This can go to about any Unlicensed Game that is based off a property, especially if they didn't even get the rights to use the property in the first place. With this in mind, good luck seeing stuff like Somari, Sonic Jam 6, and Pesterminator: The Western Exterminator, among others.
Games that use licensed music are a nightmare for gamers that use YouTube to generate revenue for their Let's Play or other game related content. Any copyrighted song that's found in a video immediately gets demonetized and the money goes towards the company/person that owns the copyright. This can also happen if someone uses footage from a trailer. Notably, later iterations of Pinball FX have "Streamer Options" that cut out some of the copyrighted music so that streamers and Let's Players have a way to play the game without this issue. One major case of this is Ninjala, which from late October 2020 and onward has "Ninja Re Bang Bang" by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu and Steve Aoki as a song that could potentially play in any online match—and is picked up and identified by the video sites' copyright detection systems. This issue was compounded the following summer, when Ninjala had a collaboration with Crypton Media and several Hatsune Miku songs were added to the game, increasing the likelihood of a licensed song turning up and rendering the video un-monetizable.
Licensed music can also be somewhat of a problem for remakes or remasters as well - as the contract will have to be renegotiated. This is one of the reasons the Grand Theft Auto trilogy remakes had to swap the music out.
Nintendo is widely known for taking down websites that host ROM dumps of Nintendo's games since it's considered piracy (this is only exacerbated by Nintendo's infamously poor track record of making a good chunk of their back catalog available through legal means). Therefore, any website that lets anyone download Nintendo games will inevitably be taken down at some point. This resulted in the crossing over of both this and Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things practices:
A couple ran a ROM dump website that not only let people download Nintendo games, but they also sold modded NES and SNES Classics that had pirated ROMs on them. Nintendo sued the couple for damages, but both sides settled out of court on the agreement that the couple stop selling the modded consoles and to never distribute the games ever again.
Soulja Boy openly announced he was selling a video game console that had a ton of games on them. Said games were nothing but pirated copies of Nintendo games. While a few people did manage to purchase the console, Nintendo immediately took action and the console can no longer be found on Soulja's website. Nintendo also claimed the SouljaGame domain, which now redirects to Nintendo's DS website. With bootleg PlayStation Vitas with pirated copies of games now being sold by the same person, it's only a matter of time before we see history repeat itself.
In 2020, The Big House, a tournament for many Super Smash Bros. games, mainly Super Smash Bros. Melee, was forced to go online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tournament had used the physical versions of the games before in earlier years, but due to the circumstances, the tournament was planned to be run with the Dolphin emulator (with the specially-developed emulator mod Slippi). Nintendo was not happy about this, and shut down the stream, indirectly forcing the tournament's cancellation. Legal explanationDolphin and Slippi are 100% legal, but streaming game tournaments for profit is legally dubious. Nintendo could not legally get the tournament itself canceled, so shutting down the stream was the best they could do. This drew heavy criticism from the Melee community.
Nintendo canceled the livestream for the Splatoon 2 North American Open December 2020 finals because several teams entered the tournament with names which showed support for the Melee community via entire Twitter URL's.
On the smartphone game side, at first the games could be run on emulators like BlueStacks, but after some time an update was released that prevented that method. When confused fans questioned the emulator developers, they just threw their hands up and refused to figure out a workaround out of legal respect. Players would eventually figure out how to play them on BlueStacks using certain settings in around 2020s.
Nintendo sued the team behind Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu in early 2024. Instead of going to court, Yuzu's development team agreed to pay Nintendo 2.4 million dollars and cease development and distribution of everything related to emulation of Nintendo's products (which unfortunately meant Citra, a Nintendo 3DS emulator, was taken down as well, as the Yuzu team also developed Citra). While emulators by themselves are legally grey (most recommend users to use files they ripped from consoles/games they bought by themselves, but of course most people would rather go the "free" way), what actually gave Nintendo justification was that Yuzu had a Patreon, which practically meant they were actively profiting from piracy. On top of this, Yuzu's Patreon subscribers rose up drastically when The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was leaked two weeks before its official release. Its ROM was quickly made widely available and people were happy to share videos related to this emulation on YouTube, thus bringing Nintendo's attention easily. (Other reasons for the emulator's shutdown were that Yuzu's developers were privately sharing ROM files among themselves on their Discord server in order to maximise compatibility for a game on its day of release, and that they gave instructions on how to retrieve encryption keys from Switch units, although this reason wasn't particularly important.)
American Girl won't be seeing the light of day as THQ went bankrupt in 2013, thus shelving the rest of the American Girls Collection video games due to Mattel owning the trademark.
The Amiga CD32 was never released in the U.S. due to a patent dispute, which was the final nail in Commodore's coffin.
Atarinote The company that used to be called Infogrames. does not hold the rights to the post-1984 Atari arcade catalog from the Atari Games division of the original company, and as such, is unable to reissue any game from that division to other platforms. Instead, the rights to that catalog are owned by Warner Bros., whose parent company retained control of the arcade division of Atari, Inc. following its breakup from the console division, which later became known as Atari Corporation. Thus, unlike the pre-1984 arcade catalog and entire console archive retained by (the current) Atari, the Atari Games catalog is rarely reissued to other platforms, likely due to Warner's historical apathy on Atari. Making matters worse is that the games are reissued under the Midway Games bannernote Midway acquired Atari Games from Warner in 1996, but when Midway filed for bankruptcy in 2009, Warner reacquired the catalog along with a majority of Midway's assets, instead of Atari Games, due to Warner not wanting to pay for trademark fees to use the "Atari" name.
Atari sued to block the PC, PlayStation 4 and Android versions of TxK, claiming that the game infringes on Tempest. Jeff Minter, the creator of the game, also created Tempest 2000. The decision has not been particularly well-received in the video game community. Atari is also trying to get the game removed from the PlayStation Store and make Mintner sign an agreement that he won't make a Tempest-inspired game again.
Atari did the same with Haunted House Tycoon, in which they claim that it infringes their game. They certainly were not the first company to make a "Haunted House" style gamenote Magnavox Odyssey was the first, and Atari's remake Haunted House: Cryptic Graves fared poorly.
The beloved AtariStar Wars arcade games (not counting ports) were only reissued once on the GameCube game Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike as unlockable extras, and they only got there thanks to LucasArts securing the rights from the games' owner, Midway Games. Since then, LucasArts parent Lucasfilm has been bought by Disney, while Midway's game library (including the Atari Star Wars series) is now owned by Warner Bros., so fans who are eager to get their hands on the original arcade games will have track down either the original cabinets or find a copy of Rogue Squadron III since Disney and WB will have cold feet in regards to legally reissuing the games again.
Barbie won't get her own Virtual Console releases due to a legal settlement between Mattel and Ubisoft.
On December 31, 2010, EA stopped production of The Battle for Middle-earthCDs and shut down the official online servers because their Lord of the Rings video game license expired. This has made the games go up to ridiculous prices online and forced fans to Keep Circulating the Tapes in order to make any sort of headway into preserving the games. It also ensures that EA cannot offer the games on their Origin Digital Distribution service either.
When Chakan: The Forever Man, based on a comic book by Robert A. Kraus, was re-released on Wii, Kraus sued Sega for not consulting him about the release.
