A Thread to Discuss Our Grievances

[Pyriel]

They'll sue you under the copyright laws of the country you're in, though. I'm not sure how making comics that use someone else's characters and settings, etc., is legal in Japan. It could be something along the lines of a parody exception, or maybe the companies just don't care enough to sue until it hits the level where a parody defense could work. Copyright and trademark infringement are usually civil matters, so A) it's up to the party who believes they've been harmed to seek legal remedy--something they might not do for various reasons--and B) in most countries you don't go to jail for it. That's infringement. Outright theft, like downloading the game from a warez group, crosses the line to criminal. It's kind of a grey area, though. You can use art assets and call it "derivative", and get sued, but not be criminally liable, even though most people would agree you stole something.

[Raww Le Klueze]

It's not legal in Japan, it just isn't enforced widely. People still get sued though, Nintendo has sued Pokemon doujins and the Doraemon estate tend to protect their property rather religiously.

[Oppenheimer]

Well, you'll never know. Shadowrun recently got a reboot or something because of a kickstarter thing. Still, that's quite a bit different seeing as Shadowrun hasn't had any special activity of note lately, not that I know of at least.

Jordan Weisman created Shadowrun in the first place. I'd imagine he still holds the licensing for it. He just couldn't get the payroll for it from any investors. That isn't even in the same ballpark as some random fans wanting to do a sequel to Suikoden in RPG Maker or something.

[Hirathien]

Ah, so it would seem. Not really into the Shadowrun thing at all so, I just went by word of mouth.

I guess if a third-party studio were to approach Konami, a kickstarter could start from there?

[LanceHeart]

I guess if a third-party studio were to approach Konami, a kickstarter could start from there?

Maybe. Kickstarter has traditionally been used for self-publishing developers, since it's often praised as an alternative to publishers in the first place. Konami, being the publisher of its own games and third-party developed IPs, might not want that to happen.

Let's not forget that Suikoden is primarily a Japanese console/handheld franchise. The recent Class of Heroes 2 localization kickstarter crashed and burned by being too niche and for specifically aiming to be a digital PSP release. I don't see a full JRPG development Kickstarter project doing any better.

[Hirathien]

I guess those Kickstarter thing must really have a big fanbase for it to work.

Too bad we can't have Pyriel patch Suikoden II and send it to Konami for them to just put it up on PSN, would have been cool!

[KFCrispy]

i would encourage anyone with a good plan to try to use Suikoden's content as much as possible. If Konami bothers to lift a finger, at least it shows they are paying attention!
Sure, Square squashing the Chrono Trigger fan games was sad to see, but it demonstrated that they were very much aware of their success with the game and recently released it for the newer generations on DS and smartphone/tablet platforms.