Konami Pulls Copyright Claim on Metal Gear Solid V Fan Art

[StrickenBiged]

Like biggest proection of pre-sales for the new NFS game is a proof that people is voting with their wallets? Yes, they are. They are supporting it.

I, per example, think that is quite shitty what Bungie is doing with Destiny, selling an incomplete game for 60 and then selling overpriced DLC to complete the game. What I did? Asked a friend for a copy of the game of his, then I had to return it and intend to buy a second hand copy. Didn't buy DLC either, my friend bought it and I'm gladly avoiding using it when I use his PS4.

 

Exactly. The masses are supporting pre-orders and shitty practices, which is why they aren't going to go away in the near future. People who are ignorant of the issues can vote wih their wallets just like the rest of us.

 

I agree Destiny had distasteful DLC plans, which is why I avoided it. Same goes for Arkham Knight, Evolve, and numerous other games that looked dodgy to me which I can't remember right now. But I'm just one guy amongst a few others. Most people believe the hype, pre-order without the benefit of reviews, buy crap DLC, etc, so these things aren't going to go away. 

 

Hopefully the example provided by CD Projekt Red and The Witcher 3 will make some companies take notice. Release a good game, with free DLC and excellent post-release support, and you will be rewarded with 6M copies sold in 3 weeks. 

[PleaseHoldOn]

If people actually cared about boycotting companies with bad reputation, EA would have gone bankrupt by now, but guess what? Proections says that the new NFS title will be the most sold on pre-orders than any other previous game. Same with Ubisoft, people complain, cry and curse all over the AC series milking, yet buy their new early titles on release. Batman AK is another example, people complained a shitload about day1 dlc, yet bought the game on release.

 

It's nice to make a post about this and such, but frankly, it doesn't work. People can't vote with their wallets, therefore nothing will change.

 

According to this post, there are two kinds of people in the gaming industry.  People who agree with your opinions (generally speaking) about these companies and buy the games anyways, those who "can't vote with their wallets".  Or people who agree with your opinions and don't buy the games in protest, those who "can".

 

The notion of people simply disagreeing with your opinions, or your opinions being wrong/exaggerated... never even comes into play.  SMH.

 

EDIT: Just to clarify, this is not directed at you TheYuriG.  Just at the notion that "voting with their wallets" seems to only matter if it's agreeable to the vocal minority in gaming, which frankly, are the biggest bunch of irrational babies in modern media.  I can't imagine the number of death threats being hurled about as a result of this censored fan art, I mean come on.

Edited September 4, 2015 by PleaseHoldOn

[Remilia Scarlet]

Exactly. The masses are supporting pre-orders and shitty practices, which is why they aren't going to go away in the near future. People who are ignorant of the issues can vote wih their wallets just like the rest of us.

 

I agree Destiny had distasteful DLC plans, which is why I avoided it. Same goes for Arkham Knight, Evolve, and numerous other games that looked dodgy to me which I can't remember right now. But I'm just one guy amongst a few others. Most people believe the hype, pre-order without the benefit of reviews, buy crap DLC, etc, so these things aren't going to go away. 

 

Hopefully the example provided by CD Projekt Red and The Witcher 3 will make some companies take notice. Release a good game, with free DLC and excellent post-release support, and you will be rewarded with 6M copies sold in 3 weeks.

As long as the DLC provides sufficient content, more gameplay, matches the quality of the base game and is reasonably priced, I will gladly pay for it. As I have stated in the past, companies cannot earn back the development cost based purely on pre-orders, hence the DLC. Free DLC is always welcomed, but paid DLC is not bad if it's up to snuff and the devs put effort into it. Skyrim is a shining example of this with Dragonborn. I will gladly put more money towards the developers if I feel they deserve it.

[StrickenBiged]

As long as the DLC provides sufficient content, more gameplay, matches the quality of the base game and is reasonably priced, I will gladly pay for it. As I have stated in the past, companies cannot earn back the development cost based purely on pre-orders, hence the DLC. Free DLC is always welcomed, but paid DLC is not bad if it's up to snuff and the devs put effort into it. Skyrim is a shining example of this with Dragonborn. I will gladly put more money towards the developers if I feel they deserve it.

