VN Ren'Py Summer's Gone [S1 Steam + DLC] [Oceanlab]

[Ali ibn Hassan]

A bogeyman for music rights owners?

Yer fekkin priceless, mister.

 

[AlexFXR]

Well, that's all good, but it's only YOUR definition of porn. Care to try convincing whoever is threatening to pull Ocean's license? Because their definition is the only one that counts for the purpose of that license.

This is where you are wrong. This is not my definition, but a television standard.

 

[AlexFXR]

The problem is NOT Ocean, it is the mercurial wims of service providers who withdraw paid services with little notice - in this case music licensing - because of an aversion to adult content.

This has been an issue for over a year and has badly affected many AVN developers who treat music and sound as an integral part of their games.

The last several pages of this thread are filled with posts complaining about Ocean and what he has to do to comprise, despite user posts (and numerous development logs by Ocean) clearly explaining the situation. SHM.

You don't seem to understand me. I didn't say Ocean was the problem. The problem is that some erotic shots are deleted, others are left. This seems very strange to me. It must be all or nothing removed.

 

[BobTheDuck]

You don't seem to understand me. I didn't say Ocean was the problem. The problem is that some erotic shots are deleted, others are left. This seems very strange to me. It must be all or nothing removed.

Two considerations: Ocean wishes to leave as much of what he has worked on in the game as he can. He has plenty of material to work on going forward that I'm sure he just wants to be at the next stage already.

Secondly, most of these licensing companys have pretty obscure terms, and they're not always located in the same country as the person wanting to obtain licenses. How would you (as a one person business starting out) make sure that the terms obey international norms? Even if they do, if you recieve a cease and desist style notification that you know is a break of their terms, how will you even pay to take a foreign company to court over it? Where is the jurisdiction? It's usually in their place of business.

I'm pretty sure Ocean has been clenching his teeth over the wasted cinematics that he scored to music. Most people don't think of how involved it is to pace something so the video and audio reach all the appropriate crescendos. And after that, no satisfaction, just back to square one with no avenue for remediation.

So I imagine Ocean will carefully do the bare minimum of changes necessary to meet the requirements so to not have to keep dealing with the licensing people every time they breathe too heavily. Does it really matter what scenes get tamed down if it allows the game to move forward? It's not about rational definitions but rather about pragmatism.

Ocean also has to keep enough adult content that ensures there's no backlash when he includes lewds in season 2 - if it comes out of nowhere, some uptight people will leave nasty words lying around on steam etc.

 

[AlexFXR]

Two considerations: Ocean wishes to leave as much of what he has worked on in the game as he can. He has plenty of material to work on going forward that I'm sure he just wants to be at the next stage already.

Secondly, most of these licensing companys have pretty obscure terms, and they're not always located in the same country as the person wanting to obtain licenses. How would you (as a one person business starting out) make sure that the terms obey international norms? Even if they do, if you recieve a cease and desist style notification that you know is a break of their terms, how will you even pay to take a foreign company to court over it? Where is the jurisdiction? It's usually in their place of business.

These two options are not logical.
1 - well, this action makes no sense at all.
2 - But here you are very mistaken. If there is a prohibition, it is always clearly stated. There are 2 genres: erotica and porn. They may ban either porn or porn and erotica. But Ocean turns out that porn is prohibited, but no one has banned erotica. Why then does he remove some of the erotica and leave some behind?

 

[BobTheDuck]

These two options are not logical.
1 - well, this action makes no sense at all.
2 - But here you are very mistaken. If there is a prohibition, it is always clearly stated. There are 2 genres: erotica and porn. They may ban either porn or porn and erotica. But Ocean turns out that porn is prohibited, but no one has banned erotica. Why then does he remove some of the erotica and leave some behind?

These are not options or alternatives, these are bits of information that might help explain why not everything is being cut - Ocean is doing the bare minimum to meet the terms he has to.

The problem is that the prohibition was added while Ocean had a license - once his license expired, he couldn't relicense the music without cuts. Terms and conditions change all the time, and it usually takes effect on renewal.

Have you ever looked into music or sound effects licensing? It's pretty convoluted, especially since all these licnesing aggregator companies popped up. Consider that if the licensing company is located in Iran, it might have stricter terms than one based in the Netherlands. Then there are the terms of the content owner, who puts it up - they might have strict terms or the might have none. What often happens is new creators make it available for everything, and once they start finding out their music is used in porn, they get upset and change the terms. The companies that do this licensing are often of drifting between regulations by making up their own terms on the fly and having clauses that seem fair, but really allow them to reserve their rights in any situation.