Saban Brands had a hissy fit over Chroma Squad due to its heavy Power Rangers leaning (though it's probably safe to say it was more leaning towards Super Sentai instead). In the end, the game was released with a small tagline proclaiming it's "Based On Saban's Power Rangers".
The mission "Hollywood and Vain" in the Yuri's Revenge expansion pack for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 featured parodies of iconic Hollywood action heroes, namely "Arnnie Frankenfurter", "Sammy Stallion" and "Flint Westwood", as controllable infantry units complete with (campy) voice impressions of the respective actors. While EA and/or Westwood could have easily cited Fair Use per Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. which set precedent for commercial parodies of existing works or people, they instead played it safe and disabled the actors' voices in patch 1.001, replacing them instead with a generic GI voice set. Patching the game to restore the excised voices is trivial though.
Despite CyberConnect2 wanting to build upon the lore of Little Tail Bronx and expand on what they have with Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter (namely giving them, especially the latter, full on remakes and remasters for modern consoles), their hands are ultimately tied as Bandai Namco Entertainment has the final say with what to do with those games due to them still owning distribution rights. Even their self-published Fuga: Melodies of Steel isn't completely immune to this, as the aforementioned partial ownership by Bandai Namco prevents CyberConnect2 from making any direct references to the characters of those games, whether it be through alternate costumes or naming, leading to a lot of workarounds on the developers' part.
The Deer Avenger series is also out of print because its rights are tangled. Simon & Schuster (the book publisher) shut its video game division down in 2003. Activision owns the distribution rights through Vivendi's acquisition of Cendant Software (Davidson & Associates). Hypnotix (the game's developer) was sold to Electronic Arts in 2005.
This is also why Discworld hasn't seen a proper GOG release yet. While the Terry Pratchett estate owns the rights to the series' characters, the actual games are stuck in licensing hell due to the collapse of developer Psygnosis and the rights never being firmly carried over to another company.
Disney has a bad habit with the above problem. To name a few:
None of Capcom's NES Disney games (including Mickey Mousecapadenote Which was licensed from Hudson Soft and both DuckTales games) have been released on the Virtual Console service for Wii or Wii U.note Disney owns the characters, while Capcom owns the source code for the games. Additionally, while a "remastered" version of the first DuckTales game has been released, Capcom have stated the deal was just for this game only, and not the original version. In mid 2019, the license for Duck Tales ran out and Capcom delisted the game on Steam. Though it was eventually brought back after the license was renewed.
As of 2017, the five Capcom NES games received a Compilation Re-release in the form of The Disney Afternoon Collection.
Sega's Illusion series starring Mickey Mouse has only seen one reissue: the Genesis Castle of Illusion, which was released only for PlayStation 3 users who pre-ordered the 2013 remake before its release. As for the Master System/Game Gear Castle of Illusions and the other installments, they haven't been reissued at all. And that 2013 remake? No longer available to purchase since September 2016 because Sega lost Disney's license; wouldn't be so hard to acquire a copy if not for the little sticking point that it is a digital-only release. That said, it was quietly returned to all platforms a year later.
Another Sega/Disney venture, Quackshot: Starring Donald Duck, hasn't been reissued at all, both Genesis and Saturn versions, on any other platform despite otherwise positive reception. The Genesis version received at least one reissue, being bundled with Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse in 1996 for a collection titled The Disney Collection for Genesis, but that was it. The Saturn version was released exclusively in Japan and was never reissued.
Sony Imagesoft's Mickey Mania, for Sega Genesis, Sega CD and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. While Disney is undoubtedly a factor in the latter three versions' inability to get re-released, the mere presence of a PlayStation port is the major obstacle keeping them from ever getting on the Virtual Console service. That later PlayStation port, titled Mickey's Wild Adventure, got released to the Play Station Network... for Europe and Australia in 2012. Worse still, both Sony and developer Traveller's Tales (which is now owned by Disney rival Warner Bros.) stated that the deal was for that port only, and not the others.
Thanks to the acrimonious relationship between Disney and Nintendo, the Mickey Mouse games for the Game & Watch were exiled from the Game and Watch Gallery series of ports of Game & Watch games for Game Boy, and it's unlikely they will resurface anytime soon because of Disney's refusal to license the characters to Nintendo.
Disney got caught on the receiving end of this trope, however, with the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs over Disney's adaptation of Tarzan, not allowing Disney to make any subsequent references to the movie. The result is that Kingdom Hearts is the only Kingdom Hearts game to have a world themed on that movie. This can be seen with Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, which brought back every world in the first game—except for Deep Jungle, Tarzan's world. note However, code in the original GBA game has the Jungle Keyblade card, showing that the world was planned. Likewise, Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory has no Deep Jungle music on offer.
Because Fuji Television holds the rights to the cast of Doki Doki Panic, the game could not be rereleased in its original form. This led to the most famous Dolled-Up Installment in gaming history: the characters were replaced with Mario characters and the game became Super Mario Bros. 2.
Ironically, Nintendo itself was found guilty of violating the copyright for the original arcade version of Donkey Kong, and therefore cannot sell the original game for its consoles — only ports and re-creations. To briefly summarize, Nintendo contracted a company named Ikegami Tsushinki to program the arcade game, but the contract did not grant Nintendo ownership rights to the resulting code, which remained with Ikegami. When Donkey Kong became a hit and Nintendo tried to make more boards themselves, Ikegami successfully sued them for copyright infringement. A detailed article is available here. The arcade version was finally released for the Nintendo Switch as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives series in 2018.
On the subject of Donkey Kong, it's widely speculated (though never outright confirmed) that this is the reason it took so long for Donkey Kong 64 to see a Virtual Console release, as it featured the arcade Donkey Kong and Rareware's Jetpac as Embedded Precursors. The rights to the Donkey Kong characters are owned by Nintendo, but Jetpac is owned by Microsoft, and as mentioned above the arcade Donkey Kong is owned by Ikegami Tsushinki. Simply dummying these games out wasn't an option either, as they must be played through to complete the game. The game was finally released for the Wii U Virtual Console in April 2015, retaining everything from the original release.
Dragon Quest initially had to go by the name Dragon Warrior in English due to fears of litigation from the owners of the DragonQuest tabletop game. By the PlayStation 2 era, they had worked things out and the franchise now goes by its original title internationally.
Wonder why Dune II has yet to see a re-release on GOG? The Dune license is not only in licensing hell at the moment, but it is partly owned by the Frank Herbert estate. They were, in fact, approached by GOG for said rerelease, only to give them a firm "No!" So, to this day, your best bet for ever playing the grandfather of all RTS games (or, for that matter, its semi-remake and semi-sequel) is to keep circulating those floppies and compact discs.
The infamous Fallout legal dispute involving Interplay Entertainment and Bethesda led to Interplay's Fallout games being pulled from all online stores on January 1st, 2014, notably Steam and Good Old Games. Bethesda, who now owns the Fallout franchise and all installments as part of the legal settlement with Interplay, stated they hoped to bring the titles back to the stores, and did so in the case of Steam later that year. They later returned to GOG.com in August 2015.
Similar licensing issues are also why Forza Horizon 4 initially shipped without any cars from Mitsubishi, which eventually came into the game through DLC for free.
