this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
287 points (97.7% liked)
Technology
71441 readers
4783 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Do you mean play disco Elysium or is there some drama associated with it?
Drama. A business partner of the creators used an illegal loophole to obtain a majority stake of the company and then fired the actual creators because they where considered to volatile.
The universe of Disco Elysium is Kurvitz paracosm which he has been creating since his teens. Its a part of their identity that they are now barred from expressing.
Its a bit like if you told Tolkien halfway trough writing lotr that he is fired as the author and can never write anything about middle earth again.
It's quite illustrative of DE's universe's relevance to our world though.
(I'm more partial to SW KotORII: TSL, even if DE feels more like my life, even I wonder if Harry's ex is too not just a blindingly bright and quite f-ckable picture, but also a murderer ; too autistic to look for authors' contacts to ask them about it.)
Barred from expressing with monetizing it, you certainly mean? Otherwise most of fan fiction would have to be censored, having IP owners not willing competition.
And even then it's in question, there are plenty of crowdfunded and later paid for indie games set in Harry Potter universe. Those I'm thinking about are NSFW though.
Fanfiction and non monetised use is not at all exempt from these laws but rather tolerated by the copyright holder. Something tells me this one wont tolerate if the og creator posts anything and they may know enough background canon to know its them.
A real irony to the plot of the game is that the business partner wanted to reign in the freedom of the creators. Not impossible they deemed it to political.
I am not sure about those games you mentioning but its possible they are tolerated because a combination of plausible deniability (wizard uk boarding school isnt that orginal) and not wanting it to gain any more publicity. Disney did the same thing ignoring Micky mouse porn.
Should fix that in law, based on the commonality of such use.
IP companies use every such opening, we should too.
Except they even use character names from HP.
Publicity - maybe, would be funny.
I would personally argue that fixing the law means getting rid of the notion of intellectual property all together.
In my own reasoning someone copying me is the highest form of flattery and i would still have an edge understanding the properties of own idea better then the copycat does.
Its a huge limiter on human progress and absolutely non sensical in situations where multiple people just happen to have a similar idea. As it stands now an employee could invent the cure to cancer, the employer claiming it and then putting it in a vault to never use and bar anyone from creating it.
Naturally such idea of abolishing copyright receives lots of criticism from many people because we would have to solve other problems that copyright now aims to fix but i don't think that justifies the damage it does.
Perhaps now - yes. 20 years ago one could argue, but today in practice it, as it was intended, simply already doesn't exist. Those holding the IP are those having enough power to insert themselves in a right place. The initial purpose is just not achievable.
Yes, if the artist thinks that. And no, if the artist expects to make some money from every copy.
That's true for patents and technologies, but not true for art and software, where it's improbable to just come up with the same thing.
Now - maybe. There are a few traditional ways, like authors reading aloud pieces of their creations and people buying tickets to such performances, same with music. And models with paying forward for a request, like crowdfunding or an order.
But personally I still think some form of it should exist. Maybe non-transferable to companies and other people other than via inheritance. Intellectual work is work, and people do it to get paid. It's just not good enough if the returns don't scale with popularity.
While in capitalism we'll always have ip, copyright, what have you.
Gotta "protect" capital
You should totally play the game, but make sure that you pirate it so your money doesn't go to the thief who stole the rights from the creators.
Oh that's unfortunate. Well I don't mind not supporting people like that so I'll give it a go
Would it not then be better to buy a shady key to financially hurt the company?
You mean cause a chargeback or something? You'd have to find a sufficiently shady seller, the key might get revoked, also you're supporting another ilk of scumbags.
How so? Isn't it the same for the financial purposes?
Many times these keys are obtained illegitimately and they end up being refunded. In other cases the key is bought from another region so the devs do get some money, but far less than they would from a regular purchase.
I'm not sure exactly how the illegitimate keys are obtained, though. Maybe in trying to not pay the publisher you end up rewarding someone who steals peoples' credit cards or something.
It's not actually a very fun game to play, reading the lore or watching a video of someone else play is sufficient.
Disagree, I think being in the pilot seat is important. The immersion of control amplifies the experience.