So Ocean who bought into a subscription license, finds on renewal the terms are changed. Or the creators say he breached the terms, because they didn't realise anything ment porn. It's all out of Ocean's hands because the legal fees are higher than the price of licences.

So he's done the pragmatic thing and tamed down season 1 just to keep the ball rolling.

I don't see why this is so strange to understand. It could be anything. Sound effect companies have issues with making squeaky toys with their sound effects, creating sample libraries as derivative works are a nono etc. Sync licensing is brutal, but it's about the only way musicians make any money at all these days.

 

[Starrky]

Can we expect mods to patch in the old censored scenes because if so I won’t be complaining then.

 

[crabsinthekitchen]

some uptight people will leave nasty words lying around on steam etc.

that will happen regardless of what Ocean does, just the words will be different

These two options are not logical.
1 - well, this action makes no sense at all.
2 - But here you are very mistaken. If there is a prohibition, it is always clearly stated. There are 2 genres: erotica and porn. They may ban either porn or porn and erotica. But Ocean turns out that porn is prohibited, but no one has banned erotica. Why then does he remove some of the erotica and leave some behind?

imagine having clear licenses and not something like

Pornography and extremely violent content are not covered by our license.

XXXXXXX's terms for proper use can easily be defined as content that can be played in a public theater or broadcast network which is available to a general audience

No illegal, immoral or political content.
...
Moreover, you may not use the Licensed Works in connection with sensitive subjects without the prior written consent of XXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Sensitive subjects include, but are not limited to, political content, such as the promotion, advertisement or endorsement of any party, candidate or elected official; and “adult videos” and promotion of adult entertainment venues, escort services, or the like.

at least the first one bans porn explicitly

 

[Nurikabe]

I have played this game more than is considered socially acceptable. At no point did I ever think, "Wow, this song is incredible," or "This scene would not work without this background music." More often than not, I push pause or mute the music altogether because it gets annoying, especially when the mood is dark and the song is a bouncy, pop song. I have only played two games where the songs were very specific and part of the story. The rest get muted.

I understand that Ocean derives some creative inspiration from hearing some of the music. I am a musician and I completely operate with that mechanic in my personal life. How these particular songs give him that creative drive to write those particular scenes, well, that will just have to be one of the universe's mysteries. But I can safely say, I will never choose this license holder and subscription service to provide music for any game I make. They have hurt too many good devs and cost them a large amount of money and time.

I am happy to hear that the impact of this season is minimal. However, I would venture a guess that Ocean has spent a considerable amount of time dealing with the issue as it is. It makes no sense to me why he would continue to patronize the company by cutting those scenes (or specific images in a scene) to comply with the license instead of cutting the music out entirely. But it isn't my game.

Fortunately, we are days away from an update release. I have so many questions I hope will get answered. Especially what happens next after those two kisses!

 

[Ali ibn Hassan]

This is where you are wrong. This is not my definition, but a television standard.

In Afghanistan?

 

[BobTheDuck]

I have played this game more than is considered socially acceptable. At no point did I ever think, "Wow, this song is incredible," or "This scene would not work without this background music." More often than not, I push pause or mute the music altogether because it gets annoying, especially when the mood is dark and the song is a bouncy, pop song. I have only played two games where the songs were very specific and part of the story. The rest get muted.

I understand that Ocean derives some creative inspiration from hearing some of the music. I am a musician and I completely operate with that mechanic in my personal life. How these particular songs give him that creative drive to write those particular scenes, well, that will just have to be one of the universe's mysteries. But I can safely say, I will never choose this license holder and subscription service to provide music for any game I make. They have hurt too many good devs and cost them a large amount of money and time.

I am happy to hear that the impact of this season is minimal. However, I would venture a guess that Ocean has spent a considerable amount of time dealing with the issue as it is. It makes no sense to me why he would continue to patronize the company by cutting those scenes (or specific images in a scene) to comply with the license instead of cutting the music out entirely. But it isn't my game.

Fortunately, we are days away from an update release. I have so many questions I hope will get answered. Especially what happens next after those two kisses!

It's probably a bulk license deal, so it's all or nothing - if there is something that the company feels violates their terms, they'll not just pull a song from that scene, but all their licenses. Ocean probably doesn't want it to be more of a headache than it already has been.

