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Request: Removal of Grisaia and Planetarian Torrents


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This is going to be long so take a seat.
And don't you dare skimming through it or not reading any of the linked articles.

1. Misinterpretation of Fuwanovel mission statement

I will start with this as it should be simple to explain.
The portion of the mission statement that is used in the forum logo (and forum logo only) is just part of the whole mission.
As you can notice on the main website, the main logo there actually describes the website differently.
DkswjeE.png
"Fan translated visual novels repository"
And if you browse the website and visit the mission statement section, you can see the mission is actually different from what the forum logo says, it is:
"Visual Novels for the World"
As even included with the logo of the section:

mission-statement-header.jpg


Following up in the mission statement, three main objectives are mentioned there

There are three main objectives, they are:
1) Make visual novels popular in the West.
2) Promote fan translation
3) Create a community that celebrates fan translation and fan sharing.


When the forums logo was made, only the first part of the mission statement was put there, because otherwise it would be too long. And many people misinterpret "West" as "America", where as it just states the general mission statement Visual Novels for the World but with different words.
West in that case means outside of Japan (where Visual Novels already exist), so basically the rest of the world.

What I am getting at is that nowhere on the whole website it states anything about promoting Localized copies, ensuring sales of Localized copies or celebrating success of Localization companies and commercial market.
Instead it focuses on fan translation, fan efforts, fan sharing, fan creations and fan improvements to the original version.

The only reason Fuwanovel doesn't share licensed versions was out of Aaeru's "good will".
She decided not to include those releases as a gesture of friendliness to the companies.
How those companies responded to this good will and attempts to build a friendly relationship is a different matter entirely.



2. Piracy vs Sharing

The whole word "Piracy" is just wrongly used since the beginning of the internet.
If you imagine piracy in a pirate movie, they invade a ship and deprive people off their possessions.
But in the case of games, movies, music - that is never the case. "Piracy" on the internet just stands for "Sharing", but people for some reason needed a word that sounds evil.
Instead of taking away possessions of someone else, you are being offered a shared copy of what someone already has. You are being offered a flower seed out of unlimited supply to grow your own flower and ultimately build your love for flowers to the point you want to support the people who originally imported these flowers from different parts of the world.


Aaeru and Fuwanovel was always for "Sharing" and as so you could say also for "Piracy" since they are the same thing.

The stuff about flower seeds and building love for flowers is much better explained in the "Spreading culture does not decrease supporters. It increases it." part of fuwanovel About section.
Please read the whole article if you haven't already done so.

You can notice there the part of why true fans pay money.


dCM6qkT.png


"Your labour IS the scarcity not the copies, for it cannot be pirated."

And are you going to argue that it doesn't work? Even the mentioned Steins;Gate release says exactly the opposite, many of the fuwanovel staff bought the copy even though we still direct people to the shared copy.
It is not because they had to buy it, they wanted to buy it, partially thanks to the fact that the game is popularized thanks to Fuwanovel.

The article mentioned above wasn't directed at localization companies however, it was mainly directed at Japanese developers and why Aaeru decided to share the copies with the improvements of additional language version.

You can even see similar examples here of people buying a Japanese version if they liked the fuwanovel copy. I can even say it for myself - I am struggling to make a living and pay rent, but after finishing Iroseka (shared torrented version), I became true fan of FAVORITE, It is one of my dreams that once I solve my situation and get some more money, I will not buy some expensive food or a car or any other pleasure like that, I will buy the games with all the stupidly overpriced little perks in the box, because I want the companies to make more of it.
But in the meanwhile, all I can really do is spread the word of how good the games are, link people to the Fuwanovel Hoshimemo page, praise Iroseka and make more people try to play it in Japanese now, make more people interested in translating it for even wider audience - because I know that I can find people who will fall in love with those games just like I have and maybe they will have the funds to afford the support to the companies. I was able to talk to a Japanese FAVORITE fan yesterday in pso2JP, uniting together we can get more and more fame to the company that deserves it, even though the Japanese person can buy the game with earnings from an hour or 2 of his time, and all I can do is spread the word. But I am willing to spread the word for many hours, writing reviews and comparisons, because that is all I can spare, my time.

If I haven't "pirated" the games in the first place, I would never be able to do this, I would never be able to extend the fandom because I would never be able to play the game.



