The developer of a Japanese visual novel by the name of Apathy Murder Club has decided to pursue legal action after a streamer broadcast the game against a requested embargo date on its Steam page.
Apathy Murder Club, a visual novel created by SHANNON and authored by Takiya Iijima, released onto Steam earlier this month—however, as reported by Automaton, Iijima quickly noted that a streamer had streamed it "for several hours from the first day of release, through several different endings."
This is more than a simple faux pas, though. Streaming rules and regulations are far stricter in Japan when it comes to visual novels. Last year, a YouTuber in the country's Miyagi prefecture was arrested for uploading a video of STEINS;GATE Hiyoku Renri no Darin that spilled the ending of the game. He was later convicted in court.
As for Apathy Murder Club, the Steam page asks that players don't distribute or stream it until August 3, with a request for copyright. Iijima took to Twitter to vent their frustration (the following quotes are machine-translated):
"If we come into contact with people who are happy ignoring the feelings of game creators like this, we will have no choice but to raise the price of games and ban gameplay commentary semi-permanently. If that means games don't sell, then there's nothing we can do. What should we do about gameplay commentary?
"I don't make games for people to create derivative works or play them live. I make games for people to play. Is that wrong? … I make a living by making games. I support my family."
It's a fascinating conundrum—we're all used to YouTubers, content creators, and streamers being a secondary way to enjoy games, and for good reason. Twitch is pretty much a free advertising platform, and if you see someone playing a game, chances are you'll want to play it too.
A visual novel, however, straddles the line between game and more traditional media like books and films. A second-hand viewing is still different, in the same way watching a movie in a cinema is different to squinting at your laptop, but the line remains very thin. I think it's a fair argument to say that streaming a visual novel could lose its creators money in the same way streaming a movie or sharing a PDF of a book might.
It should also be noted that the STEINS;GATE, the series someone was physically arrested over, is a very popular franchise—as of 2015, it broke 1 million total copies sold. The developers of Apathy Murder Club, if the Steam traffic is anything to go by, are much smaller—though it should be noted that Apathy Murder Club a limited-time project released "as a thank you", with the studio's previous title, Apathy: Narugami Gakuen Nana Fushigi, meeting with enough success on the Nintendo Switch to prompt its existence.
Later in the thread, Iijima confirmed that, even after sleeping on it, they'd still be seeking legal action: "Since we are a company, we decided to consult with our legal counsel. The person who uploaded a gameplay video … seems to have deleted it immediately, fearing that it had become such a hot topic, but there has been no official apology.
"If I say I'm consulting a lawyer, I'll seriously take it to court, so there's no point in running away. If you're a fan of mine, you know that very well … The reason why I am so thorough is because I want to protect the future creators. Even if this person never does this to me again, they will look for other small and weak prey. Newborn creators who cannot resist should not be caught in the poisonous fangs of such unscrupulous people."
Again, that's a machine translation—so take the emotions there with a pinch of salt—but if the original Japanese passes muster for native speakers, that's one hell of an impassioned speech.
There's also enough of this language in the long thread to make me feel like this isn't just Google being heavy-handed, here: "I'm going to crush them completely" and "I will never let you get away", for example. I'm reminded of the bluntness with which another Japanese developer asked strangers badgering them for a key to "buy it, you piece of garbage".
Mind, in later posts, Iijima also seems to have calmed down: "I thought I'd thought it through overnight, but I was still angry, so I wrote it on impulse." They then explain that, no, they're probably not going to go to war with all streamers, adding "I reread what I wrote and regretted it. I have no intention of fighting with game commentators, and it's true that there are some very good game commentators out there."
They still, however, intend to take the offending streamer "to court [so] that other creators don't get caught up in this kind of situation. I don't think it would be good for the game industry to forgive the people in question, who are running away without even a single apology."
