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Nintendo sends a cease and desist to insider that has leaked pretty much every E3 2019 announcement
- Thread starter Atheerios
- Start date
Pretty sure "stop being so emotionally invested in reveals" wouldn't go over well if I just blurted out what was in the basement to people only watching the anime for Attack on Titan
In spite of leaks, it is effective and it exists.
The record industry at least had a leg to stand on when it came to leaking albums. You downloaded the leak, you might not buy it. That's a logical conclusion. Sadly, the same can't be said for people who watch commercials for a game the day before the commercial is supposed to air.
People who spoil movies as people watch them are total assholes. But if one's response to having a film spoiled is to say the film is ruined, deny any artistic value in the rest of the film in its entirety, and then spew hate at the producer and studio online... well, the spoiler may be a dick but that person should probably dial back their emotional investment.
But also leaking a game trailer isn't a spoiler so they don't really go hand in hand.
Yes
There's rumors of a WarioWare game and a new 2.5 Metroid game (either a remake of fusion or a new game)
...ok? Are you trying to gotcha me here? Did I step into an elusive mastermind trap where I just proved myself wrong? What's the point of this response? The hype machine is incredibly effective, ergo, the gaming industry (especially Nintendo) goes to great lengths to protect it. I actually don't like that the system works like this. I wish we could be more open in game development.
You're saying the work in question isn't a work that can be or is copyrighted? That's really the only way it doesn't apply. And I've argued why in several other posts.
I'm probably the old man yelling at the clouds here, but I can't really blame Nintendo for this. If I was a game company that had stuff to reveal at a trade show, only to have some random person leak everythig beforehand I'd be pretty pissed too . I mean, what is everyone's fascination with leaks? What happened to just waiting until the show/event starts, and enjoy the reveals officially from the company? I always hated leaks/spoilers/rumor/etc. Just wait and have some patience people.
More open development. Another way to put an end to leaks. Sounds like a great idea.
I suspect that having an open and documented development would go to further humanize the developers as actual humanize developers. I had a bad taste in my mouth over getting burned by Double Fine but got over it after watching the Double Fine documentary.
Sadly, an open development concept would clash with the pageantry of marketing and sales and those matter more than actual people.
Jesus this was thirty minutes of noting but gibberish. Glad I missed this.
I mean, if we're in agreement, why are you so combative with this post?
Yes, I too wish developers could be more open, but like, we've seen that this does not always translates well for both humanization nor profit. Double Fine itself is an example, you had a bad taste in your mouth over it. Sure, you watched the documentary and got more context, but not everyone will. We live in a world where it seems like people want to be psychologically tricked and actual honesty and openess isn't rewarded.
Um. I mean, whoever is responsible for the leak is probably the one getting fired. And everyone would be a suspect til they know who did it.
Are they supposed to give everyone a raise when someone on the team was an asshole and leaked something? This is on them, not the company.
The threat is directed at whoever leaked it, rightfully so.
Did something else happen? Last I check she (Sabi) posted the lawyers person info in a Tweet. Did anything come of that? Or is this thread just alive to be alive?
But we had people here post that their jobs were threaten because someone else had leaked something. Now do you understand how fucked that is and why it's a problem?
The decision to announce the C&D was their downfall.
of course if they had kept quiet and kept leaking things from other companies nothing would have happened, but by publiticing their affair with Nintendo they made other companies take notice and probably already got dozens more
just not a smart move
Fucked up for the leakers knowing they can get everyone in shit, yes.
Don't leak. It's as simple as that.
Huh so gamexplain but up video about this and they mentioned that Sabi was part of their blog theory discussion for Smash Bros ultimate back in September. I watched that video back then but I didn't realize it was Sabi in that video. I checked video and sure enough, Sabi is on it:
I can see how Nintendo could easily identify Sabi in person.
I can see how Nintendo could easily identify Sabi in person.