3. Localized releases vs Fan TL releases

So as mentioned above, we are still trying to carry Aaeru's good will of not sharing localized copies, a good will even after all the things the companies have done to her in response. The good will might weaken in times of controversy we can sometimes see, but since we believe that evil should not be repaid by evil, that eye for an eye is just the wrong approach, we still continue this good will and are not sharing English licensed releases of games.

But there was never such will for Japanese releases, as with those, following the points mentioned in point 2 of this post, the creator will have more success in building fandom and true fans.

And as such we are sharing Japanese copy of Planetarian, a game Aaeru added to the website, improved by a collective fan effort many years ago. It is the same version a lot of you (Including me) were able to enjoy for free, thanks to the original fan effort and Fuwanovel sharing service. And the same version, translated out of passion for the game, shared between fans of Key to make their games even more popular.
Without this fan copy and all the other fan translated Key games, most of us would not be able to enjoy them. Without the effort of fan subbing, lot of people would not be able to enjoy Key anime.
And without that the English Key fandom would not become what it is today, a fandom that is able to organize a giant project like Key 15th Anniversary Letter.
A project that will even be collaborating with Sekai project to deliver their letter, signifying their dedication.
A project full of TRUE fans who will buy the official Sekai release even though they have probably played Planetarian several times.

And you are asking us to simply remove all that from existence so only you and other people in the past were so privileged to enjoy it for free and become a fan. That new people cannot join the club anymore, become a fan of a free version to later potentially evolve into a true fan supporting Key by buying figs and games all over the place, just like many Fuwanovel members do.

And the same goes for Grisaia, we are sharing a Japanese version of the game improved by fan translation, a version that was able to build pretty big fandom of its own. A favorite game of many thanks to the free fan translation and the free availability on Fuwanovel (among other places).
A fandom built thanks to a collaborative effort of not only translators and other people on the project, but also seeders on the torrents, page creators, article writers, even people just saying "I loved this game" in a public place - all those efforts however important or hard they might be created what Grisaia true fandom today is and as such tons of them will be able to afford the steam release, while others can keep sharing the word and original fan project for free, to get even more people on the board to be able to spend their money, time or effort or combination of those to further support their beloved game.


And in the end by removing the original fan translation patch you are not only depriving newcomers of things you were able to have yourself, depriving them of the sun that used to shine on you.
But you are also undermining all the efforts of the people trying to share and make the game as popular as possible with the means available to them. Some people have money to import the game from Japan or later buy the game on Steam, some people only have words.
But power of the words might in the end turn out more powerful than power of money. By sharing a VN and making more people be interested in it and talk about it, you are essentially trading words for words - effort and words of the original creator for the good words and effort of review writers or simply people telling their friends to play it. And in the end this trade will result in a profit for the creator, as more and more people will be interested in the words the creator has to say in their games, more and more people will want more of those words and become a true fan, patron and supporter, trading their currency for more words.


4. Fuwanovel as a negative profit website

Since this was already said, I will keep it short.
But Fuwanovel, unlike many other sharing websites such as nyaa, generates ZERO profit of any of this. Quite the opposite, running website and fees connected to this actually costs money and we rely on charity of people, paying their money to host and run the website, offering their seedbox so we can spread the game torrents as quickly as possible.
And even the times when many of us together collected the money to buy the forum software, with whatever we could put aside at that moment.
And still there is not a single ad on the website, not a single cent was generated on Fuwanovel and that is how it is going to remain.
Efforts of all the people working on maintaining the website, work put into coding and additional features, forum moderation, creating new pages for newly released projects, maintaining good upload speed by seeding - all those efforts are done with 0 compensation and 0 profit.
And as such everyone can expect everything on Fuwanovel be equal to everyone, whether you came a year ago or now, you will have access to the same games for the same equal price, 0.
That's because 0 is the ONLY price equal to everyone in the world and even though $1 might seem equal to all Americans, it is not equal to everyone in the world, only 0 is.

And as the mission statement goes, Visual Novels for the World.

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What I am getting at is that nowhere on the whole website it states anything about promoting Localized copies, ensuring sales of Localized copies or celebrating success of Localization companies and commercial market.

 

Indeed, that seems to be the case. However, it is also true that Aaeru wished to develop strong links with the English Visual Novel Community. She wished to aid with the production of visual novels in the West, and attempted to establish links with the English community back in 2012.

