#BUT i believe nicalis has the legal right to do this even though i do not personally agree with it

[inexplicably-spookified]

‘what the heck is going on with nicalis and cave story on twitter at the moment’: a post

i’m making this not to defend nicalis in any way, but because all the misinformation going around on twitter is bugging the hell out of me and i hope at least one person’ll see this and... idk, at least not contribute to this mess.

To the best of my knowledge, this all began September 2019 when an article was published exposing issues of Nicalis ghosting developers and poor behaviour in the past from its CEO, Tyrone Rodriguez. 

Around this time (again, to the best of my knowledge), rumours on Twitter began to spring up about Nicalis having tricked Pixel out of and/or straight up stolen the rights to Cave Story - some variants even claimed they forced him to sign a contract in English (a language he doesn’t speak) thus locking him out of making a sequel or anything else yadda yadda etc. 

This is not true. The contract has never been made public, but from what we know, Pixel still has a good relationship with Nicalis (or at least Tyrone) and has stated in the past making a sequel isn’t a priority for him (tbh in my opinion I believe he just isn’t interested in his 16 year old game anymore and has moved on). Pixel has also stated on Twitter that he receives revenue from, at least, the 3DS eshop port of Cave Story, and the profit from the Wiiware* port allowed him to quit his day job (note: this tweet was made by Nicalis but was retweeted by Pixel) and go into development full time. 

At the very least, there is no evidence to prove Nicalis stole and/or tricked Pixel out of the rights to Cave Story (and do you really think a Japanese businessman would be stupid enough to sign a contract in a language he doesn’t speak???), and spreading this rumour is just plain harmful.

Further info on this original controversy: x | x

*profit from CS3D, not Wiiware, apparently

Current controversy:

A couple weeks ago (Nov. 24th), Nicalis filed a DMCA takedown for CSE2 - a fan-made DECOMPILATION of the freeware Cave Story engine.

As of this post (3/12/2020), there has been no official statement or reason given, and the developers of CSE2 are, to my knowledge, still attempting to reach out to Nicalis. However, it seems they are legally in the right to take down CSE2, as the original Cave Story was freeware, not open-source (thus making decompilations illegal), and Nicalis owns the rights to it, according to the DMCA notice.

(note: there is a screenshot of an email to a fan from pixel claiming nicalis owns the rights to freeware, and that its continued distribution is with special permission from nicalis, but i won’t link it as while it’s probably true - the japanese text has been confirmed as legit - i personally don’t trust it enough to link as irrefutable evidence)

What they are not doing, however, is taking down the original freeware game. That has not been touched, nor have any freeware mods - a quick google search will find it still up on cavestory.org, arguably its most well-known download spot, as well as its current official home, the Playism website (the ones who published Kero Blaster, Pixel’s other game) and Pixel’s own website. Doukutsu Club, a fan-made host site for freeware mods, is also still up and untouched.

This rumour, it seems, started from a single tweet by someone with no connections to Nicalis, Cave Story or its community. Unfortunately it was picked up as ‘fact’ (despite no evidence) by many people including some “journalists” who then published articles further spreading this misinformation. Again, the original, free version of Cave Story is untouched and not going anywhere.

As the situation is still currently on-going, I will edit this post if any new information comes up, but for now I hope this is comprehensible enough for anyone who would like to know what all the fuss is about.

edit: as of 10/02/2021, there has been... absolutely zero information - nicalis hasn’t responded at all, and unfortunately as i assume it’s going to stay that way for the foreseeable future, i’m going to unpin this