The tag implication #53420 pokemon -> game_freak has been rejected.

Reason: Game Freak is the Company that works on the Pokemon Video Game Franchise - as they already have tags might as well credit them properly

EDIT: The tag implication pokemon -> game_freak (forum #386701) has been rejected by @slyroon.

fuyu_graycen said:
Reason: Game Freak is the Company that works on the Pokemon Video Game Franchise - as they already have tags might as well credit them properly

Not all the Pokemon games are made by Game Freak (Pokemon Go is made by Niantic, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is made by Spike-Chunsoft, etc), and there's Pokemon stuff that aren't games (e.g. the anime, plushies, food).

Pokemon is a multimedia franchise that includes the anime, the card game and several manga. Game Freak only works on the games.

watsit said:
Not all the Pokemon games are made by Game Freak (Pokemon Go is made by Niantic, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is made by Spike-Chunsoft, etc), and there's Pokemon stuff that aren't games (e.g. the anime, plushies, food).

arrow189 said:
Pokemon is a multimedia franchise that includes the anime, the card game and several manga. Game Freak only works on the games.

Uh... So? These are copyright tags, not "developer" tags, and Pokémon's copyright is under the jurisdiction of its copyright owners, which are Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. Even if such content does not have Game Freak involved in its development, they still co-own the franchise and its copyrights nonetheless.

But if we go by the "don't imply third-party developers" logic, then (to use a different franchise as an example here) anything from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise not developed by Sega or its subsidiaries (including Sonic Team) but are still made under the Sonic license such as the comics (either Archie or IDW) and the TV shows should not imply sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) because it implies Sega. Such reasoning is frankly ridiculous because Sonic stuff made under license are still works for hire, and the copyrights of any new material not tied to games are still going to have Sega as their copyright owners.

Would Pokémon overwhelm the Game Freak tag if such an implication go through? Yes. But it's nothing that a hyphen can't be placed in when searching for or blacklisting non-Pokémon Game Freak content. Just because the OP didn't provide a good reason does not mean that the suggestion is invalid.

alien_fluff said:
Uh... So? These are copyright tags, not "developer" tags, and Pokémon's copyright is under the jurisdiction of its copyright owners, which are Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. Even if such content does not have Game Freak involved in its development, they still co-own the franchise and its copyrights nonetheless.

The Pokemon brand is managed and controlled by The Pokemon Company, which was established through a joint investment by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures. Actual ownership of the various pokemon-related IPs is a huge confusing mess with no clear answer of who owns what, but TPC manages it all.

alien_fluff said:
But if we go by the "don't imply third-party developers" logic, then (to use a different franchise as an example here) anything from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise not developed by Sega or its subsidiaries (including Sonic Team) but are still made under the Sonic license such as the comics (either Archie or IDW) and the TV shows should not imply sonic_the_hedgehog_(series) because it implies Sega.

Doesn't Sega own the Sonic IP? Every piece of official Sonic media release is ultimately licensed by Sega. If that's not true, then the implications are in need of fixing.

Similarly, Pokemon is licensed by The Pokemon Company, there are Pokemon-related things the individual companies (nintendo, game freak, creatures) don't have legal control of themselves, which is why you'll sometimes see Nintendo enforcing rights over a Pokemon product (mostly the games on their systems), while other times they don't (they were legally required to announce to their shareholders that they have no involvement in Pokemon Go, when people started investing in them after seeing its success, for example). In the early days, you would see Nintendo listed on non-game products (e.g. the original release of the movies would have the Nintendo logo), but since the early or mid 00s, that's been changed to The Pokemon Company (recent releases of the same movies had Nintendo's logo replaced with TPC's). If we want to be accurate, pokemon should implicate the_pokemon_company instead of nintendo, otherwise I don't see the point in adding an implication to game_freak which would just turn into a tag identical to pokemon itself.

watsit said:
If we want to be accurate, pokemon should implicate the_pokemon_company instead of nintendo, otherwise I don't see the point in adding an implication to game_freak which would just turn into a tag identical to pokemon itself.

Even though all of the above is accurate, the real problem here is that game_freak has already been manually added to hundreds of posts - every single one of which is indeed pokemon - and we can't really stop people from doing that. Didn't it used to be aliased to video_games for exactly this reason?

wat8548 said:
Even though all of the above is accurate, the real problem here is that game_freak has already been manually added to hundreds of posts - every single one of which is indeed pokemon - and we can't really stop people from doing that. Didn't it used to be aliased to video_games for exactly this reason?

Too lazy to look it up, but I think it was unaliased because they have some of their own original IPs now (Tembo the Elephant or whatever it's called, etc) but I thought it was specifically not supposed to be used for Pokémon posts.

The tag implication pokemon -> game_freak (forum #386701) has been rejected by @slyroon.

faucet said:
Too lazy to look it up, but I think it was unaliased because they have some of their own original IPs now (Tembo the Elephant or whatever it's called, etc) but I thought it was specifically not supposed to be used for Pokémon posts.

They've had their own original IPs (they were making games before Pokemon, and had continued making other games on occasion since). The problem is that these games are rather forgettable (even the infamous Gear Project initiative where they tried hard to make games that could stand apart from Pokemon, to the exclusion of making the planned XY sequels or third version, never produced anything worthwhile, or Little Town Hero, which got a bit of hype but fell off the radar on release), garnering little fanfare and even less fan art that's relevant here. And as noted above, Game Freak as a company doesn't own all the Pokemon-related IP, which is managed by The Pokemon Company as a joint venture between Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures, and it's unclear exactly who owns what. So if people are going to mass tag game_freak on anything Pokemon-related without any demonstrable IP ownership on display in the image (e.g. their logo), that would be heavy mistagging and warrant invalidation (or at least a nuking, and warning people who wantonly tag it on Pokemon images in the future).