Square Enix Strikes Down on Final Fantasy Type 0 fan translation with potential legal action - Polidicks

[QUOTE]Square Enix is bringing down the hammer and has demanded a permanent take down of the fan-made Final Fantasy Type 0 translation patch. You’ve probably heard about the project over the last year or so. After Square Enix’s neglect, fans brought it upon themselves to offer translations to the PSP game for both English and Spanish. The project was dubbed “Operation Doomtrain” (ironically). At the helm of the project was a hobbyist game dev/hacker SkybladeCloud, along with his team. The patch was just successfully released and has had high praise. It’s a perfect translation with everything correctly translated. It looks extremely professional and offers fans everything they’ve been asking for, for free. But not too long ago Square decided to take it upon themselves and announced a console HD port/remaster with translation for western markets. It will be coming to PS4 and Xbox One. It was originally thought to come to Vita, but Sony screwed up their announcement post; later retracting it. So with further neglect from both Sony and Square, it made the patch even more popular and relevant.[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]“You know I normally use blog posts for relevant information only, such as project announcements or releases. However, I’m sorry this time it’ll be a little bit different: Unfortunately I’m forced to remove my posts and pages related to the popular Final Fantasy Type-0 fan translation project. That’s right, certain game company thinks that threats and false accusations are the way to treat its biggest fans. For the time being I can’t answer questions related to this matter, but I’ll write a more comprehensive post about all this once I get the chance. I hope you understand, and as always I appreciate your support (that I might need more that ever in the near future). Thank you very much: ~Sky”[/QUOTE] [url]http://wololo.net/2014/07/19/square-enix-strikes-down-on-ff-0-translation-patch-with-potential-legal-action/[/url] What a bunch of douchebags

What the fuck.

Problem here is if the intellectual property right holders want to retain their legal rights- they have to sue. If they don't sue and this goes to court down the road- they will lose because they effectively gave consent by not suing earlier. So it sucks but there's that. If they want to sell their own translation (someday) they have to go to court against this fan translation.

That's a damn lot of dedication and love for a series down the drain.

translation is already out on the internet soooooooo

Cue the Streisand effect.

This doesn't matter in the slightest, the creators of the fan translations shouldn't be too down about it, the game is great and the effort they put into translating it isn't lost just because they aren't able to host it on their site. Its even on piratebay, so if Square Enix wants to join the several other hundreds of people aiming to take it down, they are going to have a bad time.

[QUOTE=Sgt Doom;45435842]Cue the Streisand effect.[/QUOTE] Isn't the first time and won't be the last that square enix japan completely fucks over people for almost nothing. SE japan has no knowledge of how shit is handled outside japan.

i rated it dumb as in it was fucking dumb for square enix to do this. fuck they are arseholes with fan projects like this

I seriously can't see the logic behind this kind of shit. The playerbase just made your game accessible to more potential costumers, and you're going to sue them for improving your sales? Just, what.

What the fuck Squenix. We've been waiting for this game for god knows how long, then you say it's not gonna be out in the West, then you go back on your word and say it's gonna be out on vita then you go back AGAIN and say it's only gonna be on Xbox1 and PS4. Well fucking played. [sp]Translation's absolutely fantastic, by the way. Sky and the team really went all out, they even translated and typeset all the cutscenes[/sp] [editline]19th July 2014[/editline] Another thing to be mentioned: they're not providing the game files. They're only providing a patch, and you're encouraged to get your ISO file by ripping your UMD copy of the game.

Gotta love how Square Enix is in dire fucking need of money right now, and all they do is fuck up some more by throwing PR disasters like this around and publish terrible games like Murdered Soul Suspect.

