Few companies in the world are more protective over their properties than Nintendo. Virtually any company that dares infringe on their trademarks is met with a swift force from the legal team. Many, many of the stories to come out of the company since the golden age of gaming have been based around the simple fact of “if it’s Nintendo’s, don’t touch it.”
Of course, sometimes that doesn’t work out.
Enter Dreams, a game made by the same people that brought us Little Big Planet. Focused on bringing creativity to the masses, there are few limits in the things that players can do in the workshops of Dreams.
More than anything, Media Molecule wants to use Dreams to foster creativity into the world. The team allows players to use anything they’ve created for things out of game – including imagery for businesses and whatnot.
Sony going after Dreams creations that use Nintendo IP at the request of Nintendo https://t.co/n5NXdW3fYt pic.twitter.com/6icxgkrzEQ
— GoNintendoTweet (@GoNintendoTweet) March 21, 2020
But given that they can monetize the content they create, that can cause a bit of an issue. Most companies are alright to let the things created within Dreams to fly under the radar, but it doesn’t look like Nintendo is ready to be merciful.
One content creator, a Twitter user by the name of Piece_of_Craft, has stated that they’ve been stopped from creating any more Mario projects.
“We flew too close to the sun, boys! A big video game company who I will keep nameless obviously didn’t read my ‘be cool’ note in Dreams,” they wrote. “No worries though have a backup plan. But for now Mario projects in dreams are on hold until I put said plan into effect.”
Piece_of_Craft doesn’t name the exact company, but it isn’t exactly rocket science. A big video game company is stopping a user from using Nintendo property in their content? Who could it possibly be!
It doesn’t seem to have slowed them down, though. Shortly after mentioning the suppression, Craft later discussed future content ideas for later streams. Ironically, they were featuring a Buzz Lightyear model, and Disney is one of the few companies that can match Nintendo in their fervor for copyrights.
All in all, it’s somewhat sensible on all ends. Nintendo has the right to keep their content exclusive to themselves, especially when others might be making some sort of a profit off of it. At the same time, it’s a bummer for small-time streamers to not be able to create their own fan content without fear of a legal team coming and shutting them down.
