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Atlus sues fans that resurrected the defunct Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE Online with private servers

HylianSeven

HylianSeven

Shin Megami TC - Community Resetter
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Oct 25, 2017
19,038
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Docket for Atlus Co., Ltd. v. John Doe 1, 1:21-cv-11102 - CourtListener.com

Docket for Atlus Co., Ltd. v. John Doe 1, 1:21-cv-11102 — Brought to you by the RECAP Initiative and Free Law Project, a non-profit dedicated to creating high quality open legal information.
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This is some really disappointing news. They're suing over copyright infringement. Even if Atlus has a legitimate case here, this is still extremely shitty in my opinion given that IMAGINE is defunct in all regions now. Japan's servers were running for a while until a number of years ago when they were shut down. These fan-made private servers do not accept any money and the premium currency was gained through participating in the game's events.
 
Dest

Dest

Has seen more 10s than EA ever will
Coward
Jun 4, 2018
14,039
Work
They have the case for sure, but if you aren't hosting your own game then I think you, to an extent, should forfeit the right to bitch about it when people want to play your game again.

I also find it really ironic because Sega doesn't really seem to have an interest themselves in persuing other private servers for some of their other online games which I won't mention here but I'm sure some of you already know.
 
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Melpomene

Melpomene

One Winged Slayer
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Jun 9, 2019
18,284
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Foffy

Foffy

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Oct 25, 2017
16,379
Pretty trashy move. This is a dead ass game, and unless I'm mistaken, fan servers for MMOs like this go out of their way to try and revive the game long after its been shut down and avoid taking in money.

Atlus would likely be so petty to do the same if they shut down a gacha game. Such a backwards ass company.
 
Okabe

Okabe

Is Sometimes A Good Bean
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Aug 24, 2018
19,896
Oh shit I loved this game. Had no idea this happened though
 
Melpomene

Melpomene

One Winged Slayer
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Jun 9, 2019
18,284
Fans: "Please keep servers up for this old game."

Atlus: "No."

Fans: "Please let us keep servers up for your old game for you."

Atlus: "No."

Atlus: "Also give us your lunch money."
 
Uncle at Nintendo

Uncle at Nintendo

▲ Legend ▲
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Jan 3, 2018
8,583
Fuck, at least Nintendo fires off a cease or desist warning shot, most of the time. Atlus just go straight for these fans wallets.
 
Foffy

Foffy

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Oct 25, 2017
16,379
Uncle at Nintendo said:
Fuck, at least Nintendo fires off a cease or desist warning shot, most of the time. Atlus just go straight for these fans wallets.
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Nintendo only does it for fan games, specifically major ones around Pokemon. Sega doesn't give a shit at all: they openly support the fan game community for Sonic, have openly advertised a fan game effort through Roblox, and have done nothing against private Phantasy Star servers for those discontinued games. Sega has had long precedent of "if it's not sabotaging our current projects, go right ahead." This is the honest approach to have.

Atlus is one breath away from suing fan translations of games they have no plans to never translate themselves, it feels like. They're like a Japanese Take-Two when it comes to wanting to be shitty to their own fans doing things the company has negative interest in doing themselves.
 
AlexBasch

AlexBasch

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Oct 27, 2017
7,307
Atlus didn't allow P5 streams straight from the PS4, because people bringing attention to their games is harmful for them or something.
 
Desma

Desma

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Oct 27, 2017
5,209
AlexBasch said:
Atlus didn't allow P5 streams straight from the PS4, because people bringing attention to their games is harmful for them or something.
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And I would not be surprised if they put that giant calendar on the P5 screen so they could auto-flag streams after the in-game date Atlus allowed.
 
Uncle at Nintendo

Uncle at Nintendo

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Jan 3, 2018
8,583
Foffy said:
Nintendo only does it for fan games, specifically major ones around Pokemon. Sega doesn't give a shit at all: they openly support the fan game community for Sonic, have openly advertised a fan game effort through Roblox, and have done nothing against private Phantasy Star servers for those discontinued games. Sega has had long precedent of "if it's not sabotaging our current projects, go right ahead." This is the honest approach to have.

Atlus is one breath away from suing fan translations of games they have no plans to never translate themselves, it feels like. They're like a Japanese Take-Two when it comes to wanting to be shitty to their own fans doing things the company has negative interest in doing themselves.
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Which makes things even weirder because Sega owns Atlus.
 
