drandy86
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- Jan 28, 2019
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More psycho Ami foreshadowing
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barglenarglezous
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Illusion had partnered with Fakku for western distribution and rights enforcement, but rights enforcement by proxy is always murky. If Fakku winds up buying the assets, they'll be able to litigate much more cleanly, and based on how they have behaved in the past, I'd be shocked if they didn't go full-bore after everyone.
barglenarglezous
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I'd say it's closer to half the games on this site once you weed out the abandoned games. New KK-based games pop up several times a week lately.
As to why this matters -- neither Honey Select nor Koikatsu have open licenses, and Illusion was very publically complaining about people making for-profit games using their assets, but Illusion doesn't do business outside Japan directly, so they could only litigate in Japan against people working in the country. If an international firm buys the assets, the lack of an open use license could potentially result in a large number of independent H-game developers getting sued over the use of the games for commercial products.
A lot of developers have been riding a grey area, where "the game is free and always will be, you're just donating money to me so I can dedicate time to the game," but if that ever gets tested in court...
The people outright selling these games on itch.io are potentially fucked.
Bingoogus
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Oh shit, didn't realise Fakku was involved... fuck... I can just imagine their legal department licking their lips at this closure...
They're not all crap, but yeah, most are.
barglenarglezous
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To be clear, I don't know if FAKKU is involved in the closure, or if they're acquiring Illusion's assets. I just know that FAKKU handles western (non-pirated) distribution of KK and Honey Select.
Riolol
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- Jan 14, 2021
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So does this mean the future of LiL is in jeopardy? I guess it would be funny if the guy who put malware in his game to combat piracy gets sued for stealing assets.
butterfly boy
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He makes custom render for patreons so he is literally making profit off of illegal assets right now.
Bingoogus
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Naw i understood you man, but Fakku are a cancer and i can easily see them eyeing the IP up in full so, for me at least, the water is even murkier now that i know this particular species of scum is presently growing in the pond.
Riolol
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barglenarglezous
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Potentially. It's going to depend on who gets the assets and how much they care about little guys, because literally all the creators using KK/HS are just that -- little guys. The amount that could be collected by pursuing damages is probably less than the cost of pursuing them. Nintendo's super litigious about their IP, but they also have piles of cash to burn on being petty. Most companies don't, and most companies that exclusively deal in morally dubious sexual content generally want to minimize their exposure to the courts to begin with.
And if they go after the bigger hitters like Selebus and Runey, but not the small fish, lawyers can have a field day about "selective enforcement"
There's also the fact that Fakku's been handling western distribution and rights enforcement since 2019, and has yet to pursue action despite a strongly-worded open letter saying they would. It's been 4 years with no real action taken.
Lmao I'm not surprised, I came here to see how people were reacting to Illusion shutting down and the usual suspects are licking their lips fantasising about how this could lead to LiL shutting down.
Riolol
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I don't think anybody here is "licking their lips fantasizing about how this could lead to LiL shutting down", we are all clearly fans of the game and I think we all want to see how it ends. People here are speculating about what may happen. I will say I find it hard to feel sorry for a hypocrite but I still want the game to continue.
Nor am I, but this is about a whole lot more than LiL at this point, an entire market is endangered by potentially litigation happy elements. I honestly couldn't care less about the rest of the market as all the games outside of LiL I have followed are either done (Once In a Lifetime by Caribdis), abandoned (There's a long list on this one), or I dropped them for one reason or another (Harem Hotel by Runey), I just want to see LiL get to its planned developmental conclusion.
DeSkel15
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Some people after hearing about this Illusion stuff:
Others:
Even more others:
Then there's me:
Honestly, considering the whole Patreon fiasco and how deadset Selebus seems to be on this game, I don't really think even losing Koikatsu will end this game. It'll definitely make things far more messy, and time consuming though.
Just imagine Kaori in Daz or a Blender made Koikatsu inspired version of the characters. Of course, this is me being optimistically out of character, so, who knows.
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Honestly, considering the whole Patreon fiasco and how deadset Selebus seems to be on this game, I don't really think even losing Koikatsu will end this game. It'll definitely make things far more messy, and time consuming though.
Just imagine Kaori in Daz or a Blender made Koikatsu inspired version of the characters. Of course, this is me being optimistically out of character, so, who knows.
And finally, last but certainly not least, the next cards: Nao-chan and Rika
Lolicon Kami
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- Nov 3, 2019
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Hol' up!
Can someone explain to me what this "losing Koikatsu" is?
Usually, just cause a software goes bankrupt doesn't mean all their software becomes unable to use. I mean, sure, you won't be able to buy new copies of the game anymore. And there will be no more updates, which means your existing copy will need to be run by an emulator after it becomes uncompatible with the mainstream computer system 50 years from now .
But assuming Selebus bought Koikatsu, couldn't he just keep on using it for the time being? Or even download it from F95zone, worse case scenerio?
And since Illusion is busted and no company's apparently going to be buying them, isn't the possiblility of someone suing Selebus for using Koikatsu still at virtually 0%
Riolol
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He could probably just hire an artist to draw the scenes if it came to it
DeSkel15
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Presumably someone could buy up the rights to Koikatsu, then just go around suing anyone using it commercially or just go around bullying those who use it until they are forced to stop.
Selebus actually losing Koikatsu is more of a worst end scenario. I still think, even then, it wouldn't kill LiL.
It is quite possible that nothing happens and Selebus gets even more freedom to do what they want though.
Of course the actual legal stuff is more of an assumption by me. I'm not a lawyer.
DeSkel15
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Yeah, and it's not like there isn't plenty of references for how the characters should look. This game even has fan art:
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barglenarglezous
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"losing Koikatsu" is a bit dramatic. Barring some absurd DRM lost media bullshit on Illusion's part that somehow breaks every copy of their games (highly unlikely) the toolset should continue to function.
When a company shuts down, it's very rare that they just turn out the lights, lock the doors, and shut down. There's usually a sell-off of assets to cover final debts, liabilities, and taxes. Nobody was interested in buying them outright, but individual assets may still have value.
It's just a question of "who buys what". If it's another eroge studio in Japan, odds are good nothing of value happens outside of Japan, because noen of those studios exist as legal entities outside of the country to my knowledge. If those rights are bought by an international hentai distributor like Fakku, however, all bets are off, because they're slimy litigious greaseballs.
In the short term, it will be business as usual. Depending on who acquires the rights, we might see some action down the line -- but I'll be perfectly honest, considering that Illusion is primarily shutting down because of what they considered excessive piracy, odds are good that the distribution rights aren't going to be considered to be worth much, which makes legal action a highly unlikely scenario.
The only real concern is copyright trolling. This is the exact kind of market that copyright trolls love, and if they get their hands on the rights, they'll go after pretty much everyone. Whether they're successful will depend largely on whether their targets can afford to fight back or not.
In an absolute worst case scenario, copyright trolls buy the rights, go after all the indie devs using KK/HS, most of them shut down, and the ones who aren't broken by the ordeal remake their game in a new engine using a different toolset. And given that Sel has already endured this nightmare once before with Patreon, he strikes me as being the kind of stubborn cuss who'd do exactly that. He's already said that whenever he starts his next project, it wasn't going to be using KK anyway.