Bandai Namco Sends Threat Letter To Modding Site Over Supposed Trademark Issues
from the dear-god-why? dept
Here we go again. There seems to be a thing happening among a select few big name video game publishers that have decided for some reason that they want to go to war with their own modding communities. The reasons for doing so vary, but they all amount to wanting to strictly control the experience gamers have with their products. Which is absolutely silly. Mods only exist because people want them. And they want them because they enhance the gaming experience they have with these games, thereby making them more attractive for purchase and continued play.
But when you’ve declared a war like this, it gets real easy for it to turn into a total war type scenario, where no method of attack is left unused. So it seems is the case with Bandai Namco, which for some reason decided to issue a trademark threat to modding site Tekkenmods.com.
Programmer and TekkenMods.com administrator Dennis Stanistan revealed the site recently received an infringement notice from Bandai Namco. The email from Bandai Namco states that the website uses trademarked visuals and logos without prior approval. “By doing so,” it accuses, “you intentionally seek to attract Internet users to your website. This unauthorized use of Bandai/Namco’s intellectual property falsely suggests Bandai/Namco’s sponsorship or enforcement of your website.”
It’s a ridiculous claim to make for several reasons. At the very highest level, PC gamers are not going to somehow think that a third-party mod site has some affiliation with Bandai Namco just because its name, game name, or logos appear on it. If the company was going to make changes to its game, it would simply do so in an update to the game. The whole point of mod sites like this are to do things the game developers didn’t do with their games.
And while the site did remove the logos and material as demanded by Bandai Namco, Stanistan was also very clear that he didn’t believe any of this amounted to trademark infringement, in particular as the site goes out of its way to state it is not affiliated with the company.
As TekkenMods in its official response, the mod’s creator deleted it from the website. However, Stanistan denies doing anything illegal, writing, “Acknowledgement of your complaint is not an admission of any wrongdoing.”
The site administrator also pointed out that the page clearly states it is not affiliated with Bandai Namco. This, Stanistan explains, was specifically done to avoid confusion about whether TekkenMods carries any official endorsement. “Furthermore,” he writes, “the alleged ‘infringing’ elements are used in the context of fan-based content creation which aims to celebrate and promote the Tekken franchise rather than infringe upon or compete with it.”
For the love of all that is holy, I do not understand why it is so hard for some game publishers to grasp this concept. Mods are not a threat to their games. They are a free source of labor for making the games more attractive for purchase, for replayability, and for extending the longevity of the game. It’s all a boon, with little if any downside that I can find.
But for some, the war continues. I sometimes wonder if these companies even understand why they are fighting this war.
Filed Under: mods, tekkenmods, trademark, video games
Companies: bandai namco
Comments on “Bandai Namco Sends Threat Letter To Modding Site Over Supposed Trademark Issues”
Meat sacks should just be happy to hand over their poverty wages for the entertainment provided to them.
But yeah. I’ve never understood the dislike or hate game development companies have for modders, especially given the passion and skill of some.
I wonder how much of the tone-deafness is due to cultural issues?
I work for a regional office of a Japanese parent corporation, and projects/process changes/anything at all which involves getting Head Office to sign off usually become a weeks-long back and forth grind to get things approved and actually moving. If I were to sum up the Head Office Attitude in a single sentence it would be “meticulous yet unresponsive”.
EVERYTHING must be checked and rechecked by the engineering team. EVERYTHING must be signed off by Legal down to the last period. EVERYTHING must be triple-checked by Global Strategy/Marketing/PR until they deem that it has no potential to draw the slightest bit of criticism towards the local office, the head office, or the brand in even the tiniest way. And I do mean everything. Nothing is done by back-channels or verbal arrangements, everything must be signed and dated, there will be no deviation from official procedure. Most importantly, THERE MUST BE NO RISK OF EMBARRASSMENT OR “LOSS OF FACE” to the company or its leadership.
