[18/07] Square brings the hammer down on the Type-0 fan translation patch

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The long arm of the Square-Enix law has come down on the venerable fan translation patch for Final Fantasy Type-0, a month after its release.

Team leader Sky has announced on his blog that he had been receiving threats and false accusations from a “certain game company”, though is unwilling to disclose any further information for the time being.

As of writing, Sky has been forced to pull not only the patch itself, but any pages and posts pertaining to the project itself.

Meanwhile, the company are currently working on a remastered version of the game for both current generation machines, leaving Vita owners out in the cold.

Nova Crystallis
 
Well the game company does have the right to withhold any patches because they own the copyrights and what not. Even if it is a crappy move on their part :mad:
 
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I figured they would do this after they said they were doing the HD. Also kinda shocked they didn't shut it down earlier. Kinda lame to do it now, unless the people making the fan translation did get warned and didn't wanna say anything until it was finished
 
This is a rather strange move, IMO. 1) The game was never released here in the west. Was it ever even licensed in the west? If not, then even though it's SE's IP, if the translators are located outside of Japan or wherever else the game is licensed, SE can't really do much about it. No one is profiting from the patch and it does not include binary files. All of that leans heavily in the translator's favor from a legal standpoint. 2) This patch will not affect sales of the PS4/Xone remaster in the least. If anything, it has generated more hype and advertised for it better than SE ever did at E3. In the meantime, is it constituting piracy? Well, yes and no. Yes, a lot of people are downloading the game and playing it in emulators, but there's that tricky bit about the game never being released in the west again. And I know for a fact that a fair number of people imported the Japanese version of the game just to patch it, which means sales SE otherwise would never have had. 3) By this point the patch is everywhere and pulling it down from the official source is only a smack on the wrist to anyone even a little internet savvy. They aren't stopping anything, just hurting relations with fans--which is something SE should really consider avoiding right about now. With the official source gone SE is sort of just turning anyone who uses the patch into an 'outlaw', but see the last two points for how much that really stands.

It really bugs me how game companies have these knee-jerk defensive reactions to anything anyone does to their game code. If someone translated my IP into another language and even a few people imported a legit copy just to play the translated version, I would consider that an honor and profit gained (in fact this actually did happen to me once, minus the commercial aspect, as the original product was free). Obviously this mentality can work--take Valve with Black Mesa Source and Bethesda with Skywind, for example. They've embraced the work of fans and only gained more fans by their attitude towards fan projects, even though both mods essentially provide gamers with an old game for free. SE could learn a thing or two from that mentality.
 
This is a rather strange move, IMO. 1) The game was never released here in the west. Was it ever even licensed in the west? If not, then even though it's SE's IP, if the translators are located outside of Japan or wherever else the game is licensed, SE can't really do much about it.
Actually, they can. Square Enix is a global corporation, headquartered in Japan. Any registered IPs are protected throughout all global subsidiaries, regardless of which subsidiary actually registered said IPs.


Anyway, I don't know why the company would flexing its legal muscles now, seeing as there have been a plethora of translations throughout the years. This is the first I've heard of the company taking action against one.

Just to update, though, I think I read yesterday that it wasn't actually a cease-and-desist letter. There isn't much more information than that, though. (If there is, I couldn't find it.)
 
What kind of patch was it in the first place? a Rom patch or a patch for the game itself. i remember they were saying they want to advertise the game in a way where people had to buy it.

Either way, too little too late.
 
What kind of patch was it in the first place? a Rom patch or a patch for the game itself.

I'm not really sure what kind of patch to call it. It only pulls about 600MB of data from the game's original 3.28GB, and that 600MB of data exists on both UMDs, so only one or the other is needed--not both--to apply the translation. Oddly enough, the patched version comes out at just 2.65GB--probably because the patch data reduces redundancy between the two UMDs' data. What this suggests to me is that the patch actually contains the bulk of Type-0, pre-merged, just with certain critical assets removed for legality's sake. In this case then the patcher would just take the game binary and other important data and stick it in with the patch data to complete the image and make it executable.

So much of the data in Type-0 was encrypted or otherwise difficult to get to that I'm sure the translation team couldn't separate the translation from the data to release a more traditional patch. They had to modify a lot more than just strings of text, which is probably part of the reason why SE doesn't like it.
 
I know linking Kotaku is like the equivalent of someone using the Daily Mail or Fox News as a reputable news source, but Jason Schreier penned a rather fascinating article on the topic:

For many gamers and media outlets across the web, the narrative became simple: big bad corporation comes out of nowhere to step on hardworking fans. But the story of Final Fantasy Type-0's fan translation—which I've been following for months now—is far more nuanced, full of drama both external and internal. Square Enix has been engaged in conversations with the fan translation team for quite some time now, according to team members. And not everyone on the team is happy with how the patch was released—or how this story seems to be ending.

In March, the team announced that work was almost complete on the translation patch, and they had a final release date: August 8, 2014, almost three years after Type-0 came out in Japan. Not long after that announcement, Square Enix representatives reached out to the fan translation team, warning them that the company intended to protect its copyrights, and asking the team if they'd like to talk further about mutual solutions that would leave both parties happy.

It's my understanding that from Square Enix's end, the conversations were friendly and casual, and representatives for the publisher saw legal action as a last resort.

Soon that would all go out the window. In early June, Sky suddenly announced that they were releasing two months early, and that the patch would be available on Sunday, June 8—the day before E3.

But the rest of the team wasn't happy about this. Some of the writers felt like the patch shouldn't have been released yet—they needed more time for edits, polish, and bug squashing.

So Sky unilaterally decided to release the patch early, which if we take into account what the article mentions about SE willing to negotiate with the translation team, that decision may have jeopardised relations between the two sides.

Then there's the question of whether Sky knew about a Type-0 HD announcement during E3, though the article states that Sky merely guessed that Square would step up with such an announcement. Instead, Sky insists, the Type-0 HD announcement was a kneejerk reaction to HIS announcement of the patch's general release.

Also, the legal grounds for a C&D would suggest that the patch has actual Type-0 code of that nature in it (and is therefore not entirely "new" work). So as annoying as it is, copyright is still copyright.

Ultimately we still don't have enough insider facts to come to a good enough judgement of the situation, but I still believe that the TIMING of the Type-0 HD announcement is quite something. I think it was in response to the patch to a large extent, which would explain the overall sloppiness of the announcement, how hurried it seemed that there were miscommunications, and how virtually no information, screens or a trailer were disclosed.

EDIT: I don't mean to say SE announced Type-0 in reaction to the RELEASE of the patch, because that would be unlikely, but to the existence of a patch project in general.
 
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