Nice quote from Jeffy, I’d tell ya. Keep up the good work man!
I finally got another trust level on here, so I went ahead and put in some screenshots from the build here 
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Hey not to put a damper on this but aren’t a decent few of the characters younger than 18? I’m pretty sure this site doesn’t allow works with characters younger than that.
Not if we’re going by Strikers which is technically canon as it continues the plot of 5. Both Haru and Makoto are 18 at the start of the game, and if we’re going by given birthdays then Ann will be 18 in November of that year. So Ann’s out, sadly.
Futaba, however, is out at 16.
Technically this game could be set a few years after strikers, but I’m not sure if that’d be within the bounds of the rules here.
Actually, now that I think about it, what are the rules on aged up characters that are canon to being underage? Is that allowed? I don’t think that’s ever been explicitly stated.
there will be a time-skip in the games story and all of the girls will have redesigns to match that. roughly 4-5 years after the game
grotlover2 has stated on the WG Discord that:
Also, “aging up” a character is not a valid defense as canonical age is used. And before any one asks yes this does include fictional characters (see Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition)
So I believe the answer is you cannot have Futaba, as she is not canonically 18 anywhere.
Follow-up question, how legit would it be to have her… uhm… 19 year old older sister “Fataba” that looks suspiciously like her? 
While I appreciate the thought going into it, when it comes to taking this idea further…
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CND was a big worry in my mind before I started this up, but it’s not like I’m making a multi-thousand dollar kick-starter for a nintendo game, right? I think it’s reasonable to be concerned about this, and I’m definitely gonna take all the precautions and loopholes to try and get this right (maybe calling the game an artistic visual experience with gameplay elements once it releases, lol) but the big thing to keep in mind is that ATLUS is a predominantly Japanese company, and I, metrack, am a exclusively english person. deep in the crevices of the american fat fetish world isn’t really where I think they wanna be looking, yknow?
additionally
- the game will be 100% free when it’s released
- I’ll disclose that a majority of the characters in the game are not my property
- worst comes to worst, the girls are all getting time-skip redesigns anyways and I can just claim they’re original characters with coincidental names (evil ending)
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well, no piece of fan art is ever canon, that’s kinda the whole point of fan art. futaba isn’t fat in the hit 2016 RPG Persona 5, is she? you have nothing to worry about, there will be a time-skip in the game’s story (with a timeskip design as well, much different than just aging up) and her canon age in fatsona will be around 20-21.
Will it be that when the game is in its final and free edition you will be able to post it on Steam
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probably not steam, but I’m planning on having it on itch.io as well as just having a direct link to it’s .exe file in google drive.
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Really though what matters is probably his patreon? If he had to delete just this thread? He would. Patreon is full of people making sexgames with aged up fan favorite cartoon teenagers and getting many 1000s of dollars a month to do it. Yeah, maybe it is against some terms of service but patreon seems to enforce that very haphazardly. Yeah, I personally wouldn’t trust my entire business empire on this facet, but well, it’s too popular to be something that’s clearly againt the rules?
edit: I’d imagine the main reason people see up-aging as an invalid excuse is that a lot of people will half-ass their up-aging and just draw someone who is clearly underage and then say in the comments “she’s 18.” saying “she’s 18.” doesn’t up-age someone the same way as redrawing them to be taller and look older does… or giving them a buncha dialogue about how they’ve graduated from highschool last summer or w/e would.
legally? who knows? I’m not a lawyer, but I know dA and patreon have accepted legitmate up-age redesigns 10000s of times without complaint in the past.
It isn’t acceptable on this site. Aging up is against our terms of service due to legal matters. @grotlover2 is more in tune with those than I am, if you need further clarification.
To clarify, the legal text of US law is what states that aging up does not work.
You see under US law a character is judged to be underage by two metrics
-
Does the character appear underage (this is why a character that is not underage but looks underage is not allowed on most platforms)
-
The canonical age of the character as determined by the IP holders
See aging up does not work because in the court of law its the people that own the IP of that character that determine the age, not the artist.