The developers of Friday the 13th: The Game had to scuttle all plans for future updates and DLC effective June 2018, as a side effect of the then-ongoing legal battle between Victor Miller and the Manny Company over the rights to the entire Friday the 13th franchise. This included updates that they were already working on at the time and showing in previews, most notably a Jason X-themed update featuring that film's Uber-Jason as a playable character and a new map in the Grendel spaceship. Given that Friday the 13th: The Game was a multiplayer-focused title, being unable to release any updates for an extended period of time (however long the lawsuit takes) was effectively a kiss of death, with Gun Media announcing shortly after that they would stop all work on the game. (As a side note, the dispute between Miller and the Manny Company is also the reason why a new Friday the 13th movie has been stuck in Development Hell.)
Facepunch had been working on taking down all Nintendo-related add-ons for Garry's Mod from the Steam Workshop since the end of April 2024 due to a takedown notice from Nintendo. This has been going on since February that same year, with several add-on creators receiving DMCA, but it was only during the end of April 2024 that a proper announcement was made.
Rare has had a number of these over its history, due to a combo of having worked closely with Nintendo before Microsoft bought them out, and working on various licensed properties:
GoldenEye (1997) has never seen a rerelease due to complex licensing issues, despite its critical and commercial success. A rerelease of the game would naturally require the support of Eon Productions, the owners of the Bond film series, as well as potentially Nintendonote the original publisher and holder of the Bond license at the time of the game's release and Microsoftnote owners of Rare, the original developer. Any other company having exclusive rights to produce James Bond video games could also pose a problem; prior to 2013, Activision exclusively owned the James Bond game license, though they dropped it after how badly 2012's 007 Legends bombed and nobody else dared pick them up for 8 years. In 2020, Eon announced a new deal with IO Interactive to produce 007 games, though it's not known if this deal is exclusive or not (Unless you research or asked the owners if it is or not). There's also probably issues with the image rights of the various actors whose likenesses appear in the game, an issue which had already killed the "All Bonds" mode planned for the game. Fans looking to play the game in its original form are just going to have to keep circulating those cartridges. It wasn't until January 2023 where Goldeneye was finally released on the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Game Pass.
This is also one of the factors kept the game from appearing in Rare Replay, a compilation of Rare's most popular console games ported to the Xbox One; Word of Godsays the other factor being that even if GoldenEye wasn't tangled up in legal limbo, it being a Licensed Game in the first place made it a low priority for the compilation, Rare choosing to showcase the fictional universes that they have created completely on their own as a priority (hence the game's Spiritual SuccessorPerfect Dark getting in over it).
Speaking of Rare Replay, the Wizards & Warriors series, one of Rare's NES-era original properties, is nowhere to be seen in it, due to being published by Acclaim, whose library of games were scattered to the four winds as a result of selling their assets upon their bankruptcy in 2005.
Mickey's Speedway USA is in a similar position, with Disney's hold on the rights preventing it from being included in Rare Replay or being rereleased separately.
The Steam version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was untouched for years until a sudden update in 2014 was released out of the blue. The patch did nothing but remove several songs from the game whose licenses expired and since Rockstar didn't want to spend money to renew the licenses (which were likely more expensive now than they were years ago), the songs got cut to prevent a lawsuit. Fans of the game were extremely upset that their favorite songs were cut out and also point out that the Steam version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City went through a similar process, but Rockstar had simply stopped selling the original version of the game and added a new version without the copyrighted songs so that owners of the original version could still download and play the version they purchased. Grand Theft Auto IV had also gone through a similar change where the digital versions were replaced with updated versions that had songs under the expired licenses removed.
Around February 2021, modders in the GTA Forums community went on to develop a reversed-engineered port of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City that would allow these games to run natively on modern versions of Windows and other platforms with integrated fan-made mods such as SilentPatch and SkyGfx among other improvements, but the ports still needed data from the official releases to run. Less than a week later after the reversed-engineered ports were released on Github, Take-Two Interactive filed a DMCA strike against the project, removing the port's repository and forks thereof, which many fans were not happy with and some even tried to keep the project alive through file-sharing sites. Thankfully, after a long battle between the ports' developers and Take-Two, the reversed-engineered ports of III and Vice City as well as the planned Liberty City Stories port have been reinstated on Github as of late June 2021.
Apparently, that wasn't enough, as Take-Two Interactive struck again in mid-July of 2021, this time, going on major total conversion mods for the games, filing DMCA takedowns for mods such as GTA: Underground (a San Andreas mod which combined maps from all three games, as well as other games like Bully and Manhunt), and Vice Cry (a Vice City mod which enhanced textures). One GTA modder, Silent, the person behind the SilentPatch mods, announced that he's no longer interested in making mods for GTA games anymore in light of the DMCA takedowns due to feeling threatened for improving things.
Licensing fees are the reason why the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, despite its storied place in the world of motorsport, took until October 2019 to show up in GT Sport, even though it had appeared in GT5 and GT6. Short version: the licensing fees for the circuit are anywhere from two to three times higher than those for other racing circuits, and Sony thought that not only was the money better spent on acquiring the rights to multiple other tracks, but that paying the licensing fees for Spa-Francorchamps would set a precedent and cause the owners of other tracks to start raising their fees in response. Reportedly, Polyphony Digital had already fully modeled Spa-Francorchamps for use in the game months before they added it in full, and was simply waiting for the licensing agreement to give them the green light. The track was even previewed at the FIA Gran Turismo Championships World Tour 2019 in New York.
A similar issue is also why GT Sport does not feature cars by Lotus. Several Lotus cars had already been modeled for the game, only for the company to discover that, thanks to a rolling contract and the delay in GT Sport's release, they were receiving less money than other automakers, causing them to pull out of the game. The fictional F1500T-A that came in a game update appears to be a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of the Lotus 97T, which appeared in GT6.
GTPlanet has speculated on whether Sony and Polyphony Digital of Gran Turismo might have an exclusivity agreement with Toyota given the automaker's very robust representation in GT Sport versus its lack of representation in other contemporary racing games, complete with comparisons to the EA/Porsche agreement (including but not limited to premiering the new GR Supra in video games, even attending an one-off e-sports series for said car). This might be the reason why many recent racing games starting in 2017 doesn't include any cars from Toyota and Lexus, such as Forza Motorsport 7, Forza Horizon 4 (save for cars modified by Arctic Trucks and racing cars that are made in North America, like the T100 Baja Truck), and Need for Speed Payback.
Apparently, it doesn't affect any Asian publishers and/or developers. Recent arcade game cabinets such as Initial D Arcade Stage Zero and Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6 still have cars from Toyota. Even a mobile game developed and published in China named Miracing includes two Toyota cars. Project CARS 2 seems to benefit from a loophole (while the Toyota GT86 is their only road car that appeared in the game, it includes plenty of their racing cars that doesn't appeared in FM7, like the GT-One and TS040), since while the developer (Slightly Mad Studios) is from UK, the publisher is Bandai Namco Entertainment, a Japanese company. Project CARS 3 not only brought back the GT86, but it also included the GR Supra in its day-one car list, while the previous generation of Supra is featured as part of a DLC pack themed around legendary Japanese sports cars of the '90s.
Toyota UK does confirm that currently they don't give their license to any games besides GT Sport on their Twitter account. However, Sony hasn't been confirmed about this situation. Toyota UK has also claimed, in a now-deleted tweet from 2019, that their cars weren't in recent Need for Speed games specifically because that series promoted illegal street racing, though this doesn't explain the Initial D and Wangan Midnight games. (The official Need for Speed Twitter account replied with "pfft nerds".)
