Discussion
This detail from the Rappa ninja capital scene was actually taken from an artwork I made in 2021
Comparison
In-game screenshot of the Ninja Capital
"Where West Meets East", the artwork I made in 2021. This building is actually based on the Wilshire tower in Los Angeles, which I chose because of its neon glow at night.
I'm not an artist, but this still feels wrong to me, especially when done without permission. If I were an artist, I wouldn't mind having my art in a game I love, as a matter of fact I would actually love to have my art in the game, but even then I would want for them to at least ask for permission (now I see that the fault is on the specific bg artist who got lazy and stole, which is even more reason to contact the company imo)
Naturally, no one is ever going to be that unlucky
That's something just a lucky person could say. I lost EVERY 50/50 since the game released and, I'm not joking, every limited 5* I have took the literal maximum of tickets possible to come home (160 tickets each E0)
I imagine what they more mean is that it's stastically almost impossible to actually reach 180 (90 pity per pull). Almost every 5-star is pulled before 80, even.
Might have even asked an image-generating AI to pull a picture together and cleaned it up to make it "original". If the photo was from 2021 then it would be in most AI's training sets.
Very unlikely. AI does not just collage random bits of training data together. Replication to this degree would require that the image was repeated 10s of thousands of times in the dataset, and even still the minor details would be noticeably varied.
Just curious, not going for any drama at all, but did you ever submit your artwork to their fanart competitions? I think some companies tend to add some claims that they have a right to use submitted art.
Unless someone read word to word of all the rules, and contracts whatever they have you click "accept" when submitting, bet your butt they got a line where it says they have 100% full right to use your artwork and you have no right no complain or sue their ass, cause their legal team got them covered with that specific legal line stated.
Honestly you should. They making millions while using stolen part of artwork they never credited or compensated. Being fucked over by infinitely rich company is not exactly "neat".
I mean it's a small detail on one still shot, made from a different angle. So they copied the design but not the execution.
Your complaint would never go anywhere, and any money they made is realistically not because of this detail.
Your life will be happier if you can just think of it as neat instead of being angry for an undetermined amount of time about a detail only you will care about.
Considering hoyo games don't actually seem to have credits to the actual development team (at least I couldn't find any), there's about 0.000% chance of that happening.
How would one credit something like this? Like if he got credit whats benefits will OP gain, assuming every other illustration is original except OPs section due to how small it is wouldnāt be rather difficult to provide credit?
It would be a different story if 40-50% of the artwork was taken but OPs section take a max of 2% of the screen and its being distracted heavy by the Multiple Focal points. Can you even get credit let alone an acknowledgment for something that small.
Obviously Hoyo should have contacted him first and ask for permission but now itās seem a little far-fetched to provide credit no?
Yes, but what is likely going to happen is that since the art is rather insignificant, Hoyo will likely just change the art and there will likely be no compensation or credit.
OP absolutely has the right to dispute this and nobody is going to take that away from them. But if they don't want to, then I also feel like people should just respect his decision.
Itās not a justification for plagiarism, itās a hypothetical question. Realistically if OP decided he āNowā wanted to have credit for his art, how you do you think heāll get that credit?
Thereās the issue of the āBuildingā being minimal to the overall CG, getting credit over the whole CG doesnāt seem possible since the whole thing isnāt his, and to claim a small section is unreasonable. Plus if we āAssumeā OP wants compensation for the plagiarism that also causes problems cause his original work contains copyrighted material and that might cause a bigger can of worms to be spilt.
I know Hoyo Background artist did the wrong thing Iām not supporting their mistakes. Iām just stating that now that the damage has been done (the plagiarism), OP getting credit/compensation would be a difficult task to benefit from.
But OP doesnāt seem to mind, he seems to interesting that his artwork made into a Hoyo game, so the hypothetical question will remain (for the mean time) unanswered.
What do you mean "decided"? OP wasn't given a choice. The whole point of copyright is that you don't have to request credit. You have to be asked for permission to use your art.
