Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Boredfrom]

This Palworld thing is a delicious dilemma for these screeching autists because there's no resolution here. They're completely impotent to stop the market from consuming what it wants just like their little boycott of Hogwarts Legacy did fuckall. I'm surprised that thread hasn't started turning into a graveyard yet. NappyNep is probably on the verge of a mental episode so people should start getting actioned for actions soon.

It is also kind of useless because Pokemon will continue to print money regardless, and they admit that TPC/Gamefreak will not learn anything about this in the technical sense.

Nintendo may sue, but the big question of why they waited for so long will linger. In the case of that, Palworld would be just replaced by another game legally distinct to not activate Nintendo’s ire.

[HaughtyFrank]

With the switch 2 coming game freak might even upgrade the graphics from DS levels and then everyone is happy

[railGUN]

So REE feels bad that a bunch of artists working for a massive corporation have loosely inspired other artists working for a small company and are hoping and praying that corporate lawyers waste millions of dollars suing said small company which would most likely dissuade other small companies from making superior versions of games that large, lazy complacent game corporations have been phoning it in for the last 7 games they've made.

[Cheststrongwell]

I can't wait until AI drives all twitter artists to a lonely life of homelessness.

[TylenolJones]

Is this ableism?

I'd love to see Abbot trip down a long flight of stairs while awkwardly carrying a huge mess of concertina wire and just go from Pinocchio to Cenobite along the way.

You do know he's in a wheelchair, right.

Regardless.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/supreme-court-says-texas-cant-block-federal-agents-from-the-border.808233/?post=117997950#post-117995355

[books]

True socialism is giving me what I want without having to work for it because the fact i was born is enough. The rest of y'all on your own. I'll help out by tweeting a hashtag, but you're gonna have to pull your own weight here.

[Boredfrom]

I like how these takes always ignore the fact Palworld stole fan designs too.

 

Just like they stole that character from Steven Universe, the blue lady with bangs covering her face.

 

(I hope RE never bitchs about misinformation in social media again).

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Palworld drama is simple. Nepnep and others need to feel like they're above others. It's always the same. Anything for the dopamine.  

It's not about winning. It's about getting their hit then moving onto the next thing.

Trump -> BLM -> Hogwarts-> Abortion -> Ukraine -> Israel -> Palworld [You are here] -> Trump Strikes Back

[benji]

True socialism is giving me what I want without having to work for it because the fact i was born is enough. The rest of y'all on your own. I'll help out by tweeting a hashtag, but you're gonna have to pull your own weight here.

FACT CHECK: True socialism is me getting everything and you getting nothing. Stop being greedy, chud.

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

I'm conflicted. Socialism should mean sharing of wealth and goods with everyone.. but Benji is staff and staff can never be wrong! 

[Boredfrom]

1705977879[/url]']
Palworld drama is simple. Nepnep and others need to feel like they're above others. It's always the same. Anything for the dopamine.  

It's not about winning. It's about getting their hit then moving onto the next thing.

Trump -> BLM -> Hogwarts-> Abortion -> Ukraine -> Israel -> Palworld [You are here] -> Trump Strikes Back

You are not wrong given how giddy she is at times with this shit show. She reacted with glee when the 3D Models dude at twitter made comparisons just because she could tell off others in that thread.

[Uncle]

I can't wait until AI drives all twitter artists to a lonely life of homelessness.

you drive past one with a sign, "will paint for food"

you ask, "can you paint me a pic of trump and biden fighting over an arby's melt"

nepenthe looks up at you and says "yes, and an arby's melt shall be my fee"

you punch in a few buttons on your phone and show her what you've generated, "can you paint it better than this"

her dead eyed expression tells you more than you needed to know

you look her up and down and tell her, "that's a nice lucio shirt, but I thought you should know, it looks like he has six fingers on his right hand"

and you speed away

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

Uncle.. Please.. 

[Boredfrom]

The only reason I can imagine someone arguing "it's not plagiarism" is that it's tech bros who really care about "the bottom line". It's always tech bros behind this kind of stuff. Is technology inherently adverse to art? I don't think it needs to be. Just chill guys, pay artists and stop stealing for profit.

The artists already got paid. You should ask Nintendo and TPC if they are paying their artists enough and fairly… but that would require you caring enough beyond social media bitching.

[benji]

I'm conflicted. Socialism should mean sharing of wealth and goods with everyone.. but Benji is staff and staff can never be wrong! 