 

Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I was bashing all DLC, just the crap ones. Like the infamous horse armour, but more recently I recall that the much touted "Batgirl" DLC got crap reviews.

 

I guess the comments made about pre-orders vis-a-vis full games could be made about Season Passes and DLC, except more strongly because you can't pull out of a Season Pass. You're buying something on trust. Lately, the AAA industry in general doesn't feel to me like it deserves my trust. There are a few developers I make exceptions for, because they haven't let me down yet.

[Purple Heart]

Ea owns Bioware which create my favourite rpg's like mass effect and dragon age

 

As much as i hate EA, their games are awesome

[Remilia Scarlet]

Yeah, I didn't mean to sound like I was bashing all DLC, just the crap ones. Like the infamous horse armour, but more recently I recall that the much touted "Batgirl" DLC got crap reviews.

 

I guess the comments made about pre-orders vis-a-vis full games could be made about Season Passes and DLC, except more strongly because you can't pull out of a Season Pass. You're buying something on trust. Lately, the AAA industry in general doesn't feel to me like it deserves my trust. There are a few developers I make exceptions for, because they haven't let me down yet.

Yeah season passes I don't buy ever, not even for Telltale. I have never been a fan of that practice. Unless I'm purchasing an LE or a CE, my price is never going above $65 for a brand new game.

[TheYuriG]

According to this post, there are two kinds of people in the gaming industry.  People who agree with your opinions (generally speaking) about these companies and buy the games anyways, those who "can't vote with their wallets".  Or people who agree with your opinions and don't buy the games in protest, those who "can".

 

The notion of people simply disagreeing with your opinions, or your opinions being wrong/exaggerated... never even comes into play.  SMH.

 

EDIT: Just to clarify, this is not directed at you TheYuriG.  Just at the notion that "voting with their wallets" seems to only matter if it's agreeable to the vocal minority in gaming, which frankly, are the biggest bunch of irrational babies in modern media.

You mean consumers, right?

Gotta disagree on the following part though, I never state my opinion as truth or fact by any matter. Constantly I'm putting it very clear that all I say is an opinion, and should be taken as such.

Ok. First and foremost, I would like to say that I will rant a lot about this game and all I say will be based on personal oppinion and you don't need to take anything as facts.

[Beyondthegrave07]

Except that Kojima is not with Konami anymore, so the proceeds don't benefit him at all. It's all going in the Konami executives' pockets. If I buy this game, I'm doing so second hand, NOT new. Konami doesn't deserve a single penny.

That's not my point. What I mean is would Kojima himself really want us to avoid playing his "masterpiece" because Konami is full of a bunch of dickbags?

But by all means, boycott any of their future games. The success of this one game won't carry them forever.

[PleaseHoldOn]

You mean consumers, right?

Gotta disagree on the following part though, I never state my opinion as truth or fact by any matter. Constantly I'm putting it very clear that all I say is an opinion, and should be taken as such.

I'm not positive you actually read my post... including the edit? Though it was in your quote. Weird.

[TheYuriG]

I'm not positive you actually read my post... including the edit? Though it was in your quote. Weird.

I did, yet used myself as an example to discuss my disagreement on what you said. Should have rephrased my reply with " I, per example, never state my opinion as truth or fact by any matter" to avoid the confusion I caused you, though.

[damon8r351]

That's not my point. What I mean is would Kojima himself really want us to avoid playing his "masterpiece" because Konami is full of a bunch of dickbags?

 

My solution to that was to buy the game secondhand, but get in contact with Kojima himself somehow and find out how much he'd get from a single sale of a new copy of MGS5, then cut him a check for that amount. That is if I knew he'd be 100% onboard with that idea.

[PleaseHoldOn]

I did, yet used myself as an example to discuss my disagreement on what you said. Should have rephrased my reply with " I, per example, never state my opinion as truth or fact by any matter" to avoid the confusion I caused you, though.