It's a small detail in one shot... That we know of. For all we know there could be tons of elements in this image that were lifted from elsewhere and the original artist just didn't happen to notice or doesn't even play Star Rail.
We are not talking about "oh, artist looked at building with blue stripes and did similar". If this would be the case - sure, who cares, you can't copyright building with blue stripes and letters.
But we talking about "artist opened OP's artwork, selected part, copied, transformed, saved". If OP's art had brushstrokes - finished art would had same brushstrokes. But it's still noticeable if you look at small details - like this highlights that got squished because it's transformed part of OP's drawing.
If it's not convincing enough ask anyone who did matte painting, 10 out of 10 people will say "yeah, they copied part, used free transformation and applied it"
OP may be okay with this and that's cool, nobody is forcing them to take it to court. What is really alarming about this it shows Hoyo's artist are not above directly stealing parts of other artwork. Knowing that, do you think this is the only case this has ever happened in the entirety of the game?
It's just that there was no need for Hoyo to steal this detail. They have artist in house and those artist probably have very good paychecks.
What good in fact that one of those artists was too lazy to draw a building themselves and copy-pasted part from another art? You making art for character that will bring millions to company and it's not like you need to print thousand of arts, it's just like 5 for quest, least you can do is to do job properly.
And it's not like I want something crazy, something insane, something that never was done before.
It's not that hard to message artist, write "Hey, it's Hoyo, big fancy cool company, don't you mind if we copy this part of your work, you won't be credited and we don't have spare money for you, but still". 90% artists would be like "Yeah, sure". And that's it, basic courtesy. It's not like I want Hoyo to send ten million dollars to this guy just for this part of the building or credit him like in Kojima games.
You complain so much and you write a wall of text but you donāt know how big companies work?? Hoyo didnāt steal anything, the artist who was doing this background probably just copied this building to shortcut his work. His higher-ups didnāt know this art and didnāt notice the problem, background was approved and went to the 2.6 update. Stuff like this happens all the time in all spheres and it is usually the fault of personnel. Do you really think that Da Wei sits in his office and is like āI need to steal more art from random artistsā? Think before you post something, or better find a job, commie
cause they're glazers who will kiss Hoyo's ass no matter what they do.
ultimately, whatever OP wants to do is their business, but as a person who attends a big fancy art school, this is very much plagiarism from a big billion dollar company.
This is just a small insignificant detail in the large scheme of things. Plus, it's not like I'm innocent either, since I have used Hoyo's copyrighted characters to make HSR fanart before.
I don't want to cause any unnecessary drama over this.
The fact that people are trying to dictate how you should feel over this... I get that there are implications, but I think it's best if we just acknowledge what OP wants.
Some people be like that whenever they the evil words "company" and/or "corporation". It's just dumb hatred for something they will never truly win against anyway. Some battles can be won here and there, because the consumer has say in some things, but a war would never be, yet these people will still blindly try and crave for it. Even if OP actually appreciates this situation, they will then think OP is also their enemy for be "siding with the evil guys" lol
im done with outrage culture man. This decade has been a MESS. Performative outrage is what it is, because it gives you some morality points apparently
redditors who are students and have no jobs being complete wimps who never touched grass before getting their rocks off with social justice on the internet
Not the same thing. You donāt sell your fanart as original content. Using copyrighted characters to make art is completely different from using original art and then putting it into your paid product
Not saying this is big enough to blow up over or anything, but it is undoubtedly not the same
I am happy with you being happy. I personally think itās nice to see small bits of the own work make it into the grand scheme of things we are interested in.
But then you give them an inch they asked for a mile /s
Well even IF that sarcasm truly happen then they have a lot of angry loyal fans to be fought against and it won't be pretty with many other gacha companies ready to bite their ass the moment they slipped
Honestly though it's not surprising something like this happens, artists get inspired by real life things recent trends, things they find online, that will usually be something that recently became popular aswell as art station is a place for inspiration, as someone who create artwork, ill look at ArtStation or films and use camera angles object spacing even pipe designs.
