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

[Lady Saxophone]

bug toots

Think of it this way, how would you feel if someone pulled your "original" ideas and made money off of them before you/at all? After you decided to make the game/art/etc free?

Personally, I would be fine with it so long as the person was making money off of it in a method which they have created
(I.e. selling fanart) - The person put their hard work into making the art and they are not trying to sell it in competition to my game, so i would take it as a form of admiration for my work and a form of free advertising. If I wanted to make money, I could easily do so by selling my own official merch.
However, if the person was taking my official art and using that image plastered on banners or t-shirts or whatever, I woukd not be okay with that because they do not own that art.

I'm not saying this to defend Gaia.
I'm saying this as someone who is an artist but is also a business major.
Call me an anomaly or someone outside of the norm, but that is my personal viewpoint.

[Fossil Tape]

reference items, while shitty, boring, and uninspired, have always existed on gaia. like, yeah, it could be a basic yandere thing but the "just me" and the background thing make it VERY OBVIOUS what it's a copy of.

but gaia will continue to do it anyways because no one's sued them yet


and honestly? some of the usermade ones come extremely close to copyright infringement

[Luna Proudfoot]

I'm really interested to see where this goes, particularly a response from gaia staff

not looking forward to potential influx of trolls
HOWEVER reading people that don't use gaia try and interpret the site is downright hilarious, "gaia coins" PLEASE


edit;; i gotta say reading this twitter thread, it's definitely got some offsite traction and the pressure is on so this could create a significant precedent versus past stoled/copied/ ""parodied"" scandals
good points in here about what is and isn't considered bad taste in terms of referencing other creators hard work

[estupe]

i mean.......
i've been on this site for years and i'm familiar with gaia's parody habits, probably unlike this dev, but i would still be totally pissed if i worked that hard on a project i believed in, made it FREE to play, and then some website like gaia swooped in to profit off of it
i'd probably b***h about it on twitter too, knowing there was no legal standing there


and i don't understand the point many of y'all are trying to make about it being a generic character and that somehow invalidating his response. like yeah it definitely is generic, but it's recognizable and the item sold largely because of the reference. it didn't sell because it was a yandere item we've seen a thousand times, it sold because it was a DDLC reference item

[Shallotte]

I'd like to say one thing to everyone here saying that Copyright can't be 'defended'. Yes. It can.

The art industry is a very gray and loosely regulated area(which sucks for us artists most of the time); but what most people are misinformed or don't know about; is that Art can be legally defended if you plagiarize and publicly claim it as your own or sell the piece for money.

There is a misconception that you can't sue or have legal rights If you post something on the internet or publicly- That also isn't true. Every artist is protected by copyright. The literal only barrier is whether or not the infringement is bad enough that you are willing to pay thousands of dollars legal fees to defend yourself.

What happens, is that the Law will not sue or penalize every single person on the internet that Traces, reposts your work or sells t-shirts. And most artists will not pursue legal action against every person that traces, reposts their work or sells t-shirts either- But thats not because they CAN'T LEGALLY do it. But really because theres way too many people on the internet; you can't sue everyone for small infractions that cost more money in legal fees than its worth.

However; the most common way for an artist or company to pull off successful legal action for art- is through plagiarism via companies or other artists who steal work.

If a company sells a piece of art that's too close to the original and claims it as their own and makes money; for an artist with enough money- that is an easy lawsuit. For an artist without money- Not so easy.

But it's a lot easier to sue another artist for stealing your work; if they steal a design and you have proof that the original is yours; you've got it. And if they were selling the designs for money or pitched them to companies- you are entitled in many cases to a settlement.

Yuumei(a famous deviant artist) is a great example of this. A girl did something similar that gaia did, but slightly worse. A girl stole Yuumei's concept, changed the design a little bit, same pose and changed the hair and kept the poem on the piece, renamed it and colored it different- and boom! She submitted it to an art contest where she won a fancy scholarship to a good school and prize money.

