3 ms·

Kairosoft is a company of about 20 people with capitalization of 100 million yen (not sure what that means exactly). [0]. They make games for current game conso

Kairosoft is a company of about 20 people with capitalization of 100 million yen (not sure what that means exactly). [0]. They make games for current game consoles including Nintendo Switch and Sony Playstation 4, and games for iOS and Android. [1]. That's not the kind of company that doesn't care about its reputation or protecting its brand image and trademarks. Kairosoft also produces English translations of many of its games. [2]. According to this photo from the article, the translation appears to be incomplete and leaves much of the text appearing as strings of question marks. [3] I don't believe that a company that produces dozens of games, including for current systems and many translated into English, would approve of an incomplete fan translation of one of its games. [0] https://kairosoft.net/company/ https://kairosoft.net/company/ [1] https://kairosoft.net/game/ https://kairosoft.net/game/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kairosoft [3] https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png https://rhizome.org/static-media/uploads/bookstory5.png

staticman2 5y ago
I don't see how this is harming anyone even if it's a bad translation. And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net.
- bdowling 5y ago
  > And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net. It doesn't upset me. It's just that no one making fan fictions or fan translations should be surprised when they receive a cease and desist letter, DMCA takedown notice, or copyright infringement complaint. edit: Actually, it does bother me that some of us think that it's perfectly okay to distribute fan translations of other people's work. It seems like when the work is a game or is in a language that few of us understand, like Japanese, respect for the rights of the creators goes out the window. This causes real problems for the creators, particularly individuals and small companies, that might want to enforce their rights, but don't have the budget or legal resources to do so. So, many of them are victims of international "fans" who do whatever they want. Here, there's no indication that the fans even tried to contact the company about doing a legitimate licensed translation; they just did whatever they wanted to without any regard for the rights of the creators.
  - SirGiggles 5y ago
    I'm of the opinion that a fan translation is acceptable, so long as it requires the end user to have purchased the original product. In some visual novels, patches are distributed via delta patches that are designed to be used on the binaries provided by the original installation. Or in some other cases, the group only provides certain modified archives which are installed by overwriting the original installation. In both cases, the end user who doesn't understand Japanese (or in some other VNs, Chinese) are able to play while the publisher/developer still gets compensated for their work.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    Honestly, if you're not translating for market X, then I can't see a moral reason to object to making a complete fan hacked release in that market. If the company is interested enough to do their own translation, that's a different issue. But for things which you'll not be able to enjoy in a legal way, even if you want to spend the money? I'm all for piracy of software / books / music / art in that situation.
- thrdbndndn 5y ago
  Not like I care either way, I don't think it's comparable to fanfictions. Fanfictions are legal, this one, not so much. At the very least, the redistribution the game part surely isn't.
  - schrijver 5y ago
    Fan fiction does infringe copyright most of the time—at least under EU copyright, which does not have fair use. Under US copyright, defending fan fiction as fair use isn’t quite the slam dunk either. If publishers aren’t quick to litigate fan fiction away, I’d say it’s because they decided that it’s actually beneficial to them. It keeps the community invested in the fictional universe, and the canonical works only gain in respect—and these are the only ones making money. So it’s a social contract between fan fiction authors and publishers. That is why fan fiction communities try to moderate submissions to keep their end of the bargain—i.e. no selling of fan fiction, and no fan fiction that could be seen as detrimental to the image of the work (for example erotica is not allowed in many places). Related to this, the novel 50 shades of grey had a pretty interesting genesis where it started out as a twilight fan fiction, which was booted of fan fiction sites because of its explicit content. The author then created her own website. Because she gained a massive following, she realised that she could commercialise the novel. That’s when she changed all the names in the novel to no longer refer to Twilight characters. Because she had already transposed the characters to another universe, at that point there wasn’t much of Twilight left and she was free to market and sell it.

staticman2 5y ago

I don't see how this is harming anyone even if it's a bad translation. And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net.

bdowling 5y ago
> And if doing things without an author's permission upsets you don't ever take a look at fanfiction.net. It doesn't upset me. It's just that no one making fan fictions or fan translations should be surprised when they receive a cease and desist letter, DMCA takedown notice, or copyright infringement complaint. edit: Actually, it does bother me that some of us think that it's perfectly okay to distribute fan translations of other people's work. It seems like when the work is a game or is in a language that few of us understand, like Japanese, respect for the rights of the creators goes out the window. This causes real problems for the creators, particularly individuals and small companies, that might want to enforce their rights, but don't have the budget or legal resources to do so. So, many of them are victims of international "fans" who do whatever they want. Here, there's no indication that the fans even tried to contact the company about doing a legitimate licensed translation; they just did whatever they wanted to without any regard for the rights of the creators.
- SirGiggles 5y ago
  I'm of the opinion that a fan translation is acceptable, so long as it requires the end user to have purchased the original product. In some visual novels, patches are distributed via delta patches that are designed to be used on the binaries provided by the original installation. Or in some other cases, the group only provides certain modified archives which are installed by overwriting the original installation. In both cases, the end user who doesn't understand Japanese (or in some other VNs, Chinese) are able to play while the publisher/developer still gets compensated for their work.
- viraptor 5y ago
  Honestly, if you're not translating for market X, then I can't see a moral reason to object to making a complete fan hacked release in that market. If the company is interested enough to do their own translation, that's a different issue. But for things which you'll not be able to enjoy in a legal way, even if you want to spend the money? I'm all for piracy of software / books / music / art in that situation.
thrdbndndn 5y ago
Not like I care either way, I don't think it's comparable to fanfictions. Fanfictions are legal, this one, not so much. At the very least, the redistribution the game part surely isn't.
- schrijver 5y ago
  Fan fiction does infringe copyright most of the time—at least under EU copyright, which does not have fair use. Under US copyright, defending fan fiction as fair use isn’t quite the slam dunk either. If publishers aren’t quick to litigate fan fiction away, I’d say it’s because they decided that it’s actually beneficial to them. It keeps the community invested in the fictional universe, and the canonical works only gain in respect—and these are the only ones making money. So it’s a social contract between fan fiction authors and publishers. That is why fan fiction communities try to moderate submissions to keep their end of the bargain—i.e. no selling of fan fiction, and no fan fiction that could be seen as detrimental to the image of the work (for example erotica is not allowed in many places). Related to this, the novel 50 shades of grey had a pretty interesting genesis where it started out as a twilight fan fiction, which was booted of fan fiction sites because of its explicit content. The author then created her own website. Because she gained a massive following, she realised that she could commercialise the novel. That’s when she changed all the names in the novel to no longer refer to Twilight characters. Because she had already transposed the characters to another universe, at that point there wasn’t much of Twilight left and she was free to market and sell it.