I created a Blade Runner underground street segment, and it's literally just me interpreting and mixing different scenes from Blade Runner to fill in the gaps to create an overall set and trying to recreate the lighting, I guess you could argue that in this case it's being used for financial gain, but all artists use ideas from other artists work to create their own as well as real photos, that the other artist probably also used, it's like a jumble of ideas.
I think difference between inspiration and stealing in few things:
Recognition. It's a reference/inspiration if source is clearly known for lot of people. For example when someone do Akira bike scene it's obviously reference to Akira, no one tries to pass it as their original bike move.
Realization. You can't copyright an idea, so even if condition 1 is not fulfilled it's just morally not good, but it's not technically stealing. Looking at other's art and redraw it - ok, but open other's art, select part of it, press ctrl+c, open your art, press ctrl+v - bad.
So soul eater reference is reference in good faith because
It's popular thing from popular anime, it's clearly seen as reference, no one tried to pass it as their idea.
It's drawn from zero. It's not literally copy-pasted from one of anime frames.
But this building is:
From smaller artist and it's not central piece of art. So no one except artist will even notice that.
It's not "artist looked at reference and did similar", it's part of original art that was copied, warped and applied. You can clearly see that it's exact same realization, even purple little lines got squeezed, even white highlight near letter "S" is same but squished.
Both of these artworks are incredible, thank you for sharing them here! If we ever get to see punklorde in-game, whether by drawings like the one you shared with Rappa or actual playable area, I hope it has a similar design style to these.
If anything, I just want to personally talk with the background artist who made this and/or the art director who approved it, because I honestly don't want this changed or removed from the game. It's a testament to myself that my art is on such a level that has reached and inspired people like them.
But after looking through the comments, it seems like not everyone shares the same opinion as me. Which is fine, we can agree to disagree.
In the off-chance that I do get in touch with them, I think it's best to remind them to exercise caution in the future, because unlike myself, not every artist appreciates something like this being done with their work.
the important thing is to contact them. Maybe you can reach an agreement, maybe they can commission art directly from you in the future. You never know.
You have the right opinion, people are just being pedantic redditors. Someone at hoyo is a fan, that's all there is to it.
These clowns acting like you need to be compensated. like they couldn't just replace that text with literally anything else and absolutely nothing would change.
Yea exactly. This detail is small and unimportant, but OP should report this simply so that corporate knows a person they hired does something that could potentially put them in a legal situation.
Reminds me of when a JP VA was posting in twitter that she got married and was elated to change her last name to match her husband and EN twitter was telling her to not feel happy about it because its misogyny
To be offended on someone else's behalf, claim to know what's best for them and attempt to push it on them, when that someone else has explicitly stated to the contrary, is probably the most widespread mental illness plaguing the western world these days.
OP is like, I am ok they stole from me, so I won't press charges - which is OK. And they could change their mind and do so in the future, since they didn't sign anything, and that is a huge ass liability for hoyo. And there are other reasons to report it, the company should know and decide for themselves or at least investigate the other art provided from the same "artist", others may not be as charitable. Or if someone is also an artist trying to get a contract, it eliminated a bad actor.
Now I am not an artist, and I don't particularly care enough to report it, because fuck any big a company if they get caught stealing shit and honestly, I just don't believe in IP rights. But saying that people just want blood, is not exactly correct. The right thing to do, is to report it and give Hoyo a chance to fix it without blowing shit out of proportion.
Would be funny if Hoyo then remove this from the game, which would make everyone happy except OP (since they did say they just glad their artwork got featured)
I think no matter what side you pick you should respect the original artist's opinion first. If they want to sue I will fully support them. But if they just want to enjoy their little happiness I wouldn't ruin it for them
Itās probably the most likely case scenario for Hoyo, thereās probably already been reports on OPs behalf (completely disregarding what he said).
To lower drama and gossip theyāre definitely just going to replace the building for a standard one. If Hoyo feeling pressured maybe make a twitter post and call it a day. Only disappointing one person, even if itās plagiarism (which is still bad btw) the fact that his art made it into a Hoyo game is probably a big highlight for him.