 

And from some of the crowd, we might be able to attract new talent to the creative side of things. ... The thing is, I know next to nothing about what the OELVN community need. I only know I want to promote their work and attract new people to join their ranks. ... I want to leverage that increase in popularity to attract more attention to VN creation. - Aaeru 2012

 

Her overall goals were not hidden, or questioned. She wanted to make VNs popular in the West, which meant popularising fan-tls, and OELVN creation. 2 sides of the coin. However, you cannot aid in the production of visual novels with such a sloppy attitude regarding copyright. It was a lesson she quickly learnt two years ago, creators of works largely have different expectations and viewpoints than consumers. It was why her efforts were rebuffed in 2012, and it is why no progress has been made on that front in the past two years.

 

Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact that the state of the visual novel industry in the west is in trouble, both here and in Japan (for different reasons obviously.) You cannot make visual novels popular in the West without having a visual novel industry in the first place. Anybody with such a wish would also be required to wish for the prosperity of such an industry. If you have no prosperous visual novel industry, you have no visual novels with which to spread. This requires funds, therefore to wish for visual novels to be popular in the West is to encourage the FINANCIAL SUPPORT of such an industry. Increasing the fanbase is only part of this, the other half is to encourage the fanbase to support the official developers. If you do only part of this, then you are lax in your duties.

 

Following Aaeru's wishes or goals doesn't mean following her method. I want what Aaeru wanted back in 2012, but her method was not the way to achieve this.

 

And this brings me to my next point.

 

And are you going to argue that it doesn't work? Even the mentioned Steins;Gate release says exactly the opposite, many of the fuwanovel staff bought the copy even though we still direct people to the shared copy.

It is not because they had to buy it, they wanted to buy it, partially thanks to the fact that the game is popularized thanks to Fuwanovel.

 

That's a nice little anecdote, unfortunately I don't roll with anecdotes. I roll with facts and figures. All I see from the fan-tl community whenever this issue arises is the tired argument that an expanding fanbase will mean an increase in sales. Well, let's look at the facts, shall we?

 

The fanbase has expanded exponentially from where it used to be, but where's the pay-off we've been promised? The influx of 'true fans'? JAST doesn't sell enough copies to remain afloat without being propped up by J-List. MG can barely sell enough to keep it's doors open, and the only way they can acheive this is to release a ton of nukige that only take a few weeks to translate for quick dough. They've had to resort to pleading with the fan-tl community to wait a couple of weeks before uploading cracked copies online, because as soon as you guys do their sale figures plummet. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of the VN community still can't be bothered to support the industry. And you are part of the problem Steve, because you don't actively encourage the final step. You automatically assume that expanding the fanbase will result in a flock of new fans willing to buy the product. Well, there's jack all evidence to support this. It's a naive point of view. If half the people who downloaded and enjoyed the damn game would pay for the product, the industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it is now. And maybe if you encourage the practice, more people would buy the game. 

 

Like I said before, MG's bestselling games were around 2,000 copies before STEAM. It took a DRM platform to move a respectable number of copies. 5 times as many copies as their previous best-selling game.

 

 

And you are asking us to simply remove all that from existence so only you and other people in the past were so privileged to enjoy it for free and become a fan. That new people cannot join the club anymore, become a fan of a free version to later potentially evolve into a true fan supporting Key by buying figs and games all over the place, just like many Fuwanovel members do.

 

Welcome to reality Steve, where fairness and justice are playground illusions. There will never be a perfect solution for all, there will never be fairness for all, and if you think there can then you're naive.

 

The feelings of the creators who poured hundreds of hours into making the damn game, and the condition of the industry – an industry we all love, trumps the rights and feelings of those souls who want the game for free. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t encourage the financial support of such an industry, there’ll be fewer VNs for everybody. Then nobody gets their VN fix.

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Wow, Steve. I never knew you could be so poetic... when your not talking about lolis.

From the very first day i registered, I allways felt the fuwa communaty was bigger than just "west, west and west". I have even met some people from neighboring countries, people i never thought i would ever meet here. And when i think deeply about it, I realise that if it weren't for the so called "piracy" not only would I have never met them, theres a big chance that I myself wouldn't be here.

 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if what Steve said about this site bieng for the hole world is right, than removing the torrents is simply out of the question. It's way too difficult for people outside America to get VN's, and for me it would be impossible, as the mailing system in my countrie is hourendous... My best chance would be to take a flight to Japan and buy all the VN's I whant :P

 

So, from now on, when thinking about VN's and there future, try thinking about the hole world, not just America ^_^

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Indeed, that seems to be the case. However, it is also true that Aaeru wished to develop strong links with the English Visual Novel Community. She wished to aid with the production of visual novels in the West, and attempted to establish links with the English community back in 2012.

