Is Essentials still okay to use?

[CinnaDonut]

When I was looking into making a fangame, I originally was going to get Essentials, but then I saw how fangames that used it were banned and so on... It made me nervous, so I got Pokemon SDK instead. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, here is a link: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=416046

I know it says how SDK has more potential features than Essentials, but... I've been having some trouble with certain cmds lately. So I'm wondering if I should switch over to Essentials or not. I just don't want my fangame to be taken down...

 

[TechSkylander1518]

Those fangames were taken down because they used Pokemon's IP and got popular enough to be noticed by them, not because they use Essentials specifically. Takedowns only happen when a game gets particularly popular, though, most don't get enough attention to get on Nintendo's radar. (We did just have a game jam with almost thirty games in it, most of them using Essentials- if Nintendo was really bothered by the engine, that'd be a huge deal)

 

[SJFzone]

All that Tech said, Nintendo doesn't care about regular underground fangames, only the ones popular enough to start rivaling their own games. And also even if it does get taken down, let's be honest... you can just take the download link down and reupload it somewhere else under an untraceable alias (but you didn't hear that from me)

 

[Avery]

Those fangames were taken down because they used Pokemon's IP and got popular enough to be noticed by them, not because they use Essentials specifically. Takedowns only happen when a game gets particularly popular, though, most don't get enough attention to get on Nintendo's radar. (We did just have a game jam with almost thirty games in it, most of them using Essentials- if Nintendo was really bothered by the engine, that'd be a huge deal)

Actually, that's wrong. Uranium got taken down for making money off of it (under the guise of paying for servers). Pokémon Smile got taken down for the name. If popularity was the problem, many fan games, such as Phoenix Rising or Insurgence would've been wiped long ago.

 

[HollowGap]

Pssssst, hey, there's a game jam entry made using PSDK. Try playing it and give your thoughts on how it compares to Essentials https://reliccastle.com/threads/2689/

Essentials is still the more popular engine, though.

 

[TechSkylander1518]

Actually, that's wrong. Uranium got taken down for making money off of it (under the guise of paying for servers). Pokémon Smile got taken down for the name. If popularity was the problem, many fan games, such as Phoenix Rising or Insurgence would've been wiped long ago.

Uranium's Patreon long predates the takedown, though. The character Adam was actually a Patreon bonus where a patron could submit themselves as a character, and Adam is a post-game character in the final release, which is when the takedown happened.

Phoenix Rising and Insurgence are pretty popular, too, but their popularity is within the fanbase of people who know about and like fangames. Uranium got a huge surge in attention (1.5 million downloads in a week, according to their final note) that got it not just to the attention of fangame fans, but even a mainstream topic. That's why it has a Wikipedia page and major outlets writing about it, not just gaming sites like Polygon and Game Informer, but even sites that aren't dedicated to video games like Teen Vogue and Wired, even though an Insurgence Let's Play has double the views of a Uranium playthrough by the same person.

Spoiler: google trends comparison

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Insurgence and Phoenix Rising have had more attention on them in the long run, but there was that big spike for a short period of time.

And yeah, Smile's obviously because of the name, but it's a pretty rare case that you'll have someone buy a url that would so easily be mistaken for an official product. It's not like we have a lot of fan games taken down for that.