A Japanese visual novel creator has decided to take legal action after their latest game was streamed in its entirety on release day.
Game creator and novelist Takiya Iijima wrote a lengthy thread on X (as reported by Automaton) explaining that their latest visual novel was streamed on day one, despite requests that content creators refrain from streaming the game until a week after release.
Following the success of Iijima’s visual novel Apathy: Narugami Gakuen Nana Fushigi on Switch, a new visual novel titled Apathy Murder Club has been released on Steam for a reduced price of ¥990 ($6.39) to celebrate.
“But this is the result,” Iijima said. “Someone filmed a live stream of our newly released novel-style adventure game and played it for several hours from the first day of release to several different endings.”
Streaming visual novels have been a subject of debate for some time now, due to their linear nature. While most other game genres play differently every time, the fact that most visual novels are driven primarily by linear dialogue means that—branching storylines aside—it’s generally an almost identical experience every playthrough.
Many people therefore argue that streaming a visual novel often exposes the entire content of the game, which is similar in principle to streaming a copyrighted movie or music, or recording a copyrighted book. As Iijima says, “spoilers can be fatal” to the game’s success, since the narrative is the whole point of the game.
Visual novels in Japan often come with requests to delay streaming until the game has been out for a while, and the Steam page for Apathy Murder Club has a message informing players that live streams and gameplay videos on YouTube are allowed after August 3rd.
However, the player in question seemingly ignored this rule and streamed the game and its endings on release day.
“I’m really sad that there are people who don’t follow the rules of the game,” Iijima said in his X thread. disable streaming indefinitely. If the game doesn’t sell, there’s nothing we can do about it.
“I don’t make games so that people can create derivative works or play them live. We make games for other people. it is bad? I make games for a living. I support my family.”
Iijima noted that the player has since removed their videos, but has not reached out to Iijima to apologize. Regardless, Iijima plans to take legal action against the streamer, saying that he wants to ensure that smaller, less experienced visual novel developers aren’t robbed of their livelihood by streamers revealing all of their game’s narrative content.
“The reason I’m being so thorough is because I want to protect future creators,” they wrote. “Even if this person never does this to me again, they will look for other smaller, weaker prey. Budding creators who cannot defend themselves should not fall prey to the venom of these unscrupulous people. So I’m going to crush it completely.’
Initially, Iijima threatened to remove all existing gameplay videos for the games they copyrighted, saying, “We will delete all posts, whether they are famous or not. If you add them all up, it’s likely that they’ve been viewed tens of millions of times, and it would take an enormous amount of time to request their removal, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”
However, the following day, Iijima joined their thread and said that they regretted going so far and that they will not request a takedown of all previous videos as they appreciate that creating content also takes hard work.
Despite this, they still plan to take legal action against the person who streamed Apathy Murder Club, saying, “I think game commentators, not just those who play my games, should understand the rules set for each game and provide entertaining game commentary.
“We will take the matter to court so that other creators do not get into this situation. I don’t think it’s in the best interest of the games industry to forgive the people in question who got away without offering a single apology.”
One of Iijima’s followers responded to their thread stating, “Unfortunately, in recent years, the global mindset of not following the rules has spread to Japan, and it’s unfortunate that more and more people have no qualms about violating the rights of others.”
Iijima replied, “Such people show no remorse and will continue to prey on more vulnerable people. I think most of them are people who would rather apologize than be sorry. I will give those who look down on the world a bitter candy to lick.”