 

And from some of the crowd, we might be able to attract new talent to the creative side of things. ... The thing is, I know next to nothing about what the OELVN community need. I only know I want to promote their work and attract new people to join their ranks. ... I want to leverage that increase in popularity to attract more attention to VN creation. - Aaeru 2012

 

Her overall goals were not hidden, or questioned. She wanted to make VNs popular in the West, which meant popularising fan-tls, and OELVN creation. 2 sides of the coin. However, you cannot aid in the production of visual novels with such a sloppy attitude regarding copyright. It was a lesson she quickly learnt two years ago, creators of works largely have different expectations and viewpoints than consumers. It was why her efforts were rebuffed in 2012, and it is why no progress has been made on that front in the past two years.

 

Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact that the state of the visual novel industry in the west is in trouble, both here and in Japan (for different reasons obviously.) You cannot make visual novels popular in the West without having a visual novel industry in the first place. Anybody with such a wish would also be required to wish for the prosperity of such an industry. If you have no prosperous visual novel industry, you have no visual novels with which to spread. This requires funds, therefore to wish for visual novels to be popular in the West is to encourage the FINANCIAL SUPPORT of such an industry. Increasing the fanbase is only part of this, the other half is to encourage the fanbase to support the official developers. If you do only part of this, then you are lax in your duties.

 

Following Aaeru's wishes or goals doesn't mean following her method. I want what Aaeru wanted back in 2012, but her method was not the way to achieve this.

 

And this brings me to my next point.

 

 

That's a nice little anecdote, unfortunately I don't roll with anecdotes. I roll with facts and figures. All I see from the fan-tl community whenever this issue arises is the tired argument that an expanding fanbase will mean an increase in sales. Well, let's look at the facts, shall we?

 

The fanbase has expanded exponentially from where it used to be, but where's the pay-off we've been promised? The influx of 'true fans'? JAST doesn't sell enough copies to remain afloat without being propped up by J-List. MG can barely sell enough to keep it's doors open, and the only way they can acheive this is to release a ton of nukige that only take a few weeks to translate for quick dough. They've had to resort to pleading with the fan-tl community to wait a couple of weeks before uploading cracked copies online, because as soon as you guys do their sale figures plummet. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of the VN community still can't be bothered to support the industry. And you are part of the problem Steve, because you don't actively encourage the final step. You automatically assume that expanding the fanbase will result in a flock of new fans willing to buy the product. Well, there's jack all evidence to support this. It's a naive point of view. If half the people who downloaded and enjoyed the damn game would pay for the product, the industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it is now. And maybe if you encourage the practice, more people would buy the game. 

 

Like I said before, MG's bestselling games were around 2,000 copies before STEAM. It took a DRM platform to move a respectable number of copies. 5 times as many copies as their previous best-selling game.

 

I'd say this argument is invalid. Steam is just good at selling things, as has been mentioned before. It just becomes easier to advertise with it, thus an increase in sales should obviously happen. Instead of that, you should look at their other releases- compare the number of sales between before a game was cracked with a game that didn't need to be cracked at all during the same timespan. Sure, they're different, but the difference is not nearly as large as 5 times more, lol. You should stop using statistics as the art of making the numbers say whatever you want them to say.

 

Either you pick the cold and logical path (on which case whatever we do here won't matter at all- the piracy of those games will not decrease by we removing them from our site) Or you pick the more emotional one, on which case we should stick with doing what our missions tells us to- encourage fan translations and distribute VNs to the entire world.

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Its clear to me that the site leadership now has its head so far up its own ass it can't realize how a basic economy works. Steve, Fuwanovel will be cutting into sales from Sekai, sales they can ill afford to lose as a new company. Provide a free option, and I promise you most people will go for the free option. Only the people with principle will actually buy the priced option. Kaguya, just because people will pirate these games, doesn't mean Fuwanovel should aid them. Let them go other places. Fuwanovel wants to be different, but right now, TL Wiki is doing more than Fuwanovel ever did. At least they have the common sense to remove licensed stuff. Rest assured I will not stop fighting you guys on this until I am either banned, or things change. 

 

Last summer I could not afford ef, so did I go and pirate it? Absolutely not. I saved up enough until I could buy it. Same with Kara no Shoujo. Hell, I bought 4 total Steins Gate Limited Editions for people among other VNs. These things are a luxury and not a right. 

