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It's sort of commonly accepted in the Game Industry that there exists an insurmountable proliferation of asset rips on mobile stores, and that there is an appar

It's sort of commonly accepted in the Game Industry that there exists an insurmountable proliferation of asset rips on mobile stores, and that there is an apparent total acceptance and tolerance of them by Google and Apple. So I'm not surprised to see such a lawsuit. > According to Krafton, Apple and Google have distributed hundreds of millions of copies of the Free Fire games. The complaint says Garena generated more than $100 million in revenue from Free Fire sales in the U.S. in the first three months of 2021. Right right, that's unexpected. Edit: I meant 'expected'. > Krafton also named Google's YouTube as a defendant for allegedly hosting videos of Free Fire gameplay, as well as a Chinese film that Krafton says is a live-action dramatization of its game. But this? This is something interesting. Last I heard of someone going after YouTube videos of gameplay was the raucous Nintendo made a few years back when they were sending DMCA takedowns to Streamers and YouTubers who featured gameplay of first-party Nintendo games. I don't recall those ever really going anywhere in court? Going after a film maker for making a live-action dramatization of a game that features asset rips of another game seems ... A bit of a stretch. Presumably, the live-action dramatization includes no copyrighted assets and doesn't infringe upon any protected trademarks; and so is Krafton alleging that the live-action film features facsimiles of virtual assets that violate copyright?

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Presumably, the live-action dramatization includes no copyrighted assets A derivative work of a derivative work is still a derivative work, and if the first derivative is unlicensed and thus a copyright violation...
keleftheriou 5y ago
I think you mean ‘expected’, instead of ‘unexpected’ there?
- dleslie 5y ago
  Yes, sorry.
charcircuit 5y ago
Uploading / streaming gameplay in most cases is copyright infringement that is ignored by the rightsholders. Only a very small number of games' licenses give you permission to do so and usually you aren't allowed to do so for commercial use (think pay wall), but they do allow things like ads as an exception.
- bydlocoder 5y ago
  It's interesting how there exists a huge market based on what is in fact copyright infringement. And the biggest player on this market is a legit publicly traded company. Thankfully, game developers understand that it doesn't make sense to try and shut down Twitch and/or individual streamers.
- gpm 5y ago
  I suspect this is a largely incorrect legal take as far as US law goes, though if you have a court case supporting you I'm open to being proven wrong. My not at all a lawyer reading is that streaming video games is almost always a classic example of fair use and thus not copyright infringement in the first place. Fair use is evaluated as a balancing act of 4 factors, and streaming is very favorable under 3 of them: It's transformative, adding something new to the original work and not superseding it at all (factor 1), it reproduces a small fraction of the whole of the work - only renders of the final work not the models behind it, none of the code, only the fraction of the artwork that is interacted with and even then only in one of many possible renderings of it (factor 3), it doesn't compete with the original work in the market place (factor 4). The only thing that really ways against it is that the original work was very artistic in nature (not something like a recording of JFK getting shot, mainly of interest for it's factual content... actual example from a court case).
  - charcircuit 5y ago
    >It's transformative, adding something new to the original work and not superseding it at all A let's play is not transformative. You are literally experiencing the game as it was meant to be experienced. Similarly it's not transformative to put a song on in the background of a stream. (Video game music is copyrighted too ;)) For it to be transformative the game needs to be transformed into something else. >it reproduces a small fraction of the whole of the work - only renders of the final work not the models behind it, none of the code, only the fraction of the artwork that is interacted with and even then only in one of many possible renderings of it There are plenty of let's plays which play through a whole game. In terms of fair use you could for example illustrate what a boss looks like when talking about it by showing a screenshot of a game. Using your idea of what partial means you could watch a whole movie. It's not like by watching a movie you get access to the raw audio and video clips, or the projet files used to edit it. You don't get the 3D models they used to make CGI. >it doesn't compete with the original work in the market place For some linear story based games you could make the point that it does compte because you can experience the whole story without needing to purchase the original.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Presumably, the live-action dramatization includes no copyrighted assets A derivative work of a derivative work is still a derivative work, and if the first derivative is unlicensed and thus a copyright violation...

keleftheriou 5y ago

I think you mean ‘expected’, instead of ‘unexpected’ there?

dleslie 5y ago
Yes, sorry.

charcircuit 5y ago

Uploading / streaming gameplay in most cases is copyright infringement that is ignored by the rightsholders. Only a very small number of games' licenses give you permission to do so and usually you aren't allowed to do so for commercial use (think pay wall), but they do allow things like ads as an exception.

bydlocoder 5y ago
It's interesting how there exists a huge market based on what is in fact copyright infringement. And the biggest player on this market is a legit publicly traded company. Thankfully, game developers understand that it doesn't make sense to try and shut down Twitch and/or individual streamers.
gpm 5y ago
I suspect this is a largely incorrect legal take as far as US law goes, though if you have a court case supporting you I'm open to being proven wrong. My not at all a lawyer reading is that streaming video games is almost always a classic example of fair use and thus not copyright infringement in the first place. Fair use is evaluated as a balancing act of 4 factors, and streaming is very favorable under 3 of them: It's transformative, adding something new to the original work and not superseding it at all (factor 1), it reproduces a small fraction of the whole of the work - only renders of the final work not the models behind it, none of the code, only the fraction of the artwork that is interacted with and even then only in one of many possible renderings of it (factor 3), it doesn't compete with the original work in the market place (factor 4). The only thing that really ways against it is that the original work was very artistic in nature (not something like a recording of JFK getting shot, mainly of interest for it's factual content... actual example from a court case).
- charcircuit 5y ago
  >It's transformative, adding something new to the original work and not superseding it at all A let's play is not transformative. You are literally experiencing the game as it was meant to be experienced. Similarly it's not transformative to put a song on in the background of a stream. (Video game music is copyrighted too ;)) For it to be transformative the game needs to be transformed into something else. >it reproduces a small fraction of the whole of the work - only renders of the final work not the models behind it, none of the code, only the fraction of the artwork that is interacted with and even then only in one of many possible renderings of it There are plenty of let's plays which play through a whole game. In terms of fair use you could for example illustrate what a boss looks like when talking about it by showing a screenshot of a game. Using your idea of what partial means you could watch a whole movie. It's not like by watching a movie you get access to the raw audio and video clips, or the projet files used to edit it. You don't get the 3D models they used to make CGI. >it doesn't compete with the original work in the market place For some linear story based games you could make the point that it does compte because you can experience the whole story without needing to purchase the original.