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Square Enix sends cease and desist letter to FF Type 0 translation group

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cj_iwakura

Member
I find this type of attitude to be rather poor. What people? The hardcore? For this game, there's very few and most likely all of them have played this game. I'm sure there's more of those who don't care or don't even know about this translation and will be buying the HD version.

I might have bought it had they not needlessly forced it on next-gen.
 

LowParry

Member
I might have bought it had they not needlessly forced it on next-gen.

Well if I remember right with the reveal, someone's job was on the line if we didn't see this come to Vita. Heh. That was such a good day. So many twists and turns, anger and rage. The beer never tasted so sweet.
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it.

And making a video game is just tightening up the graphics on level three! Why do all these people ask to be paid salaries when they're basically doing nothing anyway?

5Z0X2L9.gif


I feel bad for the fansubbers. I hope this doesn't discourage guys from fansubbing other games, because the majority of the stuff they do fansub generally never sees a release here in the US. This is one of those rare examples.

Even if this is actually a C&D situation, I still don't know of a real case where a fan translation of a game with no English release planned was ever C&Ded, so I doubt it will have any serious impact on the scene.
 

cj_iwakura

Member
And making a video game is just tightening up the graphics on level three! Why do all these people ask to be paid salaries when they're basically doing nothing anyway?

5Z0X2L9.gif




Even if this is actually a C&D situation, I still don't know of a real case where a fan translation of a game with no English release planned was ever C&Ded, so I doubt it will have any serious impact on the scene.

It won't, but it will sure make people reluctant to touch big-name projects.
 

Verelios

Member
Forget it, I'm not buying Type-0 for PS4 anymore. SE can eat shit for all I care.

I was okay with paying premium price for the game but this isn't okay. If they were going to send a C&D, three years ago would have been fine. Two years ago. One year ago even. To do so only when it was just completed is just malicious. God.
 

JoJoSono

Banned
Forget it, I'm not buying Type-0 for PS4 anymore. SE can eat shit for all I care.

I was okay with paying premium price for the game but this isn't okay. If they were going to send a C&D, three years ago would have been fine. Two years ago. One year ago even. To do so only when it was just completed is just malicious. God.
It's funny. If they released one back then, the response would be just as vitriolic as it is now because people would do nothing but complain about how SE is'nt putting out the game. SE is damned on anything they do, even when it is well within it's rights.

But I don't understand vitriolic posts like this. Aren't you happy they did'nt get it out? The translation was able to be finished. And what is malicious about it? What's evil about asking people to "hey stop pirating our game"? Also, if other posters are correct this has more to do with how the game was translated and they wouldn't have known until it was out. I find it very hard to believe people at Square(on the English side anyway) did'nt know Type 0 was getting a fan translation. So clearly there must have been something now to force thier hand.

But please, get bent out of shape because a company wasn't for piracy of one of thier games.
 

Nairume

Banned
Again, didn't they already send out/threaten a C&D before the patch released and it was openly ignored because Sky thought he was untouchable?
 

B.K.

Member
I understand why they did it, but it still sucks. Fuck Square Enix. I never had any plans on buying Type-0 HD. The fan translation is good enough for me. They should have done their job and released the game three years ago.
 

Dark_castle

Junior Member
Forget it, I'm not buying Type-0 for PS4 anymore. SE can eat shit for all I care.

I was okay with paying premium price for the game but this isn't okay. If they were going to send a C&D, three years ago would have been fine. Two years ago. One year ago even. To do so only when it was just completed is just malicious. God.

What if you think in a different perspective. The reason Square Enix send C&D AFTER release is so that fans who have been waiting for the translation can enjoy it, and then taking the legal course of action to something that the translation team did, I heard something to do with certain game data distributed without them actually knowing they did.

Either way, unless Sky comes out and be honest about what has happened, your kind of kneejerk "omaigawwwwd I'm soo maaad >.<" reaction is probably the best we could go with. Anyway, we love to hate on Square Enix, we really do. We tend to jump at any opportunity to do so, even without knowing the full story.

I mean no offense to the translation team, because the patch is fantastic and I can feel bad for their effort being treated negatively by the creators. But what if the team actually did something that really breaches the law? Is Square Enix not allowed to protect their IP, and if they do, they're the monster of the world?