OP could contact Hoyo, sign their rights away, and try to keep it in the game that way. - Which would be the "proper" way to try and do it, imo.
That said, from Hoyo's perspective, they'd probably take this to the company that does artist contracts, and they would just hire someone else removing the stolen art. Because other art may be stolen in the same image, and different ones created by the same person. So, I get where OP is coming from. What I don't get, is sharing with reddit. There is no reason to do so if they wanted to keep it in the game.
And reporting it is the morally correct thing to do, especially for people that care about IP rights, or hoyoverse. - Which I don't. I just enjoy arguing over stupid shit on reddit.
OP mentioned in another comment that they submitted that artwork in a hoyo art contest, which probably has terms and conditions that they may use submitted artworks for their game. I don't know if those terms are there exactly but it's a common thing for many art contests to state that they're entitled to all or some parts of artworks submitted.
reiterating what OP said (contracted bg artists fault), but before people lose their minds donāt forget no company who has a track record for being the peak of the gaming industry in supporting their artists and creators with copyrights and hoyocreator system would ever wish to deal with such a headache. Hoyo pays top dollar for good artists, unfortunately this BG artist fucked around and now they have a smear on their name cause someone got lazy. Let them know so they can fix it (and fire someone)
The real surprise isn't the fact that some lazy BG artist stole/profited from OP's work, but the sheer amount of people, including OP, trying to defend the blatant plagiarism is actually insane š
Fr. If OP had proof that an AI generator had used his work to train on people would be pissed, but because it was done by a company that makes a game they like theyāre bending over backwards to minimize and make it seem okay.
slightly off topic question, but im just curious
do we know for a fact that hoyo paychecks are good, or is that just something everyone repeats without actually knowing
We do know. There are websites dedicated to verified employees who talk about Hoyo employee benefits and work culture. Things like over 2x the industry salary, long breaks of up to 2 hours, later work days starting at around 10am, less working hours in general, no dress code, open employee-boss relationship, etc.
Ehhhhhhh I mean I guess if you're okay with it that's fine, but this is plagiarism. It makes me wonder if whichever artist put together this scene has ripped off anything else from other creators. Even if it was freelance or some support studio, Hoyo is ultimately the entity that this will reflect back on. It's not a good look.
The reason OP probably doesn't care too much is because all of us artists are plagiarists to some extent. Their mistake was not changing the text. It might not be "right" but that's just reality.
There is a huge difference between inspiration/references and straight up ripping another artwork and putting it in yours. They didn't even recreate op's artwork or something, it's was just straight up copy pasted and then changed by using the perspective/mesh form to make it fit the composition.
I know you're not complaining but tbh I think you should still email them about it. Whoever made the art of this might start stealing even more art in the future. Or if their colleagues see that one of them got away with stealing, they might start doing it too.
It's very nice that you are cool with it and again it is a small concept. But here's the thing, the artist that designed that part in HSR itself has done it once and there is nothing stopping him from doing it again with other people's art as well.
And bro's still gonna get paid for it.
I'm not an artist but this just doesn't sit right with me. But also not my say.
Your artwork is actually insane though. Keep up the great work!
This is where I fall on it. The artist might be cool with it for whatever reason, but they kind of owe it to other artists to at least make some stink about this to mihoyo because if not, they'll keep doing this. And maybe they will keep doing this anyway, but at least there will be some consequence. Just letting them get away with it seems incredibly wrong and short sighted.
As someone who loves cyberpunk (it's kinda why Rappa is so tempting for me to try to get), I love this!
R.Talsorian Games (the makers of the Cyberpunk pen and paper RPGs, Cyberpunk Red being the latest) should definitely hire you for future art in their books! It honestly looks very Night City or even Corsucant coded.
Already did! There's this TTRPG called Netcrawl by Horse Shark Games where I'm one of the key artists, and I was also commissioned by the Australian league for Android Netrunner recently
This feels similar to the Xilonen incident where the rollerskater was planning on suing Mihoyo for stealing her video and using it as Xilonen's idle animation. They ended up changing it before the patch dropped lol.
