A quick note before I start. The second post was supposed to be my AI one but that is turning out to be a massive post and I still need some time to finish it up. I do want to stick with my set schedule though so I am flipping this post and the AI one to give me more time. Thank you for your understanding!
Oh man, this one is a bit of a mess but tbh will likely be the simplest and shortest of the 5 posts. So let’s get right into it.
I fucked up, plain an simple. I spent a fair bit of time looking back on this and being fully honest we should not have allowed any games using images of real people in them. I don’t know what possessed me to allow it, I think maybe I was thinking along the lines of FMVs from the 90s I don’t really know. The long and short though of this whole thing is I just made a bad call and at the end of the day, that is on me.
So how will we deal with this in the future? Simply enough we are not going to allow any games on the site that have images of real people in it, period. Once again, this is how we should have been operating already and I should have not allowed it in the first place.
I know this one is really short compared to the others, and it may feel like I did not spend as much time addressing this as the others. But the more I thought about it the more it just felt like I was justifying, and sometimes it’s just as simple as I fucked up. All I can really do is just admit I made a bad call and try to do better in the future.
The tldr; is the dev created a VN which used images of real people in it straight. No AI was used. We asked that they remove those images (and they did) but they left an unaltered version up on itch that they where linking directly to. We where giving them some leeway as they told us they where in talks with one of the people to obtain an actual license to use their images and likeness in the game, but we ended up fully removing the game before that happened as we realized it was not a good idea to begin with and we should have done so in the first place.
It’s hard to admit fault in such a straightforward, unambiguous way - especially when you are the “face” of something, because it feels as if there is an additional weight of responsibility to uphold the site itself plus your own general self.
Thanks for the apology and I’m glad you offered it clearly. This never should have happened, but I imagine nobody was expecting that someone would actually DO this (straight-up stealing another person’s personal image for their game) here. It’s very good that this rule is now in place for the future, because fuck. That’s gross.
Thank you, grot. Owning up to this is hard, but simple, and you’ve done so and the apology is appreciated.
In a satisfying turn of events, given the “dev” who built the game and tried to price out the demo at $5, $10, and $20 (often that $20 discounted to $5 or $10!) was removed off of Itch after several reports for stealing someone’s image to use in his game without credit, licensing, or even simple permission.
I never hate follow anyone, though this was pretty damn close to it. It was nice to see it taken down, though, when I checked back on it.
Not that I was planning on it, but out of intellectual curiosity, I recall there are maybe one or two games on here made in direct collaboration with fetish models to use their images, from a few years back. If that is something that’s allowed, it may be worth clarifying.
Although considering how hard it is to confirm licensing and all that from a moderator standpoint, I’d also understand if this is just a blanket ban on real people, period.
Yeah, especially with AI video and images and a potential bad actor faking payments, emails, accounts etc, I could see how that would be too messy for a forum like this.