Where's the proof Nicalis stole Cave Story?

[Al-Ameen Adewunmi]

I've seen a good number of reviews here claiming that Nicalis stole Cave Story from Pixel (as if that has any relevance on the game itself), but.....where's the evidence? Or is it just speculation?

[Tharon]

Just speculation. No proofs and Pixel and Nicalis seems to still be in a good relationship.

[Sterlander]

People might be acting quite dramatic when they say Nicalis stole it. No, I doubt the CEO of Nicalis held a gun up to PIxel's head and demanded he hand over the rights to Cave Story. People are just angry that the game they love so much is owned by such a terrible company, and they hate seeing their game being disrespected and abused basically.

[St. Haborym]

Well that's some bullsh*t, especially considering you can still download it for free off the developer's own website. Are they going to issue a takedown notice there next?

[JmTrad]

The best i can do is linking this 2 videos about the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6UfS4MDKe8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccwVdj8dYQQ

[Charcoal]

I've luckily never heard of the drama but apparently there is no proof. I'm sure there will be plenty of name-calling though if you question their unsubstantiated claims.

[Al-Ameen Adewunmi]

Originally posted by Q Pop:

Lol, oh look, a Nicalis employee. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loser.

Do I look like an employee to you? Dumbass.

[Carmesea]

Now i don't wanna come off as a Nicalis shill either, i believe a lot of their ports are terrible, and CS+ on steam is one perfect example of this (there are still a lot of broken achievements to this day, True Ending being fixed like 7 years after release, also a lot of weird sprite issues). But i do find it ridiculous that people decided to believe some schizo theory made by some random guy on twitter and start review bombing this one game because of it.

It's annoying to say the least.

[BC]

https://twitter.com/SuperSomething0/status/1469352925755547652

Recent interview with Pixel himself to accompany the Christmas game. Says that the Nicalis ports helped him become a full-time game developer (this has been heavily implied in the past but now its flat-out stated) and the fact that he's even bothering to do this interview shows that he's on good terms with them.

I won't act like Nicalis is a good company, but the whole thing about them stealing Cave Story seems like a hoax at worst or a really big stretch at best.

[Foamed]

Originally posted by Al-Ameen Adewunmi:

I've seen a good number of reviews here claiming that Nicalis stole Cave Story from Pixel (as if that has any relevance on the game itself), but.....where's the evidence? Or is it just speculation?

It's just a rumor which got out of hand:

• https://twitter.com/SuperSomething0/status/1208822492321734658
  
• https://old.reddit.com/r/cavestory/comments/d3badp/inside_the_ghosting_racism_and_exploitation_at/f04vqn3/?context=5
  
  That said Nicalis still has a long history of shady and unethical business practices, exploiting employees and toxic work culture.
  
  
• Inside the ghosting, racism, and exploitation at game publisher Nicalis.
  
• Following bombshell report, more indies share horror stories of working with Nicalis.[www.usgamer.net]
  
• Nicalis issues DMCA against free Cave Story games.[www.gamesindustry.biz]
  
• How Nicalis killed the 90s racer genre.
  
• Did Nicalis create the next stadium events?[blog.pricecharting.com]

[Sue]

Nicalis didn't steal CS and I have absolutely no idea of how they would have been able to do so. Pixel is still credited on every port of the game, and, still does receive his part for every copy sold.

People may as well hate the company for other reasons, but, I don't think lying about things (such as the most rated review of this game right now) is a good way to grasp the real situation of things.

[TrishaCat]

The claim that they stole it is completely false
Nicalis is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ company but there's no evidence of them having stolen it, but there's actually evidence to the contrary, with Pixel himself saying he gets money whenever people buy Cave Story
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EMafwsMXkAUjOjE.jpg

[Al-Ameen Adewunmi]

Ok so basically, Nicalis is garbage but they didn't steal the IP. Right?

[Lute]

Nicalis' CEO is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ person and their practices as a company are sketchy and skeezy but there's never been any evidence of Pixel being bamboozled by them. Nicalis as a company probably deserves your negative feelings and malice and I personally would say that it's good to not support them if possible, but it's important to hate a company for the right reasons. Pixel still receives money from sales of Cave Story+ and other ports and stuff, as you can see in the "Did Nicalis Steal Cave Story" video that someone linked in this thread already. I'd highly recommend everyone watch that video.

tl;dr Nicalis is bad but please be informed and hate them for the correct reasons

[andwhyisit]

Originally posted by Foamed:

• Nicalis issues DMCA against free Cave Story games.[www.gamesindustry.biz]

This is misinformed as well. Nicalis wasn't targeting the freeware game, just the CSE2 source code. The freeware game is still free, modding is still allowed. The takedown message seemed to indicate that Nicalis thought that the CSE2 source was a leak of the CS source code, though that could be a pretence for all we know. CSE2 was designed to be accurate and as close as possible to what the original source would have been, so that isn't a stretch. Regardless... the CSE2 source was the only thing targeted.

[TheMaverickk]

Interesting to see this discussion again.

The bottom line is that Nicalis didn't "steal" Cave Story from Daisuke Amaya. They just might have screwed him out of the IP when Amaya signed off on Nicalis bringing Cave Story to the Wii. So again technically not theft, but legal and contractual theft taking advantage of someone who probably wasn't 100% clear on what he was agreeing to due to the language barrier. I know I remember finding it strange that Nicalis was using Cave Story characters pretty liberally, and remaking Cave Story twice. And Nicalis would definitely have to have ownership of the IP if they can send cease and desists to fan games built around Cave Story.

Again all this is never been confirmed, but it should be noted that Daisuke Amaya has never had Nicalis publish any of his other games. Instead working with Playism (which is the company Nigoro turned to after Nicalis tried to screw them with La-Mulana) which have published both Kero Blaster and Pink Heaven. Also if I'm not mistaken Playism is also where the freeware original version of Cave Story is (which if I'm not mistaken, Amaya still has full rights to).

This game is kind of an oddity, cause the game was developed by Nicalis, first and foremost. Although apparently Daisuke Amaya has been credited with "adding small touches" to the game. The official PR blurb from Nicalis says "developed with Pixels COOPERATION". Which can mean any number of things. His "cooperation" could simply be that he has to let them use his characters as per their contract.

Regardless it should simply be noted that Nicalis has been pretty shady, and hasn't exactly been that supportive of indies like they would like people to think. Too many indie devs have had issues with them at this point.