Epic Games Store is Removing a Game (Dark and Darker) from Players' Libraries due to legal troubles
Epic Games Store is Removing a Game from Players' Libraries
I wasn’t aware that assets readily available on the Epic Marketplace were considered “trade secrets.” Nexon is operating at Nintendo levels of evil in this case.
What a terrible headline. That’s what happened but the way it’s written is so unclear.
It's a free to play game so just redownload it on Steam.
There's also an upgrade that isn't free that's being removed. Granted the upgrade was one of their freebie offers relatively recent.
It uses its own account system, so if you had that content you should still have access to it on the platforms that aren't removing it, right?
This happened because the developers allegedly used assets from a game called P3, which was never released, and therefore not subject to copyright infringement claims.
That isn’t how copyright works. Copyright is awarded upon creation of a work, not upon release.
While not subject to copyright laws, it definetly counts as theft. If I'm working on a drawing and someone steals it before I complete it, it's theft.
Copyright applies to unfinished works, too. There are many reasons it might not protect an unfinished work, but those reasons are still relevant even for finished works.
If someone steals your physical drawing, that’s theft. If they take a picture of it, then use the picture - or your picture + modifications - without your permission, particularly in a commercial work, then that’s copyright infringement, but not theft. If they steal your physical drawing and then take a picture and so on, then it’s both theft and copyright infringement.
Most likely this wasn’t considered copyright infringement because the allegedly copied art isn’t copyrightable, e.g., game mechanics; or the plaintiff didn’t own the copyrights themselves and thus couldn’t sue (possibly the arts were still copyrighted by the original artists, having never been purchased; possibly they were stock assets that were re-purchased by the defendant). There are any number of reasons. However, “the work wasn’t published” isn’t one of them.
On the other hand, it’s quite likely they were able to sue for theft of trade secrets for that very reason. And they might have chosen to do that simply because proving copyright infringement is much more difficult.
It's Dark and Darker.
Saved you a click!