Everything old is… scrubbed for new licenses?
March 15th, 2007Kotaku reports that the Wii VC re-release of Tecmo Bowl has had the real NFL player names “scrubbed” from the game since EA now owns the NFL license.
Is it just me, or is this kind of crazy and oddly revisionist? I suppose it makes some sense, but it’s kind of stupid at the same time. Should every game that ever came out before EA bought the NFL license be recalled and scrubbed for “infringing” content? None of the players from the game are playing any more anyway. Can’t we just let old games be old games?
Posted in Idiocy, Jeff, Virtual Console |
March 15th, 2007 at 10:25 am
If I’m not mistaken, re-releasing Tecmo Bowl to sell commercially is outside of the license that the NFL originally granted. As a result, Nintendo either has to re-purchase those rights (which would likely make the release unfeasibly expensive for the VC) or do what it did, which was remove the names.
What you end up with is sort of a “Wonder Years” situation… where the DVD has languished unreleased because re-licensing all the music used in it makes the release impossible. Thus, the result is of course ridiculous - but I at least think the idiocy is on the NFL’s part and not Nintendo’s.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:43 am
No no, I agree that the idiocy is on NFL’s part, and not Nintendo’s. I’m not saying that Nintendo had a choice about it and just decided to be stupid, just that I kind of wish this wasn’t the way the NFL license worked, or perhaps the way our copyright law worked. It just seems silly that something that came out so long ago would have to be changed for something as stupid as the player names… although I guess in some ways, that’s what sells the new Madden games every year.
March 15th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
EA has the rights until 2010, I believe. That seems almost like an antitrust issue. NFL games are an industry alone, and EA doesn’t have to worry about competition. I think the problem actually lies with EA. They are the ones that own the rights at the moment, and go after these competition limiting deals.