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That's a nice little anecdote, unfortunately I don't roll with anecdotes. I roll with facts and figures. All I see from the fan-tl community whenever this issue arises is the tired argument that an expanding fanbase will mean an increase in sales. Well, let's look at the facts, shall we?

The fanbase has expanded exponentially from where it used to be, but where's the pay-off we've been promised? The influx of 'true fans'? JAST doesn't sell enough copies to remain afloat without being propped up by J-List. MG can barely sell enough to keep it's doors open, and the only way they can acheive this is to release a ton of nukige that only take a few weeks to translate for quick dough. They've had to resort to pleading with the fan-tl community to wait a couple of weeks before uploading cracked copies online, because as soon as you guys do their sale figures plummet. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of the VN community still can't be bothered to support the industry. And you are part of the problem Steve, because you don't actively encourage the final step. You automatically assume that expanding the fanbase will result in a flock of new fans willing to buy the product. Well, there's jack all evidence to support this. It's a naive point of view. If half the people who downloaded and enjoyed the damn game would pay for the product, the industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it is now. And maybe if you encourage the practice, more people would buy the game. 

 

Like I said before, MG's bestselling games were around 2,000 copies before STEAM. It took a DRM platform to move a respectable number of copies. 5 times as many copies as their previous best-selling game.

 

I am not sure if you were around for all the discussions about MG and JAST decisions during the DC3 C&D, discussion - if they decide to go against fans and cancel a fan translation project without even announcing their own project for the same game, basically saying to fans "you will have to wait 10 years to play the game", it is not the correct marketing move.

I am no marketing expert but pissing off current fans will not make you have more profit.

However this has been discussed to eternity in the old topics so you can look those up (it is related to DC3 and copyright and game and release choices for MG, it should be in VN talk).

Essentially don't blame fans for your lack of success, blame yourself.

 

Welcome to reality Steve, where fairness and justice are playground illusions. There will never be a perfect solution for all, there will never be fairness for all, and if you think there can then you're naive.

 

The feelings of the creators who poured hundreds of hours into making the damn game, and the condition of the industry – an industry we all love, trumps the rights and feelings of those souls who want the game for free. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t encourage the financial support of such an industry, there’ll be fewer VNs for everybody. Then nobody gets their VN fix.

 

To this I can only say 2 things - Welcome to Fuwanovel, where fairness is possible and reality is just an illusion. We choose to live in the 2d world for a reason and the same way we offer fairness to people in our Fuwanovel domain, our users, forum members and supporters.

 

Also it is funny that you talk about how Fuwa fails to create the true fans to support the industry yet you still included the link from my post in the quote. Giving a clear example of one of our long time members shcboomer, who if you check more of his tweets, has spent probably several thousand dollars on all the books, figs, cards an whatnot related to Little Busters, that is worth more than if he purchased a 50 digital copies for 50$ each (steam price).

And did Fuwanovel help him discover the game or possibly deepen his love and dedication for it? Possibly, well that is his story to tell, but you can see that the system works as Aaeru has explained.

 

And then take people like babiker from Saudi Arabia who replied bellow you. Or even someone like Zeddy, a fuwanovel main website user from Iran who from time to time visits Teamspeak. Those people cannot offer money, often times they don't even have a way to transfer those money or receive the product. But they can offer words, here on fuwa but also in other fair parts of the internet, they can let more people know about these games and they can help us find more people like boomer.

 

(Also, have you ever considered that the lack of success of localization companies can also be affected by the fact that their games are NOT on fuwanovel? Nobody is building a fanbase for President here, nobody even talks about the MG games most of the times - but hell everyone is talking about Hoshimemo and Little Busters and such - interesting thought, isn't it.)

 

We can create our own paradise on fuwa, however unfair the world might be, you can always create smaller worlds and there try to change the world you just built - and that is what fuwanovel is, our brand new world.

 

 

 

PS: I would like to mention a story that not many people know:

Years ago I've fallen in love with a simple indie game Unepic. I didn't have the $5 to buy the game back then but a friend who bought it lend me his account and let me download the game (so essentially "piracy" but I didn't need to go through piratebay or whatever to download it).

I liked the game so much that I've made a review, even though I am not really that good at talking and recording.

And even though it only hit few thousand views, the author of the game personally thanked me for the publicity it brought and the sales it generated and asked me if he can use it in a promotional campaign on an indie shop, to which I of course replied "please do".

And you know what, I never went back and purchased the game, even when I had some money - I felt that I have done good enough job rewarding the author.

