The Month That Could Have Been Announcement

[MDenham]

they might rally behind SE, if SE were so cockish to do so (highly possible given the state of things currently), and remove the videos.

If SE did, there are legitimate grounds for a DMCA counternotice, which would get the videos reinstated.

[Lord J Esq]

I can't speak on behalf of JP, but my educated guess is that he will make sure the Crimson Echoes videos remain available. Squeenix has far less standing to press a copyright infringement claim when it comes to non-interactive videos of gameplay, and it would be far less practical for them to pick such a battle. Plus, they've squandered all the goodwill they're likely to get from this community.

[Glenn27]

"Honestly, it's not your decision. Make your own game and do what you will with it."


If it was my game then I would totally release it.

The creators have the rest of their lives to look forward to being cubicle slaves working for mindless bosses and being miserable.  All they've accomplished is to ensure that the equivalent of that scenario happens immediately rather than in just a few years.  Congratulations.  If you guys want to throw off your shackles, then don't puss out.


There is a legitimate case and there are legitimate legal arguments (which have already make on the board) about releasing the mod and being allowed to.  But everyone here is just terrified of some giant Japanese company's soulless legal department that they think the fans should just bow down and do whatever SE deigns.  So the modding community will take a big hit because fans are too terrified to fight back.  Yeah, it is their decision but it is the -wrong- decision no matter how many hits those little videos on youtube will get or how terrified they are of the suits working for SE.

"Oh, SE won't sue us for videos on Youtube, what a great victory!  Makes these 5 years all worthwhile, we did all this work so a couple of fanboys could make comments on youtube videos and so we could dream out about how awesome it would have been to let you people enjoy our dream instead of giving up after some idiot douchebag rats us out and lies to the idiots at SE who don't even give a fuck they were lied to and refuse to budge from their position."


You guys are acting like a bunch of slaves who don't want to risk anything for freedom.

All you non-creators are like a bunch of Uncle Toms encouraging and praising the creators for their submission, where the hell are all the Harriet Tubmans and Nat Turners here?


Some things never change and it seems like the slave mentality is still utterly dominant among far too many people.

Fight the power, don't just accept being it's slave.

[Mr Bekkler]

We're not slaves, we're zombies. Dummy, get your diction right 

[blarg]

I'm looking forward to the videos I'm sure they will be awesome thanks.

some questions

Aren't you worried about more legal threats/copy write claims on youtube?( though I personally think square would never sue over videos they might bluff a threat) I think a trailer and a whole month for this is the worst idea ever and everything should be uploaded to many places at once when they are all done.

Did you guys ever contact any of the lawyers or groups posted about in the threads? It'd be interesting what they would have had to say about this for future projects other people might get attacked for.

that would only causepeople to get sued, guaranteed fines, possibly jail time.

I don't get why people are so sure an anonymous  leaked beta from a tester would result in the team getting hit. Wouldn't "we did everything we could to comply with SE and delete it but one of the testers leaked it against our best efforts and orders we aren't responsible" be a good defence how could the judge hold them responsible for anything what did they do and why would SE even try wasn't their case already iffy? Did anybody ask a lawyer about this?

Also when I was looking up the laws I'm pretty sure jail time is impossible because criminal charges only apply to profiting pirates but I could be wrong. 

But obviously none of that matters now I'm happy with whatever the CE team does

[RySenkari]

Everybody here suggesting ways it could've been leaked "anonymously" killed all the plausible deniability these guys had if one of the beta testers actually did leak it without JP's consent.

[Gohanks]

Glenn, are you trolling?  All that slavery stuff makes it seem like a troll.  You really, honestly think that the people who worked on this game should risk thousands of their own dollars to release this game just so people like you and I can play it for free?  That's nuts, man.  If Square pursued legal action, they would not have to win the ensuing court case, simply taking the team to court would cost them plenty of money by itself.
Perhaps you feel a sense of entitlement over all this, since you got excited over the game, but the actions taken by the CE teams are the most realistic ones.  There is no fight possible here unless the team chooses to sacrifice real money and possibly more in a horrible economy over something that will make them no money at all. 