Call me white knight or anything, I don't honestly care. I want to know the truth before throwing the tantrum like 95% of you did first.
 

Pikma

Banned
Awesome way to treat the people that steps up to do what you don't bother to. Take your head out of your ass, please Square Enix
 
What if you think in a different perspective. The reason Square Enix send C&D AFTER release is so that fans who have been waiting for the translation can enjoy it, and then taking the legal course of action to something that the translation team did, I heard something to do with certain game data distributed without them actually knowing they did.

Either way, unless Sky comes out and be honest about what has happened, your kind of kneejerk "omaigawwwwd I'm soo maaad >.<" reaction is probably the best we could go with. Anyway, we love to hate on Square Enix, we really do. We tend to jump at any opportunity to do so, even without knowing the full story.

That's a lot of "what if", LOL.

Go ahead. Get me the full story. It seems like you're in the belief that somehow there's a dramatic story behind of this.

It's easy to understand why Square Enix did it. It's not surprising, but it still shitty.
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

Translating a game is really time consuming.
 

DOWN

Banned
eh guys that's how a legal department works

Seriously this.

This is what almost any major legal team does and the lawyers have little to nothing to do with the company's attitude. The company often finds their lawyers demands just as frustrating as the public does.
 
A big corp suing an individual who may not have the resources to fight is terrible, nobody likes that shit. I honestly feel for the guy if that is what is happening.

That said, there are a fuckton of terrible knee jerk posts ITT. A massive amount of hate from naive people, many who are extremely ignorant to the situation, stopping to drive by because its its fashionable to shit on Square Enix, or because they feel that this faceless company has personally insulted them.

I say this as a person who actually bothered to find a copy, and play the patch: this thing is HUGE. It requires only one of the disks to work because most of the files are already there.

The translation team screwed themselves over when they decided to release it in this manner. They should have tried something else if they had any inkling that maybe what they were doing was a potentially a much larger risk in terms of legal issues than a simple text translation.
 

Kain

Member
This picture defines the situation

78be62f68a84116500dd40052c820fbed5ab2831658d6cd3c0836c110d35a88c.jpg


They do have the right to do so, but why now? This project has been going on for ages, and now that it's finished you troll them? Besides, a translation patch is no universe going to fuck up sales of your product, if anything it'll help.

S-E has no limits in terms of douchebaggery.
 
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day. How many books is the text of this game equivalent to?

First off, no, you couldn't translate a book in a day or even a week. The average book is 64,000 words with certain genres (like Epic Fantasy) generally being well over 100,000 words per book. For games, it depends entirely on the genre as well. Baldur's Gate has around a million words of dialogue that had to be translated from English to other languages. Games like Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, Kingdom Hearts etc. can have 5 to 12 hours of cutscenes/dialogue sequences alone (doesn't involve battle dialogue or anything else), the equivalent of 2 1/12 to 6 full movies (which average 90 to 120 pages for a script per movie). Of course these are all just estimates, but the sheer workload is hardly what you make it out to be.

Second, not everything translates well, and directly translating almost never works due to differing syntax between languages. Then you have to take into account that languages have subtleties to take into consideration and for some languages, word choice on the part of a character can drastically change meaning/context. You have to find suitable replacements for cultural references that won't make sense to people of different cultures, you have to make sure you lose as little characterization as possible in the transition, and you have to make sure that any changes you do make has the same impact as the original line. None of this even considers editing, error checking, or anything else. Localization is a tricky thing. Yes, you could translate Don Quixote in a couple months, but chances are a lot of subtleties, context, and other things would be lost on a large scale and your syntax would most likely look like ass since you were rushing through.
 

sublimit

Banned
There are rumours that SE is taking the guy who made the translation to court.

If this is true this company can go ahead and fuck themselves.I will not be buying anything from them in the future.
 

