DDLC Developer doesn't like Gaia's reference items... At all

[Anoesistic]

huvf

He should've gone about it in a different way, starting a witch hunt on twitter was a very unprofessional and overall bad move.

what about people outside of gaia making art prints and fanmerch and selling that for real money?

It's supposedly against their rules on their site however I haven't seen him start anything like this for anyone else?

I get how he feels and it's fair, however why is -this- the way he's chosen to go about the situation? It's real shitty.

Reading his IP makes me confused regarding fanwork. He is okay with fanwork but under very specific situations.

I have the IP archived on Wayback Machine. There is an archive from December, I haven’t looked at it for differences. The most recent one was updated January Feb 24 2018.

His IP stipulates for tangible (ie hardcopy items such as plush toys or art or hardcopy fanfic) items:
- Limited, hard copy items that are physically sold at conventions is fine
- Implied: no tangible unlimited items at conventions can be sold

Tangible but digitally sold:
- No sales of tangible fanwork through places such as redbubble and selling it online
- Implied: no digital sales of tangible fanwork

What I took back is even if you have a limited set of prints leftover from conventions you can’t sell them online.

For digital items:
- Unstated but implied no digital sales of fanwork

View tangible but digitally sold fanwork. He specifies that the tangible fanwork must be sold locally.


Under the assumed statement of no digital sales, implied is limited quantities are also a no-go. I’m curious if this means no profit whatsoever for digital sales is covered.

This affects any artist/crafter/writer who are commissioned to create a digital or tangible item, even if the item is a limited quantity.

I don’t see him going after LP players such as game grumps whose LPs bring in money from advertising and self promotion to sell their other media or tangible items. I haven’t heard word of him going after Patreon Creators who leverage DDLC fanwork to draw in patrons and provide them a digital high-res copy of the image.

Both count as fanwork(as they are derived from the original IP), are digital and earn profit.

I’ll admit - I only read his IP when people mentioned he has a clause for fanwork. I had limited exposure to DDLC and missed the reference. Despite his negative posting towards Just Me, which references instead of being a direct fanwork, I was unable to find (through my cursory search) him going after the two categories of fanwork produced by LPs and PatreonI mentioned above.


If anything else this reminds me of Ann Rice’s “No fanfic” wank.


(Wow I’m so sorry I didn’t expect this to be so long.)

EDIT:

I stated Jan for last update. Last update was actually 24 February 2018.

Here is the WayBack Machine Archive

Edit 2:

Went back and checked. December does not have this statement:

"Fan work must be somehow related to the DDLC universe – you may not use Team Salvato IPs for projects that are not considered DDLC derivatives (eg. using a DDLC character to represent a website or product that isn’t itself a DDLC derivative)."

Specifically stated: "Businesses or companies interested in producing DDLC fan work for sale by any means other than described above should contact us for licensing or permission."

[estupe]

Dessert Theater

estupe

ty megg for reposting mrgreen
i think she brings up valid points, the must be crazy item is kind of in a different category because it wasn't a widely recognized reference, also i believe it was released in a RIG rather than directly and it could be that that actually interferes with parody practice which is worth talking about

it is almost a direct copy though


and you can't make the same argument that it's an unoriginal, generic item that could've referenced anything, i think it's pretty clear it was sourced from this artists' work
if it were recolored in the slushy scheme it would be almost "canon" colors

I'll agree it's a way too close, but it's not really a direct copy.

The hair's longer and in a different style, the first arms don't really match any of her sprites/CG, but I'm going to guess it's supposed to mimic a pose associated with yandere characters (see spoiler) The text bubble, glitch cutter, second set of arms, and the background (plus it's hidden pose) all reference other things from the game, but have been changed.

Sprite (Most likely inspiration for the Uniform Happy pose

What was added: knife and blood

CG (Background and it's hidden pose spoilers btw)

Background (Secret Pose) might be disturbing for some)

Still references the Easter egg and how the game messes with you, but it doesn't look like the actual scene.

Parent Pose/Text Bubble

Changed to Just Me and also I Love You if used with the glitch cutter

More Sprites (Glitch Cutter, Happy Face, and Companion more spoilers)

Seems nitpick-y but the distortion is less chaotic compared to the source material, also no parts where the colors where inversed.