Anyways.  The main lesson here is that all rom hacks and translations need to stay underground until the very SECOND of release.  You could make a small beta testing announcement, but no videos, no screenshots, nothing.  It's the only way to be safe.  This lesson was learned before this CE situation started back when Square showed they would aggressively protect the Chrono Trigger trademark by shutting down that 3D remake, and then not releasing CT:DS until years later.  This has nothing to do with any possibility that Square will release another Chrono title - they probably never will.  Square-Enix has just shown twice now that they will go out of their way to crush anyone who uses their property, regardless of if it's being sold or not.  However, a rom hack that was worked on silently and then released (if you wanted to be really safe, an option would be releasing onto a torrent site... but then you probably couldn't credit the authors out of fear of backlash) could not be stopped.  It's tragic that it has to come to this, seeing projects like this one get shut down for no reason at all.  And of course there was no precedent, ever (as far as I know) for romhacks/translations of any kind being shut down...

Actually, one of the weirdest things about all that is how they never shut down (to my knowledge) fan translations of their other games.  Way back in the 90s that was how I played Final Fantasy 5 for the first time, through RPGe's ancient english translation patch... Square didn't do crap then.  Heck, the comedy website Something Awful posted a full-conversion (a less-than-stellar one, admittedly) romhack of Final Fantasy 3 to their frontpage, and nothing was done about it... it's just so weird they care so much about Chrono Trigger and do nothing about their other proprerties.
Hopefully I didn't say anything that'll get me banned, but that slavery comparison annoyed me enough to register and post this... though it was probably just a troll, right?  RIGHT?  Good luck to everyone who was involved with the project in future endeavors.

[Glenn27]

Currently, CE team = http://pigeonhole.ytmnd.com/



Somebody tell me if the CE team ever gets their balls back.

CE team, if you guys seriously spend the rest of your lives doing nothing about this and go off happily diving into your graves as 90-year old farts who refuse to release their game because of false threats and hype from LAWYERS (gee, like those guys never lie, threaten, and make false implications to frighten people into complicity!  Nope, lawyers are so well-known for their honesty and high integrity!) from a Japanese company, then I've lost all my respect for you.  

That's it?  You're going to let that douchebag lying to SE take all your hard work from you?  And everybody else here is just going to clap and applaud them while this happens?  What's wrong with you people?

I bet that guy's laughing his ass off and throwing up the middle finger as he reads these posts about you guys surrendering and everybody else praising them for their French maneuvering.  Way to give him exactly what he wanted.  I'm sure he'll go off and keep doing the exact same thing to as many other groups as he can and he'll keep laughing about it while other modders surrender their dreams and their fanboys line up behind them to praise them for their bad decisions.  If I was him (which I'm not) then I'd be having the time of my life right now, the horrible reactions to this so far at exactly what he wants you guys are just giving them to him.


I can't respect someone that scared that won't even stand up and fight for themselves against bullies, particularly for a dream of theirs they worked so hard on just to immediately abandon it at the slightest hint of any remote danger.  It's like Scooby Doo running away screaming when he sees some lame bad guy in a ghost costume.  You guys worked this hard and SE's douchebaggery is the lame bad guy in a ghost costume.  So far your only response is, "ZOINKS!" and everybody else here is making like Shaggy and following Scooby in hot pursuit.  


I hope someday you'll realized the mistake you've made- not just so people can play your game (that's not even the most important part of this) but mostly for yourselves and your own sake and so you won't have to live with regrets and fear and lying to yourselves and trying to convince yourselves otherwise for the next few years.


And plausible deniability?  It still exists.  Doesn't matter what we say or do here, the burden is on SE to prove stuff.

As long as SE can't trace shit, then they can't do shit, and if anybody's got half a brain then they can think of more than several ways to release this nice and underground-style.

[RySenkari]

The problem is that you don't have to prove shit to take someone to court, and even if Square didn't have a leg to stand on (which I don't think they do), the CE team would have to devote time and money to this that they don't have. Square has more than enough money to pay any court costs that arise from any sort of frivolous lawsuit rulings that arise. They've made it clear that even if it's absolutely 100% sure that a rogue beta tester leaked the beta without permission, they'll still sue.

[Gohanks]

So what are you suggesting, Glenn?  That they release it anyways (or have one of the testers leak it), despite Square being ready and able to sue the creators?  That's not bravery, that's idiocy.  And even if it WAS bravery, what the hell is the point?  To prove something?  To who?  Square-Enix doesn't give a crap about what's being said on this message board, and they almost certainly wouldn't suddenly change their minds if the CE team dared to stand up to them.. originally there was more to this post by RySenkari pretty well covered it.  Again, I just have to wonder what you think should happen here, and WHY it is worth risking it. I sure hope it's not just some concept like standing up to the man.

