone after videos about modding, hacks, emulators and datamined stuff.
This just follows the tournament guidelines from yesterday. What they never said but did has now been listed in plain-sight, so nothing really changes, except that if you get into trouble, you can’t say “I didn’t know” anymore. Not that it’d save you anyways
I don’t see anything here that’s considered “out of the ordinary” in Nintendo land. These are all pretty classic examples of things Nintendo has taken stances and actions on in the past. If anything, this seems to actually lessen the mystery on what Nintendo actions on. I know a lot of people used to say Nintendo kind of worked at random when they took things down. This seems to broaden a lot of the relatively vague descriptions that we had.
lol Yeah and I want a pony.
Really what entitles Nintendo to any of this?
If it’s legal, I don’t need permission to use it. If it’s illegal, then it’s already forbidden so the guidelines are unnecessary.
Just cause Nintendo publish some text online doesn’t mean we are going to pretend that legal things became illegal. Emulators? Legal. Homebrew? Legal. “Offensive content” is a broad term that encompases plenty of things that are legal even if Nintendo wouldn’t like them. And me plugging an ‘unlicenced’ controller on a nintendo console is not, and it will never be illegal. It’s not like Nintendo are hosting the videos or anything, this is the equivalent of a chair maker demanding you never use the chair to watch football. Nonsense.
It’s a moral imperative to ignore these guidelines and to mock Nintendo at every possible place for thinking they have any right whatsoever for any of this.
damn that’s crazy i’ll see you all in half a year when they do something else that annoys people
This pales in comparison to yesterday’s guidelines where they forbid tournament organizers from selling food at the venue.
I wonder how many more of these it will take for the people who don’t care about competitive or modding to realize how insane Nintendo is with its guidelines. People like games made by a company and think that means they should defend their shitty behavior like some weird parasocial relationship but with a faceless corporation and not even a person
Might just be legal bunk. We will have to see how things end up in the future. I agree it’s stupid, but it depends on how they plan to enforce this.
Really the new updates to Q11 are just clarifications. “Violates applicable laws” is broad, and hacks are still very legally dubious.
Does this mean that every English patched FE game video or SM64 hack video is going to be Thanos snapped out of existence?
Probably not. They’ve always been at risk, but now Nintendo is just putting up bigger warning signs
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People act like there is no difference between situations like Bethesda Mods and Nintendo mods.
Doom Engine Mods are perfectly legal as the engine itself is open source, Hedon was developed in the Doom engine and is being sold on Steam.
The Creation Engine is not Open Source and mods aren’t necessarily legal; they are only legal for games that the tools were made available for and total conversions like Enderal, Fallout: New California and Fallout: London exist because Bethesda Softworks allowed it and the tools were made available by Bethesda themselves. Bethesda has to be careful as they do not fully own the Creation Engine as it is based on Gamebryo/Netimmerse.
Many mods for PC games try to make sure you are playing a legal copy either not working on a cracked copy or requiring the CD if the game is particularly old. This isn’t foolproof as the right holder can issue a DMCA, but this can make it less likely.
Nintendo mods aren’t legal at all and often encourage piracyand softmoding which is almost always also illegal.
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Instead of going after mods of Nintendo games from 20 years ago, they should either:
A. Compete with them and make things that fans want like more N64 Zelda games.
B. Enable modding on their own systems so that they don’t lose money.
Otherwise, they’re just wasting their time and being unethical. If it isn’t worth it to compete with ROMhacks, then ROMhacks do not make a significant impact on their finances and do no harm to the company. Especially because, gasp, most people who play ROMhacks are diehard fans that buy every entry in the franchise already.
Bad, Nintendo, Bad.
L
Nintendon’t like their fans
I miss when Nintendo pulled this shit against Game Genie and lost. Who cares if I mod or cheat in a game I legally purchased? Clearly Nintendo, and that is backwards thinking that literally already lost them a court case 30+ years ago
Good thing these are just guidelines, because they’re very bad guidelines that no one will follow.
this has always pretty much been their right, now they’re simply spelling it out word by word for people