Wow, you think Joanne and Colin Moriarty and everyone at CDPR should be given anything after what they've done?

[Pwnz]

True socialism is giving me what I want without having to work for it because the fact i was born is enough. The rest of y'all on your own. I'll help out by tweeting a hashtag, but you're gonna have to pull your own weight here.

I don't know man, being a barista influencer sounds like a lot.

I think I'll create videos of me reacting to shitter posts and I'll take my commune ratio please.

[Potato]

True socialism is giving me what I want without having to work for it because the fact i was born is enough. The rest of y'all on your own. I'll help out by tweeting a hashtag, but you're gonna have to pull your own weight here.

Wasn't your fault you were born, was it?

Obviously the fault of your parents who are probably boomers so let's go with the free money!

[benji]

The only reason I can imagine someone arguing "it's not plagiarism" is that it's tech bros who really care about "the bottom line". It's always tech bros behind this kind of stuff. Is technology inherently adverse to art? I don't think it needs to be. Just chill guys, pay artists and stop stealing for profit.

[Potato]

The only reason I can imagine someone arguing "it's not plagiarism" is that it's tech bros who really care about "the bottom line". It's always tech bros behind this kind of stuff. Is technology inherently adverse to art? I don't think it needs to be. Just chill guys, pay artists and stop stealing for profit.

The other 10%...Russian bots

[Uncle]

The only reason I can imagine someone arguing "it's not plagiarism" is that it's tech bros who really care about "the bottom line". It's always tech bros behind this kind of stuff. Is technology inherently adverse to art? I don't think it needs to be. Just chill guys, pay artists and stop stealing for profit.

The artists already got paid. You should ask Nintendo and TPC if they are paying their artists enough and fairly… but that would require you caring enough beyond social media bitching.

I love how fucking everyone is "tech bros" now

you know what tech bros actually are? weird rightoids obsessed with cultivating their brand online and shilling their latest snake oil using marketing corpospeak about the blockchain

not, like, random guy who codes as a hobby, is probably familiar with linux and has a passing interest in the latest tech developments

and also not "guy who has the minuscule understanding of copyright necessary to understand that palworld is not plagiarism"

AI is easy as fuck for anyone to start fucking around with, if anything tech bros are probably angry that it's so accessible to the masses and they can't successfully grift with it because it's generally free and community-led

[Gameboy Nostalgia]

I'm conflicted. Socialism should mean sharing of wealth and goods with everyone.. but Benji is staff and staff can never be wrong! 

Wow, you think Joanne and Colin Moriarty and everyone at CDPR should be given anything after what they've done?

No! I think they should be taxed and their wealth distributed to trans folx exclusively! 

[Uncle]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/vgc-palworld-embroiled-in-ai-and-pok%C3%A9mon-%E2%80%98plagiarism%E2%80%99-controversy.807630/page-58?post=117997599#post-117997599

It's a sea of people asking for "evidence" when the evidence is already there plastered in front of them. Apparently you need a PokemonTM watermark somewhere on the screen for it to be apparent - the fact there is the, pretty much perfect matching of hundreds, if not thousands of vertices per character exactly along three spatial axes within an infinite space multiple times again and again is insufficient and it's all just totally a neat coincidence (Nepenthe thanks for the wording of that last bit - don't want any plagarism accusations!)

Sure you were just "asking questions" though

yes, actually, that's about the level of what you'd need to win a court case

like extracting those files from palworld and discovering metadata in the file that identifies which pokemon the model was stolen from and/or matches the metadata of files in scarlet and violet

[Uncle]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/vgc-palworld-embroiled-in-ai-and-pok%C3%A9mon-%E2%80%98plagiarism%E2%80%99-controversy.807630/page-58?post=117998142#post-117998142

I hope this doesn't get them in any legal trouble and it's considered distinct enough because Nintendo goes too far with their capitalistic abuse of copyright against fan Pokémon projects. From my perspective, it's a solid parody.
I do wonder how the conversation would go if Palworld was just a straight-up Pokémon fangame, and got taken down for being that. The controversies have been smaller there, and the conversation goes a different way. I guess if it doesn't threaten Nintendo's bottom line, less people care.

