Nintendo is pretty litigious and protective of their IP. A "Zelda MMO" would get a cease-and-desist letter that would make the authors' heads spin so quickly they'd travel back in time where they'd be dead.

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qarl an hour ago | parent [-]

Yes. BUT. A clean-room implementation with all new art assets would be an entirely new challenge for them.

I think we're going to see real quick how this is going to go with those Adobe clones. Clean-room is supposed to be legal. I have a feeling it's about to stop being legal.

But then that will make PC-clones illegal: meaning all modern computers. It's a curious problem for them.

	▲	vunderba 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		yeah it's going to be an interesting next couple of years for sure. If you clean room reverse it, the mechanics in a Legend of Zelda game are, for the most part I think in the clear legally speaking. But part of what makes Zelda feel like Zelda (IMHO) is that you’re fighting familiar monsters in a familiar setting with familiar music aka all the lore, otherwise its you've just rebuilt an open world exploration game with dungeons. However if you borrow lore like even if you change the names of all the monsters, you may still run into legal risk if they remain visibly recognizable. Even if you redraw them in a different style, if they’re still identifiable as Octoroks/Moblins/etc, that might still open you up to litigation. There was a similar case a while ago, Tetris v. Xio, which might be worth looking into, since I think it sets some useful precedent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding,_LLC_v._Xio_Int....