Comment by ranger_danger
5 days ago
How is this legal? Specifically, distributing copyrighted assets and using their name/logo without permission.
5 days ago
How is this legal? Specifically, distributing copyrighted assets and using their name/logo without permission.
It isn't. It will stay up only until they get sent a strongly worded email/letter by LEGO. Experience it while you can.
I doubt there will be a letter... there's been an enthusiast-driven project to remake Lego Rock Raiders (Manic Miners if you're interested) for years now, and not only is Lego aware, they've actually provided some of the original assets for the game (the intro movie and some misc. graphics) to help the project along. As long as no one is monetizing it they don't seem to much care.
Which like... is the balanced view IMO? Like nobody is making money off this or the Manic Miners project, it's not detracting from any games Lego is actually releasing right now, and absent those factors, it's essentially free advertising and building community goodwill. I wish more companies would take this "it's not hurting us, just let it be" route for fan projects instead of guarding their IP like a dragon.
Lego is primarily a toy company, where Nintendo is a video game company (primarily).
Even though, both companies have a lot of overlap.
Agreed, LEGO aren't like Nintendo.
TL;DR: it's in a gray area, but nobody with power actually cares (at least for now), so it's effectively fine.
As I understand it, Lego is aware of the project (there's been a significant increase in interest in Lego Island in the past few years, with attempts to obtain the original source code) and simply does not care. It's an ancient IP and can't realistically compete with anything new, at least not in a way that would significantly affect Lego's revenue. This is not unlike the way several other companies have acted when their respective older games have been given the same treatment; if a fan project is not actively causing problems (reputational, financial, etc.), most companies will just leave it alone. For companies that actually seem to care about public opinion (as opposed to, say, Nintendo), I think it's fair to assume that the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan project, however legally justified it might be, far outweigh any possible benefits.
> the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan project
Just last month LEGO shut down Masks of Power, the Bionicle fan game. They were really close to a release and LEGO had allegedly met the team and given them permission in the past.
I'm increasingly convinced that fan projects should be developed quietly and announced right on release, so they at least exist somewhere on the internet if they get shut down immediately after.
It looks like the team had made a Steam page for their fan game and were accepting donations for working on it, so I can see why Lego felt compelled to take it down. https://web.archive.org/web/20241125104301/https://masksofpo...
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Yeah I don't understand why fan projects aren't already developed anonymously to prevent issues from happening.
Specifically, I would assume the calculus is about "how much damage does this do by existing" versus "how much risk is there that we attempt to shut it down and sue and set a precedent by losing", and because for most projects the first value is tiny and the second value is potentially enormous, companies leave them alone.
When either value changes drastically in scale (e.g. a project does something making it very cut and dry which side of legal precedent it falls on, or to massively increase the damage to The Brand(tm)), that's when you get worried.
Nintendo and Lego are on the same level when it comes to sue people for trademark violations. There are several cease-and-desist orders against YouTubers for calling no-name bricks legos.
I don't know why, but the US invention "legos" is incredibly grating.
Its like a whole country called spaghetti "basgetti" as kids and just went with it.
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Off-brand toy bricks are a direct threat to LEGO's bottom line, which is in the business of selling toy bricks, and only has its popularity as a moat.
Copies of old LEGO games floating around online are effectively just free LEGO advertising, so the situation may be quite different here.
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Probably because they are "lego bricks", not "legos", in the same way that you don't call a bag of rice "rices"
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Absolutely nothing should be getting called "legos", dear god, its "lego" or "lego bricks"
Note that companies usually ignore fan projects like this and don't mention them at all. If they would mention and tolerate them, it weakens their intellectual property in a future lawsuit.
Once fan projects get too much traction, companies have to cease and desist them because that's the way intellectual properties work in the law. It usually has nothing to do with whether it was a cool project or not, it's just that there's way too much money at stake when not defending your IP.
Amusingly I actually have Video of Atari's Lead of Marketing playing OpenRCT2 on Stream, giving away RCT2 Keys to promote RCT World. To this day, Atari has left us alone though, so yeah it's pretty much not worth it to them to try anything.
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Is there any way for a company, Lego in this case, to adopt a fan mod or remake, to make it legitimate IP/copyright wise?
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It's definitely not a "gray" area though it may well be true that no one cares, so it's effectively fine.