The presence of Sherlock Holmes is what led to the late localization of The Great Ace Attorney. Though Holmes was public domain in Japan, parts of his lore and character were at the time still owned by the notoriously litigous Arthur Conan Doyle estate in other countries. Capcom circumvented this by pulling a page from Maurice Leblanc and changing his name to "Herlock Sholmes". Similarly, the name Watson had to be changed to Wilson. This also culminated in adding an extra number for the final puzzle in the last chapter of Resolvenote namely, that the "5" had to be added next to the "4", turning the trunk's six-digit combination number in the original game into a seven-digit one for the localization.
The reason why it took forever for a new Guilty Gear game to come out since Overture was because Sega owned much of the franchise since 2004, as well as a legal dispute between Arc System Works (the production studio) and Sega (who owns Sammy Entertainment's video game catalogue), until Arc System Works regained the entirety of the franchise in 2011. This was why only Sol and Ky appeared in Overture (with Dizzy only mentioned in passing), because all the other characters were owned by Sega during that time, and Arc System Works wanted nothing to do with Sega due to their treatment of the franchise. (As a side note, the dispute between Arc System Works and Sega was also why the former retooled BlazBlue from what would have been a JRPG into a fighting game to act as a Spiritual Successor to Guilty Gear)
Harvest Moon is a bit of a Cult Classic, but it's popular enough to receive shelf space in most major retailers. The original Japanese version of the game, known as Bokujou Monogatari (Ranch Story), is created by Marvelous and was localized by Natsume for many years. Marvelous eventually partnered with XSEED Games for their translation, to which Natsume basically said, "Fine, but you can't have the name, and we're gonna make our own game with the name!" This is how we now have Dueling Games: Story of Seasons, the continuation of Bokujou Monogatari under a new name, and Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, the continuation of the Harvest Moon name without the original designers. Naturally, when retailers like Walmart and Best Buy decided which games to stock, they went by name alone, stocking the "new and unproven" game because the brand was successful and passing over the "tried and true" series because it had an unfamiliar title.
When the Henry Stickmin Series was rereleased as The Henry Stickmin Collection on Steam, a lot of the sound effects and music used in the Newgrounds entries outside of the brand new Completing the Mission game were removed and replaced. For instance, one event in Escaping the Prison used the theme song to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly that was replaced with a more generic showdown music while one event in Infiltrating the Airship involved a Robot Buddy resembling Tails remove its various game-based sound effects during its use.
The Wii ports of the Humongous Entertainment games are noteworthy — Atari contracted Majesco to port some of the games, who then outsourced it to Mystic Software, who had the SCUMM SDK and every tool they needed to port the games without much hassle. So what did they choose to do? Completely ignore it, and just slap a ScummVM build onto it, which is a GPL-licensed virtual machine that happens to be capable of playing Humongous games. Long story short, they failed to comply to the GPL, and the games had to be pulled. Admittedly though, a lot more people were mad at Mystic in this case than the lawyers.
In the Groove stopped development after a lawsuit from DanceDanceRevolution publisher Konami was settled out of court. Similar lawsuits on Guitar Hero (at this point owned by Activision) and Rock Band were less successful. Fortunately, ITG later got a Spiritual Successor, StepManiaX, the team of which does pay royalties to Konami and which is similar to ITG but with a few key differences such the addition of a center panel.
Retro FPSIon Maiden had to be renamed to Ion Fury, due to a lawsuit by Iron Maiden. Yeah, those Iron Maiden. It should be noted that some of the claims made by Iron Maiden's lawyers put the suit into frivolous territory, such as claiming the main character of the game is a gender-swapped version of Steve Harris (the game is a Bombshell prequel, so it has the same protagonist), that the skull bomb logo resembles the Eddie mascot, and that the gameplay of Ion Maiden is a copy of that of Iron Maiden's Legacy of the Beast (a mobile RPG).
This is also the case for the Jump Super Stars games, where various Shonen Jump properties are owned by different companies. Sometimes, a different company can hold the manga rights, anime rights, and the merchandising rights, as is the case with Dragon Ball.
J-Stars Victory VS however was able to receive a western release eventually despite the difficulty in obtaining all the rights, though Namco already having the rights to make games out of at least fourof theincludedfranchises might have helped.
Kaiju Combat has the official name of "Colossal Kaiju Combat" due to copyright concerns from Kaijudo.
The King of Fighters 2001 featured a new character named K9999, an unusually blatant (even by fighting game standards) Captain Ersatz of Tetsuo Shima from AKIRA. Fearing legal threats over plagiarism, SNK did everything they could to erase him from company history, including retconning the storyline of the NESTS Chronicles Saga, outright replacing him with the newly-designed Nameless in The King of Fighters 2002: Unlimited Match, and, as a 2019 report indicated, making it company policy that even so much as talking about him was forbidden. Once they finally decided to bring him back properly in The King of Fighters XV, he was redesigned and renamed to "Krohnen" to distance him from Tetsuo.
A minor example with the Knights of the Old Republic series. The series was initially intended to be a direct sequel to the Tales of the Jedi comics revolving around the Sunrider Jedi family. However, they were unable to prominently feature the Sunriders due to copyright issues with their surname, resulting in them being Demoted to Extra. They were never entirely Adapted Out, leaving a minor Continuity Snarl in place that was supposed to be resolved by the novel Mandorla which was unfortunately never published. Nomi Sunrider was able to receive a brief cameo in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but under her maiden name Da-Boda.
This trope is likely the reason why the NES versions of Kung Fu Master (called simply "Kung Fu" in North America) and 10-Yard Fight won't ever see re-releases, unless Irem (the original creators) and Nintendo (who made the NES versions) can work out some kind of deal. Of course, this doesn't stop Irem from re-releasing the original arcade versions since they made and released the games themselves.
This is essentially why there hasn't been a Madou Monogatari game using the original cast of characters since 2000. SEGA currently own the rights to Madou's More Popular Spin-OffPuyo Puyo, as well as the rights to the characters from it, since many of said characters are also in Puyo games. However, D4 Enterprise own the rights to Madou Monogatari itself, and... basically nothing in said series, leaving them unable to make any new Madou games that have anything to do with the series as it was pre-rights issues beyond the title and genre.
Take-Two, the new owner of Visual Concepts, took revenge on EA when it bought the exclusive rights to use the Major League Baseball license in multiplatform games, forcing EA to cancel its MVP Baseball series after its well-received 2005 installment. This left the Major League Baseball 2K games as the only game in town for those who didn't own a PlayStation 3 and thus couldn't play Sony's MLB: The Show (which, as a then-console exclusive, wasn't covered by the deal) — and after MLB 2K, much like Madden, succumbed to sequelitis and eventually saw MLB 2K13kill the series, owning a Sony console was the only option for people who wanted a pure simulation baseball game until The Show went multi-platform in 2021. (The relaunched RBI Baseball, published by MLB themselves, is more of an arcade-sim hybrid.)
