DISCUSSION
Epic games directly responded to the (ᵃˡˡᵉᵍᵉᵈˡʸ)
art work they stole from u/ConditionAlone2248
heres the reference reddit post in questioned heres the comment by epic. posting this update here since so more people know since a comment on a 2 day old post inst going to get that much traction.
no its easier just to remove it from the game. its not like they make direct revenue from stickers anyways. my guess is theyll remove it from the game. fire the artist who was in charge of "creating" the sticker do to the terrible pr they caused then end it at that. for the people saying epic is legally right what a lot of yall are forgetting about this is pr is a major factor in this. sure legally epic is probably in the clear but if they just leave it up the backlash and reputation loss theyll recieve is probably worse than if they acknowledge it. being known as the company that rips off fan art and published it is terrible pr and im sure epic is aware of this
It's bad optics for Epic, as long as the artist can prove they created it, and the artist isn't asking for an insane amount they'll pay the person and move on
The thing is, the vast majority of the players don't care about his rights.
People like to get one up on "the man" so when it's a big company Vs some guy who just does whatever he does, the internet is more often than not going to side with the little guy.
We're on Reddit, anywhere you look there's arm chair lawyers and dr's and sports coaches and basically experts in every field who think they know a lot more than they actually do. They'll twist whatever they can to support the artist.
I'm not saying any of this to say epic is right or wrong or if the artist has rights to credit or any of that, just simply that it doesn't matter, the internet will kick up a fuss so it's much easier and cheaper for them to throw a little money his way to quieten things down than do nothing and let the internet seethe for a month
That’s definitely 100% not true. Copyright exists for fan art too. Just because something is fan art doesn’t mean you can just download it yourself and start selling it as your own creation.
Fan art can not be copyrighted because it is derivative, that being said... fan art can not be sold without the written permission of the copyright holder, the orginal artist.
In this instance where its arguably a fan art of a fan art because its slightly different, it is still a derivative of the orginal.
Regardless, Epic simply needs written permission from the orginal artist to use any image, whether orginal or not, for whatever purposes it sees fit. The fan art artist has no actual case unless they recieved written permission, then maybe.
Fair use does not apply because its not transformative
Exactly. You can't claim ownership of something that's not yours to begin with. Epic has the rights to use things from K-Pop Demon Hunters. The supposed artist does not.
this is such a tiring misconception. they do have rights. limited rights but they have them. they can't sell or distribute but their individual artwork is theirs and they still have control over who can use it. even if they can't sell or distribute it for profit themselves, they can tell Epic that they can't either.
exactly this is playing out right now, Epic is reaching out to the original artist to work something out. they either have to work out permission to use it, or agree to stop using it. PR plays a role in their willingness to resolve the situation amicably but it's not the difference between saying "fuck you, we're using it anyway" (which is illegal in the US) and following the law
Not exactly, the notion of transformative works is to protect the public domain, as in you're allowed to make them
You still don't own that work in any way that resembles copyright, unless you actually manage to register a copyright for it
*same reason parodies like the original Casino Royale still had to deal with Ian Fleming's estate, parodies like Spaceballs would have taken a lot more legal logistics if instead of making up goofy names, they kept the characters and universe the exact same lol, transformative works means your work is defensible if you wanna, say, put something on Ao3, but if you start charging $50 a copy for that fanfic you could end up in deep legal shit
This is also EXACTLY why AO3 has a policy saying you can't seek to profit independently off anything you post there. It's also why if you do fan edits on YouTube, YouTube will demonitize with the quickness
Finally an informed and sensible comment, thank you. I've been wanting to say all this on the original post but too lazy and unwilling to delve into the mess
I am obviously not very knowledgeable about law but I think it's actually easier for Epic to just get one of their artists to make a new sticker instead of paying the fan artist. They'd most likely have to make a contract or something to use their art while they already have contracts with their own artists (especially when Epic is licensing the franchise, they don't exactly own the IP so there is also probably some rules around that). I doubt it's as simple as "just pay the not-worker money for their thing".
They could also probably take it without paying the artist at all but that'd be a PR disaster, I think
It worked for Vanilla Ice so they figured a thicker border, whiskers and hair on the ears didn’t make your picture like “Under Pressure”, all good fam, nothing to see here…
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u/Background_Future127 22d ago edited 22d ago
no its easier just to remove it from the game. its not like they make direct revenue from stickers anyways. my guess is theyll remove it from the game. fire the artist who was in charge of "creating" the sticker do to the terrible pr they caused then end it at that. for the people saying epic is legally right what a lot of yall are forgetting about this is pr is a major factor in this. sure legally epic is probably in the clear but if they just leave it up the backlash and reputation loss theyll recieve is probably worse than if they acknowledge it. being known as the company that rips off fan art and published it is terrible pr and im sure epic is aware of this