Video games are great at nurturing creativity and creation, and few developers focus on that as deeply as Media Molecule. You might recognize their name from the Little Big Planet franchise, but despite making a name for themselves with those titles, they didn’t hesitate to move onto other IPs to help encourage creativity.
Their latest title, Dreams, provides players with everything they need to be creative. What’s more than that, they’ve even happily allowed players to use their creations out of the game, even if it means monetizing them. Dreams is a useful tool for artists and entrepreneurs to create drafts or even finished versions of content that they want to use to represent themselves.
Unfortunately, Media Molecule’s ideals aren’t universally shared in the gaming world. Plenty of companies are swift to shut down anyone who might be using their intellectual property to their own gains.
Among these companies, Nintendo is arguably the most fierce. Perhaps it’s because they have dozens of easily-recognized properties, or perhaps it’s something to do with their highly aggressive legal team, but either way, the gaming community normally knows by now to veer away from Nintendo’s property.
But sometimes, it seems Nintendo wants to instill the lesson again. Such has been the case with people creating fan content of Nintendo characters on Media Molecule’s Dreams.
A few days ago, we discussed how a streamer was being forced to remove their Mario-themed creations from the game at the request of “a big company,” which they wouldn’t name. Everyone was quick to realize that the streamer definitely meant Nintendo.
Now, Nintendo is broadening their no-tolerance policy, forcing Sony to remove a wider range of Nintendo-related content from their creative title.
“Sony Interactive Entertainment is notifying the affected users that an IP Infringement Notice has been received from Nintendo and that the content will be removed,” Sony stated in their announcement.”We cannot comment on the volume of content to be removed, this is done on an individual case by case basis.”
At the end of the day, it makes sense, and Nintendo obviously has every right to request the removal of content that infringes on their property. Still, it seems like no harm is being done, and forcing Sony to remove the content is doing nothing but hurting the title and fanbase.
Perhaps at some point, Nintendo will loosen up and allow players to create fan content that honors their favorite developer. Until then, you should probably steer clear of making any Nintendo-themed content in Dreams.
