While searching some things related to hacks I stumbled upon this:
(Updated 10/24/2023)
[…]
Q11:What do you mean by content that is “unlawful, infringing, or inappropriate”?
A11:Examples of unlawful, infringing, or inappropriate content include, but are not limited to, content that incorporates Nintendo intellectual property and:
[…]
Involves illegally copied or modified game software, game software produced using Nintendo’s copyrighted material without Nintendo’s authorization, or game software obtained illegally.
Probably this will only affect streamers and content creators, but I wonder if Nintendo will use this to struck anything hacking related.
I thought they sent a cease and desist for the development of Project M for similar reasons (which is a similar vein to Romhacking). I think currently we’re just not high enough profile to get noticed at the moment. Or they don’t care as much.
if they really wanted to, they would have already done something about the GBA hacking scene in these past years.
my guess is that they either don’t care enough to go against it, because considering everything related to FEE3, it’s pretty much impossible that they don’t know at this point in time.
or, they don’t have a valid reason yet to act, as long as there’s no money involved like actually trying to sell an hack, or make a kickstarter for it, or anything else that could generate profit for 3rd parties while using Nintendo’s properties without their agreement.
i believe that as long as it keeps being just a hobby around here, there shouldn’t be any problems.
however, that does not mean that we’re 100% safe either, but i suppose that’s always been the case for this platform.
These guidelines seem to be explicitly for streamers and such. Unless they change directions, Nintendo has typically only gone after fangames and Rom hacks that have made money. To my knowledge, they’ve also only ever really targeted the Pokemon, Mario, Metroid, and Smash communities, and that has typically only been done in limited capacities. I’d be pretty surprised if they’d go after FEU, but if they start going after other hacking/fan game communities, the chances of that would increase. And I’m pretty sure one of the bigger communities would probably try and engage in some kind of civil suit to stop Nintendo since my understanding is the case law on matters such as these typically isn’t settled (not that Nintendo would lose anyway).
I remember D3 Publisher put out a similar guideline update, but them being a smaller sort of company it only applied to the Japanese community. Even if that wasn’t true, nothing really changed, anyway. Japanese modders have always been under D3’s scrutiny while western modders went and currently go unnoticed. I suspect this is a similar case with Nintendo, primarily in the sense that nothing really changes. Especially so since they’ve already gone after creators in the past without this guideline. They’ve done it before, so nothing was really stopping them from doing it again.
(I definitely hope it doesn’t mean a new swath of petty takedowns. Never can be sure with Ninty, after all)
They also updated tournament guidelines and basically banned community tournaments. Nintendo being tyrannical is nothing new, but I think our little corner of the internet is still safe from them at the moment, unlike the Smash community.