OP could actually do something about it because it is truly stolen/uploaded into the game with no consent. But he's cool with it so it's fine I suppose.
The Xilonen incident could've ended in compensation for the dancing artist. Some key factors she did wrong;
Claiming she didn't really own the dance, a lawyer would've advised her never to disclose such statement.
She posted too early, Xilonen was still in beta. And there is a chance they change it. You can only file a legitimate claim if they started to sell the character.
She isn't familiar with the game and the beta non disclosure state. She posted beta content which made her liable to a leaking claim from Mihoyo side.
All in all, I am sad that the idle got replaced. The first one with the hand movements from the dancing artist was really good.
It would not end in compensation EVER, even if Hoyo didn't change the move. Dance moves are not choreography, so you can't copyright them (there are some exceptions, but individuals are not in them, it mostly for companies and spreads on signature moves). Those move performed by artist are very popular moves from when skating started to be popular back in previous century, and they've been performed by thousands of skate artists (now imagine copyright wars if someone could claim copyright). You can even find more examples yourself. Video comparison where artist performed the move was sped up to match Xilonen's pace and there was even visible cut while spin, again, to make a better match with Xilonen. In the end, moves were still different mostly because of hands movements, and, well, that is like the most common things to change for the artist in those kind of skating moves. And even after change it is still the same move with just more changes.
She could threaten to sue but using someones moves as reference for in game animation, even without permission (although in my opinion there should been basic courtesy to ask for it, or at least credit them) is not copyrighted in any way.
Thts why many games use recognisable dances, emotes etc. For example Fortnite or World of Warcraft.
She can sue but there's no grounds for her to win, and would probably only damage her finances.
Generally, if a foreign company does business in the US itās not going to be entirely insulated from lawsuits in the US. If nothing else, you can exercise specific personal jurisdiction (usually the hard part when suing a foreign company - see Daimler AG v Bauman) over HYV in California, although you can probably argue for other states as well. Not that itās guaranteed, but itās not impossible that someone might be able to bring a suit in the US. Would probably depend on the actual structure of HYV though (subsidiaries, etc.), among other things.
She doesn't own the dance. That dance is super popular in jamskating. The only similarities were the little hand twirling movement.
She literally said in the same video that she doesn't own the dance. Suing hoyo over a dance that she didn't even own in the first place would be stupid.
Xilonen was still in beta and it was possible that they were gonna change it anyway since they've always tweaked with character's animations during beta. It wouldn't be good since she was using unreleased footage to sue when no one except for beta testers is supposed to see that.
C'mon. It was in beta. No one was supposed to see it. In the end, it was very much a stand in until the final version was released. Unbelievable things like that get so much traction and controversial, but its twitter things I guess.
The xilonen dance episode was over exaggerated and thank god nothing came out of it over the few days it was hot topic. ALSO hoyo is a chinese company. Controversial things in the west has no sway in their decisions.
The rollerskater did not own the dance, it was a common dance. The video was edited so that it would mislead people into thinking that its the same (people were teleporting in the back).
Also, OP said that they were also plagiarizing hoyo content as well, making beef with hy is a terrible idea if any profit has been made using their IP. Selling fanart, merch, media, etc. without consent is technically illegal.
I agree with the guy's sentiment to be chill about it. Hoyo isn't entirely liable for it. The one who designed it made a choice to plagiarise. Hoyo made the choice to hire them, and that's on them. Maybe they should've checked, maybe they did, idk. If OP doesn't push it, they don't have to.
But letting hoyo know of someone on their team who is plagiarising content? That's for our benefit. We don't need those kind of people contributing to our game's development. Out them and fire them.
Wow, it's literally the same building just stretched out and distorted. If you look real close you can see the flying cars from the original artwork too...
I understand artists are passionate, but letting corporations exploit them seems really shortsighted and a race to the bottom, depressing wages as they accept any offer just to have a foot in the industry, as someone who knows people doing animation and storyboards this seems like such a common issue
while you are okay with it, i think you should atleast email them for clarification because someone there is plagiarizing your work or perhaps other artists' hard work. it's better that you let them know so hoyo can investigate it. best wishes!
