Sony denies LBP costume copies

[Shrygue]

via Computer and Video Games (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=201976)


Sony has come under fire for allegedly copying Sackboy costume designs from non-winning entries to a design competition held before the game was released.

Posters on the official PS forums pointed out uncanny similarities between their own submitted Sackboy designs and the new Sackboy costumes recently released for download.

Check out the similarities on the forum (http://community.eu.playstation.com/playstationeu/board/message?board.id=b_EN_GAMES_general_lbp&thread.id=33834&view=by_date_ascending&page=1).

According to a Sony community man, it's all just a coincidence: "this was always going to be a possibility when we ran the costumer competition - releasing new costumes which are similar in theme to ones that were entered," said the rep under the alias Sam_Protagonist.


"Here's the fact of the matter," he went on: "The art team who are responsible for designing new original (ie unlicensed) costumes were involved at the very final stage of judging, by which time the number of entries had been whittled down to 10 from each batch of entries (Europe, Japan, USA).

"If at any time we take inspiration from a costume competition entry that didn't win overall we will contact the creator directly.

Sounds reasonable to us.

[pibs]

Hmm its similar but he did submit it so technically MM can do as they please with it since they own it now because he agreed on the TAC that anything summited becomes their property.

[rmedtx]

I agree with pibs. There was an agreement for the material submission for the contest. Mm owns the rights to all submitted materials.

[F9zDark]

I agree with pibs. There was an agreement for the material submission for the contest. Mm owns the rights to all submitted materials.

Very true and if the person was going to complain then he shouldn't have sent it in. But then again, didn't the contest stipulate that only winning submissions would be used in the game?

So Mm broke their own agreement; which in US law nullifies the whole deal. Meaning, if this content LOST the contest and was used although the agreement stipulated the use of only WINNING content then by US standards this person would retain their rights to the content and Mm could be held liable (since the agreement that handled the "signing over" of the content was nullified by the company that WROTE IT).

Its not worth all the heartache or wasted money going to court over it. Not only that, the designs while "similar" are clearly not the same. The original drawing clearly depicts the shark eating the head of the sackboy (with clearly noticeable blood). The design from Mm is clearly a shark mask (sans apparent sackboyicide).