In December 2013, Marvel, after having their licensing contracts with Activision expire, made Activision stop all digital and physical distribution of the Deadpool video game (only six months after release, even!) and all of their X-Men and non-movie Spider-Man gamesnote Including X-Men Destiny, which was already barred from distribution by Epic Games in 2012 as noted above. and Capcom the same for the Marvel vs. Capcom series and its DLC, notably including Marvel vs. Capcom 3 DLC playable characters Jill Valentine (who's not a Marvel character) and Shuma-Gorath; since Capcom did not have the foresight to release those two on disc, their playable status in Tournament Play in now in jeopardy due to the Fighting Game Community's MO on non-universally available characters such as console exclusives and delisted DLC being to simply ban them in the name of match-up knowledge fairness.
As of December 2016, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Deadpool, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance were rereleased for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam including the DLC.
Ms. Pac-Man, despite being made as an unofficial adaptation of the original Pac-Man arcade game, was allowed to be released with the approval of Namco. However, the character of Ms. Pac-Man isn't actually owned by Namco: the rights to the character belonged to the General Computer Corporation Group, and for Namco to use the character of Ms. Pac-Man in commercial usage they would have to pay royalties to GCC. In 2019, those rights were then transferred to AtGames, who you may know for making garbage plug-and-play consoles. So rather than Namco trying to work with AtGames for the usage of Ms. Pac-Man, they are now pretending that Ms. Pac-Man never even existed, with not only replacing the character with a similar looking character called "Pac-Mom", but also scrubbing the character of Ms. Pac-Man from the games where she has appeared in, culminating in Pac-Man World Re-Pac completely removing Ms. Pac-Man from its story and replacing her with Pac-Mom. Because of this, don't expect Namco to rerelease Ms. Pac-Man: Maze Madness any time soon.note In case you are wondering, the final official appearance of Ms. Pac-Man was in Sonic Dash of all games.
The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic mobile game, My Little Pony Puzzle Party, was praised by bronies for having superior gameplay/quality compared to the other game, My Little Pony: Magic Princess, but then it was quickly discovered that it was a clone of another game, Toy Blast. Two weeks after the game hit global, Peak Studios sued Hasbro for the game, stating that it was a clone of their own game. A few months later, the case was settled and the game ended up getting removed from the Play/App stores. What made this even more surprising is that it was a free-to-play mobile game, which cases like this are extremely rare considering how many of these games are out there.
It's speculated that NBA Jam Extreme omitted Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O'Neal because those players had contracts with competing game studios. Contractual obligations from the three acting in movies that year (Kazaam for O'Neal and Space Jam for Jordan and Barkley) might have also played a role.
That was at least true for Jordan; he later appeared in the Space Jam tie-in game by Extreme publisher Acclaim.
Competitor Midway Games failed to dodge the same bullet Acclaim was hit with in their answer to Extreme, NBA Hangtime. In addition to the players omitted from Extreme, Muggsy Bogues got written off of Hangtime's roster due to his contractual obligations appearing in Space Jamnote Odd, considering that he appeared inNBA Jam Extreme. However, three other players that appeared in the film (Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson and Shawn Bradley) were exempted from those obligations, and were allowed to appear in both Hangtime and Extreme.
EA's NCAA Football is in indefinite limbo as of 2013; the NCAA strictly forbids athletes from receiving any financial compensation for their participation in college sports, including endorsements and licensing. This meant that all the players in the games could not be referred to by name (but stats, age, and team was okay). In response to legal disputes from former players over demands for royalties for their apparent portrayal, the NCAA ended its licensing agreement with EA. This only meant that they couldn't brand it as an NCAA game (in fact, the first two were called Bill Walsh College Football instead), as EA still had license agreements for team names and other elements from unrelated parties (such as individual conferences and the Collegiate Licensing Company, while ESPN had tie-ins for integration of its talent and television presentation in the games). However, the conferences followed suit and pulled their license as well, essentially shutting down the series. In 2021, EA announced that a new game is finally in development, tentatively titled EA Sports College Football. They have secured the rights to use most of the NCAA FBS schools (albeit without the license to the NCAA itself), but will not include real players or their likenesses on the roster at this point, instead using computer generated players similar to the in-game recruiting classes. However, they are open to changing this if the NCAA rules are changed in the next year.
Neverwinter Nights 2 managed to avoid the total Screwed by the Network suffered by Obsidian's previous game Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords. It got two full expansions and a premium module, but it was still fairly buggy when Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast sued Atari over license agreement violations. Continuing game updates after that was probably a low priority. It also resulted in the Steam version being pulled, though it has since been rereleased on GOG.com.
A more malicious example of this trope involves the sad fate of the NFL 2K series. To put it bluntly, not only was Visual Concepts' ESPN NFL 2K5 acclaimed by many critics as a better American Football game than EA Sports' competing Madden NFL 2005 (to this day, it's still recognized as one of the best ever made in the genre), but Sega released the title three weeks before Madden and sold it for only $19.99 as opposed to the $49.99 that was customary for AAA video games (including Madden) during the Sixth Generation.note And this was the point of contention right here, the NFL was pissed that one of their licensed products was being sold at a discount rate, believing anything with the leagues's name should be sold as a "premium product". The NFL decided there would only be one game from then on and EA won the bidding war. EA's response to the stiffening competition was to sign a deal in January 2005 with the National Football League that granted them the exclusive rights to use the NFL license until 2010 (a deal that would be renewed three times in 2010, 2015, and 2020), making Madden the only game in town for football fans unless they were into college football or were willing to play games with fictional teams and leagues (such as Blitz: The League, Backbreaker, and Visual Concepts' own All-Pro Football 2K8, intended as a Spiritual Successor). Sega and Visual Concepts were forced to halt all development on new NFL 2K games, as were Sony and 989 Sports with the NFL GameDay series, Microsoft Studios with NFL Fever, and Midway Games with NFL Blitz, and Sega sold Visual Concepts to Take-Two Interactive later that year. Football fans were not pleased, especially since the deal is often blamed for the growing sequelitis that Madden succumbed to in later years, with all its competition having been killed.
Enjoy the classic NFL Blitz series from Midway Games over the Blitz games developed by Electronic Arts? Want to play those games on modern platforms? Well, too bad, because when EA bought the Blitz franchise from Midway, it didn't include any of the previously released games (including the non-NFL branded Blitz: The League series) which were sold to Warner Bros. along with the rest of the Midway library. This means that three different parties all have an interest in the Blitz franchise (EA, WB and the NFL), so there won't be any reissues of Midway's Blitz games anytime soon. Fans will just have to keep those cartridges and discs circulating.
The wonderful No One Lives Forever is not going to get any kind of rerelease in the foreseeable future, because nobody seems to know who holds the rights to it. The game was originally published by Fox Interactive, which was bought by Vivendi Universal Games. The 2002 sequel was published by Vivendi's Sierra; Vivendi sold its video game division to Activision in 2008. Activision's lawyers stated that the company does not currently possess the rights to the game. The developer Monolith Productions isn't any wiser on the subject either.
In 2014, Nightdive Studios attempted to sort out the rights mess and get the game re-released. They contacted Activision, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (which acquired Monolith in 2004). None of whom was sure about the rights, and they didn't think it was worth looking through their archives. The three companies would threaten to sue Nightdive if they did anything with No One Lives Forever.