Heres the article(warning: artistic Nudity and Gore)

Long story short- Yummei eventually got through to the contest people; and the girls prizes were completely revoked and the prize money confiscated. Which as an artist, is about as bad as being taken to court and being sued. That girl is basically blacklisted from the industry forever- So yummei didn't end up taking her to court. The punishment she got was bad enough already and the girl didn't end up getting any money so taking her to court would have been both overkill and of no benefit. Yuumei just let her go after that. And that is one of many examples.

In summary; if the DDLC gaia item is too close to Monika within the law(and looking at the promo image; it very well probably is); then YES. The creator can sue. The question is really if he wants to endure thousands of dollars of legal fees to defend his copyright, for a game he put out for free(and hasn't really made all that much money off of) or not. That's literally the only thing.

Gaia has literally only gotten away with most indie reference/japanese anime items because they either know that the copyright holders won't bother suing, or the changes they've made have been sufficient enough for the law to allow it. But if Gaia keeps pushing their luck like this; eventually they will tread on the wrong persons shoes and end up in a big suit which might end with the closure of this website.

Doki Doki Literature club is not an 'Idea'. Which people in here are using as an argument. Once something is recorded, posted, drawn, written or taken a photo of- it becomes a 'tangible medium'. Doki Doki Lititure club is a 'Tangible medium'. Meaning, it's protected by copyright and can be legally defended as a property by the copyright holder.

The staff have to start being more careful. This is one thing I can't defend them for. If they are going to release reference items, they need to do it with the same amount of respect they've shown to Undertale.

[dreamsk]

Fossil Tape

and honestly? some of the usermade ones come extremely close to copyright infringement

I think Gaia recently in the past few weeks changed their policy on user made reference items.

[cloudseas]

bug toots

Think of it this way, how would you feel if someone pulled your "original" ideas and made money off of them before you/at all? After you decided to make the game/art/etc free?

Butting into this conversation to offer a coder's point of view ("Sorry, excuse me, coming through, hope you don't mind."), I don't think the guy should have ever made the game free in the first place. Yes, it was a nice thing to do. He also probably put in a lot of time and effort to making the art and the story, but I can bet that he spent just as much time, if not more, into the actual coding of the game.

Look, coding's hard. Even to implement that you'd think should be relatively simple, there can be interactions with other lines of code that you didn't think would even be affected, and then you have to fix those interactions. This is why coders get paid as much as they do, because coding's hard and it takes a lot of work. If he was the sole developer of/creative force behind the game, he's sending a signal that he doesn't value the time and effort put into making the game if he makes it free. Sure it's a nice thing to do, but there is a very good reason why artists are advised to set fair (read: not dirt cheap) prices for their commissions. Even if they think their work is crap, they took a lot of time to make it and that time is worth something.

If people are buying fanart of his game and his characters, then I think it's pretty clear that people put value on it and that it's a game that will sell.

Also the only creative work I make is writing, so I'd be delighted if people made art/fanwork of any fics I wrote. If people were to be selling that fanwork, if it was a work that I was planning to make money off of, I might talk to them about it. If it was something that I made for free, then what's the point? Honestly, I would be happy that these people were getting recognition (in the form of cash) for the effort that they put into it. Hey, maybe I'd tip them myself if they had a tip jar lying around anywhere.

All that being said, I really do hope that the guy talks to lanzer and the people at gaia about this instead of just trying to build up outrage among his fans/followers. This is something that has happened in the past, and satisfactory agreements have been reached. There's no indication that an agreement can't be reached in this case either.

[Shallotte]

cloudseas

Butting into this conversation to offer a coder's point of view ("Sorry, excuse me, coming through, hope you don't mind."), I don't think the guy should have ever made the game free in the first place. Yes, it was a nice thing to do. He also probably put in a lot of time and effort to making the art and the story, but I can bet that he spent just as much time, if not more, into the actual coding of the game.

Actually, I'm quite certain he made this game in Tyrano Builder. So I don't think the coding was difficult at all until the glitchy parts of the game where custom coding was required. But visual novels are extremely easy to make in tyrano builder; outside of Variables- you literally just click and drag windows into a hierarchy tree and branching paths and upload the art and writing into the boxes provided. Even the avatar animations are done that way.

Better yet; Tyranobuilder is the only Visual novel simulator that allows games to be uploaded without having to pay a percentage of earnings to the source company.

I own tyranobuilder- and I recognized the dialogue box style right away tbh.

[Verdure]

Regardless of how you feel about the issue, it's still unprofessional to incite a Twitter riot. neutral The issue should've been brought up with Gaia in writing, then maybe a lawyer if the situation calls for it.

To answer a previous question, if any of my works were parodied I wouldn't be upset. I like Weird Al and other artists that sample and do fan art that sells. They make money off of other people's work non maliciously. Then again, I don't work for free, so the whole "make money where I didn't" thing wouldn't apply.

Disclaimer: I am not a copyright lawyer (are any of us? lel) I specialize in bird law. cool

[cloudseas]

Shallotte

cloudseas

Butting into this conversation to offer a coder's point of view ("Sorry, excuse me, coming through, hope you don't mind."), I don't think the guy should have ever made the game free in the first place. Yes, it was a nice thing to do. He also probably put in a lot of time and effort to making the art and the story, but I can bet that he spent just as much time, if not more, into the actual coding of the game.

Actually, I'm quite certain he made this game in Tyrano Builder. So I don't think the coding was difficult at all until the glitchy parts of the game where custom coding was required. But visual novels are extremely easy to make in tyrano builder; outside of Variables- you literally just click and drag windows into a hierarchy tree and branching paths and upload the art and writing into the boxes provided. Even the avatar animations are done that way.

I mean, even with a game builder, there might have been custom scripts that he could have written to get the game to work just the way he wanted it to at any point of the game. There's also the logic that he would have needed to figure out to get things to work correctly. I don't have much experience with game building, but I can see it being something like using Dreamweaver to make a website. Sure, you can drag elements onto the screen, but you might be spending a few hours to get everything to look just the way you want it to. * likes to give people working on things that involve code the benefit of the doubt *

[Fossil Tape]

dreamsk

Fossil Tape

and honestly? some of the usermade ones come extremely close to copyright infringement

I think Gaia recently in the past few weeks changed their policy on user made reference items.

i wouldn't know; this is the most active i've been on gaia since about 2012. i just know that i saw some pretty blatant pokemon items and was shocked it was allowed

[Shallotte]

cloudseas

Shallotte

cloudseas

Butting into this conversation to offer a coder's point of view ("Sorry, excuse me, coming through, hope you don't mind."), I don't think the guy should have ever made the game free in the first place. Yes, it was a nice thing to do. He also probably put in a lot of time and effort to making the art and the story, but I can bet that he spent just as much time, if not more, into the actual coding of the game.

Actually, I'm quite certain he made this game in Tyrano Builder. So I don't think the coding was difficult at all until the glitchy parts of the game where custom coding was required. But visual novels are extremely easy to make in tyrano builder; outside of Variables- you literally just click and drag windows into a hierarchy tree and branching paths and upload the art and writing into the boxes provided. Even the avatar animations are done that way.

I mean, even with a game builder, there might have been custom scripts that he could have written to get the game to work just the way he wanted it to at any point of the game. There's also the logic that he would have needed to figure out to get things to work correctly. I don't have much experience with game building, but I can see it being something like using Dreamweaver to make a website. Sure, you can drag elements onto the screen, but you might be spending a few hours to get everything to look just the way you want it to. * likes to give people working on things that involve code the benefit of the doubt *

Yes, but like I said- Knowledge on any coding was only required near the end of the game. Tyranobuilder is so easy to use that a kid with limited to no coding knowledge could make a visual novel like DDLC with extreme ease and a google search on variables.

You literally click and drag most of the code. It's that easy.

[Angels Alibi]

I see both sides to it
If I put a lot of effort into something and didn't make any profit off it directly and another source then made profit off the idea, I'd be a bit upset
Would I make a tweet//post basically gathering my fans to attack the other source? No
But I would be upset

I also see it as Gaia artists going "oh my god this is amazing, let's share it with Gaia so people who like it can make avis based on this amazing thing"

But again, I also see the danger in that. The risk of the artist not seeing eye to eye and feeling upset about their idea being used.
Regardless of the situation here, it was still something he made and put time into.
So I get both sides and I just hope maybe both sides learn some kind of lesson

[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

[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.