Aretak

Member
What's evil about asking people to "hey stop pirating our game"?
Oh please. That might be a valid point if piracy was the only way for somebody to use the translation patch, but it's not. Ripping UMDs has been a trivial task for a long, long time with custom firmware. I'm sure plenty of fans of the series imported a copy of Type-0 with the intention of ripping it and using the English patch to play it. But apparently it's okay for those people to serve as collateral damage as long as we take down the evil pirate boogeyman in the process (although, SPOILER ALERT, that never actually happens).

It's the same bullshit argument that people use to defend things like shitty always-online DRM. "EA are justified in fucking over paying customers because it stops piracy! I stick crayons up my nose for fun!" Thank god the team behind the patch managed a quickfire release and ensured it'll be available forever.
 

ZeroX03

Banned
Oh please. That might be a valid point if piracy was the only way for somebody to use the translation patch, but it's not. Ripping UMDs has been a trivial task for a long, long time with custom firmware. I'm sure plenty of fans of the series imported a copy of Type-0 with the intention of ripping it and using the English patch to play it. But apparently it's okay for those people to serve as collateral damage as long as we take down the evil pirate boogeyman in the process (although, SPOILER ALERT, that never actually happens).

It's the same bullshit argument that people use to defend things like shitty always-online DRM. "EA are justified in fucking over paying customers because it stops piracy! I stick crayons up my nose for fun!" Thank god the team behind the patch managed a quickfire release and ensured it'll be available forever.

It's a valid point because the translation patch is piracy. It contains much of the Type-0 ISO data that has been modified for English. It's not your usual 'patch', it's distributing big parts of the game.

Hey SE. Go suck it. Support your fans don't fuck em.

Lots of posts like these, no description in how this actually hurts the fans in any way as we already have the damn patch.
 

Dark_castle

Junior Member
That's a lot of "what if", LOL.

Go ahead. Get me the full story. It seems like you're in the belief that somehow there's a dramatic story behind of this.

It's easy to understand why Square Enix did it. It's not surprising, but it still shitty.

Don't see a lot of "what if". You might wanna check your eyes, LMAO.
 

FryHole

Member
That's a lot of "what if", LOL.

Go ahead. Get me the full story. It seems like you're in the belief that somehow there's a dramatic story behind of this.

It's easy to understand why Square Enix did it. It's not surprising, but it still shitty.

It may not be the full story, but it sounds like we'll be getting some background soon, and there's reasonable grounds to believe there's some drama to it.

http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=121592590

http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=121594474

this particular story isn't as black and white as some ITT have made it seem, not just because they obviously have the right to stop someone from releasing their game's source code, but because they have been in touch with the folks behind the fan translation for quite some time now.
 
Does Square Enix have the legal right to do this ? Yup.

Does Square Enix desire to make a profit ? Yup.

Do either of the above have anything to do with whether the decision is right or wrong in a moral sense ? Nope. In a perfect world laws might reflect morality but this isn't it. I'm a little concerned with the way that morality seems to be reflecting laws though, since it seems that if you can lobby for legislation you can effect public perception in ways that are directly contrary to public interest, but meh, that's a debate for another time and place. And the second is more likely to contribute to an argument against moral justification than for.

Do I hate Square Enix ? Nope. I just don't care for the larger percentage of games they release these days. That's the way the industry marches. I still buy games that interest me from them.

There is also only one type of IP you have to vigorously defend in order to avoid losing it: Trademarks. And its highly questionable that some of the claimed defenses of trademarks were necessary (single natural language words in a descriptive context). You can be as selective as you wish in the enforcement of copyright or patents. As far as I know there is no legal requirement at all to defend either of the above. Well, beyond their limited lifespan. Which is moot in the case of copyright (it lasts longer than most people living when a product is released will continue living) but valid in the case of patents.

People who said this wouldn't happen:
I was one of the people who said this wouldn't happen. This is the first time I've seen an actual fan translation, that wasn't for a porn game, C&Ded.

This patch was on thinner ice than most (the patch basically includes a combined data file containing the data for both UMDs which is placed into the ISO) whereas the translation standard is to release patches which essentially contain only binary differences that are then patched into the correct place. I'm pretty sure it would have been possible to release it similar to that, but it would also have been considerably more difficult to use, first you'd have to build the merged iso, from the 2 base ISOs and then apply the diff.

