Some of you may already be aware of what’s going on with Sega and the Shining Force community lately. In short, Sega has launched a series of DMCA copyright claims against fans who posted videos about Shining Force on Youtube, Many videos have been taken down, and in some cases this even caused users to lose access to their entire channel. Synbios16 made a video explaining the situation in more detail, I think it’s important for all Sega fans to look at this, seeing how it sets a very dangerous precedent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQdFcf9SE5s
Thanks for sharing. Hopefully TWOTA’s YouTube channel won’t be targeted next!
It would be a shame to see Shining The Holy Ark and Shining Force 3 disappear from the net. They are two very good games.
I still even listen to the STHA and SF3 soundtracks sometimes. They are really good for 15 year old games.
There’s much that can be said about this, but it seems to me that the people in charge of the new Shining games want nothing to do with the older ones.
I checked out Shining Blade, and while it’s good graphically, it’s very generic and lacks the maturity the older games had.
I was wondering if TWOTA could do anything to help with this situation. Any ideas?
I’m not sure. I just find it incomprehensible that Sega hasn’t responded yet. I’d like to think there’s going to be an official statement soon but so far I haven’t seen any actual comment from them on these events.
I think that Sega of Japan have an outdated approach to social media. They need to understand that fans raise awareness of a series.
I just read that Warcraft 3 was heavily pirated in China but Blizzard didn’t really mind because it gave them free publicity which made WoW popular there later.
I doubt that we will see the Shining games outside of Japan now anyway unless we saw a new game for the new consoles and it was easy to localize.
If we can link more people to this video it would help:
Sega versus the internet
Total Biscuit was promoting some of Sega’s games for free until recently. He’s pretty popular so this might backfire on Sega.
He was actually going to review NiGHTS HD. He talks about his opinion of NiGHTS a bit in this video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45bh7_ywuw#t=10m21
So yeah, nice going there Sega. By the way, NiGHTS on Steam has just been released. I’m not going to buy it because of Sega’s actions here. I know it ultimately won’t matter, but I’m just not giving money to a company that doesn’t give a damn about its fans. Even if it made some the best games I’ve ever played.
Good job losing that free advertising Sega.
I wonder if this is considered acceptable business practice in Japan.
[quote=“Geoffrey Duke”]If we can link more people to this video it would help:
Sega versus the internet[/quote]
Alright. Do either you or Draikin want to make a post about it on the front page? We could tie it in with Panzer Dragoon, e.g. “Panzer Dragoon videos could be next”.
Are people sure these claims are genuinely from Sega and not from some weird troll(s)? Exhibit A
We can’t be certain since Sega refuses to respond and Youtube doesn’t care who makes the copyright claim, but the e-mail address they used to make the copyright claim is owned by Sega so unless someone hacked them then it does seem to be Sega who is behind this. I’d also assume that if Sega weren’t behind this then they would just have said so.
They must just have a dinosaur in charge. I can’t imagine that this is common business practice in Japan. I mean, I can fully understand Sega wanting to protect their IP, but this is the wrong way to do it, and in fact, hurts their image.
Sega need to get with the times. It’s like economics as well. Those who invest in their future will win in the long run.