Yandere Pose I mentioned above. (Uniform Obsessed)


Also I think the shirt has no real ties to the game except for reiterating Just Me

i agree with you, i think the item might make enough significant changes to work within parody law
BUT i do think the gaia item is still drawing it's popularity from the source material; very few people in the original CSU thread didn't realize where the item was sourced from


i was speaking of "must be crazy" though, when i said an item was almost a direct copy

[2sammygate]

Shallotte

MingSao

Oh. This is a thing that's happening again.

I'm just going to hide in Guides & Resources or Lake Kindred when the trolls attack. I'm getting too old for this s**t. emotion_donotwant

Maybe there will be a silver lining to it though. The controversy might bring in a lot more users that didn't know Gaia existed and found out though the controversy.

the inverse, too. now more people know about the game! domokun stargate

[Michelle Chiba]

Gosh... this is reminds me of Queen of Dorks copyright over the Beneto Bunny...

How many items are copyright?

stare you know Kiki is Hello Kitty parody?!

[Phanna]

Sand Dancer Shaka

Phanna

Sand Dancer Shaka

aaah but it doesn't need to compete in the same media to infringe. Sadly, even smaller businesses than Gaia have gotten in trouble for transformative works.

Apparently, objects made out of love for the series are treated with disdain but parody items that insult the franchise is a-ok. That's law for you sad

Yeah, doesn't help that I'm not a lawyer...and my last brush with a law course was a 6 week seminar half a lifetime ago circa year 2000. I knowing me, I barely paid attention then. emotion_facepalm

But yeah, I don't see this being an issue ever for Gaia. I'm sure they know exactly what they are doing when they make items like this to cover themselves legally.

I'm not either! So I could be very wrong haha

I'd like to think Gaia is covered legally :S

Yeah, and Gaia has already made a plethora of near misses to other IPs and nothing drastic has happened yet. If Gaia is in trouble over this, they just go in, tweak colors a bit more and instantly no longer a close copy ( though it's most likely far enough from original to pass already)

[Shannon-Jeva]

hot take: it's almost like he's upset because his character design for his game, which he released for free, was essentially stolen and being sold for actual money..

Like, okay, I get that Gaia is likely protected under parody laws or whatever, but morally it just... feels wrong to me?

I've personally taken issue to the pokemon items that are very close to the original (like the nebby and jiggly puff items..) (as a side note, pokemon is the easiest for me to pick up reference to; i know there's probably countless other items that are also very close to their originals that i don't pick up on)

Dan Salvato made DDLC and released it for free as a way to introduce people to visual novels (while also making fun of a lot of VN tropes). He most certainly could have made a good chunk selling the game, and chose not to. So maybe his issue is that Gaia made an item that almost nearly replicates one of his character designs and making money off of it.

Idk, I have really strong feelings on this supporting Dan and him calling out Gaia.

I noticed in the thread, too, that someone said he's getting people to attack and hate gaia -- i don't think this is true at all. He called them out publicly. There's been a lot of meme-y replies (and DDLC on twitter is really meme-y, from what I've seen), probably because people don't think this is right or it doesn't sit well with them.

Just my 2 cents. sweatdrop

[heartsighs]

eugh not this drama again. my worthless opinion is under the cut

I'm surprised at all the support people in this thread are giving gaia. When the item was released, directly into the cash shop, tons of people instantly recognized it as this character from DDLC. Even if it is a trope character, the item is clearly meant to be the character from the game. My issue with it is that gaia could have put it in a RIG or something, so that no one is DIRECTLY buying it from the CS. It's one thing to steal/mimic a character and not intentionally/directly profit off of it, and another to charge, what, $7 for it?

I think there are clearly two mindsets here. People who, if this kind of thing was done to something they created, would see it as a huge ego boost that people are willing to buy their work because they love it so much. The other side are people who would claim it is clearly stealing and be upset about the profits not going to them, or just someone else profiting off their creation.

[Vicious Dreams]

I just thought I’d throw these items out there:



These are VERY old Gaia items. Food for thought.