Noseka: The Gold Project, initially called Noreya: The Gold Project is an early access Metroidvania made in Godot by Dreamirl. Despite overall positive responce from its playerbase, the game was taken down a few months after release due to trademark issues with the name Noreyanote In case you're wondering, NOREYA Nexus is the name of a home software company. In January 2024, the game was brought back, under the new name.
The Survival Horror game ObsCure was a Genre Throwback to '90s teen horror movies, and originally had Sum 41's "Still Waiting" and Span's "Baby's Come Back" in its soundtrack as a nod to those films' "hip" soundtracks. The 2014 rerelease on Steam, however, had to swap them out for similar-sounding generic Pop Punk tracks, likely because the rights had expired.
osu!, a clone of Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (and its overseas spinoff, Elite Beat Agents), allows players to create levels for songs of their choosing and upload them for use by the general public. Naturally, most songs are not properly licensed for use in the game, which has led to copyright holders, usually music labels, sending out DMCA strikes to take down content from the game, partly because osu! can be used as a means to listen to music without having to actually pay for it in some way (such as buying the songs or listening to them on paid or ad-backed streaming services). The developers are aware that the vast majority of songs lack the copyright blessing to be used in the game; in order to allow players to legally make levels for the game, they work with artists to operate a Featured Artists program, consisting of songs that players can make levels for without legal repercussions.
Parasite Eve, despite being very influential and selling 3 million copies in Japan and North America, has been somewhat difficult to rerelease or remaster thanks to the Product Placement and the fact it's actually a licensed game. The 3rd Birthday did not have the "Parasite Eve" name on it because Square-Enix did not have the license.
If you think Popeye had it bad, the video game adaptation of Phantom 2040 didn't fare any better. Because King Features owns The Phantom character, don't expect to see either Sunsoft's SNES port or Illusions Gaming's Sega Genesis port on the Virtual Console anytime soon.
Starting with the Generation III games, references to gambling started to be phased out of the series with the English versions of Pokémon: FireRed and LeafGreen renaming the Gambler trainer class to Gamer and then to PI in the English versions of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. It was then followed up with removing the slot machines from the European releases of Pokémon Platinum and after that the card flip and slot machines were replaced with Voltorb Flip in all non-Japanese releases of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver. These were all made in response to PEGI (Pan European Game Information) tightening their regulations on gambling in video games. All of this came to its logical conclusion in Generation V with Unova being the first region in the main Pokémon series to lack any sort of Game Corner in any version of the games set in that region.
Pokémon X and Y were released early in Italy and Canada, which resulted in leaks that caused Nintendo to crack down hard on the leakers and the stores that broke street date on the games.
Love Nintendo's Popeye? Want to see it on the Virtual Console? Arcade or NES? Too bad, because King Features Syndicate/Hearst refuses to allow it. To sum it up, King Features is really, really touchy on its products when it comes to licensing, a behavior that is dated back to its establishment, and usually it's a miracle when a deal is somehow reached to have a particular licensed King Features property reissuednote This is especially the case with the Popeye cartoon shorts, which took up to 2007 to receive an official home media release. Namco received a license from King Features and Nintendo to develop a mobile phone (not a smartphone) version of the game, but so far, that's it.
For years, Electronic Arts had a deal with the automaker Porsche giving them exclusive rights to feature their cars in their games. If you were a fan of a racing game not made by EA and wanted to drive a Porsche, you had to either settle for cars built by Ruf (a German automaker that uses Porsche chassis as the bases of its own cars, which are visually almost identical but seen as legally distinct), or wait for expensive DLC. The deal finally expired in 2016, largely because Porsche didn't want to renew it, seeing it as having hurt their brand awareness, in middle of Volkswagen Group's diesel emissions scandal that impacted themnote Porsche is now officially part of Volkswagen Group since 2012, so the Dieselgate scandals hit them so hard.
The Game Boy game Q-Billion is unlikely to get a rerelease anytime soon. Aruze had owned the Q-Billion copyright after it acquired Q-Billion developer Seta. After Seta shut down operations, Aruze neglected to renew the copyright, and thus, Aruze no longer legally owns the game and they're not sure who does.
The Quest for Glory series was originally named Hero's Quest, but Sierra On-Line had to change the name to avoid potential trademark issues with the makers of the tabletop game Hero Quest. The initial (EGA) release of the game did have that name, though.
The Revenge of Shinobi has seen five revisions due to copyright concerns (as Japan at the time had somewhat lax copyright laws). Like Yuri's Revenge above, Shinobi had cameos from a number of pop culture icons, namely Rambo, the Terminator, Spider-Man and Godzilla, as well as that of actor Sonny Chiba. Spider-Man was made official in REV02 when Sega obtained the video game rights to the superhero franchise, though Spidey had to be recoloured to a pink spandex in the Virtual Console release.
In a variant, the original soundtrack for River City Ransom: Underground was replaced with new music in late 2017 after co-composer Alex Mauer had the game taken down from Steam twice over a copyright dispute. The original music by Mauer, Cheap Dinosaurs and Disasterpeace can be found on the album Ram Son.
Atlus sued the group behind ReIMAGINE, the private, fan server for the defunct Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE over copyright infringement, resulting in the server taken down. The root cause is unknown, but allegedly this is because of the group charging Microtransactions, thus making money from it (despite being advertised as forever free-to-play).
In light of the then-upcoming release of the Japan-exclusiveShining Ark, Sega has launched something of a crusade against anyone who has uploaded videos of older Shining Series games to YouTube and/or Nico Nico Douga, hitting many uploaders' accounts on both sides of the pond (including popular commentator TotalBiscuit) with DMCA notices and causing a number of uploaders to either pull their videos immediately or even see their accounts being shut down as a result. TotalBiscuit refused to discuss Sega games until 2017 because of this incident.
In the first few releases of SimCity, the "Monster" disaster summoned Godzilla to attack your city, complete with his iconic roar. Toho, of course, objected, so later versions of the game feature a quadrupedal orange kaiju with a different cry.
When Sonic the Hedgehog CD was released for iOS, Android, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, it came with both Japanese/European and American music. However, the Japanese themes, You Can Do Anything and Cosmic Eternity - Believe in Yourself, had their lyrics removed. This is rumored to be due to the estate of the late Casey Rankin not allowing them to use his contribution to the song. The lyrics were readded in the Sonic OriginsCompilation Re-release years later.
Similarly, legal disputes over the music in Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (possibly involving music that Michael Jackson may or may not have contributed) have prevented Sega from rereleasing it since 2011, meaning that it hasn't gotten a Retro Engine remake like the other classic games. There is an alternate soundtrack for the game that removes most of those contributions, but outside of the PC release of the game, they remain unused. On May 28th, 2021, the game was announced as part of the Sonic OriginsCompilation Re-release, with the music changed to that alternate soundtrack (allegedly "recreated" by Jun Senoue, though there's evidence to suggest these were even earlier versions of the music than what was leaked), presumably due to the aforementioned legal disputes.
This is likely the reason why Sonic Pocket Adventure has not been rereleased or officially acknowledged by Sega. On a BumbleKast Q&A, Ian Flynn stated that he was barred from including or mentioning the game in the Sonic Encyclo-speed-ia book (making it one of the very few Sonic games to be entirely omitted from the book) for undisclosed legal issues. This likely stems from the fact that the game is developed and published by SNK as opposed to Sega.
