EDIT: The above post and the following several posts were originally held in
this thread.
translation
wow pretty much exactly what i wrote, i'm da bes, thanks for translating
If you can, please give me an honest feedback for the specific points in the order I present.
I will appreciate this very much.
I assure you I don't associate you as part of FSS itself, so even if you didn't apologize I wouldn't put it against FSS.
Although, your attitude flip here honestly makes you look better than Saijee is currently doing since you're sounding more receptive and willing to have a conversation, so uh yeah.
If anything, I'd recommend to read through the
TSSB crowdfunding thread. There's a load of information and discussion in that thread that will likely help your point of view (beware though it does get very heated, please try to understand our frustrations). Even though they made one general response post, the FSS team mainly seems to have skimmed it just to answer questions so they might not be as informed as we'd like.
MyACG doesn't actually have approval by ZUN to develop their game for the PS4, specifically. As with any other Touhou derivative game, they're free to make it for the PC, subject to the derivative guidelines. In order to develop and publish on the PS4, they would either have to join the Play,Doujin! program, or otherwise get explicit permission (which is very unlikely). While they definitely screwed up early on, what they aim to do here is to use this campaign to win a PS4 dev kit, release this game for PC only, and use the dev kit for future titles. The funds raised by the campaign do not go towards the group, but rather go towards helping Chinese indie developers in general; note also the difference between doujin works and indie works. That being said, they might use some of the scholarship referred to in cuc's first post to help fund this game somehow. However, this is no problem since it's their money.
As for the second question, ZUN does not control doujin culture. Doujin culture is just that, a culture; it isn't something proclaimed by somebody, it's a community of people making stuff for other people who make stuff. It's never been a commercial endeavour, it's a hobby. What you might think of as "doujin spirit" is just basic standards based on those principles. Touhou is fundamentally a product of doujin culture: something ZUN made on his own time and dime as a hobby, simply because he wanted to make a thing and keep making things. Once it blew up in popularity, in order to protect his IP but still give other hobbyists freedom to make stuff with his characters, settings and music, he wrote the original Touhou derivative guidelines. These aren't "doujin rules", nor does such a thing as "doujin rules" even technically exist. They're a promise made by ZUN that as long as you stay within some pretty reasonable boundaries you're free to use his stuff as you want.
Obviously, ZUN sets these rules (since it's only about Touhou derivative works, not all doujin works), and they've worked extremely well. They've only been updated once, in 2011. The rules in regards to commercial activities are even still freedoms given to others: by default, using his IP in commercial activities would be infringement, but if you contact him about it and get permission you don't have to worry about him taking action against it. This
doesn't mean that you have obtained any sort of rights, it just means he won't do anything. In doujin culture everything is built on systems of mutual trust and respect; at no point should the word of law even come into discussion. Nobody wants it to be about laws, and by everyone agreeing to play nicely and not take advantage of others, everything is great. Trying to make a commercial product based off of someone else's doujin work is just a bad thing to do since it stomps all over all of that. On top of that, doujin works are meant to be a hobby, something you invest yourself into, not something you make just to try and profit. Most circles put in more money than they get back from sales, but it's a hobby; that's expected. Sometimes doujin circles do evolve into companies, e.g. TYPE-MOON and Team Shanghai Alice (Korindo Ltd.), but that's based on their own IPs, rather than using others'.
So to answer that more directly, do the "doujin guidelines" depend on ZUN? No, and they don't really exist besides as a product of the culture (the Touhou derivative guidelines are different, and depend entirely on ZUN). Can ZUN go against "doujin spirit" uncontested? Technically anyone can, but he won't, because he cherishes the doujin culture and helps make it flourish.
Anyways, please direct further comments unrelated to the MyACG fangame to the TSSB thread as well. There's been significant overlap between threads and we should try to reduce it as much as possible.
P.S for No.4 I should have been more elaborate. FSS was accused for not explicitly crediting ZUN when they removed the English description and put up the Japanese explanation. The video was never taken down which shows credit for ZUN however, any moment of not clearly crediting ZUN goes against doujin rules. The TCP4 may have credited on their independent site but I do not see explicit credit for ZUN in the description of the game on the PS4 site. If someone were to miss the part of crediting ZUN on the video they will not know who the doujin work should be credited for.
Mostly they got nailed for this because they were already at people's attention. It is entirely true that when they changed the description to the apology they removed any credits, and they should have kept them. Additionally, MyACG have been giving explicit credits pretty much everywhere, as has been said already, so I'm not sure what you're talking about here. (And again, not "doujin rules", but this is part of the Touhou derivative guidelines.)