 

And you know how I talked about how money isn't equal to everyone - someone can make $5 to purchase the game in 1 minute, someone has to work whole day for it.

But you know what is equal to everyone, TIME - everyone has the same 24 hours in a day and that is your currency that you can spend on things, just like mentioned in the Aaerus post on fuwanovel website. I've spent about 10 hours on the review, recording the videos and  then voices, cutting and all - someone can probably make $200 in that time or even more. I couldn't but I chose to spend my time currency on it and I think I did much more than If I have just bought the game for $5 initially and never made a review.

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I think the line of only providing fan tls (whether localized later or not) is okay. Meh.

Well, I just came across the best argument in this thread. Well played. Everyone can go home now, problem solved. As expected of you, zaka. :D

#bankaguyaforderailing

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Fuwanovel wants to be different, but right now, TL Wiki is doing more than Fuwanovel ever did. 

 

Well, wouldn't you say that maybe it is what makes us different then :)

 

 

And as such doing what we've always been doing and not sharing licensed releases will still be the case.

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Fuwanovel and TLwiki are kind of doing different things anyway in most cases, and where not, quite a few projects aren't on tlwiki but have threads on fuwan so there's that.

 

I think this might be a bit derailing though

 

I don't have time to tldr argument because I'm in Liechtenstein and got 1 hour of nets time so I just #opinioned w

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Its clear to me that the site leadership now has its head so far up its own ass it can't realize how a basic economy works. Steve, Fuwanovel will be cutting into sales from Sekai, sales they can ill afford to lose as a new company. Provide a free option, and I promise you most people will go for the free option. Only the people with principle will actually buy the priced option. Kaguya, just because people will pirate these games, doesn't mean Fuwanovel should aid them. Let them go other places. Fuwanovel wants to be different, but right now, TL Wiki is doing more than Fuwanovel ever did. At least they have the common sense to remove licensed stuff. Rest assured I will not stop fighting you guys on this until I am either banned, or things change. 

 

Last summer I could not afford ef, so did I go and pirate it? Absolutely not. I saved up enough until I could buy it. Same with Kara no Shoujo. Hell, I bought 4 total Steins Gate Limited Editions for people among other VNs. These things are a luxury and not a right. 

 

You mean you want to be different?

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I'd like to thank everybody for this discussion. I'm currently discussing this matter with the staff to review longstanding Fuwanovel policies. In the meantime, I suggest everybody deescalate and remember that we're friends and we're here for the love of the hobby. I'll re-open this topic soon so the community can continue to discuss it.

Edited by Tay
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I think it's important to the site's integrity to make sure licensed material stays off or gets taken off, since all that'll ever come from it is trouble. When stuff gets licensed it means Fuwanovel has done it's intended goal of spreading knowledge about the game; The added publicity ensures that the game will be well seeded already - we're not talking about niche games here.

What I would propose instead is for Fuwanovel to try and be a more approachable version of both the TLWiki and VNDB: Keep the Grisaia sub page, remove the download link and guest comments and possibly add news regarding the official TL's status.

Best of both worlds, since unlicensed games will be available for download, additional traffic will come regarding the official translation, and Fuwanovel makes an effort in trying to be an informational instead of a pirate site.

It already doesn't really feel like one since the need to constantly justify the pirate agenda just vanished with Aaeru. It can focus on being all about VNs, everyone's love for them and making sure the culture, games and information about ongoing releases get spread.

I'm all for the removal of the torrents, but take this incident and try to refocus over it.

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I'm not a fuwanovel fan and I really hate the way some things are done (like prepatched releases) but mentioned "three main objectives" are something that I respect. Or actually 2nd and 3rd. Cause I think I have a bit different understanding of 1st objective. To me "popular" does not mean "make some companies earn more money" but rather public opinion about the medium in general.
I hate all these companies who take fan TL and try to sell it and couldn't care less if they'll go bankrupt.

Edit: also if I will be able to crack the encryption, I will release that Planetarian translation on PC faster than they'll do it on steam. BTW if anyone is willing to help me with that - please PM :D

Edited by メルP
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I don't know what the policy is.

 

But what I liked about fuwanovel and fan translation is that it gave acces to a wider audience unavailable content.

It's not just pirating for the sake of it.

It's pirating in order to translate something that people couldn't get acces to in the first place.

 

Even though this is illegal, this isn't something I think is wrong since it can't cause any problems at all.

People can enjoy something they couldn't because Japanese producers wouldn't export it outside of Japan. No loss for them in terms of sales and we gain from it.

