#ip laws

This game has been getting crazy amounts of hype, not only in the Bionicle community, but outside it! IGN and other major gaming journalism sites have several articles talking about it. I've seen big influencers with no interest in Bionicle checking out the trailers and getting interested. Some of them seeming to not know that it was a fan game, and thinking it might be official. Team Kanohi themselves speculated that Lego's reasoning was that the quality and popularity of the game made it hard to distinguish from an official product.

There's some speculation that it got C&D because Lego has their own Bionicle comeback in the works. And as much as I would love that to be the case, and as much as I hate to be a killjoy, I genuinely think its the opposite. I may be wrong, and I hope I am! But I think that Lego killed it because they have no plans to bring Bionicle back.

This game was on a path to become crazy popular. In addition to a great Bionicle tribute, it also just looked like a great game! If its development had this much hype, then its actual full release may very well have been stratospheric, and launched Bionicle back into mainstream popularity.

But that would also mean there's a lot of hype and demand for a product that Lego isn't selling, and has no plans to sell. And that would be a big problem, Lego would be in a tight spot having essentially a huge commercial for a product no one would be able to buy, it'd be like the Rick and Morty McDonald's Szechuan Sauce incident, but possibly worse, since its not a meme but a genuinely good game.

Bionicle isn't profitable for Lego, nor is it compatible with Lego's current toy production or story writing philosophy. They would not be able to capitalize on it, even if they bought the game to make it official. Making Bionicle again would likely lose them money, even with additional hype from the game.

It also would mean the mainstream public perception of the Bionicle IP is completely outside of Lego's control. And while I and many of us think this is a good thing, from a corporate IP standpoint, this would unacceptable. The ability to control public perception of a brand is literally the main motivation behind Intellectual Property Laws.

At worst, it could even cost Lego their trademark on Bionicle products, since trademark disappears if it is no longer associated with the trademark holder. And they've clearly become much more jealous about their IP lately, between this, the DuckBricks concept art scandal, and the numerous Roblox asset takedowns in recent months.

And this isn't to shield Lego from criticism, I am FURIOUS that they did this. But we also have to understand that the state of modern IP laws may have pressured them towards this. IP law, as it currently stands, is fucked up. It gives way too much power to corporations and strips actual creators, both fan and original, of autonomy to make their art. We need to change the law around IP.

But what do we do now? Well first, we support Unmasked Games and Project Rustbound. I'm very excited to see what they make. Next we MUST proceed more carefully with Bionicle fan projects. Things like The Mangai Project, Bionicle Iliad, and Myths and Legacy need to make sure they do things very carefully. Thankfully, none of them seem to have the kind of mainstream hype outside the fandom that would cause Lego to worry.