[Shannon-Jeva]

Vicious Dreams

I just thought I’d throw these items out there:



These are VERY old Gaia items. Food for thought.

I get that the item can easily be taken as a "generic anime girl" or whatever, but it's the other poses that make it more specific (especially the "JUST ME" pose) to DDLC.

Those items are old yes, and can probably be used in a cosplay for a character from DDLC. But they're very generic.

[pukadon]

Luna ******** it i'm just gonna say it... .. I really wonder how much of this could have been avoided if gaia just.... . . contacted the artists they got content/references/etc from beforehand. and furthermore worked out some kind of agreement, whether it was credit, commission, or a cut of the profits? an established dialogue is key here and then it's not "whoops surprise we paid tribute to your idea but also used it to boost our own profits", which, when they do reference items, they are legit banking on people to spend money BECAUSE of the reference and anyone who is arguing that this DDLC item is totally different because xyz minor details is missing the point entirely. it's very clear looking through the gcd cash shop update threads of the day that people were buying it because. of. the. very. clear. reference.

when you're an artist your bread & butter is your concepts + the execution so i really think it should be a case of artists supporting artists[/spo

oflm0zxx:0="Luna ******** it i'm just gonna say it... .. I really wonder how much of this could have been avoided if gaia just.... . . contacted the artists they got content/references/etc from beforehand. and furthermore worked out some kind of agreement, whether it was credit, commission, or a cut of the profits? an established dialogue is key here and then it's not "whoops surprise we paid tribute to your idea but also used it to boost our own profits", which, when they do reference items, they are legit banking on people to spend money BECAUSE of the reference and anyone who is arguing that this DDLC item is totally different because xyz minor details is missing the point entirely. it's very clear looking through the gcd cash shop update threads of the day that people were buying it because. of. the. very. clear. reference.

when you're an artist your bread & butter is your concepts + the execution so i really think it should be a case of artists supporting artists[/spoiler]

i agree with you there, tbh.
it's one thing if it's a major money-making IP from a huge company, they're not gonna be losing out on much (though some people still aren't comfortable with it and that's understandable). but an indie game (a free one even), yeah, i can see where that gets dicey and it would've been better to check first.
even though i don't think he handled it very professionally at all, i don't think it was wrong of him to be concerned/upset by it, all things considered.

it's just a mess and i hope things can get resolved relatively cleanly. i feel like the best resolution at this point would be to either
1. give him a cut of what profit was made selling the original and recolors that did come out
2. not make any more recolors of the item
3. not re-release the ones that we do have for cash so no more money gets made off of them
4. putting proper credit to him for the character on the items (and any subsequent releases)
5. some combination of the above???

[Calelith]

Shannon-Jeva

Those items are old yes, and can probably be used in a cosplay for a character from DDLC. But they're very generic.

"Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

So is the design of the main character of DDLC.

"Ph’nglui mglw’nfh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn."

[Adnama Lavode]

Man, people will defend Gaia's ability to gank character designs and profit off them to their deaths. If they're legally able to by some parody loophole, then yeah, it's legal, but it's still shitty from an artist's perspective, and a baseline moral perspective. And with this specific situation where the creator of the character that was stolen made the game for free just makes it extra lame that Gaia's making money off the guy's work/fame of the game. I feel like Gaia has survived off riding the waves of fame created by other people, to be honest.

I see a lot of people saying the character is generic too, and that it can be any anime girl. Well, yeah. That's part of the point of the game. But the situation in which the item was made, the background, the text and the character itself combined makes the character obvious and where it came from obvious.

I imagine the reason Gaia hasn't been reamed by someone for doing this yet is because the only ones to bother speaking up about it are people that don't have enough money to fight Gaia over it anyway. It'd be interesting to see what Gaia does if a company with decent financial backing has a problem with an item they've "parodied." I can imagine the item rollback now; all the disgruntled fans/buyers of the item being mad because they don't understand consequences of IP theft. lol

[Chibi Halo]

Anoesistic

huvf

He should've gone about it in a different way, starting a witch hunt on twitter was a very unprofessional and overall bad move.

what about people outside of gaia making art prints and fanmerch and selling that for real money?

