Fan-made Goldeneye 007 remake shut down due to copyright

This story about legal ramifications in gaming, boiled down, in 1:32 minutes.

What's the fuss?

One Goldeneye 007 fan spent 1400 hours meticulously recreating the 1997 classic, within another game, for people to play for free. Interested? Sorry, copyright law beat you to it.

The situation

If you were a 90's kid and had access to the Nintendo 64 gaming system, chances are you played the classic game GoldenEye 007 based on the James Bond franchise. 

• Despite being made by an inexperienced team, the game garnered critical acclaim and is considered to be one of the most important video games ever made. 
• Even 24 years later, the original game is still adored and played, even on a competitive level.

One such fan, going by the name "Krollywood", painstakingly created the entire game in another game - 2018's action title Far Cry 5. 

• Despite being a first-person-shooter game, Far Cry 5 has built-in tools for creatives to make their own levels using the game's assets.
• Krollywood's project took 3 years and garnered himself worldwide attention, but it only took MGM (the half-owner of James Bond) a quick email to force the deletion of his work from the public eye.

Boiling it down

Copyright in video games is a relatively new area of intellectual property (IP) law. 

• Nonetheless, cloning games is usually a blatant no-go in the eyes of intellectual property holders.

Despite these odds, many of these die-hard gamers aren't dissuaded from creating similar fan remakes. 

• In some cases, companies who own the IP have actually supported these projects and have even provided jobs to the fans behind them.

Modern games have evolved from being "just games" into a cross-breed of content platforms à la Netflix and social media platforms like Facebook. 

• Allowing players to share their own creations with one another ensures that the game never gets old, elongating player engagement. 

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