Recently, former Nintendo employees Kit and Krysta revealed in their podcast that the compound word "Nindies" (Nintendo independent games) that Nintendo vigorously promoted around 2015 was completely abandoned by the company just a few years later. The reason behind this was not an adjustment in market strategy, but purely legal and brand protection considerations.
Nintendo has been actively cooperating with independent developers since its early years, and significantly increased its support around 2015, attracting a large number of independent games to its platform. The word "Nindies" came into being and became a symbol of publicity at the time.
According to the two people, the term was originally coined by Nintendo's "Developer Relations and Promotion Team" and was once widely accepted and used both inside and outside the company. The team not only designed exclusive logos, T-shirts and other peripheral products for it, but also used it as a core concept to promote independent game cooperation. However, the popular abbreviation was eventually stopped by the company's legal department.
Krysta explained in the podcast: "You can't do that because you shouldn't combine brand words like this." She used "Wiimote" as an example, pointing out that Nintendo officially insists on using the full name of "Wii Remote." The core rationale of the legal department is that splitting the "Nintendo" brand name and combining it with other words will "dilute the brand", making it difficult for the company to defend the integrity and exclusive rights of its brand in possible future legal disputes.
Although the team leader who proposed the idea tried to challenge the decision of the legal department, he ultimately failed to change the result. Kit admitted on the show: "You can't beat this."