IamLEAM1983 said:
I figure it's a tad more nuanced. Copyright owners have to report violations to maintain their IP, sure, but what *constitutes* a violation is up for debate and is subjective.
Nintendo took one look at AM2R and jumped the gun. They took one look at the fan-made Pokemon game and jumped the gun. On the other hand, Valve took a look at Black Mesa and realized there really wasn't any way to misconstrue Black Mesa as being Half-Life. There's no violation to report, only what you can objectively call an homage.
Nintendo does legally need to protect its IP, but it could really stand to hire a legal team that can tell the difference between fans putting together a tribute and, say, some ROM hacker using Nintendo's assets in one of the bootleg market's ubiquitous five-berjillion-games-in-one knockoff consoles. I've heard ridiculous theories involving Nintendo actually looking for a payoff - but how is a lone bedroom programmer going to shit out however million dollars you think Nintendo might want?
Nintendo isn't a slavering wolf out of a Tex Avery cartoon, it's just being more than a tad paranoid about copyright law.
As a company that's big on being family-friendly, there's another really good reason for Nintendo to shoot first and ask questions later. How can a company be certain that the entire fan project follows the content guidelines people expect of them? Not just in the playable game, but in every line of code. I'm thinking right now of something like http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112870-Steam-User-Finds-Misogynistic-Joke-Buried-in-Dead-Island-Code-UPDATED. When you see a Pokemon fangame you assume it will have not just the gameplay, but also the tone of the established franchise. But that's not something Nintendo is in a position to assume. Maybe if they were given the chance to approve the game and its content beforehand (which they would never do, admittedly).
Pokemon Go is reportedly hitting 100 million downloads, which is more than 25 million more downloads than the number of 3DS and Wii U's sold to date. That's a lot of people getting into Pokemon that could easily be confused into thinking that Pokemon Uranium is a new Nintendo game (I'm not talking about gamers that come to sites like this, I mean the masses at large that didn't even understand the Wii U was a separate console). I mean, people don't even understand that Niantic is the developer of Pokemon Go. Pokemon Uranium was downloaded 1.5 million times. Just a single off-color joke or bit of foul language, even just lurking in the game's coding, could damage their reputation/brand identity and generate undesirable headlines.
Also, as a business I'd have to imagine they don't want free Metroid and Pokemon games coming out just a few months before they launch their own $40 retail titles. I bet that's why the Mother 3 translation is still up to this day - it's not a brand with new games actively coming out this year. Also, am2r represents a free upgrade to one game they are currently selling online, Metroid 2, using the art assets from another game they are currently selling, Zero Mission. Why would anybody pay money for the virtual console version of Metroid 2 after the release of am2r?
It's not like Nintendo is the good guy here, but I'd be a lot more irate if these fangames weren't using art assets from games currently being sold digitally, weren't based directly on games still being sold, weren't using the official names of the existing franchises, and weren't from franchises being currently developed for. Even discounting the 'protect your trademark' arguments, that's a lot to expect a corporation to ignore.