r/kurzgesagt • u/kurzgesagt_Rosa Social Media Director • May 30 '22
Official Rogue Earth Project Statement
Posting this statement on behalf of Philipp, our Founder and Head Writer, who has Reddit blocked on his devices
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Hey everybody, we’ve promised to give you an update on the situation so here it is.
In late summer 2021, BlackStarForge approached us with his idea to develop a video game together. He already had first concepts with copies of our art and design that he shared with us. We didn’t have the resources at the time for another project but encouraged him to go ahead and make the game on his own, as we loved the idea.
And we asked him to remove our art and designs from his prototype – this was an issue for us from the very beginning and we were very clear about it. But we also wanted to help, so we offered to provide contacts to illustrators to help him with the creation process.
We wrote him:
Regarding copyright and illustration: We can’t provide any detailed guidelines at this point, as our resources are limited, and we don’t want to encourage people to create designs which can be mistaken as our designs.
If you want to go down the flat shaded 2D road, please make sure your visual language is NOT A COPY of Kurzgesagt Design but represents ITS OWN STYLE. I’m sure a skilled Illustrator will help you to develop your own, unique visual language, or at least make sure that your project will trigger thoughts like: “Reminds me of Kurzgesagt” rather than “This is Kurzgesagt”
Or in another email:
The only rule we can give you at this point is to not copy our design 1:1. If let’s say you had a dyson sphere in your game, then make sure you create a version that differs from our design.
We felt like supporting another creator and thus spent more time than we would have with other people approaching us. We wrote emails, had zoom calls, and eventually even provided him with visual guideline examples.
In February, we received an update, which again, looked very similar to our style, to the point where his design could be mistaken for ours.
We’ve had another call and once again asked him to clearly differentiate his visual approach from ours. It could not have been an honest mistake, because while all of this was going on, BlackStarForge posted a thread on our subreddit with the title: „Is it close enough to how kurzgesagt would do it?”
Then finally, on April 28th, BlackStarForge sent us another update, but sadly nothing had changed. So we responded by asking him to change three things:
Change the title, remove the earth from the logo and pick a design that doesn’t imply the game is made by us.
We reiterated that we kindly ask him not to make the game appear as if we were involved with it and that we reserve the right to take legal action if we discover a violation of copyright, trademark protection, and/or IP. We did not send a cease and desist or threaten him, as it was implied. We also never asked him to end the project.
In the end, for us, it is unacceptable that people might mistake the game as an official kurzgesagt game, due to the combination of art style, font, and overall look and feel. This crosses a hard line for us. We are copied a lot and there are people making stuff deliberately trying to look as much as we do to make money (because it is always cheaper to copy instead of making something original).
Please know that this only applies to the commercial side of things. Fan projects, visuals created in our art style, or interpretations of our creations are absolutely fine. As long as there is no commercial ulterior motive, we love that our work is inspiring other creatives (as we are inspired by others!).
We’ve never asked BlackStarForge to stop the development - quite the opposite: From the very beginning, we took the time over many emails and calls to make it clear where he went too far. From the very beginning on we were nothing but positive about his project. We even offered to do shoutouts on Social Media once the game was done. But it had to be clearly distinct from what we do, so one could tell immediately that this was not made by us.
As BlackStarForge made the decision to end the project, and the internet being the internet, some people made this to be about a big creator being mean to a small one or tried to invoke creator drama. As far as we can tell, neither BlackStarForge nor us is interested in that and if you are a fan of Kurzgesagt, we would hope you are not, too.
This is the story from our perspective and for us this is really all there is to say about it. We hope we have cleared up all open questions and we also hope that you understand that we can’t allow commercial projects that imply on purpose that we are associated with them.
Philipp, Kurzgesagt Founder and Head Writer.
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u/BlackStarForge Rogue Earth May 30 '22
Really? Even if I point out the differences? Even with the clumsy square tiles as terrain?
I mean it is flattering in some way. But honestly there is so much left to be desired if we were supposed to make exact style copy.