On a creative level, I'm guessing that he vibes off a track while writing cinematics, sets a tone, and then maps the tempo of the animations to the tempo/feel of the track, spacing the animation to fit lyrics, fills etc. Maybe he's not enough of a musician to find a track the same tempo to replace music quickly, after having scuplted the scene. I'd also guess rewriting the pacing of such scenes would be highly frustrating.

 

[yossa999]

I already can't imagine the scene where Nika & Nami are preparing to leave to the college without the Grace Mesa's "The Long Way" playing in the background. It would just be the wrong mood without this song.
Or I feel that something is out of the place when the MC leans back and closes his eyes in the auditorium while the camera pans from one girl to another without “A Certain Shade of Blue” playing.

 

[Bolero]

I only read last 2 pages of comments so i may have the wrong impression about what is going on with this censored content. I mean the game is so far focused on character development and has very little sexual scenes. Now to censor what little there is, is not good. Story and characters are important, but most of the people want to see something lewd eventually. As i said i do not have the time to read every comment, so i may have misread something, but removing lewd scenes is a very bad idea, if that is what the problem is. If the problem is music, i would rather the game had none, than to remove naked scenes.

 

[JJ1960]

I only read last 2 pages of comments so i may have the wrong impression about what is going on with this censored content. I mean the game is so far focused on character development and has very little sexual scenes. Now to censor what little there is, is not good. Story and characters are important, but most of the people want to see something lewd eventually. As i said i do not have the time to read every comment, so i may have misread something, but removing lewd scenes is a very bad idea, if that is what the problem is. If the problem is music, i would rather the game had none, than to remove naked scenes.

The content image changes are for the Steam release in order to open the story up to a broader audience. The changes are minor and analogous to when a movie has a couple of small cuts to get a PG-13 rating instead of an R rating to have a better box office. Some people are freaking out about it because the next release will not have something in it that they had before, not realizing that they are perfectly able to keep the old version installed if they want to beat off to seeing Nika's dick in the jacuzzi.

The music changes are due to the holders of the licenses arbitrarily changing the terms of their license when Ocean went to renew them (he didn't get a perpetual license which would have solved the problem but at the time he didn't have the large amount of money to pay for one). New licenses are going to be perpetual and avoid future changes by the licensing company. Ocean is making that change so all the work he did to match the music to the cinematics don't have to be scrapped and redone along with trying to find a piece that is similar in feeling and tone to what he wants to convey.

Lewds will be in the second chapter (the releases following this one) which will be structured so that licenses are not a problem from the get-go. Steam will have the appropriate adult content flags set for that. Having the initial version without the limiting adult restrictions means more sales, so more money for Ocean to continue to develop the story in the future and afford more and better hardware for the renders, and maybe hire more reliable coders for his contract work.

I don't understand why so many people can't seem to grasp that this is a necessary business decision which will ensure that more of this terrific game gets made.

 

[Donettes]

Some people are freaking out about it because the next release will not have something in it that they had before, not realizing that they are perfectly able to keep the old version installed if they want to beat off to seeing Nika's dick in the jacuzzi.

Yeah that's a thought I've had these last days. Probably one or two pussy shots will be altered too, but my goodness with the fixation there's been with his dick vanishing from our screens

 

[AlexFXR]

The problem is that the prohibition was added while Ocean had a license - once his license expired, he couldn't relicense the music without cuts. Terms and conditions change all the time, and it usually takes effect on renewal.

Do you even realize how ridiculous this is? Since when can contracts be changed without the consent of both parties? I can imagine how happy employers will be if this happens. They will promise millions, and when payday comes, they will change the contracts and pay a couple of dollars.

Have you ever looked into music or sound effects licensing? It's pretty convoluted, especially since all these licnesing aggregator companies popped up. Consider that if the licensing company is located in Iran, it might have stricter terms than one based in the Netherlands. Then there are the terms of the content owner, who puts it up - they might have strict terms or the might have none. What often happens is new creators make it available for everything, and once they start finding out their music is used in porn, they get upset and change the terms. The companies that do this licensing are often of drifting between regulations by making up their own terms on the fly and having clauses that seem fair, but really allow them to reserve their rights in any situation.

It doesn't matter how strict the rules are. The important thing is that they must be fulfilled; if you don’t want to fulfill them, then the lawyers will leave you without your pants. It’s the same with Ocean, if there is a ban, then everything needs to be removed. If some of the nude scenes are left in and some are removed, it would be like breaking a contract.

 

[zack1419]

so you are telling me an adult VN will be censored or have the lewd content removed for whatever reason is making some of its fans worried?