(EDIT) Ah, y'know what, forget it.  It's 1 AM, I shouldn't have even registered for these forums!  I just get riled up over stuff that outrageous.  Whatever.  As I said before, good luck to the CE team, if you do dare to try something like this again, make sure to keep it secret until it's too late to do something about it.  In the opinion of this random internet person, you did what you could.

(EDIT2) Before I leave for the night, I'll note that Glenn is right in a few ways, and that's that there is a possibility the gaming community could somehow rise up and cover the court costs.  It would take an unprecedented miracle, but it could happen, I suppose. Square-Enix seems to be the oddball of the companies I know of that have some kind of stated policy on romhacks.  I know Capcom for sure allows hacks of its old games as long as they aren't for profit, and the other companies don't seem to do anything about it.  I've only ever seen Square Enix  (and Vivendi, as was mentioned in a thread on this topic) aggressively move against people for this kind of thing.

[Glenn27]

Oh well!  If SE can't prove shit then they can't do shit.  If there's no evidence that the creators or any particular individual released it then they can legally go fuck off unless they can prove otherwise to a court.  As long as whoever releases it (assuming someone hopefully does) is smart enough to hide signs connecting them to the original makers, etc., SE, again, can't do shit.

And if they do sue for any reason, the game community will be all over the news.  There'll be plenty of people wanting to help out and support the creators.


Some of you people are so fucking paranoid that you act like you're all afraid that SE will hire ninjas to silently assassinate all the creators, all the beta testers and all their friends and family instantly in a single night or worse, travel back in time to ensure that these people never existed to begin with by killing off all of their grandparents.



It's not as big a fucking deal as the more paranoid among you are making it out to be, SE's just a soulless corporation it's not God.  It's not that hard to release something in a nice, good anonymous fashion.



"So what are you suggesting, Glenn?  That they release it anyways (or have one of the testers leak it), despite Square being ready and able to sue the creators?  That's not bravery, that's idiocy. " 

You can't do anything with a lawsuit without a case. 

Asshole lawyer- "Since this fan for releasing a free mod of one of our games made over ten years ago!"

Creators lawyer- "There is no evidence they actually released it themselves, it's unknown who did."

Judge- "Is this true?"

Asshole lawyer- "Ummmm....."

Judge- "Gtfo."

Creators- "YES!"

Asshole lawyer- "At least SE will still pay us for this."


If SE can't prove shit then they got no case.  The burden is on THEM to prove ANYTHING.



"And even if it WAS bravery, what the hell is the point?  To prove something?  To who?  Square-Enix doesn't give a crap about what's being said on this message board, and they almost certainly wouldn't suddenly change their minds if the CE team dared to stand up to them.. originally there was more to this post by RySenkari pretty well covered it.  Again, I just have to wonder what you think should happen here, and WHY it is worth risking it. I sure hope it's not just some concept like standing up to the man."


It doesn't matter what SE thinks, fuck those guys.  The point is not to just surrender FIVE YEARS OF THEIR FUCKING LIVES because of some soulless corporation.  And yeah, it is worth risking it, not just for themselves but also for the modding community and the rights of fan mods.

This game isn't going to take a penny from SE but it doesn't matter to them.  They threw down a gauntlet, based on false pretenses from an e-mail, but they don't care- they're too arrogant to back off or admit they're wrong.  We don't matter to them- the creators don't matter either.  Their five years of hard work, dedication and fandom and feelings are meaningless to SE.

And they'll be completely meaningless if all they do is surrender their feelings.

[RySenkari]

To be totally honest, there's a greedy selfish part of me that really does want them to release it and see what happens (hell, I replied to one of their Youtube videos begging them to fight it, but I was pretty much venting). I just don't want to see anyone get sued. I'm not pissed at them over it, I can absolutely see where they're coming from... and the fact that SE went back on their own deal just makes me more pissed at SE.

They didn't want the CE team to report on a series of three word conversations? Seriously? Why are they even attempting damage control, they know what they've done and they don't care.

Maybe someone still has it. Maybe five years later we'll see the patch pop up through the torrents. By then there's no way Square would sue anyone but the people distributing the torrents. It'll be a nice thing to look forward to, I suppose.

Oh well!  If SE can't prove shit then they can't do shit.  If there's no evidence that the creators or any particular individual released it then they can legally go fuck off unless they can prove otherwise to a court.  As long as whoever releases it (assuming someone hopefully does) is smart enough to hide signs connecting them to the original makers, etc., SE, again, can't do shit.