I'm saying that copyright protects duplication of a work. It does not protect the existence of a work.
You can't claim breach of copyright because someone reports that you have product X in development.
Can't really blame Nintendo, they've got decades long history of secrecy at this point.
Ugh we are obviously just going around in circles so for both our sakes let just agree to disagree and move on.
I don't think I am, I didn't intend to be. If you want to explain your POV to me, feel free to PM me.
It's much much much easier to create blanket rules and plans and systems than discrete exceptions or outliers- so the thing you're characterizing as "fetishistic " is actually just practical ubiquity in the pursuit of a manageable strategy.
It may look overengineered from the outside but it's actually just the most manageable approach in many cases.
On the OP tweets —
She might simply be paraphrasing the c&d but the fact she admits she posted "trade secrets " as opposed to "information I happened upon" is a pretty serious statement (regardless of your feelings on the matter or it's seriousness) and contains consciousness of the nature of the material and its value in an admission of guilt. It also contains the nature of Nintendo's concern. The Wii managed to get to market as a unique way to play games in large part because the invention was really application rather than new tech and as such required strict protection to avoid being beaten to the punch by competitors.
It's not always as trivial as story or names or release dates.
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Usually the damages for violating an NDA are spelled out in the terms of the NDA in a liquidated damages provision. I imagine that NDA breach damages are often NOT consequential in nature although such consequential damages can be contracted for as well.
In other words, no one needs to show a loss of sales, nor should they, for violation of the NDA to merit any award to the aggrieved party. People who sign NDAs are compensated, in part, for their secrecy surrounding their work. They contractually AGREE to the value of that secrecy (or damages) by the very contract terms under which they sign. In consideration for their secrecy, often a term of their employment, they are compensated.
Anyone saying that a company needs to show damages for an NDA violation is simply ignorant of the fact that the company in question can refer to the NDA, itself, to show the quantum of legal harm owed by the leaking employee.
Everyone: stop armchair lawyering. It's a bad look. We get it, many of you are unsophisticated and are grappling with legal concepts for the first time. But how about you admit you know little and take the time to ask questions rather than purport to know what the law says or how a judge might think.
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an open development concept clashes with the core nature of making games.
There is a whole thread dedicated to this very topic and devs coming in saying why its a bad idea
Ok, I'm down for this....then again with all the confs during the year it might not be possible...
Las Vegas maybe?
Yes, you can. It's called "right to first publish". When you're the copyright holder of a work, you also control when you let the public know about it, and when you let the public see it.
Wow. What an attention grab.
Ok so making a fake but reasonable and realistic example here:
You work at a small video color correction company with three editors, a CEO and an admin. You color correct trailers and short videos.
Nintendo sends you a new secret video to clean up for e3. You need this work to keep the lights on. You have a contract with Nintendo that absolutely contains very strict industry standard confidentiality and NDArequirements. Further, Nintendo did due diligence in your security systems. But they can't do due diligence on individual behavior.
One of your four workers leaks the video. You don't know which. Nintendo says they can no longer trust your firm and is not renewing the contract. You can't fire the individual and save the firm because you can't tell who it was. So you go out of business and everyone there loses their job.
Now, whose fault is that and is it serious?
This seems like a really bad idea.
Like to the point that powers that be can stomp on this guy rather easily by doing little investigative work.
Some of you are trying to compare movie announcements with video game announcements which I don't think is a fair comparison. When blockbuster movies are announced years in advance, they are rarely cancelled. Video games, on the other hand, get cancelled behind-the-scenes all the time. Fans get really pissed when they find out about cancelled games, too.
Do we really want to live in a world where games are announced 4 years prior to release and a good chunk of them never see the light of day?
Do we really want to live in a world where games are announced 4 years prior to release and a good chunk of them never see the light of day?
No games should be announced 4 years prior to completion anyway.
We know when a Studio is producing a movie years in advance (like many many years). Why shouldn't this be the case with games?
