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Electronic Arts has issued a DMCA takedown on OpenSC2K, a fan-created remake of the classic city-building title SimCity 2000. The publisher claimed that the open source remake was in fact using assets lifted directly from the original game, despite the game being described as open source.
“Assets from the game SimCity 2000 are being infringed upon,” reads the takedown notice, posted on GitHub. “The current audio visual output of the repository creates content that infringes on Electronic Arts copyright. As long as that continues to happen, no other changes other than removal is sufficient to address the infringement.”
Speaking to Torrentfreak, OpenSC2K creator Nicholas Ochoa claimed that he had not been contacted by EA prior to the takedown notice. “I received notification after the fact from GitHub,” said Ochoa. “Nobody from EA has reached out since and I’m still waiting for GitHub to review my request. I just wish they’d have reached out first, I would’ve gladly removed the content quickly and without issue.”
The takedown apparently wasn’t a total surprise to the developer, however. When the game was first announced, a number of people had pointed out the potential copyright infringement involved.
Ochoa said that he hopes to get a non-infringing version of the repository restored, mentioning that his own code had been pulled offline alongside EA’s assets. If successful, he then intends to upload a version of the game that doesn’t include the copyrighted materials, instead including instructions on how to directly extract the assets from SimCity 2000.
