Bungie Lawsuit Situation is Crazy

How about actually summarizing the situation, rather than lazily posting a video?

basically they were accused of stealing ideas other people came up with, so they submitted a bunch of fan videos to show that they didn't, but the judge said they can't do that because there's no way to verify authenticity, and the reason Bungie can't just give their own evidence is because they removed it from the fucking game

ConfusedTorchic posted...

basically they were accused of stealing ideas other people came up with, so they submitted a bunch of fan videos to show that they didn't, but the judge said they can't do that because there's no way to verify authenticity, and the reason Bungie can't just give their own evidence is because they removed it from the fucking game

Ah, thanks.

Was it, uh, their OWN fan videos? Because if not, doesn't that just fly in the face of the entire bone of contention?

Nope, they're random videos players made years ago, before the content in question was stricken from the game.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

basically they were accused of stealing ideas other people came up with, so they submitted a bunch of fan videos to show that they didn't

The real question is, how exactly would fan videos prove you didn't steal ideas?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The real question is, how exactly would fan videos prove you didn't steal ideas?

By showing it having already been in the game at one point.

Revelation34 posted...

By showing it having already been in the game at one point.

But that's not the issue.

The person pushing the lawsuit is claiming Bungie stole ideas from his stories that he wrote in 2013.

Destiny came out in 2014, and Destiny 2 didn't come out until 2017. Proving something was in the game at one point doesn't disprove that you stole the idea. If anything, it would be more likely to prove you stole the idea.

The only way to disprove a copyright claim of this nature would be to argue that the ideas were either generic enough to not be copyrightable in the first place, or to argue that you simply didn't use those ideas at all. Fan videos of content that used to be in your game doesn't really do either of those things.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The real question is, how exactly would fan videos prove you didn't steal ideas?

While I'm not sure of the details, I'm guessing the approach is to show that while there are broad conceptual similarities between the plaintiff's ideas and what ended up in the game, those similarities are too basic or superficial to justify claims of infringement (like Shakespeare's estate couldn't sue Disney for The Lion King, even if we put aside the other practical issues with that idea). Without actual official content to reference, though, that kind of nuance is hard to prove and that leaves them stuck in the position of "I guess there are similarities but you'll have to trust us that they aren't close enough to really be infringing on anything."

I'm not entirely sure why they can't just resurrect the old build of the game to demonstrate it properly, unless they actually deleted all records of the old content, but something about the way they vaulted the content seems to be putting them in a really difficult position for this lawsuit.

yeah, it's a running joke that this lawsuit might force bungie to put the game back into the game

whoever supported the idea of removing the straight up main campaign of a game that's still going probably should also be fired

Wait...Destiny 2 just straight up had its campaign removed? LOL

I never played it.

adjl posted...

like Shakespeare's estate couldn't sue Disney for The Lion King, even if we put aside the other practical issues with that idea

I mean, if Shakespeare had an estate that was still extant, and the work was still under copyright protection rather than public domain, they might actually be able to sue over The Lion King.

There's certainly enough similarities there (enough that the audience started pointing it out) that there'd at least be a case. Maybe not enough to win , but definitely enough to question it.

fettster777 posted...

Wait...Destiny 2 just straight up had its campaign removed? LOL

I never played it.

mhm

after the did that, the new user experience was awful because it just thrust you in and didn't teach you how to do anything, which forced them to try to resolve that, and their attempt at creating a new new user experience was somehow worse than not having one at all, because while it did teach you some stuff, it didn't teach you half the shit you still needed to know to play the game, and the stuff it did try and teach you just...didn't, sometimes.

i remember trying it, and the game told me to use my sparrow to get somewhere, but didn't tell me what that was or how to even access it. i already knew how so that wasn't really a problem, but that doesn't help people who are actually new.

and then when you finally get to leave the new user area, you are still immediately thrust into cutscenes spoiling shit, it still tries to put you automatically into whatever new season mission there is, you go from the hub area being a barren nothing to suddenly it looks completely different than what it first showed you.

it doesn't teach you what the different elements do, it doesn't teach you what your supers are outside of the button to use them, it doesn't teach you how to build your class (which is important because it's not just "pick a predetermined set of skills on this tree" anymore). it's just bad.

https://i.imgur.com/RCSMghn.png

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I mean, if Shakespeare had an estate that was still extant, and the work was still under copyright protection rather than public domain, they might actually be able to sue over The Lion King.

