PMU and getting sued?

[Whimsy]

This was brought up only off-topic two years ago. But wouldn’t it be disastrous? :x.x:

I mean, what this topic is about is that using copyrighted stuff is illegal. But the companies haven’t reacted yet, probably because we are still small enough not to affect them negatively. But now PMU is only getting better, and with things like PMUniverse Social Media it spreads even further.

My post has two purposes:
Firstly, a question, how should we as regular players act? Can we for instance still post videos on Youtube about this game?

The second purpose is that I just have to bring this up because I am worried! I am surprised I got only one topic when searching ‘sued’, and from two years ago! What if people are forgetting about this? Please! Don’t let it happen! :x.x:

[shadowlucario50]

Let me quote what what12345, IllusDark8, and Drakos have stated before:

@what12345

Nintendo is a company that makes money selling Single-Player games with the occasional Wi-Fi battle or Local Connection Gameplay. PMU is made by a group of people that lets Pokemon fans play together on an online multiplayer server where players can cooperate in dungeons and hangout. If Nintendo wanted to, they could have already had made a Multi-Player version of one of their Pokemon games online all the way back to 1995 if they really wanted to, but they didn’t. Which is why I believe, PMU has stood here without being hit by Nintendo or by the Law.

@IllusDark8

We are not making profit on it though. Think of it as a Rom Hack, they don’t make profit nether do we. It’s illegal, if we are using it as a way to raise money for one’s selve or group without permission from Nintendo.

@Drakos

Think how many Pokemon fan games there are out there, the reason Nintendo’s done nothing is because there’s so many of them that they haven’t heard of all of them, and don’t even care about most of them because they’re of much lower quality than the real thing. Look at PMU for instance, the most we’ve had online at once was something like 151, I think? Then compare that to the millions of customers for the real Pokemon games. Even if this sort of game was offline, it still wouldn’t make a dent in Nintendo’s profit and it would be a waste of time shutting it down.

Honestly, I’m not worried about this at all. While there’s a possibility PMU can be taken down by Chunsoft or Nintendo, the chances are extremely slim. Even if we were advertised by a lot of people, we’re still not entirely measurable to the higher millions they have to our hundreds. Because, despite PMU getting better, the servers are still extremely weak with the multiple crashes, quite a few people leave before getting HM Rock Smash or because of the huge grinding issue, and we use fanmade PMD sprites for Gen 5 and 6. It’s far from Nintendo’s standards.

While it can be worrying, it’s not something to get worked up about. PMU has been running for quite a long time (7 years?), so you shouldn’t really fret.

[Agunimon]

PMU doesn’t make a profit off of its content and donations go towards keeping the server running. Besides, as previously stated, we’re not a very large group of people, nor are we detracting from Nintendo’s massive profits in any way, shape or form. I don’t think it’s something to be concerned about.

[Whimsy]

Yay! Makes me happy to see these answers! And hopefully this will make anyone else who was worried like me happier.

That being said, if anyone doesn’t agree, please post! This is important after all.

[Lt_York]

I hope this doesn’t count as a deadpost, but if I could note something?

Hyrule Total War is a much larger game-mod/fan-project/etc that even went so far as to be at one point mistaken by IGN to be a full-on Zelda game that they wrote an article about alongside the time that Skyward Sword was released.

H:TW even had the scare of being greenlighted on Steam (by someone who took the work without the owner’s permission) and Nintendo sat quiet.

I will say that, if Nintendo or Chunsoft -wanted- to, they could certainly take PMU down. But PMU isn’t anywhere near high-profile as that project, which Nintendo is ignoring.

Besides, it’s been over ten years since PMU came out, hasn’t it? I think we’re good.

[AnkokuFlare]

I remember used to worry about that after a fan game my friend fshy was helping on that went kaput after receiving an email from the attorneys due to their domain containing the word “pokemon” on it. Aside from it’s convenience, I think that’s what lead me to have the first domain named pmuniverse. Back at 2010, Me and Pikablu also worked on getting a footer, TOS, and License Agreements done to prevent stuff like that from coming up. Not sure if that helped or not, but it’s something haha.

it’s been eight year since the game has been out of publicity.

Could be a possibility, but it’s nothing to get worried about. Spreading the word is all up to you. Often times caring intention, respect, with some wit to back it up gets some nice results.

Even if the law does occur, I’m sure there will be some kind of work around.

From what I’ve gathered so far projects are more likely to “die” due to inability to adapt and/or change of interest of all persons participating. Either way, I don’t think they are ever truly dead. When there’s a will ,there’s a way. :la: