Rather interesting stuff to read, about a very professionally done fan made SNES style game, that continued the Chrono Trigger story:
[b]Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes[/b]
Given the huge amount of DQ doujin I’ve seen in Japan, for profit even, I can’t imagine the Japanese HQ sent this order directly.
I’m lead to believe that CT is more popular in the West than it is in Japan - so quite a horrible blow. Sad really…
If SE doesn’t release a new Chrono game within a couple of years, not a remake but an actual prequel/sequel, then I encourage more people to take it into their own hands and then calmly tell SE to go :twisted: themelves and ignore the cease and desist letters.
I’m saddened Square Enix went that far, since I’m told the fan made production wasn’t for profit. You’ve got a billion game mods of DOOM running around, and no one is worried the IP for that will be stolen. [b]Although Blizzard is just as anal[/b], so it doesn’t come as a total shock.
I know why they did it… I just don’t agree they needed to do it… but then I’m not a lawyer.
What was that saying… “shoot all the lawyers”?
Seriously, if it is merely a modded continuation or spinoff that is non-profit, the company should have no recourse what-so-ever. Fanfics are perfectly legal and only count as canon if the original creator wishes it so. This isn’t pirating and this isn’t profiting off an IP that is owned by someone else.
Its sad, really its sad. 
For one, a game that is the best of its kind, should get a remake, for the fans and the enthusiasts. I was actually looking forward to it.
… unfortunately that’s not so. It doesn’t matter if it’s for profit or not. You don’t technically have the right to use someone else’s characters without permission unless you can make a fair use argument, and fanfic is not currently enshrined as fair use.
There are companies that give explicit permission for fanfic as long as it’s non-profit and/or follows specific guidelines. (Activision used to give permission for people to make Zork fangames using all the IP) There are many more that just don’t care.
Caveat: the exact laws vary a lot! What’s true in the US may not be true elsewhere.
It does strike me odd that Square Enix never sent a cease and desist letter to [url=http://www.nuklearpower.com/8-bit-theater/]8-bit Theater[/url], despite that Brian is making profit off their IP. Or the crew at OC Remix for remixing their music from Heaven to Hell and back. Or what about that Secret of Mana 2 translation from years back? I can’t help but wonder if there’s SOMETHING not being spoken about, that’s at work here. 
Suddenly they come out the shadows and rule there’s a fanmade work that’s an critical IP threat, but everything else isn’t? It just doesn’t add up. The only thing I can consider is if Square-Enix is making an official Chrono Trigger 2, and honestly fear that their production would be inferior to a fan made one.
This isn’t the first I’ve heard of SE going after spin offs of their titles: http://www.gamegrep.com/video/2782-squa … lagiarism/
It seems to be a recent trend that they’re cracking down on unlicensed use of their IP. It’s probably not that they fear unlicensed spin-offs will compete with their products; they simply see their IP as worth quite a bit, and prosecuting unlicensed use preserves its “scarcity”, thus preserving its value, and giving them a better bargaining position when they negotiate with companies that are willing to pay the (considerable) fee to use SE’s IP commercially. Of course, the problem with this thinking is that it ignores the fact that fan-generated hype is good for business too–for this reason many developers like Bioware encourage a sprawling fan developer community. They see the fan mod community as an asset rather than a pack of parasites that need quashing.
This is, what, the fourth Chrono Trigger sequel/spinoff/remake to be given the C&D axe by Square Enix?
I’m annoyed, and not at Squeenix. I find it very hard to believe that the people working on this project hadn’t heart of the previous cases, and in all of them, a tremendous amount of time and effort has been expended on stuff that was killed almost basically just before release.
Why not work on your own original game instead? With all the manpower that went into those Chrono Trigger remakes/sequels/etc you could produce something pretty damn good indeed.
Honestly, I’m on Square Enix’s side here purely because I’d rather see original work made than some Chrono Trigger fanwankery. There isn’t nearly enough of the former.
