Drives me up the wall that they don't take this approach. There's an argument that, in American IP law at least, you have to "protect your copyright" or you might lose it, but that could very easily be overcome by introducing a license agreement that any fan creator can attach to their game that clearly states that Nintendo's IP belongs to Nintendo and that the fan work is purely the work of the fan and does not represent the opinions of blah blah you know the rest.
The way I see it this would be a "carrot" method of protecting their IP as opposed to their currently-preferred "stick" method. Encourage fan works! Celebrate them on your site! Maybe for the really good ones you can look at porting them to virtual console - we all know that virtual console is just an emulator running ROMs anyway, there's no reason you couldn't let anyone with a Nintendo Online subscription play Zelda with a randomizer or even something like Pokemon Crystal Clear (anything that doesn't have non-Nintendo IP in it, basically).
You just made two fantastic points. I didn't even think about how to circumvent the IP perils but it seems like it wouldn't be that much effort. Almost certainly LESS lawyer hours. And that gets to the one comment your post raises for me: the carrot and the stick method aren't 1:1. It would just take so much less effort to do a carrot method. Even if you had to interact with fans, maybe show up at a Smash tournament to kiss babies and pop champagne, you had to bother uploading ROMs to Nintendo online (and had to have a meeting about it first), and have a snarky twitter account then that is LESS effort than one sticky situation where Smash players throw a fit. You have to deal with big creators getting copystrikes on their accounts and making arguments with lawyers of their own less. You're paying less in lawyer fees with no decrease in the fidelity of your IPs.
And then you can think about the benefits. Nobody is going to play an OoT randomizer instead of TotK. In fact, they're going to be first in line. People in general like exposure. It's general marketing practice that getting acquainted with Zelda makes them more likely to buy the big ticket item afterward. If it matters to you, when you do have to make a controversial final call (e.g. someone's not listening to your requests) and it seems harsh, you'll have some goodwill so people will take your side and give you the benefit of the doubt.
The stick method is the inferior method. There's just no way it couldn't be.
It would be an interesting and brave new world to see fan games on the VC.
Drives me up the wall that they don't take this approach. There's an argument that, in American IP law at least, you have to "protect your copyright" or you might lose it, but that could very easily be overcome by introducing a license agreement that any fan creator can attach to their game that clearly states that Nintendo's IP belongs to Nintendo and that the fan work is purely the work of the fan and does not represent the opinions of blah blah you know the rest.
The way I see it this would be a "carrot" method of protecting their IP as opposed to their currently-preferred "stick" method. Encourage fan works! Celebrate them on your site! Maybe for the really good ones you can look at porting them to virtual console - we all know that virtual console is just an emulator running ROMs anyway, there's no reason you couldn't let anyone with a Nintendo Online subscription play Zelda with a randomizer or even something like Pokemon Crystal Clear (anything that doesn't have non-Nintendo IP in it, basically).
TheDrink? Like Trunks? Witnessed.
You just made two fantastic points. I didn't even think about how to circumvent the IP perils but it seems like it wouldn't be that much effort. Almost certainly LESS lawyer hours. And that gets to the one comment your post raises for me: the carrot and the stick method aren't 1:1. It would just take so much less effort to do a carrot method. Even if you had to interact with fans, maybe show up at a Smash tournament to kiss babies and pop champagne, you had to bother uploading ROMs to Nintendo online (and had to have a meeting about it first), and have a snarky twitter account then that is LESS effort than one sticky situation where Smash players throw a fit. You have to deal with big creators getting copystrikes on their accounts and making arguments with lawyers of their own less. You're paying less in lawyer fees with no decrease in the fidelity of your IPs.
And then you can think about the benefits. Nobody is going to play an OoT randomizer instead of TotK. In fact, they're going to be first in line. People in general like exposure. It's general marketing practice that getting acquainted with Zelda makes them more likely to buy the big ticket item afterward. If it matters to you, when you do have to make a controversial final call (e.g. someone's not listening to your requests) and it seems harsh, you'll have some goodwill so people will take your side and give you the benefit of the doubt.
The stick method is the inferior method. There's just no way it couldn't be.
It would be an interesting and brave new world to see fan games on the VC.