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I’d imagine patreon’s that don’t get closed down for this reason are counting the aged up characters as their own IP (which to me at least makes sense if it’s a total rework of the character design that bares resemblance but is in fact in many ways original artwork, even if the name of the character itself is copyright infringing). Because if they were infringing copyright they’d be taken down regardless of age just for infringing copyright.
Like I said it’s a wildly inconsistent rules enforcement system.
It’s actually more reasonable to take a hard stance on enforcing your own rules. I guess the reason patreon doesn’t like to enforce it’s own rules is that by not enforcing their own rules they stand to profit monetarily, whereas a fan forum has no such incentive to break it’s own rules?
edit: I didn’t mean to come across as debating weightgaingaming’s rules. I understood those were a firm no. I was just wondering what people thought patreon and dA’s rules were like, because those are the sites the OP actually posts on a LOT whereas they’re new to this forum.
DA is different. When i’m making a game that specifically uses characters from a series I don’t own, I have to be more mindful in respects to that. Strictly Fan-Art images, though, are inherently transformative (creative commons or whatever), and I stand by that assertion. Aging up in that sense is fine because the artist controls the canon of the image, and I feel when it comes to Fan-Art, artistic intent is so much more important because of this. I’ve never drawn the twins from Persona 5 for example, because they look like literal kids.
I’m talking with the mods currently about the legal technicalities with the characters, but I don’t believe my Patreon or this game violates it, even in a legal scenario. The characters in this series are recognized to age in respect with the real world calendar, and also have been shown to have a pretty definite place in real-time. Atlus maintains this very apparently, such as P5R, a game releasing in 2020, being set in 2016 so the ages align with the canon-assigned birthdays. Along with each and every character getting a Fatsona redesign, the game will also be noted to take place in 2021- a 4-5 year time skip similar to how much time has actually canonically passed since the P5 story. If anything, this is a weird, fetish rendition of “where are they now?” in a way. That’s the justification for the legal parts of it, anyway.
Is there a specific law you’re referring to here?
So this is getting off topic so I am going to request that further discussion of this be tabled as @metrack and the @staff discuss this issue in respect to the project in private. If users wish to discuss this issue more thoroughly (especially since this is a very complex issue) feel free to open a dedicated topic on #general-discussion.
I do want to take the time to answer some of the questions that where posed before we table it though.
The PROTECT Act of 2003 is the specific law that governs most of this atm. We did hear there may have been a strike against it on 1st amendment grounds by the US Supreme Court but we neither have the time to look into it our selves or the money to seek legal counsel on the issue at the moment so we default to the worst case interpretation of the law out of caution. If there is anyone in the community that has legal training and would like to help out feel free to contact us.
To your point on Patreon @namad its actually the opposite of what you claim. Patreon very heavily enforces these rules on publicly displayed content and I have seen 4 patreons closed down for posting work that it considers NSFW alone. What you need to take into account is the size of Patreon. The fact of the matter is every company (including us) will only do the minimum possible to comply with the law (usually enough to show they are acting is good faith). Since Patreon is so large they will usually only take action when alerted to an issue since it is not feasible for them to active police everything on the site and while you may not see these rules being enforced the subset you are looking at is likely a very small fraction of the sites actual content. So it is a fallacy to assume a perceived lack of enforcement means no enforcement.
Copyright is a totally different matter and should not really be compared in this instance. For copyright it requires the copyright holder to file a DMCA or request that the infringing content be removed so Patreon is not compelled to actively enforce copyright. With child pornography laws Patreon is compelled to active enforce where they can.
This is mainly because the law itself is so grey and context matters. For example on a more general art site like DA fat is not necessarily sexually explicit but on a site that is mainly for fetish based games I think you could see how that context could change the perception of the content.
I think there is some of that but its mainly the greyness of the law combined with the context of it.
I hope this answers some of the questions and misconceptions. This is a very complex topic when it comes down to it and small debate like this does not actually do it justice.
Once again we are requesting that all further debate on this halt at least on this thread. If anyone wishes to have a more in depth discussion on this feel free to open a new topic in #general-discussion.
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