As to CFW PSPs: It depends when you're talking about, during its early life, hacking it was trivial, in the middle it required hardware initially*, at the end it was literally putting a file on the memory stick and starting a program. So for most of its life, it only took knowing a guy who knew a guy. That means that a lot of people had CFWs , but it also means that the percentage of those people who could do more than run prepatched ISOs was smaller than usual. It's also probably not really germane to the current debate, I'd guess that most people playing Type 0 now, are using emulators since the PSP has basically been a dead system for 2 years at this point.

*A CFW PSP could create the necessary hardware once it existed.

Regarding early / late announcements and "bitching": There's a lot of room between 3 years before the Japanese release and 3 years after the Japanese release, if you want a good time for announcements. I'd personally suggest trying a range of about 1 year either side, if you don't want people complaining.

I will sigh if he calls it source code in the writeup.

I've long since given up expecting correct terminology or even a passing understanding of the field in writeups. It used to bug me but those days are gone now. This translation isn't carrying source code unless the original UMDs and/or PSN release do , in which case that cat is loooooong out of the bag.
 

SirNinja

Member
I've never really understood why translating something is costly? I mean I don't speak two languages but I feel like if I did it's literally just taking a sentence and rewriting it. How hard is that? I could translate a book in like a day.

First of all: no, you couldn't, unless the book in question is a very short one. Second: translation - be it for games or movies or books or more - is not a 1:1 thing. Colloquialisms, puns, figures of speech, and much more lose some (or sometimes all) of their meaning when going from one language to another. If you want a translation that's even half-decent, the translators will need to reconstitute all of that in some form. With games, it's even more difficult - you have to consider things like whether the new dialogue will work properly with existing animations and events.

Voice actors also factor significantly into localization costs, at least if you don't want your game to be the next Chaos Wars.
 

JoJoSono

Banned
Oh please. That might be a valid point if piracy was the only way for somebody to use the translation patch, but it's not. Ripping UMDs has been a trivial task for a long, long time with custom firmware. I'm sure plenty of fans of the series imported a copy of Type-0 with the intention of ripping it and using the English patch to play it. But apparently it's okay for those people to serve as collateral damage as long as we take down the evil pirate boogeyman in the process (although, SPOILER ALERT, that never actually happens).
Really? You really think people actually imported the game? Just to rip the files to patch.

I'd laugh, but the naivety is a bit too much here.

It's so easy to find torrents, blogs offering download links, and whatnot of the Type 0 ISO already patched that I very much doubt most of the people were so nice and imported the game. Please, PSP iso pirating is so rampant. It's what basically sold the system for years.

Because it is so easy. You just dump the thing on a memory card and call it a day. People love easy and free.
It's the same bullshit argument that people use to defend things like shitty always-online DRM. "EA are justified in fucking over paying customers because it stops piracy! I stick crayons up my nose for fun!" Thank god the team behind the patch managed a quickfire release and ensured it'll be available forever.
And these are the same arguments people use to justify thier piracy. "Screw EA I'll just pirate your game. You'r always online drm won't effect me but I'm going to be loud and use that to rationalize stealing the game!"

"SE took forever to do something, so I'll just download the game. It's thier fault!"

Why do people still support squeenix?
Because they make good games? Them sending a C&D is'nt some moral breaking thing that I have to make a stand against.
 

daegan

Member
Regarding early / late announcements and "bitching": There's a lot of room between 3 years before the Japanese release and 3 years after the Japanese release, if you want a good time for announcements. I'd personally suggest trying a range of about 1 year either side, if you don't want people complaining.

Was the fan translation even announced that long ago? IIRC it's been less than 18 months for the whole thing to transpire.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
This picture defines the situation

78be62f68a84116500dd40052c820fbed5ab2831658d6cd3c0836c110d35a88c.jpg


They do have the right to do so, but why now? This project has been going on for ages, and now that it's finished you troll them? Besides, a translation patch is no universe going to fuck up sales of your product, if anything it'll help.

S-E has no limits in terms of douchebaggery.
Maybe a token legal move to cover their butts for when their own translation comes out in stores? Notice that they waited for the fan translation to proliferate around the net for a while before sending this, instead of sending it before they had a chance? They obviously knew this fan translation was coming, but they waited till everyone had a chance to get it before making a move?
 