People in this thread have issues holy shit. Square did nothing wrong. I feel bad for the guys who did the translation, a C+D isn't a nice thing to be dealt with but Square-enix is making their own HD version of it. This isn't a chrono trigger situation of them stomping out a remake and doing nothing with it but instead "Hey we're planning on doing this ourselves, stop." It's totally fair game. They also probably know about 70-90% of the people who download the patch are playing a emulated version and not a legal one, let alone the fact that they probably have the thought "If people play and go through the original, why would they be excited for our remake." AND because of the legal reasons someone mentioned earlier. It just makes sense really. I mean they aren't gonna stop it as it's already released buuut people calling Square big mean bullies ;__; are in the wrong. Edit: Reading Sky's post in the OP what a entitled guy, seriously the amount of unwarranted self importance is off the charts. Edit 2: Just figured I'd do a quick comparison to two other fan translations; [b]Mother 3[/b] It was finished awhile ago and Nintendo didn't do anything about it. Everyone played it and liked it and it was fine because nintendo has no plans to do anything with the series/game. You can say "i-it helped increase sales ;__;" all you want but you'd be a fucking liar because nobody imported it or found a way to translate it. Everyone just grabbed a rom or a already patched one. It's the same case here, nobody was going to import a legal copy to modify when it's easy to just download. [b]Dangan Ronpa 1/2[/b] There were fan translations being done by Oren and another team, both of them stopped when they heard it's getting a release/remake/whatever in the west knowing they'd hurt the games sales. People are bummed but they understood that the translation [b]wasn't needed anymore[/b]. [b]Type-0[/b] is a DR1/2 case but instead of being respectful about it they continued to push it out and when they were told to stop threw a small spiteful temper tantrum.

[QUOTE=Sift;45436866] They also probably know about 70-90% of the people who download the patch are playing a emulated version and not a legal one, let alone the fact that they probably have the thought "[B]If people play and go through the original, why would they be excited for our remake[/B]." AND because of the legal reasons someone mentioned earlier. [/QUOTE] This makes absolutely no freaking sense.

[QUOTE=maxumym;45437083]This makes absolutely no freaking sense.[/QUOTE] There are hundreds of people, in fact the majority who once they know the plot twists etc to a game they don't care to go through it again. If you wanna argue that you're just flat out wrong. vvvv Yeah it's too late to do anything, it's more a debate on "did square do something wrong or not" now.

It hits a torrent site, gathers a few seeds and Square will be powerless to remove it as it continues to migrate into private trackers. Not advocating this or warez at all but it's (probably) going to happen.

[QUOTE=pentium;45437098]It hits a torrent site, gathers a few seeds and Square will be powerless to remove it as it continues to migrate into private trackers. Not advocating this or warez at all but it's (probably) going to happen.[/QUOTE] It already did though, the patch has been released on the 6th of June

[QUOTE=H8Entitlement;45435801]Problem here is if the intellectual property right holders want to retain their legal rights- they have to sue. If they don't sue and this goes to court down the road- they will lose because they effectively gave consent by not suing earlier. So it sucks but there's that. If they want to sell their own translation (someday) they have to go to court against this fan translation.[/QUOTE] You are thinking of trademarks, not copyright.

[quote]Square did nothing wrong.[/quote] according to you maybe.

Under U.S law if you don't defend your properties you lose them. (Trademark defense is enforced, copyright is heavily suggested.) Squenix was under legal obligation to send the CnD now that they have the hd reissue coming out. They didn't care beforehand because the hd version wasn't in the works. We could go with "Squenix hates its fans" though.

Snip/

this is the knid of bullshit that piss's me off what is it with Japan and the West being so far away from release dates in Berserk it was like 10 months before it came to the west and by then the 2nd one was out.