There's certainly enough similarities there (enough that the audience started pointing it out) that there'd at least be a case. Maybe not enough to win , but definitely enough to question it.

I dunno. "King's brother kills him and runs the prince out of town, then the prince comes back and deposes the uncle" is a pretty broad idea to try copyrighting, and that's really where the similarities end. Arguably, it only seems so generic because of Shakespeare, which is a big part of why it's good to have classic media enter public domain so new works can build on their foundation without worrying about infringing, but I'm pretty sure you can find similar stories in even older stuff that Shakespeare himself drew inspiration from.

adjl posted...

I dunno. "King's brother kills him and runs the prince out of town, then the prince comes back and deposes the uncle" is a pretty broad idea to try copyrighting, and that's really where the similarities end.

You've also got the ghost of a dad, two comic relief sidekicks, a love-interest... sure, it's all generic, but it is there.

Like I said, it might not be enough to win a copyright trial, but it would definitely be enough to start one.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You've also got the ghost of a dad, two comic relief sidekicks, a love-interest... sure, it's all generic, but it is there.

Like I said, it might not be enough to win a copyright trial, but it would definitely be enough to start one.

A judge would just throw it out wasting "Shakespeare's" money

ParanoidObsessive posted...

You've also got the ghost of a dad, two comic relief sidekicks, a love-interest... sure, it's all generic, but it is there.

I mean, what doesn't have comic relief sidekicks and a love interest? Ghost dad, I could maybe give you, but the other two points are about as generic and high-level as concepts get (though, again, one could argue this is because of Shakespeare and picking such a massively influential figure for this analogy might not have been a great idea).

adjl posted...

I mean, what doesn't have comic relief sidekicks and a love interest?

Yeah, but it's a preponderance of evidence.

One or two similarities? Coincidence. Three or four? Ehh, could still be random chance.

Once you start getting a long list, no matter how innocuous each separate item might look on its own, the more it starts looking like maybe you stole your ideas from a specific source.

Not every copyright case is going to be a ridiculous slam dunk like this one:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator#Plagiarism_and_aftermath

Most of the time, it's a case more like The Matrix, where a lot of people are fully convinced they were stealing most of their ideas from Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, whereas people like me think they stole most of their ideas from Mage: The Ascension instead. Either could be true, both could be true, or neither of them could be true and all three stories just happened to have a lot of similar ideas entirely by coincidence. But at a certain point all the little nodes of similarity make you start to wonder.

Bungie and lawsuits, name a more iconic duo

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Yeah, but it's a preponderance of evidence.

One or two similarities? Coincidence. Three or four? Ehh, could still be random chance.

Once you start getting a long list, no matter how innocuous each separate item might look on its own, the more it starts looking like maybe you stole your ideas from a specific source.

I mean, why stop there? Both stories take place on Earth, both stories are in English, both stories feature one or more characters that had parents... If you go looking for similarities, it's not particularly hard to find them, which is why you need to do something to curate those you find to decide whether or not they're too trivial to consider.

Comic relief sidekicks and a love interest are common enough tropes that I wouldn't count them toward similarities between any two pieces (again, putting aside questions of how much of a role Shakespeare played in that becoming true), no matter how many other similarities exist.

I'm genuinely happy that removing half of the game is actually coming back to bite them in the ass. Destiny 2 would be a really fantastic game if they didn't remove so much