CorvoSol

Member
Really? You really think people actually imported the game? Just to rip the files to patch.

I'd laugh, but the naivety is a bit too much here.

I'm not disputing your point, but I did import the game for that. It was only 20 bucks on Amazon awhile ago.
 

360pages

Member
I can see why they did it, but if they wanted to make anything close to a profit they should have just put it on the PS3 or Vita PSN, I'm not going to be paying for a PS4 to buy the game, and perhaps when FF15 and KH3 comes out I might fork over the money. but as it stands, there are still a huge back log of games this gen I haven't even touched. and the Wii U is probably going to be the first current Gen thing I buy and I'm still holding off on that.

I honestly have no idea why they are putting it on the PS4
 
I honestly have no idea why they are putting it on the PS4

I have a couple of theories

1.by the time it comes out the PS3/360 will pretty much be dead (So basically, the same reason why they never released it on PSP, the PSP was already dead in the west for the most part).

2.Vita install base is too small

3.They might be taking advantage of the extra horsepower in the PS4/Xbox One and adding HD assets to the game. Although from the information we have right now it sounds like it's just a remaster, not a remake.
 
Why do people still support squeenix?

Because they make games that I enjoy. Theatrythm sequel is probably my most anticipated game right now. KH and FF X HD remasters were among the best remasters I have ever played. Plus many other games. You expecting me to boycott them over this or something?
 
I have a couple of theories

1.by the time it comes out the PS3/360 will pretty much be dead (So basically, the same reason why they never released it on PSP, the PSP was already dead in the west for the most part).

2.Vita install base is too small

3.They might be taking advantage of the extra horsepower in the PS4/Xbox One and adding HD assets to the game. Although from the information we have right now it sounds like it's just a remaster, not a remake.

Yup quick and easy job for the growing user bases. Although I wonder what comes out first. This or ff15.
 
They were never making a real game. Only a tech demo to sell their engine and even that didn't really happen.

It's more the principle of the thing at this point. You've gotta be mad for a reason.

I mean, what other thing can I blame for me yelling at every pedestrian that stops to ask me for the time? Gotta have something.
 
It's funny. If they released one back then, the response would be just as vitriolic as it is now because people would do nothing but complain about how SE is'nt putting out the game. SE is damned on anything they do, even when it is well within it's rights.

But I don't understand vitriolic posts like this. Aren't you happy they did'nt get it out? The translation was able to be finished. And what is malicious about it? What's evil about asking people to "hey stop pirating our game"? Also, if other posters are correct this has more to do with how the game was translated and they wouldn't have known until it was out. I find it very hard to believe people at Square(on the English side anyway) did'nt know Type 0 was getting a fan translation. So clearly there must have been something now to force thier hand.

But please, get bent out of shape because a company wasn't for piracy of one of thier games.

To be fair its fine to ask people to stop pirating their game but at the same time they should of brought the game over because thats what people wanted in the first place. The people who bothered to pirate and patch the translation in are the ones who would of bought their game in the first place. Because people didn't want to pay the extra amount of money to import the game and not be able to understand it. Its not the usual situation where the game is highly pirated yet easily bought at your local store. Instead they clammed up for a few years completely ignoring their fans and decided to bring it over to the most illogical platforms the game could end up on which means some people will be forced to shell out 400 bucks if they want to play that game. So to sum it up SE ignored their fans who wanted type 0 to be localized eventually snubbing them by bringing it over to the platforms they didn't want the game on and then legally said that the english translation, for the game their fans have been begging for them to localize, can't be distributed anymore. Theres so much anti-consumerism that its apparent that SE only cares about SE and not their fans anymore. Type-0 is just a quick way for them to make some money while FFXV is being finished up. And you know what? It'll sell because the x1/ps4 are starved for jrpgs. Also before anyone says "They're a company their main priority is to make money etc" yea I understand that but you can be a company who treats their customers right and still make a profit.
 

stryke

Member
Lttp because I only just remembered this...iirc didn't sky say that the fan translation would not be affectedby a c&d because of the laws of his country of residence?
 
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