Ashes of Dreams

Ashes of Dreams

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May 22, 2020
14,354
Imagine is both one of the worst Megami Tensei games I've ever played and one of the worst MMORPGs I've ever played. I tried it twice, both during what should be different high points for the game, and it was an unsatisfying experience both times. It's idea of demon negotiation was awkwardly chasing after a random enemy mob while spamming the "Talk" action. It's combat was so uninspired it doesn't even need to be talked about. The playerbase all gravitated to the same locations, making 90% of the content in the game dead on arrival.

But it's still a part of history. People should be able to experience it. If there will never be an official version, it absolutely should be allowed to be in the hands of the fans. Unless they're secretly planning a revival, which I doubt, this sucks.
 
kubev

kubev

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Oct 25, 2017
7,533
California
Oh, wow...I remember playing this ages ago. I wasn't too familiar with the Shin Megami Tensei games at the time, and I found it really funny how you'd chase enemies around and talk to them to persuade them to side with you.

I wonder how much of a case they have here. The GitHub page for the server software indicates that it's created from scratch and fully open-source, so I can't imagine that being illegal. It makes sense that they're complaining if the Web site mentioned in the documents is a copy of the original game's Web site, and I can imagine there being issues if they're distributing an altered version of the game that includes copyrighted assets (as opposed to just forcing people to patch a vanilla installation of the game, though I can't remember how the game distributes assets and whether that stuff would be hosted on the game server and, hence, somehow considered to be infringing), but I don't see why they'd pursue this unless the game was somehow directly negatively impacting a current Atlus game with a similar structure.

Does Atlus currently have any online RPGs like this? They call it an MMORPG, but I don't think it's technically MMO, as it was more along the lines of Guild Wars in that you went through dungeons in smaller groups.
 
grand

grand

Member
Oct 25, 2017
24,900
Oof, they identified one of the John Does, which is why this is escalating in court. They're gonna need to pay for a good lawyer because while they have a good argument, Atlus/Sega will try to bully them to set an example.
 
AImalexia

AImalexia

Prophet of Truth
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Aug 31, 2021
2,426
disgusting, by law companies should be forced to release server binaries on end of service
 
Fendajaz

Fendajaz

Banned
Oct 29, 2017
2,123
Damn I fucking loved this game back in the day. Its how I discovered the megaten franchise. So shitty of Atlus. Let the fans have what they want.
 
grand

grand

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Oct 25, 2017
24,900
Like, it's super crazy that Atlus is following through on this. Most companies don't sue for servers because they know the courts might rule it as akin to someone building a record player to replay an old record or something: namely, not a part of the intellectual property. Atlus might be gambling a big controversy in gaming if this defendant gets any sort of legal funding.
 
kcp12304

kcp12304

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,974
Even if they are in the legal right, it doesn't make business sense to go after this. Especially considering the fanbase is very niche and pays attention to things like this.
 
grand

grand

Member
Oct 25, 2017
24,900
Dust said:
Not even C&D first? Just outright lawsuit?
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They sued two John Does originally and only figured out the identity of one within the last month.

I wonder if Atlus wasn't expecting to discover one of them, or rather, that one of them was in the US. Because that has severely increased the stakes of the court proceedings from a simple ruling against an anonymous party to take control of a website.
 
Dreamboum

Dreamboum

Member
Oct 28, 2017
22,854
Atlus should be sued for selling Soul Hackers 2 for 90 euros. Not fans preserving the history they want to remove. What a trash company with a disdain for their fans
 
Gemüsepizza

Gemüsepizza

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,541
Wasn't there a law or something that says when you don't actively defend your trademarks, you risk losing them? And they probably could get sued by shareholders, too.
 
Kanhir

Kanhir

One Winged Slayer
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Oct 25, 2017
3,890
I don't see what Atlus stands to gain from this other than bad PR.

Foffy said:
Nintendo only does it for fan games, specifically major ones around Pokemon. Sega doesn't give a shit at all: they openly support the fan game community for Sonic, have openly advertised a fan game effort through Roblox, and have done nothing against private Phantasy Star servers for those discontinued games. Sega has had long precedent of "if it's not sabotaging our current projects, go right ahead." This is the honest approach to have.
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Capcom too, there have been active private servers for the PS2/PSP Monster Hunter games and MH Frontier for a while, and Tri ones are just going up now. Capcom haven't gone near them to the best of my knowledge.
 
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