 

[gyshia915]

I completely understand why the music chosen is important for Ocean. As yossa999 commented, there're some scenes connected to the music like that first day of college: from Nami waking Nika up to getting ready and then the arrival; those songs are a break from the kind of music played on previous scenes and we're used to them already. If all it takes to keep all the music is to make minor changes on some scenes, it's the right call to do that.

Curiously for me, the music that I think better captures the Summer's Gone vibe are not the songs, but the ambient electronic pieces. Particularly 'Encyclopedia of Frozen Dreams' by The Intangible. I've done quite a lot of playthroughs of this game and everytime this track plays in the background I just choose a render of that scene and wait until the music fades. Maya at the hospital, Zara at the pool, Nami after the lake scene (IIRC), Vanessa... This symbiosis between the music, the gorgeous renders and the confusion and/or psychology of the characters is one of the main reasons this game is special for me. Beautiful.

 

[BobTheDuck]

Do you even realize how ridiculous this is? Since when can contracts be changed without the consent of both parties? I can imagine how happy employers will be if this happens. They will promise millions, and when payday comes, they will change the contracts and pay a couple of dollars.


It doesn't matter how strict the rules are. The important thing is that they must be fulfilled; if you don’t want to fulfill them, then the lawyers will leave you without your pants. It’s the same with Ocean, if there is a ban, then everything needs to be removed. If some of the nude scenes are left in and some are removed, it would be like breaking a contract.

Terms and conditions on subs get updated. Rates get updated, rents go up. There are so many contacts that are indexed, or have clauses. Law is grey when it comes to civil issues, not black and white. Someone posted some examples of some of the terms. It's literally a minefield when it comes to creative industries. I'd like to see how you'd go about prosecuting a company in a different country for changing the terms on you, you know like social media does pretty much every update. Some of these companies know it is simply too hard for small businesses to get legal representation internationally.

This important thing to understand is that there isn't much oversight into these areas. People make terms that protect their interests, and they make their terms as open to interpretation as possible to give themselves a way out. For example, my government made it impossible to do tax any other way than online; one of the terms and conditions is that they are not liable for any financial loss incurred by me using their website. What a bullshit term, who'd agree to that? Only my whole country, because the government can imprison us for tax avoidance. Enjoy believing the world is simple contracts of black and white.

You really don't seem to accept that at renewal, the terms of licence can be easily changed. It is incredibly common. Half of business is negotiating fees and terms. Otherwise, no one could increase their hourly rate. In contract work you have to write the contingencies into the fees, but you can't forsee everything, and we're talking about industries that have avoided standards. Or why do you think these industries sprang up after Spotify paved the way, strongarming the music industry?

Anyway, this is way off topic. If you don't believe that people can screw you over by claiming you've broken a vague contract, you're going to have a lot of fun in life. Ocean's learned this lesson in a painful way, and he's had the guts to do the simple things he can to resolve it.

 

[Maviarab]

Terms and conditions on subs get updated. Rates get updated, rents go up. There are so many contacts that are indexed, or have clauses. Law is grey when it comes to civil issues, not black and white. Someone posted some examples of some of the terms. It's literally a minefield when it comes to creative industries. I'd like to see how you'd go about prosecuting a company in a different country for changing the terms on you, you know like social media does pretty much every update. Some of these companies know it is simply too hard for small businesses to get legal representation internationally.

This important thing to understand is that there isn't much oversight into these areas. People make terms that protect their interests, and they make their terms as open to interpretation as possible to give themselves a way out. For example, my government made it impossible to do tax any other way than online; one of the terms and conditions is that they are not liable for any financial loss incurred by me using their website. What a bullshit term, who'd agree to that? Only my whole country, because the government can imprison us for tax avoidance. Enjoy believing the world is simple contracts of black and white.

You really don't seem to accept that at renewal, the terms of licence can be easily changed. It is incredibly common. Half of business is negotiating fees and terms. Otherwise, no one could increase their hourly rate. In contract work you have to write the contingencies into the fees, but you can't forsee everything, and we're talking about industries that have avoided standards. Or why do you think these industries sprang up after Spotify paved the way, strongarming the music industry?

Anyway, this is way off topic. If you don't believe that people can screw you over by claiming you've broken a vague contract, you're going to have a lot of fun in life. Ocean's learned this lesson in a painful way, and he's had the guts to do the simple things he can to resolve it.

Easier to ignore him, he is obviously very, very clueless about this stuff. As you say, some companies, apps etc change their ToS and other aspects of use weekly.