Since the whole debacle with Archie writer Ken Penders claiming the Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood characters were copying from his works, it's very unlikely that Chronicleswill ever receive a sequel, and that Shade, Ix and the Marauders will ever be seen in anotherSonicmedia again. Though it was unlikely for a sequel to Chronicles to happen even before this, as the game's developer, Bioware, was bought out in the middle of the game's development by EA, who isn't remotely interested in having one of their studios working on another publisher's IP. Also, Penders lost the case completely and utterly (unlike his case against Archie because of Archie's incompetent record-keeping), so it's really just a case of Sega really not bothering with making a sequel to a game that was divisive and apparently didn't sell all that well either.
According to Ian Flynn, writer of the IDW Comics, there is a unique legal gray area regarding the three ghosts that debuted in the Sonic Unleashed tie-in Halloween short, Sonic: Night of the Werehog. Lah, Su, and Uh are considered Marza Animation Planet-created characters, and therefore require permission to appear in Sonic media (even though Marza is an in-house animation studio that is a subsidiary of SEGA Sammy). While they were able to appear in the IDW Comics as a quick Continuity Cameo, Flynn notes that any further appearances would likely require more negotiations. This is likely why Sonic was absent in the 2023 follow-up animated short to Night of the Werehog, Ghost Tale, which instead solely focused on Lah, Su, and Uh.
Cryptic Studios got permission from Pocket Books to use the Vesta-class and Luna-class from the Star Trek continuation novels at launch, but the licensing was such a hassle they've sworn off directly adapting any further Star Trek Novelverse materials. The USS Titan's appearance at the end of Star Trek: Lower Decks season one allowed for them to, at least, make a revamped version of the Luna-class.
For many years, players believed that Cryptic Studios was not allowed to use anything from the reboot movies, thus the creation of various expies for ships like the Narada and the U.S.S. Vengeance. However, that changed with the release of the third expansion Agents of Yesterday as many things connected to that universe was brought in. As it turns out, Paramount was fine with it - it was Bad Robot they had to hurdle over. The same can be said about the TOS-related ships as Paramount was not fond of having outdated ships having endgame counterparts. A limited edition run of these kinds of ships were released about a month after Agents of Yesterday was released as part of a promo.
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary had just a minor legal hurdle to overcome. The game featured the character Harry Mudd, including a close-up of his face for Enterprise viewscreen communications, which was of good likeness. At the time the game was made Paramount had a policy that whenever the physical likeness of a character from a Star Trek TV series was used in a licensed work, the original actor or their estate would have to give their consent. Unfortunately, the actor who played Harry Mudd passed away just as the game was ready to be released, and they had not secured his permission yet. Rather than delay the release of the game and wait for his inheritance to be settled and obtain permission from his estate, the developers simply changed the close-up into a shadowy silhouette of Mudd.
The developers of Stellaris initially named each of their major content patches in homage to various sci-fi and fantasy writers, starting with the 1.1 Clarke patch. However, authors and their estates will often trademark their names, as it can be considered a brand and used to promote material with no relation to the author. Negotiating deals with the estates to use the names ended up being a significant investment of time and money for their legal department. After the 3.2 Herbert update, it was decided to abandon this naming scheme in favor of more generic space-themed names.
Super Mario RPG introduced Geno, a doll given life that can kick ass with his weapons and magic. Because the character was created under Squaresoft's thumb at the time (now known as Square Enix), the Geno character belongs to them instead of Nintendo, which also means that Geno's chance of appearing in a future Nintendo game is practically nonexistent. However, Geno did appear as a cameo in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (the credits explicitly attributing his ownership to Square Enix), and he has shown up a few times in the Super Smash Bros. series: a Mii outfit in the 3DS and Wii U games is based on Geno's design, and he can be battled as a Spirit in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. note The Mii costume was released alongside Cloud's introduction to Smash Bros., implying Geno's appearances are just part of the collaboration.
Most of the Super Robot Wars games, save for the Original Generations series, will most likely never be seen in the States since the American rights to the various mecha used are owned by far too many different companies. The biggest hurdle in this is Harmony Gold, who has been rabidly protective of "their" Robotech "franchise"note Which was initially adapted from threeunrelatedanime about transforming mecha. and its components. Because of this, Super Robot Wars V takes a detour around the hurdle for overseas fans: It still won't be released in the States, but the game does have an official English localization for the benefit of game importers. Ultimately, this was averted for Super Robot Wars 30, which will have a North American and European release via Steam.
Even then, the series has been affected: Amongst the franchise's Homages to famous mecha anime is the Huckebein series of mechs, which are Gundams in all but name. Eventually Sunrise decided they weren't okay with this, which resulted in Second Original Generations having a scene where every single Huckebein is lined up on the tarmac at an airbase seemingly just so an enemy can blow them all up, and The Federation just decides they aren't going to rebuild them or create any more because...because. The Huckebein Mk-III is subsequently replaced with the Exbein, which is identical except that the head no longer looks like a Gundam's. Eventually, even that got backtracked as the original Huckebein returned for Super Robot Wars X and a new Huckebein, the Huckebein 30, was introduced in SRW 30.
When Final Fantasy VII's Cloud Strife was released as a DLC character, he was only voiced in Japanese. This was due to Cloud's original English voice actor, Steve Burton, being in a union while Nintendo used non-union voice actors. Furthermore, Burton's contract prevented anyone else from voicing Cloud in English. Likewise, once Ultimate brought Cloud's Arch-Enemy Sephiroth into the game as another DLC fighter, George Newbern was similarly unable to reprise him and they kept his Japanese voice actor in the English version.
All music representing the Sonic the Hedgehog and Kingdom Hearts series are pre-existing, unlike all other series which had new remixes composed, which hints at an issue with music licensing. In Kingdom Hearts' case, Disney-owned elements not originating from the franchise couldn't be represented aside from the Mickey Mouse emblem on Sora's Keyblade, so Donald and Goofy are missing from Sora's Dive to the Heart, although this may have been a deliberate decision since Sakurai stated that only video game characters are allowed in Smash.
While in a livestream, Sakurai stated that there is no music from the original Minecraft in the game because the music in that game was "too relaxing", elsewhere he's alluded to other issues leading to the omission. The classic C418 composed tracks are likely absent due to him personally holding his song's publishing rights (having declined to give them to Microsoft), leading to complications for re-licencing them, though why the later Lena Raine composed tracks (which in contrast are owned by Microsoft) are also missing isn't known.
The Pac-Land stage cannot use the music from the original arcade game, as it is also the theme song of Hanna-Barbera's Pac-Man cartoon, the rights to which are owned by Warner Bros..
EarthBound has no sourced music from its original game and Xenoblade Chronicles X has no music at all, likely because Sony owns the distribution rights to those games' soundtracks.
The unofficial web-based Taiko no Tatsujin simulator, Taiko Web, was taken down by Bandai Namco's request since early January 2023.
Tales of Eternia was renamed Tales of Destiny II in North America to avoid copyright conflicts with the creators of (He-Man and the) Masters of the Universenote Which takes place on the planet "Eternia"., and is likely one of the reasons North American gamers didn't receive the realTales of Destiny 2.
Having various companies own American and European rights to Tatsunoko series was overcome for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, as Capcom went through the trouble (and money) to buy all of the rights for every series represented in the game and then some, with the exception of Hakushon Daimaou. This character was removed from the international version as the European copyright holder absolutely refused to sell the rights to Capcom.