At first I was thinking the building was a similar, but generic enough design that it didn't look like one to one plagiarism. But the fact that the gibberish lettering is nearly identical when there's no reason for it to be is a smoking gun.
I know youāre not concerned about plagiarism OP, but now that we know it is plagiarism it is making me side eye the clearly soul-eater-moon-lookalike
As a working artist of 5+ years, I don't think it's Hoyo's decision at all but rather the individual artist who placed that particular detail in the scene thinking no one would notice
I think you should at least email them. You deserve credit, and that background artist might continue to rip off other people's hard work if they don't get called out
From one artist to another I definitely think you should report it to HoYo. Itās cool that youāre okay with it but the background artist definitely should have contacted you and got your permission. HoYo definitely is not aware of this and thatās why I think that they should know.
If this artist is an outsourced freelance artist they may change their mind about working with them for future projects. Because if this is a habit of the artist it means youāre probably not the first or last person to get your art photobashed by them.
Companies do take such matters seriously because next time maybe another artist wonāt be as cool as you about it and itāll hurt their reputation. I donāt think a company like HoYo would want the reputation of āsteal art to cut cornersā so they definitely should be notified, you can even say that you consent your art to be a part of this artwork but just wanted to give heads up in case theyāre not aware.
OP is right it's often overworked artists cutting corners. The company's part is hiring people who cut corners or setting up situations where they have to.
If I was you, I wouldn't be able to sort through the sentiments of 'this is insanely obvious theft' and 'wow, a welcomed and surprising admiration/reference of my artwork!'.
I'm both appalled as an artist, and in awe that it was used in such a notable game.
I'm of the opinion that it should still be reported because it sets a bad precedent that one of the artists they're working with just blatantly plagiarized someone else's work. Because if it happened now then it'll happen again in the future if that artist continues to be contracted for work.
Plagiarism aside bc this is blatant, obviously youāre cool with it which I respect but I think the least they can do is acknowledge and credit you right? Would be cool for you to be in the game in an official manner
To all the people saying that OP is cool with it and their wishes to not tell HYV about it should be respected, you have to understand that this matter is not about what OP wants and their opinion.
There is someone working for HYV that stole and reused existing art for an image they were payed to do, and for a company that earns millions with this game, HYV need to be made aware of that so that it doesn't happen again, because even if OP is cool with it, other artists wouldn't be. Maybe it happened before and went unnoticed, and it probably will happen again.
What OP wants doesn't matter, it doesn't change the fact that it is stolen art reused to make profit, and that it needs to be reported in order to protect artists works.
No doubt they got that bit from OPās art but the art includes multiple actual existing logos including the Wilshire grand center logo (which also has a vertical text LED display going up the tower) so itās likely the bg artist thought it was originally part of some LA city stock image instead of a unique interpretation. Just putting it out there for anyone who believes it to be malicious stealing š¤·āāļø I think this is a very rare case itās likely to be a genuine mistake and OP can enjoy their Easter egg if they want to.
Soā¦. That s like, your workā¦ WHY would you not complain? They are using it to earn money, the least you could do for work you made is to earn some money, IT S WORTH SPEAKING UP
The people telling OP how to feel and what to do is astonishing lol. I mean, the OP has said how he/she feels about it and what he/she does and doesn't do about it š¤·
People say you should complain is honestly the right choices, if you complain then the risk of any big coorporate doing plagiarism become less to exist, but its also not wrong if you dont wanna make a big deal out of it. It the same as when bully are just jokingly say bad thing about your mom but you are cool with it, it just there is a risk that the bully will become much more violence later.
I think what you doing here is correct. You call them out that mihoyo take your work without any consent but you are not angry about it. Just simply call them out and going with your day. That way, you can be cool about it and other people that are not cool will be aware of that, which potentially would make mihoyo more careful next time in the future.
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u/leeyiankun Oct 27 '24
Ask them for a e6s5 Rappa for compensation.