Atlus has filed a court case against fans who attempted to revive Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, an MMORPG that was shut down in 2016. Two defendants were named in the suit: COMP_hack and Rekuiemu, the former of which fully reverse engineered the SMT: Imagine server with open source code, while the latter hosted the servers. The fan effort initially released the year after Atlus shut down the MMO, in 2017, though the project would see updates all the way into 2021.

At the tail-end of 2021, on December, 28th, Atlus filed a lawsuit against them, alleging that the project was a "blatant violation of U.S. copyright law", as not only did the two revive the game without Atlus's authorization, Rekuiemu made an exact copy of the original Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine website from 2007 and made it their own. Initially, this website noted the copyrights of the original teams involved with the MMO--Atlus, SEGA, and Cave--but Rekuiemu added their own copyright next to those, as well. They also put their own logo at the bottom of the site, which Atlus took issue with, purporting that this kind of behavior is copyright infringement.

In blatant violation of U.S. copyright law, Defendants—by their own admission and without any authorization—have decided to “resurrect” the Imagine Game. They have done this by (1) creating and operating an exact copy of the original website used by Atlus to distribute the Imagine Game (the “Infringing Website”); (2) creating and distributing an exact or nearly exact copy of the Imagine Game which users can download from the Infringing Website (the “Infringing Game”); and (3) creating and distributing an unauthorized web server—which Defendants call a “server emulator”—that emulates the original game server used by Atlus and that enables users to publicly display and play the Infringing Game online with other players (the “Infringing Server”)

Meanwhile, a separate revival project of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine exists, called SMT: ReImagine. This version used the final Japanese version of the game, and also offered a partial translation patch, and used its own form of launcher. ReImagine was not targeted by Atlus's lawsuit, but following the ReImagine team's discovery of the court battle between COMP_hack, Rekuiemu, and Atlus, and a summons had been issued to the defendants, the SMT: ReImagined project was shut down, along with its own custom servers, in order to protect the team of fans that had worked on it for years.

Source

 

[Luke94]

Okay how is it with Scourge the Hedgehog? Is he violating Sega’s NDA,DMCA,Copyrights Infringement that IDW Publishing after Sega ended partnership with Archie Comics replaced him with Surge the Tenrec? Was it just only Ken Penders fault? Because he was focusing too much into Echidna Tribe ancestors of Knuckles the Echidna instead of Tiara Boobowski’s royal ancestors,right? What if companies like Sega would be more like companies like Nintendo?
Would it mean even more lawsuits related to unofficial,fanmade computer games/video games,right?
What if companies like Sega would cancel Sega CD/Mega CD,Sega 32X hardware add-ons including Sega Dreamcast instead of CD-ROM slot in Sega Saturn it could 64-bit cartridge based hardware add-on instead? What if both Sega and Nintendo both wanted to partnership with Phillips? I guess Unreal/Tournament/Championship fans are already pissed because Epic Games had removed those games. Imagine Sonic the Hedgehog fans of Sega not being satisfied of Sonic CD,Sonic the Hedgehog 3,Sonic & Knuckles,Knuckles’ Chaotix,Sonic Adventure 1,Sonic Adventure 2…etc.

 

[sombrerosonic]

Okay how is it with Scourge the Hedgehog? Is he violating Sega’s NDA,DMCA,Copyrights Infringement that IDW Publishing after Sega ended partnership with Archie Comics replaced him with Surge the Tenrec? Was it just only Ken Penders fault? Because he was focusing too much into Echidna Tribe ancestors of Knuckles the Echidna instead of Tiara Boobowski’s royal ancestors,right? What if companies like Sega would be more like companies like Nintendo?
Would it mean even more lawsuits related to unofficial,fanmade computer games/video games,right?
What if companies like Sega would cancel Sega CD/Mega CD,Sega 32X hardware add-ons including Sega Dreamcast instead of CD-ROM slot in Sega Saturn it could 64-bit cartridge based hardware add-on instead? What if both Sega and Nintendo both wanted to partnership with Phillips? I guess Unreal/Tournament/Championship fans are already pissed because Epic Games had removed those games. Imagine Sonic the Hedgehog fans of Sega not being satisfied of Sonic CD,Sonic the Hedgehog 3,Sonic & Knuckles,Knuckles’ Chaotix,Sonic Adventure 1,Sonic Adventure 2…etc.

huh? what? English man.