It's supposedly against their rules on their site however I haven't seen him start anything like this for anyone else?

I get how he feels and it's fair, however why is -this- the way he's chosen to go about the situation? It's real shitty.

Reading his IP makes me confused regarding fanwork. He is okay with fanwork but under very specific situations.

I have the IP archived on Wayback Machine. There is an archive from December, I haven’t looked at it for differences. The most recent one was updated January Feb 24 2018.

His IP stipulates for tangible (ie hardcopy items such as plush toys or art or hardcopy fanfic) items:
- Limited, hard copy items that are physically sold at conventions is fine
- Implied: no tangible unlimited items at conventions can be sold

Tangible but digitally sold:
- No sales of tangible fanwork through places such as redbubble and selling it online
- Implied: no digital sales of tangible fanwork

What I took back is even if you have a limited set of prints leftover from conventions you can’t sell them online.

For digital items:
- Unstated but implied no digital sales of fanwork

View tangible but digitally sold fanwork. He specifies that the tangible fanwork must be sold locally.


Under the assumed statement of no digital sales, implied is limited quantities are also a no-go. I’m curious if this means no profit whatsoever for digital sales is covered.

This affects any artist/crafter/writer who are commissioned to create a digital or tangible item, even if the item is a limited quantity.

I don’t see him going after LP players such as game grumps whose LPs bring in money from advertising and self promotion to sell their other media or tangible items. I haven’t heard word of him going after Patreon Creators who leverage DDLC fanwork to draw in patrons and provide them a digital high-res copy of the image.

Both count as fanwork(as they are derived from the original IP), are digital and earn profit.

I’ll admit - I only read his IP when people mentioned he has a clause for fanwork. I had limited exposure to DDLC and missed the reference. Despite his negative posting towards Just Me, which references instead of being a direct fanwork, I was unable to find (through my cursory search) him going after the two categories of fanwork produced by LPs and PatreonI mentioned above.


If anything else this reminds me of Ann Rice’s “No fanfic” wank.


(Wow I’m so sorry I didn’t expect this to be so long.)

EDIT:

I stated Jan for last update. Last update was actually 24 February 2018.

Here is the WayBack Machine Archive

Edit 2:

Went back and checked. December does not have this statement:

"Fan work must be somehow related to the DDLC universe – you may not use Team Salvato IPs for projects that are not considered DDLC derivatives (eg. using a DDLC character to represent a website or product that isn’t itself a DDLC derivative)."

Specifically stated: "Businesses or companies interested in producing DDLC fan work for sale by any means other than described above should contact us for licensing or permission."

Why do I get the feeling he changed it after he learned about the items on Gaia. Also, I’m beginning to wonder if he actually has a formal copyright on the individual characters in the game. I wonder that because of the situation my twenty year old niece finds herself in. She’s a very decent mixed media artist and while that isn’t her major at Florida State she has had friends there who do indie music not to sell ask her to design album art for them. She’s done a few pieces in her spare time and has shared the results on places like Instagram. My sister before one of her last weekend visits to see her wondered what she could do to protect her work and be compensated should her friends decide to offer their music for sale either physically or online.

A lot of young artists who do commissions for people who write, make films, or compose music don’t realize that their work should be protected in the event the work it’s connected to should ever be sold plus state who can actually use that artwork (the person who commissioned the piece). On top of that a lot of artists think once they create an original character or piece of artwork it’s instantly copyrighted. While in essence that is true it’s not that simple. Just creating a piece or a character isn’t enough. To really protect oneself they need to register a formal copyright for their works. Yes, in some instances a free Creative Commins copyright is enough if the piece is just for show on a site like Deviant Art or other such online art sites. If most people won’t recognize your art if they saw it then you likely don’t need a formal copyright. However, if you’re Game Freak, o_8, or Jenzee and your artwork is used in successful for profit video games then you’re going to want that formal copyright because a broader range of people will look at your work online on a site you don’t run and say “That’s from X”. So really if someone is going to take direct rips from your indie game and create a product to sell for money then you better formally copyright every last character and the entire game in question. Because once your game gets traction and you start to get thousands of followers online or the artwork or subject matter is unique to just you then you should formally copyright every piece of art you create (my niece on Instagram or Twitter has ten thousand followers). So if he has no formal copyright on anything related to the game and its characters all he’s entitled to is the profits on the sale of the item (Price x the quantity sold for each version) and nothing more. At that point before he can even get money from anyone selling anything on any place he says no way he must formally copyright everything related to that game.

