Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

Keeping stuff for sale can be expensive because of licensed assets. Licensed music has taken games down before and it will again. I don't know the publisher contracts Nintendo signs, but if there's a time duration in the contract, that may open up a very expensive "deal with keeping track of which developers relicensed their games" problem.

That said, I 100% believe this is just a way for them to make sure you can't mod second hand 3DS consoles in five years time when they bring 3DS re-releases to the Switch.

View on HN

> Very expensive "deal with keeping track of which developers relicensed their games" problem.

There is tons of licensing issues in the gaming industry under the surface that causes problems all over the place. An extreme example would be Sega's mistakes with Sonic.

Sonic 3, despite not having him in the credits, contains some works by Michael Jackson. That has complicated things tremendously in re-releases, so much so, that Sega has re-released that game far less than Sonic 1, 2, and CD. Sonic Origins, the latest re-release, contains redone music from prototypes rather than solve the licensing quagmire.

But that's not the only licensing quagmire. Guess why the Sonic movies don't have almost any soundtracks or sound effects from the game? According to the Directors, it wasn't a thematic choice, but a legal one. Sonic CD's re-release on smartphones had a similar issue with the opening scene having the vocals removed, because they were from an obscure band that went through a series of legal changes, acquisitions, member changes... This is actually a big problem with re-releases in general. Hunting down who actually owns the rights to a series can be a mess when acquisitions are involved; and you'd better hope the new owners at the end of the road are reasonable and not eager for a quick buck.

And to top it all off, just look up the Kenneth W. Penders story, which single-handedly took advantage of Sega's lax copyright protectionism to "steal" almost 200 characters right from under Sega's feet. Nintendo is no doubt looking at that, and the Sonic music issues, and thinking... man, this is why we protect.

Metal Gear Solid 2 & 3 haven't been available on digital marketplaces for a while because both games include real historical footage that Konami no longer has the rights to use. (Off the top of my head, MGS3 used clips of some nuclear weapons tests, for example.)

Additionally, the Metal Gear Solid Main Theme is reportedly not available anymore because of debious copyright battles with a russian composer, which led to MGS4 having the Love Theme instead.

> MGS3 used clips of some nuclear weapons tests

Wouldn't this be a work of the federal government and in the public domain? Thinking of all the war movies that used old military footage....

> Wouldn't this be a work of the federal government and in the public domain?

Not necessarily

EDIT: This got prematurely sent and thus was overly terse: contractors and other private parties connected to government test may have been permitted to take photos, and those (even within the scope of work of a government contract) may be subject to copyright. (Also, its theoretically possible that some tests were photographed by people with no formal connection to the test, though the remote locations and lack of announced times make that challenging.)

Have people building games today that use works under license learned this lesson and purchased perpetual licenses, or are they still trying to save money by purchasing narrow licenses that don't work for re-releases or remakes or similar?

Some agencies understand games now and sell appropriately priced perpetual licenses.

Others still treat a game like a moderatly long one time performance.

If the agency won't offer a perpetual license at a reasonable price, their content shouldn't be included in the game. It's inexcusable that games are still being removed from sale in a medium where the cost of manufacturing a copy is 0 because the makers of the game signed a bad contract on some minor piece of content in the game and don't want to be bothered removing it.

You agree, I agree, but try telling that to the C-level exec who really wants to use "Stressed Out" in part of the game.

If they ARE using licensed things that are non-perpetual, they should arrange for some way to remove them, if possible.

And it sometimes is impossible, the "Poker Night at the Inventory" games are no longer available because the character licenses expired, and they'd be nothing without them.

Why pay for a perpetual license if most games see no significant sales after a few years? Everybody that wanted to buy GTA Vice city did it ages ago.

Its not just an issue of perpetual duration, but the covered media (e.g., when it comes to use in movies), and paying the necessary premium when a future movie is a distant low probability event may not make sense for game publishers.

> Guess why the Sonic movies don't have almost any soundtracks or sound effects from the game? According to the Directors, it wasn't a thematic choice, but a legal one.

Why is this a thing? I've heard of game studios having a movie studio make a movie, but then not allow them to use certain elements from the game. It ruins the movie, IMO, and I've never understood why game studios knee-cap movie adaptations like that.

Probably because the game studio licensed those assets from a third party, and that license doesn't cover a movie adaption.

On the last point, I looked it up and it's an interesting story but it looks like Archie comics is the main culprit behind the lax protection although you could say SEGA is also at fault. Nevertheless, I kind of feel like Mr. Penders won one for the little guy.

So basically another case study why modern copyright law is broken ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com