I like how these takes always ignore the fact Palworld stole fan designs too.

and I like how assholes at era constantly talk "around" others to their face, like the truth of the thread is set in stone and any new dissenting opinion is just one for the regulars to chuckle at, "get a load of THIS guy"



you're just soooo cool

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/vgc-palworld-embroiled-in-ai-and-pok%C3%A9mon-%E2%80%98plagiarism%E2%80%99-controversy.807630/post-117997044

Well, gaming culture is just pure capitalism filtered through a nerd lens, and I've come to the conclusion that being an artist is in many ways fundamentally at odds with capitalism. To create art can be pretty cheap, if not free. It requires taking free time to practice and learn. It's bolstered by the sharing of resources and community building. It requires observation of the real world, which in many cases means exercising empathy towards other people and cultures different from yourself. It also sometimes means telling a person who doesn't know as much as you the cold truth about their input and expectations, no matter how rich or senior they are to you.

Art is also an intrinsic part of all cultures and something I'd consider a fundamental part of the human condition. It's a way to communicate your identity to others, to entrench or critique religious, social, and moral values, and to uplift and inspire others. There is inherent value to the actual process of creating art itself beyond the final work that simultaneously cannot be commodified, which can make it confusing as fuck to a lot of people who aren't artists at all.. I've encountered this in AI discussions, where someone insists that it's a solution to my "problems," unaware that the "problems" are literally just the artistic process that I consent to engaging with. Like, some people find artistic creation itself- drawing, painting, animating, etc.- inherently useless or an obstacle in and of themselves, and it's so fucking weird.

The best way I can describe it would be like if I asked gamers "Why are you playing games when you could just see the ending on YouTube?" Since the goal is to beat the game, it must be presumed that everything before the ending is an unnecessary inhibitor to that goal. The easy rebuttal to this is, obviously, "playing games is fun." But trying to tell folks like this that "literally making art fulfills me" and it's through one ear and out the other.

As for the rules, there's a lot of things that are at least ethically dubious without actually being illegal. Not all plagiarism is a civil or criminal matter, so adding it to the rules is a headache that's more trouble than it's worth.

🎖️

[Boredfrom]

I mean, there's an ethical argument to be hosted (outside of here) about the anticapitalist effects of piracy and theft from large corporations and how that, in turn, affects artists in and out of the corporate sphere. But frankly in this context, and on this specific forum, I find it trite.

It's one thing to not care that GameFreak got got because they'll be fine; it's another thing to cheer this on under the context that Palworld's success has any notable positive impact on the world from an anticapitalist perspective, when frankly their brazeness at potentially stealing free fanworks doesn't engender any confidence in me as an anticapitalist artist. If you wanted me to point out an example of keyboard activism, it would be Palworld fans insisting that their game is somehow a thorn in the eye of capitalism, when frankly taking capital in order to generate millions in profits that will likely be consolidated as personal wealth as just another form of capitalism. I mean hell, where were these specific Palworld when Activision Blizzard employees trying to unionize? Not actually on the picket line, I can tell you that. This attempt to reframe the shamelessness as actually politically noble is corny as hell.

Like I'd rather people just say that they don't care about the stolen assets, and subsequently the artists who made those assets, specifically because they have an issue with GameFreak's shitty output as of late. That's at least more honest.

[railGUN]

"literally making art fulfills me"

So go make art you dunce. AI doesn't come into your house and break all your pencil crayons. Just expect that if you want to be a well paid artist, you have to be really really good. This isn't new.

[Boredfrom]

"literally making art fulfills me"

So go make art you dunce. AI doesn't come into your house and break all your pencil crayons. Just expect that if you want to be a well paid artist, you have to be really really good. This isn't new.

But that would require effort and/or talent.

[Uncle]

 

[benji]

Half the gaming podcast media thinks physically stealing from stores is ethically fine as long as it's a big corporation - so hardly shocking digital/ip theft isn't a big concern for them.

the same media that rightfully crucified Filip Miucin for plagiarism bullshit, I for once just wanted them to also protect devs

Advocating for workplace protections for devs might mean that games take longer to come out.

Do you want that?

Do you want games to take a longer time to come out? For what, just so Sally and Jared can see their families and be emotionally fulfilled?

Sounds like you're not a gamer.

I'm not sure that Nintendo winning this in court would even be a good thing for artists lol, we don't even like them shutting down fan games that directly use and repackage their IPs (actually highly illegal), now we want them to be able to shut down knockoffs as well for using their models as references? Careful what you wish for...

Slippery slope fallacy aside, if Nintendo can't protect their own extremely recognizable designs from being stolen in such a brazen manner legally, than what chance do artists with far less resources available to them have?