[QUOTE=theevilldeadII;45438460]this is the knid of bullshit that piss's me off what is it with Japan and the West being so far away from release dates in Berserk it was like 10 months before it came to the west and by then the 2nd one was out.[/QUOTE] Part of it is publisher/developer incompetence, but part of it is also localization matters. In large JRPGs where one has to go through and translate every single box of dialogue, every single item, attack and spell names, so forth and so forth, Square Enix also likes to go all out with voice-casting and redubbing (usually). Which adds another extra bulk of time onto release, since they have to get english voice actors doing all the lines over again entirely. Part of the localization process often also involves taking something japanese and trying to rephrase or tweak it to fit better with overseas audiences, which is why Ted Woolsey and the Working Designs translators are rather famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) during the SNES/PS1 era of JRPGs. In this case, it's mostly Square just not wanting to bother with bringing the game over for a damn long while before finally deciding to localize it, and the translators that already did it just got shat on. I didn't know there was a complete translation of the game on the net, but it's to be expected. If the Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix+ translation wasn't already basically done for a good while now besides some engrish on the Japan-only scenes, they'd probably of gotten a C&D too thanks to 2.5 HD ReMix on its way.

[QUOTE=Sam Za Nemesis;45436552]For the record: Square is a company that tries to protect their IP in every situation possible even though they would benefit better trying to make a partnership with the people making those fan works. Take this fan remake of Chrono Trigger as a fine example [video=youtube;YELRuYNBRDk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YELRuYNBRDk[/video][/QUOTE] Goddamn I really fucking want to see a remake of that game, one of my favorites.

Another funfact: They announced the localization of the HD version of the game (For Xbone and PS4) right after this fan translation released.

[QUOTE=H8Entitlement;45435801]Problem here is if the intellectual property right holders want to retain their legal rights- they have to sue. If they don't sue and this goes to court down the road- they will lose because they effectively gave consent by not suing earlier. So it sucks but there's that. If they want to sell their own translation (someday) they have to go to court against this fan translation.[/QUOTE] I was wondering if there was any truth to this, [URL="http://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/2b5k4b/if_an_intellectual_property_holder_doesnt_enforce/"]so I asked some lawyers on reddit[/URL], and basically what I was told is that: Copyright has no such protections, and can be enforced under your discretion. A copyright violation is valid even if it's one out of a million that you've enforced. A trademark violation is valid in some circumstances. There's two ways that you can lose a trademark: abandonment and becoming generic. First, if you "abandon" your trademark, meaning that you don't use the trademark actively. If Square were to sue someone using the Final Fantasy name and the defendant claims trademark abandonment due to a lack of policing their trademark, Square would only need to prove that they've regularly policed it, [I]not[/I] that they've policed [I]every[/I] usage of it. The second way you can lose a trademark is through that trademark becoming generic. It's happened to escalator and aspirin, and is happening to kleenex and xerox. They're brand names that are used to refer to a group of products - for instance, kleenex is used to refer to tissues in general, instead of just to Kleenex-brand tissues. To use the argument that a trademark has become generic in court, you have to provide evidence that the company knew their trademark was being used in that manner but didn't defend it (as an example one of them gave, if "apples" became a term for computers in general and Apple didn't tell people to stop using it that way, the Apple trademark would become generic). However, this only applies when there could be confusion between the product using that generic name and the real product. For example, if you made your own jeans and called them "Levi's Jeans," that would cause confusion between the real product and your product. However, if you made a chain of restaurants called "Levi's," it would be difficult to confuse the two, so that wouldn't be evidence for generification of a trademark. But, as one of the lawyers put it: [quote]However, this situation is unlikely to happen to fan works and similar infringements. If anything, the infringers strenghten the trademark by tying it more strongly to the concept. "Harry Potter" could be genericided as a trademark if it would become the dictionary synonym for "wizard", but not if it would be associated with dozens of unlicensed novels about the same single recognizeable character.[/quote]

destiny is destiny i guess lmao

Doesn't Square Enix charge money for translation DLC's?

Square are totally within their rights to do this but surely it's better PR to allow it.

[QUOTE=Alfax;45436464]I seriously can't see the logic behind this kind of shit. The playerbase just made your game accessible to more potential costumers, and you're going to sue them for improving your sales? Just, what.[/QUOTE] It says right there in the blurb in the OP, let alone the actual article, that they're releasing their own translation. If you're heading a fan project and it turns out the company whose IP you're using is working on much the same thing, expect a C&D. That's how it goes. The company that produced the game is under no obligation to have their product compete with a derivative work.