Sure, that applies in the for-profit case. But I don’t think enthusiasts have a duty to produce original works; and personally I’m not terribly interested in amateur-made original works. Take the doujin market for example (which happens to also turn a profit). Sure, there’s a few original gems like Tsukihime and Higurashi out there. But a lot of the appeal of the doujin market is that it features familiar, well-loved characters in new (often sexual) situations. Notably, Square Enix doesn’t go after doujin producers for making–and selling–FF7 porno comics and even a few surprisingly professional-seeming voiced visual novels.
Well even the monolithic corporate evil that is EA - for all their DRM and questionable market practices against competition - don’t attack the modding community. The entire SIMS and SPORE community is practically mod ran… and the programming engine for several Command and Conquer titles were officially released to public domain. As for Japanese with American branch companies, Capcom USA is quite well known to take fan made materials and incorporate them into their games: the ending artwork in Capcom Fighting Evolution and the music from Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix for example.
This is a path Square Enix USA has chosen to walk - not legally forced too - and it’s a sad one. This is the exact opposite of what interviews I’ve read from Square Enix Japan claim… it seems doujin are only good for the Japanese to them, because I’ve NEVER seen them raise a single complaint about all that Dragon Quest fan made materials. Plus they overlook what they want to overlook, because I’ll be damned if they have no idea about 8-bit Theater (and for the record I LOVE 8-bit… I’m just pointing out there’s no consistency to the C&D letters).
Well you could say the same about anything really… I mean people put a LOT of energy into making Star Wars RPG adventures, rather than creating their own original Sci-Fi stories. It’s what some fans do when they really like something, and you tend to alienate them when they get crushed by their heroes (i.e. the people who made it). If people want to make a bad doujin of something, I’m all for it. Not like you have to read it… because sometimes you get something GOOD out of it.
For example a lot of the cool canon stuff that’s in Star Wars and Star Trek, were from the fan community. Of course there’s 99% of the other horrid stuff that isn’t worth spit… but then you can say that about the official stuff George and Gene had written. And we all know Square Enix isn’t flawless and could use an infusion of new ideas from time to time. They’ve practically murdered the Mana and SaGa series without effort whatsoever, and now looking to do the same for Front Mission.
That may also be with the difference in laws. I believe the laws governing dojin products is different in Japan and especially the licensing of such.
Maybe instead of complaining we should seek to have lawmakers make the laws, in that specific area, more in line with Japan. I am wondering if it’s Square Enix USA and not Square-Enix Japan that sends those C&D letters. While the former is a branch of the latter, it doesn’t run everything though it and these letters may be instances of the differences in cultures as well as laws.
Lower entry barrier. For a fan-made item you have the mechanics, world and its basic history, characters, etc. all fleshed out. All you need to design is a scenerio, a few new enemies & characters and then write dialogue and program it.
Not likely. Corporations lobby for IP laws to be stricter, so they can ensure they never lose what they own. Common citizens lobby for IP laws to be stricter, so the corporations can’t steal them away. Strict IP laws aren’t a bad thing and I really don’t see a need to change them.
Again, Square Enix doesn’t [b]HAVE[/b] to send these C&D’s… they’re doing it because they want to. The IP laws aren’t doing anything they shouldn’t be doing. It’s purely a decision by the company.
If anything, copyright law in Japan is stricter than in the US. However, it’s the corporate culture that’s different, at least with respect to otaku-related stuff. Many companies put up guidelines listing the types of derivative work activities they will allow, etc. As Ryuukishi07 put it, doujin works are allowed because/when companies don’t sue.
If this group had really wanted to release this game no matter what, they should’ve just kept quiet until they were done and then released it. There’s pretty much nothing anyone can do once a popular file hits the Internet.
On the one hand, these guys did an awful lot of work and it sucks that they got C&D’ed after putting so much blood and tears into the work product.
On the other hand, what were they expecting? I completely understand that Square wants to protect their own canon. Look what happened when the unauthorized sequel to Don Quixote was released. Cervantes had to release his own sequel, and apparently the hurried way it was done means it’s not as good.