Era’s Adventure dev was unaware he used Yoshi
Era’s Adventure features Yoshi as its lead character. But Botond Kopacz, the sole developer behind the Android release, says that he was completely unaware that the model he chose was of Nintendo’s classic dinosaur.
“Actually this is an indie game developed by one developer, so due to the limitation of effort, I purchased a cute character from TurboSquid, one of the biggest 3D asset stores, without knowing the background story of the character Yoshi, since I’m not a Super Mario fan.”
Kopacz added that he began to realize the significance of the lead character he used after he received emails “from Super Mario fans that I stole Yoshi”. However, Kopacz feels that he did not infringe upon a copyright since “no assets are stolen from any Nintendo game or website and the Yoshi’s name is not present anywhere”.
“Once the game was released on the Play Store, after spending hundreds of hours in making the game, I started receiving ‘kind’ mails from Super Mario fans that I stole Yoshi, etc. So I started Googling and I realized that the character is really from the Super Mario series. Since no assets are stolen from any Nintendo game or website and the Yoshi’s name is not present anywhere, there is no copyright violation. [There would be] at least pattern violation if the 3D model is detailedly registered in the US pattern database.”
Yoshi’s appearance slightly, according to Kopacz:
“I know that, even if I modify the character a little bit, that this will still be a big problem for the Nintendo fans, but I’m making the game alone so I have really limited time to do some changes. And I still hope that many people will find the game great and many people will enjoy it.”