 

And I never said what you posted was anything more than your opinion... I'm not sure why that matters.  Or why the rest of my post is somehow invalidated because of that.

Edited September 4, 2015 by PleaseHoldOn

[TheYuriG]

And I never said what you posted was anything more than your opinion... I'm not sure why that matters.  I was trying to discuss your opinion.  This is a forum.  That sort of thing happens here.

Fair enough, but let's stop derailing the thread now, shall we?

[PleaseHoldOn]

Fair enough, but let's stop derailing the thread now, shall we?

 

My original critique of your post was on topic... it's this "I refuse to talk anymore because opinion" nonsense that's actually sending it off the rails.  But whatever.  I'm not sure why I post here anymore.

Edited September 4, 2015 by PleaseHoldOn

[TheYuriG]

My original critique of your post was on topic... it's this "I refuse to talk anymore because opinion" nonsense that's actually sending it off the rails.  But whatever.  I'm not sure why I post here anymore.

I'm generally open minded and I believe discussions like these are meant to be done as they may offer extra viewpoints on subjects that might be interesting for people in general, but since what we were talking about isn't the main subject of this thread, I suggested that we stopped here. I see you are still interested in taking this forward, so I'm going to PM you to try and see your points of view on the subject, as I believe that constructive criticism like yours is something that we lack greatly lately as a society in general.

[PleaseHoldOn]

I'm generally open minded and I believe discussions like these are meant to be done as they may offer extra viewpoints on subjects that might be interesting for people in general, but since what we were talking about isn't the main subject of this thread, I suggested that we stopped here. I see you are still interested in taking this forward, so I'm going to PM you to try and see your points of view on the subject, as I believe that constructive criticism like yours is something that we lack greatly lately as a society in general.

 

I don't care about any of this... if you really want to get this back on track, answer my original gosh darn reply to you instead of quoting something about "your opinions" and "how they aren't facts", that you apparently had posted two months ago.  If you don't want to get back on track, then let's just stop here.

Edited September 4, 2015 by PleaseHoldOn

[Remilia Scarlet]

That's not my point. What I mean is would Kojima himself really want us to avoid playing his "masterpiece" because Konami is full of a bunch of dickbags?

But by all means, boycott any of their future games. The success of this one game won't carry them forever.

 

I see. Thank you for clarifying.

 

My solution to that was to buy the game secondhand, but get in contact with Kojima himself somehow and find out how much he'd get from a single sale of a new copy of MGS5, then cut him a check for that amount. That is if I knew he'd be 100% onboard with that idea.

This is an excellent idea, if not entirely feasible. Konami gets nothing, and Kojima gets what he rightfully deserves, wbich is every fucking cent.

[NotAFoxAnymore]

Imagine if it's all a publicity stunt for MGS5. I mean, c'mon, nobody ever seen the original image.

Kojima retweeted the image, I doubt Kojima would be in on a publicity stunt for the company that fired him.

[Dr_Mayus]

 

I don't know the YouTuber. What's the context of the music being there? 

 

If it was background noise while he critiques/reviews the game in question, then I'd have said it's probably fair use. If it's just background music playing while he talks about unrelated things, then it's probably a breach of copyright. 

 

As an aside, and returning to your "crappy Sonic Songs" point in your first post - song covers or remixes should be ok under fair use. Just uploading a Sonic track would be a breach. Edit: to clarify - the rights holder owns the precise song they created. A cover is a new creation (in the UK at least) albeit using an existing music score. Copying the sheet music to PDF would be a breach of copyright with respect to the musical arrangement, but transposing the arrangement from the track back to sheet music would not be. It's a bit complicated, but basically copyright in a thing exists in the actual thing being subjected to copying, if that makes sense. A track is not the same thing as the sheet music which tells you how to create the song, just like the software which produces a visual image is not the same thing as the visual image produced. 