While the original Japanese-only release of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes had character themes during battles, they were removed in Ultimate All-Stars. This was due to Capcom not being able to get the music rights for the Tatsunoko characters, as their themes were instrumental versions of their respective TV show theme songs. Instead, the stages were given original music themes.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989) was released on the Wii's Virtual Console for 600 Wii Points ($6) instead of the usual 500 points ($5) due to the game having to be licensed. When the license ran out, Konami didn't bother to renew it and the game was removed from the storefront as a result.
The Tetris Company claims to have copyrights on basically every aspect of the game, even those which the US Supreme Court has ruled cannot be copyrighted (Lotus v. Borland), and they'll send C&D letters to anyone who dares make a game with falling tetrominoes, or even just the Russian folk song "Korobeiniki"note often remembered as "the Tetris theme"; while the Tetris Company cannot completely curb its use as it's public domain, they've trademarked it for video games. This litigiousness ended up killing Tetris: The Grand Master.
Blockles was pulled after a lawsuit from The Tetris Company was settled out of court.
This is also what's preventing Tetris Attack from being re-released. The game itself has nothing to do with Tetris, instead being a localization of the Japanese game Panel de Pon. As the head of The Tetris Company openly regretted licensing out the name to Nintendo, the chances of it appearing on the Virtual Console are very slim; as of 2015, it seems the game can only be mentioned in works that make reference to the actual Tetris series, such as Super Smash Bros.Pokémon Puzzle League—an N64 sequel that was heavily themed around Pokémon: The Series and made no reference to Tetris—did get a Wii Virtual Console release, and Puzzle League stuck as the English name on future games. Eventually, Nintendo threw up their hands in defeat and simply released the original Japanese Panel de Pon on the Nintendo Switch Online service, sidestepping the legal issue entirely.
The Tiny Toon Adventures video games from Konami. The games and their codes are owned by Konami, but Tiny Toon Adventures is owned by Warner Bros., who have their own video game publishing arm. Because of this, it's unlikely we'll see these games in the Virtual Console service any time soon. Konami's Xiaolin Showdown are also in this same limbo. And after the expiry of the license in 2016, the remake of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 has fallen back into this trope.
Thrill Kill was all but completed, but when the North American division of its publisher Virgin Interactive was sold to Electronic Arts, EA shut it down over fears of parental-group lawsuits. It now exists in a number of pirated copies initially distributed by its irate programmers.
The Jean-Yves character in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation had his model based on a real life archeologist with the same name and his likeness was used without his permission. While the real life Jean-Yves did become upset over the matter, it was far too late to do anything about it due to him only finding out well after the game had launched. Regardless, the Jean-Yves character was quickly scrapped from Tomb Raider Chronicles and replaced with a different character. Jean-Yves had also been planned to appear in Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness where he would be killed in the opening cutscene instead of Werner von Croy.
In addition to the Chariots of Fire problem,note The final results screen originally played Vangelis' theme music to the movie, but a later re-release changed it into a Suspiciously Similar Song.Track & Field can't be re-released in Japan under its original name of Hyper Olympic due to the word "Olympic" being trademarked by the International Olympic Committee. Because of this, the Arcade Archives release uses the international name. This also applies to the Arcade Archives release of its sequel Hyper Sports (Hyper Olympic '84) as well.
Twitch Sings, a karaoke game for Twitch streamers, shut down on January 1, 2021, due to Twitch wanting to invest in broader tools and music services. This also forced the removal of all VODs and clips of the game hosted on the platform due to contractual obligations.
DMA Designnote Now known as Rockstar North, the studio behind the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead franchises was sued by Pixar because the CGi unicycles in Uniracers closely resembled the unicycle from Pixar's short film, Red's Dream. Pixar eventually won the lawsuit and halted further production of Uniracers cartridges.
In early 2024, Valve Corporation had taken action against two fan projects, which is surprising considering their support for Game Mods and fan games:
Team Fortress 2 Source 2, a Team Fortress 2 fan port built on s&box, used actual assets from the original game. While fan games/mods involving this game are usually fine, the use of s&box without any agreement in advancenote Facepunch, who owns s&box, has not licensed any Valve assets for that game, indirectly making this fan project unauthorized. caused a more complicated legal problem that Valve is justified for issuing DMCA to the project.
Portal64 supposedly used Nintendo's assets (as if the title alone was not enough).
The original version of the 4XSpace Empire game VGA Planets somehow got away with using unauthorized paper-thin expies of species and factions appearing in Star Wars, Star Trek, and Battlestar Galactica. With the more current "Planets Nu" version, the creators are moving towards having their own ship designs and aesthetics, mostly to avoid this trope.
Wick (2020): In late 2020, Studio Whip got slapped with a Cease and Desist for calling the game Wick, due to it being the same as another product made by different creators. Studio Whip had to change the game's name to Flicker of Hope to avoid any further legal action, though luckily the game is still available to download and nothing else about it had to be altered.
The early sports games World Games and California Games were never re-released for the Virtual Console because publisher Hasbro was hit with a copyright claim from Epyx.
This appears to be the reason why the hidden character Blarney (an Expy of Barney the Dinosaur) is Dummied Out in Xenophage Alien Bloodsport. Considering how HIT Entertainment has had their character been subjected to countless derisive parodies and satirical depictions at their expense, this isn't surprising.
Speaking of Silicon Knights, you probably would want to hold on to your copies of X-Men: Destiny if you bought them before Silicon Knights lost a lawsuit against Epic Games over the latter's Unreal Engine 3 technologyreasonSilicon Knights reverse-engineered the engine believing that Epic Games had deliberately sent them a bugged version of it to make the latter's Gears of War look superior by comparison, and the former used the modified engine on all of their projects starting with Too Human without any permission from Epic and Silicon Knights credited it as their own. Don't expect to see any fresh copies in any warehouses after 2012, as the court ordered Silicon Knights to eradicate the game code and destroy all the unsold copies of Too Human, Destiny, and all of their future unreleased projects. Then, to the shock of everyone, Microsoft made Too Human available for free digitally in 2019 on the Xbox Marketplace, as well as including it in the final backward compatibility update for the Xbox One.
Judgment and Lost Judgmentweren't available on PC, due to Takuya Kimura's agency Johnny's & Associates having the conflict between Sega and Ryu ga Gotoku Studio on how Kimura strict control in terms to his likeness via this article (likely against modding Takayuki Yagami's model).note Played with and forced in Lost Judgment's Side Case = Takayuki Yagami: Evil Detective? when Keihin Gang member Kaito Sakakiba was impersonating Yagami with the wrong weight class. They appeared to have changed their stance in 2022, presumably due to a change in upper management, and both games eventually received ports on the PC.
The turn-based fighting game formerly known as Yomi Hustle was delisted from Steam due to alleged trademark infringement by Yomi creator David Sirlin of Sirlin Games, over the word "Yomi". Developer Ivy Sly ended up changing the name to "Your Only Move is HUSTLE", with the first four letters of the new name cleverly forming the acronym "Y.O.M.I".
, and shut down the stream, indirectly forcing the tournament's cancellation. Legal explanation This drew heavy criticism from the Melee community.