And if they do sue for any reason, the game community will be all over the news.  There'll be plenty of people wanting to help out and support the creators.

They can file a lawsuit. If you get sued, you HAVE to show up in court to defend yourself. If you don't, even if you're absolutely innocent, you still get ruled against. And even with the support of the entire gaming community, we couldn't do anything to, for example, keep JP from having to disrupt his life and show up in court. I mean, maybe if one of these guys was in law school, I might suggest they do it and then use the experience for extra credit for one of their classes, but even then, there's always the tiny risk of losing and having your credit rating for the next decade totally ruined. It might be worth it to some people, but the CE team doesn't consist of anyone to whom that statement applies.

[FaustWolf]

Glenn, chill out dude. At least everyone will still get to see it even if they can't play it. As long as SE doesn't send another C&D against the Youtube playthrough (no reason to, because there's already a ton of Chrono Trigger playthroughs on Youtube), this is not a complete defeat and the CE team retains its dignity by showing off its work for all the world to see.

With regard to the great fight for fan and consumer rights, this is a battle which must be won through precedent and not in court. Did a single fan fiction author go to court to win their right to reinterpret and further develop intellectual properties? Apparently not, given the Anne Rice example. But Anne Rices are relatively few and far between; there's just so much fan fiction out there and so many authors have come to accept it (some even beautifully acknowledge and embrace it) that Anne Rice seems to be in poor form, and not many other authors are willing to squash their fans like she is. Same goes for fanart. Holders of intellectual property have to realize that fan projects are part of the culture that ultimately develops around a product that captures people's imaginations.

Unfortunately modding and other forms of fangaming are still a young area of fan activity in comparison to fan fiction, fan art, and fan film. I mean, this whole movement literally started in the late 90s and early 00s. We're on the cusp of a new cultural wave. We all thought SE was building up a tolerance for fangames with the release of various RPGMaker titles, fan translations/retranslations, and medium-scale mods like Prophet's Guile. Crimson Echoes, as one of the few full modifications/conversions to reach fruition, emerged onto a lightly treaded path, and SE, not being used to the existence of such things, decided to kick it down. But CE will not be the last such project attempted, in all probability. All this has just been one battle in the gradual campaign for acceptance of fan activity.

[CursedSeishi]

The issue, Glenn, is that SE explicitly told them to destroy ALL copies, and inform those who had it to do the same. If a Beta tester leaked it, they wouldn't get in trouble, it be these guys. And you cannot say "I'd do it anyways" if it was you having 150k lawsuit staring down at you. Its easy to talk smack when the ball ain't in your hands, but if you're the one with it, and the defense is all around you, well then what?

SE has the edge in every way. Financially, the court costs would be covered by the sale of their worst-selling game alone. Time? They got a whole section just for this, so oodles and ooooodles of it. And, the creators did say if asked, they'd stop work on the game.

Plain and simple Glenn, you are all talk. You wouldn't do it. You can talk all you want, but until you have the beast staring down at you, with flames licking around your boots, and jaws ready to snap shut around you, it means zip, zero, nada, nothing.

I want to play the game as badly as everyone else does, do I wish these guys would go "F*** the system!"? Oh yeah, but I'm not so blinded with stupidity to not understand that these people did this out of love of the series, and its killing them too I bet, they've tried to talk with people at SE, but we see how well its working. Whether or not the lawsuit is a bluff is irrelevant, you can't honestly expect these people to risk such a thing. If they were rich, it might not matter, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[SuperSlash]

"To be totally honest, there's a greedy selfish part of me that really does want them to release it and see what happens"


Ooh man, it's the same way for me. I know it won't happen (them releasing it), but it makes me angry when I watch the videos to see how great this game would've been, and knowing that it will never be playable is very frustrating.


I've thought of something before (again, I know this won't happen, because I'm probably leaving out something really obvious, knowing me), and that is to release the game as is (98% complete would be good enough for me at this point, and I think I speak for everyone here when I say that) on the Compendium, and after a few people have gotten it, quickly delete the topic before Square sees it (somehow) and then pretend the topic never happened. I already know some issues this would cause though, and as I said, I'm probably leaving out something obvious and important, but man, that would make my day. One thing I can think of already is that the hack no longer exists anyway, so all of this is irrelevant.