If we're going for the movie analogy, that would be the timeline.
We can know that a studio is working on a game, they just shouldn't announce it like they do with shitty misleading trailers that the dev team has to crunch to deliver
I don't think we get trailers for movies years before release though.
This. If there is an NDA, damages are almost always stated as liquidated because it would be near impossible to otherwise quantify.
If Sabi signed an NDA and leaked this information, they are perhaps the stupidest person on the planet.
Right to first publish has to do with publication. There is nothing in copyright law in the US that prevents an unrelated third party from telling others that they learned about something in development. That's one of the reasons why so many projects use code names.
I didn't say we'd get trailer announcements. I don't want an announcement that something is in development when devs are constantly developing things that never pan out.
Why? You have to hire hundreds of people to make a game. Sometimes that's vastly more easy when you can attract talent to a beloved franchise- an unnamed title will not produce the same resumes- and there are lots of other business reasons too.
Source that. The first right to publish only concerns actually selling/publishing the work in question. If somebody gives a specific publisher the right to sell their book first before anyone else like Amazon etc., that is the first right to publish that the author of the work gave to them.
Partial spoilers or leaking the name of the work have nothing to do with that.
I can't say I understand the idea that the game industry is toxic so leaks aren't a real problem. Yes, the game industry and the work culture it has created is toxic in a lot of ways and in that sense, leaks aren't the only problem. However, if someone (i.e. the leaker) knows that something is extremely flammable (i.e. the games industry), they can't exactly claim innocence if they choose to set it on fire. You can certainly say that something should be less flammable and that was a contributing factor, but at the end of the day if someone knowingly blew it up, that person is culpable for the harm caused too.
In a perfect world I would love for the game industry to be somewhat more open and not rely on a precariously built marketing plan, but let's not advocate for knocking it down for that reason and spiting the devs in the process. Not to mention that leaking like this is likely going to lead to a closed internal development process, which will lead us even further from a more open industry. If there is danger of something being leaked, dev teams may end up keeping it secret from more and more people within the team, until a dev has no idea what's going on outside of the work they're doing personally. That's the last thing anyone needs. Leaks aren't just about image, they're about trust, and destroying trust within a team can have disastrous consequences.
In other words, I think that the industry and present-day marketing can have its own problems, but I think that leak culture is harmful as well and isn't going to help the former. I also think that the toxicity of gaming culture is going to make it really hard to change any of this (see: Puddlegate). We as a community need to learn that things change and "downgrade" in development and it's not some sort of betrayal unless someone is actively trying to deceive us about it. That's veering into another discussion entirely, though.
In a perfect world I would love for the game industry to be somewhat more open and not rely on a precariously built marketing plan, but let's not advocate for knocking it down for that reason and spiting the devs in the process. Not to mention that leaking like this is likely going to lead to a closed internal development process, which will lead us even further from a more open industry. If there is danger of something being leaked, dev teams may end up keeping it secret from more and more people within the team, until a dev has no idea what's going on outside of the work they're doing personally. That's the last thing anyone needs. Leaks aren't just about image, they're about trust, and destroying trust within a team can have disastrous consequences.
In other words, I think that the industry and present-day marketing can have its own problems, but I think that leak culture is harmful as well and isn't going to help the former. I also think that the toxicity of gaming culture is going to make it really hard to change any of this (see: Puddlegate). We as a community need to learn that things change and "downgrade" in development and it's not some sort of betrayal unless someone is actively trying to deceive us about it. That's veering into another discussion entirely, though.
I don't really mind that though.
It's rather immaterial and can be part of the broader strategy.
Kinda like how we know that Sony is working on ps5 years before we see anything.
or how we know they want to make Metroid Prime 4 but were shown nothing before the project was rebooted.
True but there is to be a middle ground between pulling a Killzone 2 and going Sega with the Saturn "it's out now".
Announcement trailers are the least useful thing in this regard.