 

Regarding Grisaia, they bought the fan translation and are making modifications.

Unless they make a restoration patch, both these games are different. (It would be incredibly stupid if they didn't add a patch at least on Sekai's website).

Lets suppose they are clever enough to do that and Fuwa still links the torrent.

 

My opinion on fan translation is that "A translator owns his fan translation".

And if he choses to sell it, not accepting this is stealing. And I'm 100% against that (And if you could delete my Steins;gate Jast thread I'd love it).

 

Now let's come back to the idea of "VN's for the world".

What would be the most efficient way to spread VN's ?

 

Waiting for people to stumble across fuwa ? Or advertising them on huge gaming platforms such as steam ?

The difference between fuwa and localization companies is the power a company has to advertize it.

Unfortunately they aren't doing the best of jobs doing it, but they can. Because they do things the way laws allow them to.

 

They have the potential to make it real and to spread it.

 

One thing I don't like about them is that they shouldn't start blaming websites such as fuwa, because these websites are what started everything. Fan-translation allowed them to exist, so they shouldn't be butt-hurt about it.

 

As for the story of "free is the same for everyone", this doesn't only apply to VN's and is just a bad excuse to justify pirating. 

 

The only exception I would make is when a company gets the legal right to make a translation of a game which has already been translated and then asks for the removal of the previous translation. That's bullshit. Someone worked in to translate that VN in order to share it to a wider public and all he gets several years later is a company calling him out for doing it ...

 

Fan-translation allowed everything that followed, so it shouldn't be just treated as illegal rubbish.

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I believe a translation is another work than the original, and in most cases they don't even fight over the same market.

I think a licensed translator should not have the right to block out other translations that have been made available under public domain. Even if the maker is the same. On one hand it would seem kind to remove it for the translator, but on the other hand that would make the old free licence void.

 

I'm not 100% sure, but I personally don't have any problems with Fuwanovel retaining torrents to the old patched game. The question is not if the new commercial translation should be hosted or not, it's a question if the translators still own the right to change the rules of use to the new owners, afterwards.

I don't think so. For comparison, if you release a book and that book is in a library, can you really demand them to stop distributing it?

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I don't think so. For comparison, if you release a book and that book is in a library, can you really demand them to stop distributing it?

 

The library still has to buy the book, not download it on the internet and them distribute. And we can't compare book's sales with VN's outside Japan .-.

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I've held off on this debate til now, but I've been asked to weigh in so I'll do so.  I think my conclusions will be a bit different than what some were expecting.  I also address some misconceptions in this thread regarding the role of Steam and other content distribution platforms in increasing VN sales.

 

VNs are not freeware

 

Commercial VNs cost hundreds of thousands of US dollars to produce.  Developers do this for a living, and they're not paid very much to do it.  It's a labor of love.  They need support to continue making more games for us to enjoy.  This doesn't change whether a game is untranslated, fan translated, or localized.  People that play VNs without paying are essentially parasites freeloading off the paying fanbase.  In the end, if too many people freeload instead of supporting a company, the company goes out of business and no more VNs get made.  The parasitic ecosystem collapses.

 

To maintain a healthy ecosystem, people must support the games they love.  When you buy a game, you're basically investing in the company's future.  You're saying "Here's my money--make more games like this!"

 

The role of fan translation

 

More than 95% of Japanese VNs are untranslated.  Fan translators provide a service by allowing us to enjoy titles in English we otherwise wouldn't have access to.  Many fan translators choose high profile titles that are currently beyond the grasp of the nascent localization industry.  Others choose titles that would never be localized due to controversial themes (e.g., lolicon).  Fan translators provide their fan translating services free of charge--but they don't own the game license.  All they can lay claim to is their translation, their derivative work.

 

When you play a fan translated game, you're expected to own the original Japanese version.  Few people actually buy the original game.  This behavior is typically written off because in the end, no sales are lost as a result of the fan translation.  The people playing the game in English weren't the target audience for the game in the first place.  Also, the customer's dollars won't be achieving their intended effect.  "Make more games like this" really means "make more games like this that I can play".  If a fan translator has to act as a middleman, financial support does not have its intended effect.  You end up with more titles you want to play but can't, since 95% of titles won't be translated.

 

In the end, fan translation does not grow the paying fanbase. The true role of fan translation is to promote localization, allowing consumers to support games they love, to see more such titles in the future.  Fan translation promotes localization by calling attention to the medium as well as particular titles.  Many localization deals wouldn't have happened if fan translation efforts hadn't highlighted to Japanese developers/publishers that there was interest in these titles overseas.