I'm not sure that Nintendo winning this in court would even be a good thing for artists lol, we don't even like them shutting down fan games that directly use and repackage their IPs (actually highly illegal), now we want them to be able to shut down knockoffs as well for using their models as references? Careful what you wish for...

ITS NOT REFERENCE FOR FUCK SAKE
Getting a model and doind the bare minimiun to change it is not being inspired, its not being referential, its stealing.

Slippery slope fallacy aside, if Nintendo can't protect their own extremely recognizable designs from being stolen in such a brazen manner legally, than what chance do artists with far less resources available to them have?

this is what people keep conveniently ignoring.

instead of thinking about the people in your lives who might be independent artists, y'all just wanna rally against The Pokemon Company and condone stealing from artists because they aren't making the type of game you want or aren't making it to your satisfaction

Terrible take from Andrea.

I respect the hell out of her but this isn't the first time she's brushed off a controversy with that kind of attitude.

Speaking of:

I don't understand why so many in games media are acting like this about the game. Really does a disservice to the issue at hand.

- the developer has openly discussed AI use for designs in the past
- the developer has a history of ripping off games, including a hilariously blatant copy of Breath of the Wild
- there is now evidence that the developer may have copied actual in-game Pokemon assets, which goes beyond "the designs look similar"

I don't see how criticizing the developer and this game is "cop shit," given all of that.

grubb is a fucking moron. caring about artistic integrity is not "cop shit", cishet white dude

When criticism of plagiarism is framed as 'stanning the big bad corporation' nuance like this doesn't matter. How the artists at Game Freak / Pokemon / Nintendo personally feel is irrelevant or just collateral damage.

Reading response Tweets is giving me brain damage.

It also hurts literally all artists who could design similar stuff. Why hire a talented fakemon designer like TemTem did when this shows it's far cheaper and more profitable to just steal from Pokémon directly and cut out the actual artists entirely

The best thing that has come out of this whole thing is that we can now give names and surnames to all the people in the media who don't care about artists. Very informative.

I'm not sure that Nintendo winning this in court would even be a good thing for artists lol, we don't even like them shutting down fan games that directly use and repackage their IPs (actually highly illegal), now we want them to be able to shut down knockoffs as well for using their models as references? Careful what you wish for...

As a person who already had their own artwork stolen, sold on t-shirts in Denmark through Amazon, and was told by Amazon's European legal department that unless I can provide a "patent" to my design then they won't do anything. No independent artist is going to have a patent for anything that they create so I was pretty much stuck with letting it go.

I absolutely, as an artist, want Palworld to be burned in court for this. People do not care nor want to try and understand how immensely frustrating it is for artists to have their concepts stolen and watch as nothing happens to the thief in question because so many people take copyright laws and infringement as something to be less concerned about knowing that artist's, unless backed by larger corporations, don't have the resources to fight it.

I'm not going to call out people specifically because you can't, but pretty much anyone with eyes can read the people who were downplaying that this is plagiarism (even after the models were started to being compared and posted) with some of the most insane bad faith arguments you've ever read in your life. Downplaying plagiarism IS defending/supporting it. We're talking about something that in most serious industries will get you blacklisted for life if you're caught doing it once. It's not defensible or downplayable.

And since I'm actually replying to you so it's okay, your other post is no different in this respect, it's a terrible bad faith argument at best to posit that we shouldn't want Nintendo to action actual plagiarism because fan games!!! And you are downplaying the plagiarism as just references when some of the models are so similar that it goes far beyond references.

And no one cares about the myriad of other knockoffs like TemTem or Coromon or Nexomon or whatever because those games put in the work with their Fakemons. This game didn't.

No, Nintendo protecting their artists isn't actually going to be "bad for artists". You know what's bad for artists? One of the biggest companies in the world going "oh well" to plagiarism from a multi-million dollar profit game and letting it slide. If goddamn lawyer assassin company Nintendo can't protect their artists, then who the hell can lmao.

Like, come on.

I'm not sure that Nintendo winning this in court would even be a good thing for artists lol, we don't even like them shutting down fan games that directly use and repackage their IPs (actually highly illegal), now we want them to be able to shut down knockoffs as well for using their models as references? Careful what you wish for...

What the fuck am I reading. There are many many many reasons why companies are not allowed to just take existing models from any game, edit them, and then sell a new game after having done so. Same with any kind of game asset. Code, textures, animations, VFX, level geometry, etc.

How the fuck did this thread evolve into "Actually, it's perfectly fine that they ripped assets from other games." Like is this what the Pokémon evolution of a tech bro is?

