Even if the project is verifiably hacked the instant that remake becomes available on the web Disney will sue the shit out of them. It’s just how Disney is.
Depends where they sue him but regardless, when Disney’s lawyers serve you for x- million you have to lawyer up, that costs big money… can you afford a lawyer that would go up against Disney’s legal team…? I couldn’t…
Realistic likely hood: out of court settlement for 10s of millions.
Court settlement: who the fuck knows but realistically if your defense rests on ‘it wasnt me that leaked it i was hacked’ I suspect you best have the receipts to back that up in court and have experts willing to testify under oath…! Regardless of legal precedent and standing copyright law a part of the Mouse’s legal team would also be leaning on the politicians, judges and press to make 'an example, bare that in mind…
This is a firm that can hire Info-Sec specialists to prove that he wasn’t hacked and the exact path of the data and hold them in contract, well, permanently… it’d be like going toe-to-toe with the US government only laser focused and far more efficient… would you want to get into a he-said-she-said with the NSA…? No? Imagine if the NSA just wanted to fuck you up…! That’s what’d happen… The Mouse would financially cripple him or drive him to suicide…!
Disney is a monopoly with power akin to a nation state when it comes to their industry…!
If people get their hands on this game, via him, his life is pretty much over…
You know it’s a lot easier to think about pulling a “Tee hee who released this game? Not me oops.” then it is to be the person staring down the idea of actually having consequences from it.
If Disney sues you, there’s basically no upside.
The downsides are, that even if you win or come to a settlement that you’re on the hook for lawyer’s fees. How many thousands of dollars do you have sitting around to burn on lawyers?
A settlement agreement would of course end with Disney getting the payout, not you. So, decide how much that is.
And that’s all assuming you end up either winning or not going to trial.
If you go to trial for IP infringement, it’s a civil case. That means that Disney doesn’t have to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but only that it is more likely than not you infringed. So if a jury needs to be 99% sure in a criminal trial, they only need to be 51% in a civil trial.
And for a trial you will be deposed, which is sat in a room an interrogated by Disney’s lawyers. And you have to answer their questions and you have to tell the truth. Want to pled the 5th? Guess what, it’s not a criminal trial so pleading the 5th in a civil deposition can be used against you to draw the worst inferences. They will ask if you worked on it, and if you distributed it, and they’ll ask in every way possible so you can “technically tell the truth” while trying to weasel out of it. And if you do lie, and your lie gets caught, you’re toasted.
Creatives: Here’s a showcase of my skills and talents, a portfolio of work I’ve done that prove this. Here’s a tutorial to show how I did it to pass on my knowledge so you can learn from it…
You: FUCKING SHOW OFF!!!1!1 STOP BEING AN ATTENTION WHORE YOU BITCH!!1!!!
He remakes old games in modern engines. In particularly at the moment with UE5 it’s a fairly good overview of it’s capabilities (it’s basically magic and is definitely the software that runs star treks holodecks).
Selling it is clearly out of the question; but would such a thing be okay to give away free? Is there even sufficient law and precedent to say one way or the other without a court decision? It’s not really a parody or a remix, but it’s also not straight up theft. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something similar actually coming out before; has anyone ever remastered or duplicated a thing in their own way and released it without any ties to the original content creators? 🤔
I’m fairly certain you could legally get away with a full duplication of the game’s layout and mechanics, so long as you didn’t use the name or the characters. This does have precedent and happens a lot.
No. Assuming they rebuilt the game in a publicly available game engine, they could release whatever they did to that, but the characters are trademarked, and the game level design and any audio they'd have used would be copyrighted. The fact that you didn't ask for money isn't a defense that would stand up in court.
There is a potential way around this that has often been used by other projects. You make the original game files a requirement for it to work and you don’t distribute any files that include trademarked material directly and instead it uses the original files and modifies/extends them as needed. This has been used for a large number of other projects including things like the Ocarina of Time decompilation project.
It would still qualify as a mod if it required the original game, I’m pretty sure it would be fine to release that way, but it’s probably not worth the risk of legal bullshit.
AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) was a fan recreation of Metroid 2 that got Cease and Desist’ed as well as DMCA’d on release. Notably Japan’s copyright laws require you to aggressively protect your holdings or else have them forfeited.
I always hate that people do this instead of distancing themselves from the IP (at least enough for plausible deniability and to avoid automated detection). Especially when the work they made from scratch exceeds what they re-used, often a case of don't use trademarks in the name. Though when it comes to map data I don't know how much you could do (maybe jumble it up a bit or create some kind of procedural generation) unless it's just a spiritual successor from scratch.
Similarly, I'd be interested in new asset packs(/games?) made for free engines (that don't have assets OotB, thus don't function). Though I know that is also more likely if it only needs textures/sounds/models and not map data (which I am not sure if included map data is a thing/common).
Remaking Lego Island seems silly when MattKC has already done a lot to get it running on modern PCs, and is in the process of decompiling the binaries.
I watched his Hit and Run remake videos from the beginning, and it’s not really about the end product - he made it clear from the beginning that that project was never going to be released.
Mostly, it seems to be about selling his “learn how to make Unreal games” courses and Unreal plugins.
The videos were fun in their own right, to be honest.
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