In the past two days, i have had both of my Auctions for a reproduction of Zelda OOT Master Quest shut down from eBay, from a report by someone.

Now, today I've noticed that my website has been shut down by my hoster due to someone reporting it as illegal activity.

I don't know 100% for sure who it is, but if anyone has followed my Auction on here that got shut down by a certain patch hacker, I'd say things aren't too hard to figure out.

If anyone is trying to contact me or go to my website, you can do so through here at NA until I have this resolved.


Thanks!

Dang...hope that all gets resolved soon!

That's so lame. I hope it all gets resolved quickly.

Are repros even allowed on eBay? That's probably why it was taken down.

*In my best Canadian accent* "Sorry to hear that."

They aren't "allowed," but that's not really enforced, and OP's repro is fine with many more people than the rampant repros of actual North American releases like Hagane, Wild Guns, etc.

 

His repros are of games that were never available for sale in that form, so it isn't the same thing as selling fakes. It is, however, copyrighted. Nintendo generally hasn't cared much about these things and doesn't usually assert their rights. The free patch author, on the other hand, is. RetroStage wasn't expecting this reaction and is understandably upset. Making a repro N64 cartridge wasn't easy and took a lot of work. It wasn't trivial, like he just burned a copy of their patched ROM. They're all working outside of copyright considerations, so if the patch team didn't want, need, or care about Nintendo's permission, why does RetroStage need their permission to make his own derivative work?

The last RetroRGB podcast interview was with the guy who maintains one of those huge Zelda hacks that he specifically wants to be able to run on real hardware with repro carts. This person was part of a Zelda hacking community that requently borrowed tweaks and hacks from each other to use in their own project with ZERO drama. That's essentially what ReteoStage here did: borrowed their patch for his bigger project of enabling custom N64 games on real hardware!

I think the whole thing is very unfortunate. RetroStage put in a lot of very hard work and his new PCBs are exciting! This game was the obvious go-to game to release on these PCBs but it looks like the community has to redevelop these patches themselves if they want similarly functional repros without these guys shutting it down.  

Wow what a piece of human trash.
I LOVE the CIB copy of Master Quest I got from you. Great quality, price was a tad high, BUT for (what I think is) the "first" repro 64 game can't complain too much.

Given Ocarina of Time Master Quest is copyrighted and owned by Nintendo, selling repro of a game in the context of a business like that has its risks. It sucks but this is also not very surprising.

Ironically, Master Quest is a highly disappointing rom hack. I've been playing through the GC original version, so little is actually changed...

Yeah, it's just remixed dungeons, but I've wanted it on a cart ever since Paradox extracted it from the GC disc (IIRC, it was them). I'm guessing that it was too hard to do much else with a permanent game ROM, so if the DD version ever arrived it could only take advantage of hooks built into the original OOT game pak to mix things up. Obviously, cartridge space was at a premium and OOT already forced them to make a ROM a bigger than they had ever done before, so they weren't going to waste too much space on stuff that may never get used.

Mirror-image flipping like the 3DS version would have made it a lot more fresh, but I doubt they could have easily done that with the DD + OOT. I guess they could have put a completely different version of OOT on the disc if they wanted to but my impression was always that they just wanted to mix it up a bit. The whole thing reminds me of Sonic & Knuckles "Lock-on Technology" for the Genesis.  
 

Hm...I just went to the auction to get a little background. That's a difficult situation since it's a game owned by Nintendo and the hack/edit/whatever made by the patch person was them doing something to Nintendo's game...thus can they really say that they "own" it? They don't own the original game...so they shouldn't be able to claim ownership on a hack/edit right?

I don't really understand copyright laws so maybe I'm totally off. :/

Still seems petty of them to go after your own website after getting your eBay and NA auctions shut down.

Unfortunate, but not surprising (unfortunately!)  

Sorry to hear about this. The CIB you made was excellent. I hope you get things worked out soon.

As others have noted, there is great irony in a thief who has no rights to something stolen attacking another person for doing something similar.

While they do still have rights for their own work, they don't really have the rights to do anything commercial with it. Strangely, this gives them the rights to shut down a commercial application of something they themselves can't even legally commercialize.

I can understand that they don't want Nintendo to think that they made the patch to profit commercially off of Nintendo's work, but the patch authors seem particularly motivated to go beyond simple discouragement and are actively policing it. It seems that they have a vendetta against repros and alternatively promote flash carts (the project thread seems to be on Krikzz Everdrives forum). I doubt they personally sell flash carts or benefit financially from it, but I don't know why they aren't as excited to see these boards as I am. I've been using backup units, RAM carts, and flash carts since the '90s (Professor SF7, Super Wildcard DX, V64, V64jr512, Multi Xchanger, MGD^3 with GB Xchanger, etc) and only recently got an Ultra Everdrive 64 but I don't feel that way toward a unique repro like this.

