Club TGM has ended

hebo-MAI · September 01, 2011, 07:27:10 PM

Club TGM has ended.
"It is very hasty and regrettable though, Club TGM has stopped continuation because of settlement with Tetris licenser."
(My translation may be wrong)

Mr.Mihara said that on Twitter.
"deleted the movies uploaded by those who breaks rules on nicovideo (August 30th)
->they uploaded the movies on You Tube (August 31st)
->some people talked them (August 31st)
->Mihara concluded they were malicious (August 31st)
->Mihara couldn't avoid stopping Club TGM (September 1st)"

see also this.

Wojtek · September 01, 2011, 07:39:40 PM

haha, looks like mihara never give up on his bullsh**s. it's all becasuse clones and clones videos on youtube again? :-D

message to mihara: stop blaming others for your own failures, if you can't get your game released, then maybe there is problem with you and your game and not with people who would like to play it. you suck.

what tgm club was about? i seen links to on 2ch but i never looked closer to it.

Anonymous · September 01, 2011, 07:57:37 PM

I'm not very good at japanese, what does it say?!

hebo-MAI · September 01, 2011, 08:57:24 PM

I edited my post.
If you want to read other link, use translation.

EnFuego · September 02, 2011, 12:58:51 AM

google translate:

"Because people like to be erased in the UP to YouTube smiling, TGM'm said to be bad. = Bad is erased and not erased from the UP even if YouTube. The other half believes it, I can only imagine If I had to be malicious, you can not follow, that the trees disappear."

I think it is trying to say that because people void youtube copyright laws with clones we can't have ~~nice things~~ TGM4.

Kitaru · September 02, 2011, 02:05:04 AM

Quote from: EnFuegoI think it is trying to say that because people void youtube copyright laws with clones we can't have ~~nice things~~ TGM4.

Well, there is nothing happening here that is actually against copyright. a) You can't copyright games, -- just related assets such as art, source code, rule texts, etc. -- so clones or fan games are technically in the clear. (There are also no patents associated with game mechanics existing in Tetris.) b) Recording and uploading videos of your own performances for non-commercial purposes is fair use. If you try to monetize such videos with YouTube ads without a written agreement with the developer, then you might have a problem.

In this case, we're not even talking about the fact that TTC/Arika doesn't like fan games; some of the videos that ended up being removed were direct recordings from actual TGM arcade machines. That should be fair use straight-up, but I guess maybe they didn't display a ClubTGM logo or something and Arika power tripped.

I still don't understand what the purpose of ClubTGM was in the first place. I guess it came about as a result of some agreement between Arika and TTC since it formed after they did their first sweep of clone videos on YouTube/NicoVideo, but what it was supposed to accomplish is beyond me.

DrPete · September 02, 2011, 02:25:25 AM

oh mihara-san, why are you so tsundere?

Rosti_LFC · September 02, 2011, 02:53:31 AM

Quote from: EnFuego
google translate:

For reference, I've always found Excite's translator to be way better than Google for translating Japanese.

My understanding is that Mihara doesn't want any Japanese players to post videos without following the rules of Club TGM. He tries to remove all the ones that don't follow the rules from nicovideo, realises they just get uploaded onto YouTube instead, and as a result deems that ClubTGM is pretty much useless as a concept because people can just upload videos anyway.

randomtetrisnoob · September 02, 2011, 08:04:21 AM

Quote from: Kitaru
You can't copyright games

Nice.
Sorry for the segue but what about patents though? i.e. is there such a link that can be used to defend fan-games like Nullpo?

Quote from: Rosti_LFC
My understanding is that Mihara doesn't want any Japanese players to post videos without following the rules of Club TGM.

What were the Club TGM rules?

caffeine · September 02, 2011, 08:09:27 AM

Quote from: Kitaru
Well, there is nothing happening here that is actually against copyright. a) You can't copyright games, -- just related assets such as art, source code, rule texts, etc. -- so clones or fan games are technically in the clear. (There are also no patents associated with game mechanics existing in Tetris.) b) Recording and uploading videos of your own performances for non-commercial purposes is fair use. If you try to monetize such videos with YouTube ads without a written agreement with the developer, then you might have a problem.

In this case, we're not even talking about the fact that TTC/Arika doesn't like fan games; some of the videos that ended up being removed were direct recordings from actual TGM arcade machines. That should be fair use straight-up, but I guess maybe they didn't display a ClubTGM logo or something and Arika power tripped.

I still don't understand what the purpose of ClubTGM was in the first place. I guess it came asbout as a result of some agreement between Arika and TTC since it formed after they did their first sweep of clone videos on YouTube/NicoVideo, but what it was supposed to accomplish is beyond me.

You can't copyright games... unless you're TTC and try to claim trade dress on things like "falling blocks" and "10x20 playfield."

Also, didn't Arika take out patents on IRS or something?

Rosti_LFC · September 02, 2011, 12:11:58 PM

Copyright and patents are entirely separate forms of intellectual property, and they work in entirely different ways. Patents are only valid in countries they are filed in, and only whilst you continue to pay for them (up until 20 years, and then they expire). I'd be surprised if the patents for IRS were still valid in Japan, let alone the rest of the world.

caffeine · September 02, 2011, 01:12:55 PM

Quote from: Rosti_LFC
Copyright and patents are entirely separate forms of intellectual property, and they work in entirely different ways. Patents are only valid in countries they are filed in, and only whilst you continue to pay for them (up until 20 years, and then they expire). I'd be surprised if the patents for IRS were still valid in Japan, let alone the rest of the world.

Very interesting! Thanks for that.

Kitaru · September 02, 2011, 03:34:50 PM

If I recall correctly, the IRS patent fell through. (I feel like Tepples made a post a while back where he confirmed this...) ~~The intro screen on TGM1 lists IRS as patent pending~~, there is no analogous legal info screen on TGM2, and TGM3 lists IRS/IHS and so on as merely "designed by Arika." EDIT: It's actually listed as "designed by Arika" in both TGM1 and TGM3.

Anyway, I think the closest you'll find to a patent for Tetris is Nintendo's patent on Dr. Mario.

zaphod77 · September 03, 2011, 01:22:52 AM

I could be wrong, but it looks to me that Club TGM is paused, but not gone forever.

In the past I believe there was some arrangement between TTC and Arika that made it Arikas problem to deal with all "copyright problems" with the TGM series, and that it is because of this that they were allowed to continue development of it. TTC levied monetary sanctions against Arika when TAP appeared in MAME, as I recall.

Club TGM was apparently formed to try to get people to follow the rules, which i suspect were to only upload video caps from actual machines, not emulation or clones, and display the Club TGM logo.

Incidentally, IRS and IHS are not patent worthy. The invention is obvious. Anyone wishing to develop a playable tetris game without SRS and with 20G would have came to the same conclusion and invented IRS.