So yeah, if there’s no formal copyright there’s not much he can do outside of talk to Lanzer and Bluecow until he gets one. And you know I would not be surprised if a lot indie game makers working alone on a free game don’t file formal copyrights because they’re not familiar with formal copyright laws.

(Source)

[Anoesistic]

Chibi Halo

Why do I get the feeling he changed it after he learned about the items on Gaia. Also, I’m beginning to wonder if he actually has a formal copyright on the individual characters in the game. I wonder that because of the situation my twenty year old niece finds herself in. She’s a very decent mixed media artist and while that isn’t her major at Florida State she has had friends there who do indie music not to sell ask her to design album art for them. She’s done a few pieces in her spare time and has shared the results on places like Instagram. My sister before one of her last weekend visits to see her wondered what she could do to protect her work and be compensated should her friends decide to offer their music for sale either physically or online.

A lot of young artists who do commissions for people who write, make films, or compose music don’t realize that their work should be protected in the event the work it’s connected to should ever be sold plus state who can actually use that artwork (the person who commissioned the piece). On top of that a lot of artists think once they create an original character or piece of artwork it’s instantly copyrighted. While in essence that is true it’s not that simple. Just creating a piece or a character isn’t enough. To really protect oneself they need to register a formal copyright for their works. Yes, in some instances a free Creative Commins copyright is enough if the piece is just for show on a site like Deviant Art or other such online art sites. If most people won’t recognize your art if they saw it then you likely don’t need a formal copyright. However, if you’re Game Freak, o_8, or Jenzee and your artwork is used in successful for profit video games then you’re going to want that formal copyright because a broader range of people will look at your work online on a site you don’t run and say “That’s from X”. So really if someone is going to take direct rips from your indie game and create a product to sell for money then you better formally copyright every last character and the entire game in question. Because once your game gets traction and you start to get thousands of followers online or the artwork or subject matter is unique to just you then you should formally copyright every piece of art you create (my niece on Instagram or Twitter has ten thousand followers). So if he has no formal copyright on anything related to the game and its characters all he’s entitled to is the profits on the sale of the item (Price x the quantity sold for each version) and nothing more. At that point before he can even get money from anyone selling anything on any place he says no way he must formally copyright everything related to that game.

So yeah, if there’s no formal copyright there’s not much he can do outside of talk to Lanzer and Bluecow until he gets one. And you know I would not be surprised if a lot indie game makers working alone on a free game don’t file formal copyrights because they’re not familiar with formal copyright laws.

(Source)

He might have, but the part I quoted was included in their January revision (updated Jan 23). Just me came out on 5/2/2018. However, some aspects of the document might have been changed after on 24/02/2018. I archived on 24/02/2018 (Last updated Jan 23) and 25/02/2018 (last updated Feb 24) as a just in case he revised it. Again, I haven't had time to look through and see what's different yet.

It'd be interesting to see if he has filed a copyright and what date he filed if that's the situation.

I hope your niece figures this out as well. I had a similar situation myself, where a friend's band paid me $10 for a quick doodle (and said they'd only print 30 shirts) before they kept selling shirts and albums with my design since the design took off in their fanbase. Couldn't do anything about it sadly.

[Jinkx Monsoon]

👽☆☮ ☭

 

Who cares?? There are lots of key differences between Gaia's design and DDLC's design. The hair for one, is very different. And the uniform is SUPER generic and looks like so many other anime uniforms. You can't design a generic as ******** anime school girl and then get upset when someone makes a similar design.
I mean, it's shitty when Gaia makes designs based on free stuff (homestuck, DDLC, probs other stuff) and cashes in on it, but like, there are still key differences between Gaia's interpretation and the characters design. Not to mention, like I said before, it's super generic.

 
 

☭☮ ☆👽