Nintendo’s mystery baby

A news round-up today, also covering Nintendo legal updates, a new Fortnite lawsuit, a former FTC chair's told-you-so and more.

Nintendo posted a four-minute animated short about a baby and a magical pacifier to its YouTube, app and social media channels today. There was no obvious connection to Mario, Zelda, Custom Robo nor any other notable Nintendo franchises. And Nintendo offered no explanation other than the title “Close to You.”

Popular theories are that the short is tied to next spring’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (is that baby Rosalina?) or to Nintendo’s Pikmin game franchise.

The case for Pikmin: there’s some similar music, the pacifier looks like it is being carried by invisible Pikmin and… is that a blurry red Pikmin under the bed?

Nintendo dropping a context-free teaser is atypical, but it’s not unprecedented. In July 2024, the company posted a brief video, without explanation, of a man wearing a paper bag over his head. Nintendo then revealed exactly one week later that it was teasing a surprise August 2024 Switch horror game.

More Nintendo news

• Nintendo is seeking a $4.5 million default judgment against alleged Switch software pirate James “Archbox” Williams, TorrentFreak reports. (Last November, I reported on how Nintendo used a Reddit post about an optometry clinic in Arizona to help track Williams down.)

• On Friday, a magistrate judge in another Nintendo piracy case recommended an award of $17,500 in damages from Jesse “Every Game Guru” Keighin, who Nintendo sued last year for streaming 10 Switch games ahead of release. While the damages are exactly what Nintendo requested, Nintendo did whiff on one claim.

  • The judge sided with Nintendo over allegations that Keighin violated Nintendo’s copyright when he… streamed the games ahead of release without permission, also violated copyright when he circumvented Nintendo’s technological piracy prevention measures by using an emulator to play the unreleased games, and did so when he posted links to Switch emulators and the cryptographic keys needed to access them (because, by the court’s logic, those are meant to be used to run illegally copies games).

  • But, in a footnote, the court said Nintendo had failed to make a case that posting links to ROMs for the games and the cryptographic keys to access them violated Nintendo’s right to block others from copying its games. The court’s logic there is that Switch emulators may technically violate that right, but ROMs and keys innately do not. It’s minutiae, but still notable to see Nintendo not win all of its arguments. (See the footnote at the bottom of page 20)).

• Nintendo has publicly denied a since-retracted statement from a Japanese politician about its actions around generative AI regulation: “Contrary to recent discussions on the internet, Nintendo has not had any contact with the Japanese government about generative AI,” the company stated in a social media post. “Whether generative AI is involved or not, we will continue to take necessary actions against infringement of our intellectual property rights.” (OpenAI’s new Sora 2 generative AI video-maker is awash with clips that use Nintendo characters, IGN notes.)

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More ad-related news

• An EA commercial for this week’s Battlefield 6 takes a clear shot at Activision’s long-running celebrity-filled Call of Duty ads, by introducing a squad of Battlefield-endorsing celebrities, then quickly blowing them up. Coverage of the ad in Adobo Magazine didn’t spell out the CoD angle, but Joey Johnson, creative director at the commercial’s studio, Mother LA, came close. He said: “it became as simple as ‘make fans think we’re hopping on the same bandwagon, and then blow up that notion to make room for a more grounded and true ‘Only in Battlefield’ film.”

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Item 2: In brief…

🎮 Funcom has closed The Outsiders, the 10-year-old development studio behind acclaimed 2022 heavy metal rhythm shooter Metal: Hellsinger, PC Gamer reports.

• Studio creative director David Goldfarb posted on social media that “[w]e are not giving up, and we are going to try to continue in some form.”

👀 Epic Games is suing two Fortnite users, alleging that the pair used bots to artificially boost activity around their in-game islands, triggering payouts of tens of thousands of dollars before Epic shut them down, Aftermath reports.

🇸🇦 Ubisoft has detailed Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s upcoming Valley of Memory expansion, saying the free six-hour update to the 2023 game will be released on November 18. But a 21-minute video presentation on Monday did not clarify if Valley of Memory amounts to state-sponsored DLC.

• Valley of Memory is the mini-expansion that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot confirmed in August at a Saudi government-backed gaming event in Riyadh.

• The expansion is set in AlUla, a historical site in what is now Saudi Arabia, and is, per a French news report, the result of a funding deal between the kingdom and Ubisoft. Game File reported last month that the coverage of a rumored deal had led to pushback among Ubisoft employees about working with the kingdom’s government.

• Asked last month if the Mirage expansion was funded by the Saudi government, Ubisoft told Game File that the new content “was made possible thanks to the support of local and international organizations, through access to experts, historians and resources to ensure the creation of an authentic and accurate setting.”

• Ubisoft’s video showcase of Valley of Memory this week included comments from Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani, the VP of culture for the Royal Commission for AlUla. He said he hopes that collectible historical artifacts in Valley of Memory “will encourage the players to discover more about the fascinating history and the tangible heritage of AlUla.” The Royal Commission for AlUla is chaired by the kingdom’s Crown Prince. According to its website, the Commission’s objectives “include preserving AlUla’s natural and cultural heritage, developing the area into a global destination for cultural and eco-tourism, and driving economic growth and community development.”

🚫 ESL Impact, an all-female Counter-Strike 2 esports league, is shutting down next month, saying its operations are “not sustainable,” PC Gamer reports.

• The outlet notes that ESL was purchased by Saudi government-funded Savvy Games in 2022 as part of a $1.5 billion acquisition.

🤔 Lina Khan, former chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which sought to block Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard (over Call of Duty being used to potentially give Microsoft a gaming monopoly), reacted negatively to last week’s 50% price increase to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

• “As we’ve seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand,” she wrote on Twitter/X. “As dominant firms become too-big-to-care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about the consequences.”

🇺🇸 The U.S House of Representatives is out of session this week, with Republicans who control the House blaming the government shutdown (and Democrats saying it’s to dodge a Jeffrey Epstein-related vote, per Politico).

• This is GameFile-relevant, because Wednesday was set to be the day of a House Oversight committee hearing on radicalization of online users, tied to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Valve CEO Gabe Newell had been called to testify about potential radicalization via Steam.

• A Valve rep did not reply to Game File’s query about whether Newell had already submitted written testimony, which was requested by the committee.

• The Senate is in session this week, but they’re focused on non-Valve matters.

🌎 YouTuber KurtJMac has completed a 14-year live-streaming journey, traveling to the “Far Lands”—the technical limits—of Minecraft, IGN reports.

• At the end of the Minecraft world: A towering wall of gray shapes…