 

The role of localization

 

Localization completes the support circuit by bringing Japanese VNs to us in a language we can understand--with the promise of more such titles in the future.  It also promotes the medium more effectively than fan translators ever could, since official localization brings marketing and media attention.

 

When fan translation undermines localization by providing an excuse for people to freeload, its usefulness ends.  This is why fan translations, in general, should not be distributed once official localizations are available.

 

On content distribution platforms (e.g., Steam)

 

These gather funding by attracting a different audience than the VN fandom that typically follows JAST and MG.  The DRM that Steam uses increases sales, but not by converting pirates to customers.  Rather, it was designed to prevent resale, ensuring that every customer is funding the developer/publisher rather than funding resellers such as Gamestop.  Basically, releasing a VN on Steam exposes it to the Steam ecosystem (an ecosystem highly enriched for people willing to support the games they like), attracting customers that otherwise would not have known about or been interested in the product.

 

My stance on Planetarian and Grisaia

 

With my general philosophy on the issue explained, I'd like to qualify it a bit in this particular context.  While there's no issue with Planetarian, the release of Grisaia will be a different version from that which was translated--the all-ages version rather than the original 18+ version.  There are no plans to release the 18+ version.  Putting aside my personal views on this decision, the fan translation has added value for some people, and therefore there is justification for retaining the fan translation on Fuwanovel.  I have strong views on this topic, but they are related to my personal interests in the VN scene and thus are outside the scope of this argument.

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Oh my. Lot's of debating. I'm not going to get too involved as I would have to read the mountains of text from before, so I'll just state my opinion.

 

Don't remove the two VN's from Fuwanovel.

 

I for one don't have the money to purchase these VN's despite wanting to, thus I resort to fuwanovel or other websites.

 

As well, and I have no clue if this was mentioned before, taking down a torrent for 2 visual novels from just one website won't make a difference in the face of all the other torrents out there. I'm sure that if you go on some Japanese websites you would fine many a torrent for some Japanese-version visual novels.

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There's a lot of awesome debate here on a topic that I find really interesting.  I generally fall into the "Take down licensed links" line, because as much as FREE VNs are very nice, if there's any industry out there that I want to show support for, it is just that subject.  "I can't afford it"  isn't really a valid argument in support of downloading whatever you want.  And there is absolutely no argument that the best way to show support for an industry is to spend money on it.  Fan translations are great for the vast amounts of probably-never-to-be-localized games, but it's hard to seriously justify spending nothing on a game that you can and should support if you really want to play it.

 

Of course, all that only applies here depending on whether or not Fuwanovel is a site about "supporting the VN industry, and the western localizations", or "listing download links for all the games that are available on the internet".  One of the reasons I like Fuwanovel so much is because of its perceived desire to further the cause of supporting the VN industry.  Maybe I just assumed Fuwa to be a little bit different than it is, but if that's the case, oh well. 

 

There are plenty of places out there to find unobstructed content for all the VN's there are in existence, but very few places to go that actually seem to support the VN industry in any serious manner.  I have no idea whose decision it is to decide if Fuwa is supporting the VN industry or just handing them out to the world., but... good luck with that. :D

 

I don't tend to make long and serious posts (or all that many posts at all). At least I don't think so. (This is a long and serious post for me)

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So, what does her response mean?  It means that she had every desire to post VNs that were licensed in America, but couldn't.  I asked her why not in a private chat on the IRC later, and her response was simply that she was tired of dealing with those companies and didn't have the willpower to put them on the main site.  In case you didn't know, that's part of the reason she left, because she was doing everything for the site almost singly-handedly, and it was just too stressful for her.  ~Naomi~

After arguing with Aaeru countless times, I can vouch that this is an accurate characterization of her view.  Aaeru had zero respect for copyright.  As far as she was concerned, software was meant to be freely distributed, no exceptions.

 

But this argument isn't about Aaeru's views.  It's about setting Fuwanovel policy, and the future of a Fuwanovel that ISN'T beholden to Aaeru.

 

But well, if you really want previous precedent--I don't see Saya no Uta in Fuwanovel's download list.  This time the publisher is Sekai Project rather than JAST--a company less likely to aggressively pursue takedowns.  Consider for a moment whether aggressiveness of the publisher should be the deciding factor as to whether a game download stays or goes.

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