"Who said anything about Pokémon inspiration?"

Y'all go from "They're just inspired"

to "Yes they stole shit and here's why that's ok. 😃"

What kind of sunk cost fallacy is this?

Holy shit these people are so dumb and think they're so smart.

What they're advocating is literally what Mattel did to Bratz:

On December 10, 2006, Mattel sued MGA Entertainment for $500 million, alleging that the brand's creator, Carter Bryant, was working for Mattel when he developed its original idea/concept.[21] On July 17, 2008, a federal jury ruled that Bryant had created the Bratz concept while he was working for Mattel, despite MGA's claim that Bryant had never been employed by Mattel at the time and Bryant's assertion that he had designed the Bratz concepts between two separate periods of employment at Mattel. The jury also ruled that MGA and its CEO Isaac Larian were liable for converting Mattel property for its own use and intentionally interfering with the contractual duties owed by Bryant to Mattel.[22]

On December 3, 2008, U.S. District Judge Stephen G. Larson granted a permanent injunction requested by Mattel against MGA.[23] Subsequently, on December 10, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted MGA an immediate stay of the injunction, thereby halting the impending recall of all Bratz products, ensuring that retailers would be allowed to continue to sell the Bratz products through at least the Court's final ruling on the matter. In its initial statement, the Court suggested Larson's previous ruling was "draconian" and had gone too far in awarding ownership of the entire Bratz franchise to Mattel. The Court of Appeals also ordered MGA and Mattel to resolve their dispute out of court.[24] Isaac Larian and MGA Entertainment issued a statement that "the Court's stay is good news for all Bratz fans and for anyone who cares about fair competition."[25]

On July 22, 2010, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that ownership of the Bratz franchise belonged to MGA Entertainment. The Court Of Appeals rejected the District Court's original ruling for Mattel, where MGA Entertainment was ordered to forfeit the entire Bratz brand — including all registered copyrights and trademarks of the Bratz name — to Mattel. The panel from the Court of Appeals said Judge Larson had abused his discretion with his ruling for Mattel, concluding that Bryant's employment agreement could have, but did not necessarily, cover ideas as it did designs, processes, computer programs, and formulae, which are all more concrete.[26][27]

In addition to the litigation for ownership and control of Bratz' on October 20, 2009, artist Bernard "Butch" Belair filed a new design infringement lawsuit against both Mattel and MGA in Manhattan federal court, seeking unspecified damages. Belair claimed that his copyright designs of young women with "large heads, oval eyes, small bodies and large feet," which he had created for shoe designer house Steve Madden, were "pilfered" when Carter Bryant, during his 2008 court testimony, testified that he had been inspired by Steve Madden shoe ads which he saw in Seventeen magazine. Belair says neither MGA nor Mattel "sought or obtained permission ... to copy, reproduce, create derivative works from or distribute" his "copyrighted" work.[28] In 2011, MGA prevailed over Belair, with the summary judgment stating that, "Belair cannot monopolize the abstract concept of an absurdly large-headed, long limbed, attractive, fashionable woman."[29]

This was despite the fact that BARBIE was literally "stolen" from a german doll in the first place.

And we already had this case in video games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Nintendo_Co.,_Ltd.

[benji]

I mean, there's an ethical argument to be hosted (outside of here) about the anticapitalist effects of piracy and theft from large corporations and how that, in turn, affects artists in and out of the corporate sphere. But frankly in this context, and on this specific forum, I find it trite.

It's one thing to not care that GameFreak got got because they'll be fine; it's another thing to cheer this on under the context that Palworld's success has any notable positive impact on the world from an anticapitalist perspective, when frankly their brazeness at potentially stealing free fanworks doesn't engender any confidence in me as an anticapitalist artist. If you wanted me to point out an example of keyboard activism, it would be Palworld fans insisting that their game is somehow a thorn in the eye of capitalism, when frankly taking capital in order to generate millions in profits that will likely be consolidated as personal wealth as just another form of capitalism. I mean hell, where were these specific Palworld when Activision Blizzard employees trying to unionize? Not actually on the picket line, I can tell you that. This attempt to reframe the shamelessness as actually politically noble is corny as hell.

Like I'd rather people just say that they don't care about the stolen assets, and subsequently the artists who made those assets, specifically because they have an issue with GameFreak's shitty output as of late. That's at least more honest.

How do I keep thinking she can't be explicitly more ignorant than she has been.