 

What we really need is a YouTuber to go to court over this sort of thing, so a precedent can be set. At the moment, both YT creators and alleged copyright holders are in the "wild west", due to most copyright laws being drafted a few decades ago.

 

SGF (who is awesome and I highly recommend him) has talked about it in one of his podcasts. It was during his "gamenights" where he streams crappy games from the Ouya, CDI, Old Dos games and in one case Ride to Hell. It was Ride to Hell that flagged him and despite him running a 2 hour  plus stream (where he plays 4 or 5 different games) it flagged the whole thing because of music in Ride To Hell. So whomever was in charge of that music gets the copyrights for everything (despite RTH only being maybe 10% of the stream).

 

Also on the point of using copyrights (I remembered this on my way to work ). I used to work for Sony, I cleared it with my boss that I was going to spend my weekends leading up to Christmas demoing in EB Games all the newest titles. I then decided to have one of the artists at PS3Trophies.com photoshop me some posters to get interest going for my demos. Now these were free demos that were used to show off Playstation product and I worked for Playstation. When I sent my boss the Poster she had made me (I had already had them printed and put up in stores) I was told to take them all down because they used copyrighted characters and they hadn't been cleared to be used in that way. This is the poster

 

 

So if you think about it, this guy (whether he was making money off it or not) was using a copyrighted character of Konami's and posting it all over Twitter. This is no different than my story because both of us were just trying to do good for the company but the company didn't want us to use their characters in that way. If they let 1 person get away with it then they have to let everyone get away with it and not everyone will have the intentions of me or this guy.

[StrickenBiged]

SGF (who is awesome and I highly recommend him) has talked about it in one of his podcasts. It was during his "gamenights" where he streams crappy games from the Ouya, CDI, Old Dos games and in one case Ride to Hell. It was Ride to Hell that flagged him and despite him running a 2 hour  plus stream (where he plays 4 or 5 different games) it flagged the whole thing because of music in Ride To Hell. So whomever was in charge of that music gets the copyrights for everything (despite RTH only being maybe 10% of the stream).

 

Also on the point of using copyrights (I remembered this on my way to work ). I used to work for Sony, I cleared it with my boss that I was going to spend my weekends leading up to Christmas demoing in EB Games all the newest titles. I then decided to have one of the artists at PS3Trophies.com photoshop me some posters to get interest going for my demos. Now these were free demos that were used to show off Playstation product and I worked for Playstation. When I sent my boss the Poster she had made me (I had already had them printed and put up in stores) I was told to take them all down because they used copyrighted characters and they hadn't been cleared to be used in that way. This is the poster

 

 

So if you think about it, this guy (whether he was making money off it or not) was using a copyrighted character of Konami's and posting it all over Twitter. This is no different than my story because both of us were just trying to do good for the company but the company didn't want us to use their characters in that way. If they let 1 person get away with it then they have to let everyone get away with it and not everyone will have the intentions of me or this guy.

The big difference between you and the other guy is that your image uses artwork that has been created by someone else. That image of Nathan Drake was not created by your friend, it was cut and paste from an existing image. Same goes for the the box art images used. That is a breach of copyright because you are manipulating an existing image.

The fan art guy (I assume) drew the image from scratch, so he owns the copyright in the image, albeit the image is of an existing character, which may or may not be trademarked. As long as he does not use it for commercial purposes, Konami shouldn't be able to touch it.

[Dr_Mayus]

The big difference between you and the other guy is that your image uses artwork that has been created by someone else. That image of Nathan Drake was not created by your friend, it was cut and paste from an existing image. Same goes for the the box art images used. That is a breach of copyright because you are manipulating an existing image.

The fan art guy (I assume) drew the image from scratch, so he owns the copyright in the image, albeit the image is of an existing character, which may or may not be trademarked. As long as he does not use it for commercial purposes, Konami shouldn't be able to touch it.

But see that is going into really grey area. You can also make the argument then that reviewers or Let's Players are manipulating copyrighted stuff but are covered under Fair Use (they are making money off of manipulating their stuff, I was using the images to make money for the owners of said images...for a company I worked for).