 

[Luke94]

Sega is thinking that they are like Nintendo.
But it seems Sega fans fans of Shinmegami Tensei MMORPG got less than more creative freedom…etc.

 

[Foxi4]

Sega is thinking that they are like Nintendo.
But it seems Sega fans fans of Shinmegami Tensei MMORPG got less than more creative freedom…etc.

They got shut down because their website was using assets straight up lifted from the original, not because they were running a private server in and out of itself. The site was an exact replica of the original which could cause confusion as Atlus is *not* running it, they had good reason to intervene, though they did go a little hardcore, a C&D would’ve sufficed.

 

[Luke94]

Well Sega is third party company not first party anymore no more.

 

[Lumstar]

Okay how is it with Scourge the Hedgehog? Is he violating Sega’s NDA,DMCA,Copyrights Infringement that IDW Publishing after Sega ended partnership with Archie Comics replaced him with Surge the Tenrec? Was it just only Ken Penders fault? Because he was focusing too much into Echidna Tribe ancestors of Knuckles the Echidna instead of Tiara Boobowski’s royal ancestors,right? What if companies like Sega would be more like companies like Nintendo?
Would it mean even more lawsuits related to unofficial,fanmade computer games/video games,right?
What if companies like Sega would cancel Sega CD/Mega CD,Sega 32X hardware add-ons including Sega Dreamcast instead of CD-ROM slot in Sega Saturn it could 64-bit cartridge based hardware add-on instead? What if both Sega and Nintendo both wanted to partnership with Phillips? I guess Unreal/Tournament/Championship fans are already pissed because Epic Games had removed those games. Imagine Sonic the Hedgehog fans of Sega not being satisfied of Sonic CD,Sonic the Hedgehog 3,Sonic & Knuckles,Knuckles’ Chaotix,Sonic Adventure 1,Sonic Adventure 2…etc.

Derivative work complicates matters. Anything like Scourge the Hedgehog, is undeniably based upon Sega's designs. Ken Penders can only claim characters he actually created. (he's tried to sue over things like the Sonic Chronicles echidnas)

 

[Foxi4]

Derivative work complicates matters. Anything like Scourge the Hedgehog, is undeniably based upon Sega's designs. Ken Penders can only claim characters he actually created. (he's tried to sue over things like the Sonic Chronicles echidnas)

Ken Penders needs psychiatric help and is a slightly more socially acceptable version of Chris-Chan, I strongly recommend looking into his recent “art”. I am shocked that the courts even entertain his suits, but if I recall correctly, everybody settled disputes with him solely to just make him disappear forever.

 

[Lumstar]

Ken Penders needs psychiatric help and is a slightly more socially acceptable version of Chris-Chan, I strongly recommend looking into his recent “art”. I am shocked that the courts even entertain his suits, but if I recall correctly, everybody settled disputes with him solely to just make him disappear forever.

His small "win" was just luck. Archie (or Sega) couldn't produce documents that he had signed his characters over to Sega. And according to copyright law, your creations belong to you until/unless proven otherwise.

 

[Foxi4]

His small "win" was just luck. Archie (or Sega) couldn't produce documents that he had signed his characters over to Sega. And according to copyright law, your creations belong to you until/unless proven otherwise.

This is correct. An artist needs to sign an official release, otherwise any creative work done while under employment of a third party is still technically the author’s. It was a clerical error on their part, but thanks to this error the series was purged of terrible characters the moment Penders left.

 

[Luke94]

Do you agree with those statements or not?