Can someone please clarify:
- Illusion/Fukku create and/or distribute a modding tool.
- I assume this tool is either free, or comes bundled with some kind of Illusion software, or has to be purchased. I do not assume the devs making those games are all pirating that tool.
- The tool's main purpose is to create content to be used in games.
- Illusion/Fukku allow or tolerate this usage of their software for quite some time
- Now out of a sudden, when many devs rely on it and created content and are in the mid of projects, having invested a lot of effort, Illusion/Fakku claim that said tool is not to be used to produce anything of what said toll is intended for, and claim (additional) licence fees.
Right?
Yes and no.
Up to 3. everything is in order, but...
Especially on 4. there's something a bit more nuanced. The idea behind it is to share characters, stories, etc. etc. They tolerated the usage of the tools (which were clearly designed to be character creators as they have share functions) as long as there's no money made with the content created from it. Using assets generated by creation engines is generally only allowed for fair use as in parodies or non-commercial software, not under commercial usage. This would require the person in question to buy licensing rights for commercial use (which to my knowledge, Illusion did not hand out since they were oblivious to this all.)
This is currently the issue. They allowed/tolerated/ignored the issue, because it wasn't an issue until recently. The "scene" around people making games with Illusion assets has been around for years (plural!) and since it was unregulated en large, the market surrounding it grew to the levels they are at today. Now that there's developers around that _created_ the market and made it grew so that there is a pretty big demand for adult games, the License holders (which are Illusion) step in and try to enforce copyright claims via licensing.
They had an update, stating that they "Did not know a scene like this existed in the first place.", but this is just a shorthand excuse. Not knowing that there is a huge development boom surrounding these creator tools, that has been going on for years(!) is either showing dangerous levels of shortsightedness on the developers parts, or rather, a sever lack of knowledge how the market for adult games (which is largely fringe and thus - uncontested except for the big few) functions.
Going by Ockham's Razor, the simplest solution is also most likely the correct solution - Money. They've seen that there's loads of devs that can turn their assets into fat stacks upon stacks of money and so they want in on it.
P.S: If I got anything wrong, please feel free to correct me. I've only gathered all the knowledge I hold as well as what I could read around through multiple threads thus far.