 

Now as for the guy creating fan art, like I said it is grey area. He isn't legally wrong but Komani decided to stop it because they could. Most companies wouldn't have bothered with it (because realistically it isn't hurting anything) but Konami decided to be a dick about it and get it removed. I was never arguing that Konami was correct in doing what they did, only that it was their right to protect their property.

 

Once again, if people are actually that offended by what Konami did then DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCT but in the end, who really cares. Every successful business (from Wal-Mart to Valve) thinks of their customers as nothing but an open wallet. I don't really understand why people get up in such arms over a company and then post things like "they only think about the money" Well no shit they do...they are a business, businesses stay open because they make enough money to stay open.

 

At the end of the day did they make a product you enjoy? Yes? then buy it.  If a piece of Fan Art being removed off of twitter is really a reason not to enjoy a game...well your priorities are kind of messed up because that really isn't anything to worry about. Considering most companies (including those Apple products we are using) use sub-human conditions where the best thing those companies did for the labourers is install a net so they can't kill themselves, I think Twitter losing one piece of art is going to stop the world.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357833/Apple-responds-suicides-Chinese-Foxconn-factory-hanging-nets.html

[Arkthur]

Oh Konami I'm gonna miss you. 

 

I support the thought that, being a fan-art and since the author was making no money from it, this is stupid. I'm glad Kojima is out of that company, now I can keep buying his games without giving the money to greedy idiots.

[StrickenBiged]

But see that is going into really grey area. You can also make the argument then that reviewers or Let's Players are manipulating copyrighted stuff but are covered under Fair Use (they are making money off of manipulating their stuff, I was using the images to make money for the owners of said images...for a company I worked for).

 

Now as for the guy creating fan art, like I said it is grey area. He isn't legally wrong but Komani decided to stop it because they could. Most companies wouldn't have bothered with it (because realistically it isn't hurting anything) but Konami decided to be a dick about it and get it removed. I was never arguing that Konami was correct in doing what they did, only that it was their right to protect their property.

 

Yeah, let's players are the big grey area of the moment. The Copyrighted stuff in a game is the game's software code and visual assets, not the images produced on the screen AFAIK, but I could be wrong. Like I said, we need a court case to decide this question, and the related question of whether the interactive nature of playing the game makes the gameplay recording the player's original product or not.

 

When it comes to reviewers, etc, I would argue that the law is clearer and their content clearly comes under fair use because it is a critique of the game and publishers do not have the right to monetise those videos or have them taken down.

 

The guy creating fan art is less of a grey area than you suggest. Anyone can go and draw a picture of Mickey Mouse and not get into any trouble whatsoever with copyright law. This is because copyright exists in every work individually and belongs to the creator of the work - my crude drawing of Mickey Mouse has copyright and belongs to me not Disney. You can't get in trouble, in the UK at least, for just drawing an image even if it is of a recognisable character. 

 

The difficulty comes - and where I think you are possibly confusing two different IP rights - when you try and monetise that crude Mickey Mouse drawing, because it is very likely that Disney (or their lawyers) had the foresight to trademark depictions of that character. Trademarking exists so that an imitation of an existing mark cannot be used for commercial purposes. If Konami have trademarked depictions of Solid Snake then they have the right to block attempts to use those depictions when used for commercial gain, e.g. if the artist was using the image to sell his work or another product. My point in this thread is that Konami do not have the right to takedown an image that is not being used for commercial purposes. 

 

But, despite not having the right, it appears that Twitter has given them the power to flag images for copyright violations. It appears to be the case here that Konami chose to flag an image as a copyright violation without any actual copyright violation or subsequent right to do so, i.e. they abused the ease with which the Twitter takedown system works to have the image removed regardless of the fact there was no breach of copyright - the artist created the image, not Konami or their employees - and subsequent lack of a legal right to do so. So I disagree with you that they had a right to do so - they did not unless they produced the actual image that was the subject of the takedown which, again, it appears they did not. 

 

Therefore, #FucKonami.