I'm guessing that one of them feels passionately for some other reason, like someone ripped him off somehow in a previous incident (not just using his work commercially). I feel for both sides but I wish it turned out differently.

If it wasn't a discussion they had when hacking the rom, I'd be surprised.

Well, the long and short of it is going to be that I won't be selling any more copies of the game, and will have to take a loss on this project. I can't have my website, which provides a lot of people with alternatives for using donor boards to make their games, kept offline for something so trivial as a personal grudge. These authors have made their point, and reluctantly I don't have much choice or the means to fight them on it.

It's funny, though, because this is the first repro I've sold in years. Once I switched to PCB design instead, I never looked back at repros. But with this project I thought I was honestly bringing something new, unique and exciting to the community. That, and it was the perfect game to showcase my new flashable N64 boards. Never figured it would bring this kind of negative attention...


I will be selling off the boxes, manuals and labels here on NA if there is anyone who wishes to perhaps add them to their collection. Hopefully I can at least recoup the costs on those.

Have the authors talked to you in PMs first before going on a "shut down everything this guy's doing" crusade? No warnings or anything?

Kinda felt like this could be all avoided without the shutting down of a guy's sites he sells from. :\

Ever thought about selling the boards, boxes, labels, manuals, etc while flashing an enduser-provided ROM? You'd be selling the board with the service of putting whatever the buyer provides on there, just like that website that lets you order preprogrammed chips.
 

Not a word. The only contact I've had with them in on the Auction thread where they posted. AFAIK they created an account here SOLELY for that. I don't believe they've posted here since.
 

Not really, and I don't think it's worth the hassle at this point. The boards that I didn't use now will be available for sale so that people can make their own games/repros, and if someone else wants to make a copy of this patch as a repro - all the power to them  

There is nothing illegal / copyright / hack / patched / authored anything about the boards I've designed, so I can't be shut down for those. What other people do with them is their business, like any flash cart.

Doing some digging, I found out who, but like you I won't name names. Dispite you asking permission or not, it would be better for them to take the high road and contact you first with a C&D before attacking your livelihood. Especially since that livelihood sells things that aren't illegal such as PCBs and what-have-you.

Yeah, you made a mistake selling something off of thier work, but if their work doesn't comprise off of making money, why would it be okay to mess with yours? At the very least, a warning saying it's not okay would suffice, followed up by the cancelation of your motives if you're not within compliance they've set up for you to respond to.

And anyone please feel free to tell me that I'm wrong about all this, I just feel like there should be a better way to compromise rather than resort to this harshness. 
 

This same argument is going on at the krikzz forums right now, ironically. The hack authors are acting ridiculously entitled about their releases for whatever reason right now on N64.

My understanding is that ROM hackers really have no claim of ownership because they are utilizing IP they don't own, without authorization from the IP owner, to produce the hack. While they "authored" or edited the code, the actual IP owners could seek damages against them and force them to relinquish any claims of ownership to the hack, because there is no actual ownership of it on the part of the hacker - only the illusion of ownership because the IP owners didn't write the hack.

So, it is ridiculous that they would seek to remove your distribution of a hack that they have no actual ownership of. They would be utilizing the same process Nintendo or another actual IP owner would use to remove the posts because technically it is a violation - but not of a copyright they own. The hackers are actually in violation of the same thing when they create the hacks. It's absolutely an asinine act on their part. 

It's like they are actively trying to engineer their own destruction.

Maybe you pissed someone else off. If you recall, I said I had no problem with them being sold blank or not with our patch.

Thanks for chiming in.

Perhaps if you'd bothered PM'ing me before starting this whole thing, we'd have been able to work things out on what was clearly an oversight on my part. Instead, you went right for the juggular, getting anything related to me selling that game here, eBay or even on my own website shut down.

Honestly, if that's how you handle dealing with people with regards to your patches, please leave the modding community. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying we'd rather not have someone so acidic in there.

Which... he didn't... so who shot the sheriff here? Yes, what Retrostage did was wrong, and I'm sure he admits to that.

IICR, one random white knighted hero, if they mistake a OoT Master Quest for an original OoT bootleg being sold on Ebay or not, isn't enough to shut them down. It takes either a slew of people from a community or a person who holds a copyright/IP/whatever that is also vocal in the matter. Then the site gets shut down in the same fashion. The only way for that to happen is also having the IP holding claming to be infringed to do so. 

So, if you're not the one who did so, fine. But having you be the most vocal about it, and the time this all went down, it's hard not to put two and two together. Squeeky wheel gets the most grease, they say.