I know it’s not just my company either. The Japanese tend to make a very big deal of procedural correctness via official channels for a variety of long-standing cultural reasons, is what I’m trying to say here. Knowing this, it’s not hard to imagine some game company execs in Japan being told about an American or Euro-based modding site based on “their” franchise, instantly seeing such a project as THE EXACT OPPOSITE of everything I was describing above, and freaking right the fuck out.
Once the freakout happens, I imagine there’s probably very little that anyone lower down the ladder could do to convince them of the value brought by such free labour and free promotion. They are not interested in “working with the community”. They are interested in iron-fisted control of their brand/IP, lest some unapproved modification bring the company (or more specifically, its current leadership) into disrepute, which is like an unforgiveable crime over there. Thousands and thousands of Japanese people have committed suicide over real or even simply perceived losses of face in their professional field.
So yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if this “war on modding” is driven by cultural factors to a large degree.
Re:
Believe it or not, there was once a time when Japanese culture was very open. Capcom put in an OC Remix OST in one of their video games and allowed OC Remix to give away the OST. Doujin Manga was prevalent and none of the Doujin Manga-ka were victims of litigation. What changed? Well, before, Japan didn’t really have a lot of lawyers, so that’s why copyright action wasn’t taken, outside of Nintendo. But once there was legislation that criminalized copyright infringement due to trade agreements such as the TPP (which the US didn’t sign but Japan did), that’s when big companies such as Bandai Namco went after fan projects.
(This is not definitive but my interpretation)
Re:
Wasn’t it Japan that was trying to put ‘pirates’ in prison for decades?
They fell into the myth of kajillions in lost sales because people were creating scanlations, because the publishers refused to meet the demand of a large market.
They went after subtitle sites for daring to have better subs than were on the content (if they even provided subs).
It might also explain why Nintendo keeps beating on its fan like Ike beat Tina for daring to want more than what was provided.
In a culture where they would have slapped Oliver Twist for asking for more, perhaps they need to understand that abusing fans isn’t always a good look & they should seek a way to appease both cultures.
We gave you our perfect game, it needs nothing else. To make changes to the game is the highest insult. Lather, rinse, repeat.
One does wonder if no one ever had the idea that their culture expects people to behave like A and its uncouth to discuss why people don’t behave like A and the only tool they have is lawyers sending confused letters to express their displeasure because the culture won’t allow them to discuss changes with outsiders.
Ah yes, the logic of claiming that a statement that “We are not in any way affiliated with [Trademarked Name]” infringes said trademark.
Could it just be greed?
Could the threat they feel is players not buying new games because old games are being updated by the community?
Re:
And thereby promoting the new games because of the potential brought by modding?
Re: Re:
Absolutely. Bandai Namco are being extremely short sighted on this issue.
Mods are a threat to publishers, in the sense that they are a threat to selling some things related to the game, such as DLC and sequels that are just more of the same.
Mods can increase fanbase and create a long tail of sales, so they are a threat to short term profit but have long term profit opportunities, and some publishers care more about one than the other.
Hey, AAA studios!
Skyrim, mostly because Bethesda embraced the mod community instead of hamstringing it, has one of the most vibrant communities and is still making sales to this day over ten years later.
Skyrim will go down in history as one of the greatest games ever made, mostly because the mod tools were shipped with release.
I remember not liking that house layout and making a personal mod just to remove that one table and chair that I kept getting caught on. It was ENCOURAGED by the studio…
I probably would have been sued by Nintendo or Bandai for even having the tools to do that.
Perhaps something to learn here 🤔
Re:
Bethesda already screws with their modding community (especially Skyrim’s) on a regular basis.
Like the creation club (which was already widely disliked) that needed to update the game’s exe (thus breaking major mods) every time it added something.
Or the anniversary update, which updated the compliers used and caused a split in the modding community that still exist years later (and has since gotten worse).
Or the creations update, which removed the creation club store menu to add another store menu that still had the same issue (and so far is also widely disliked). And those new creations disabled achievements (the old ones didn’t).