I'm glad that Japanese fans were on the same page as everyone else when it comes to Konami. Honestly wish we had better communication with them in the past when all this was happening with the pachinko drama
I'd say pachinko drama is rather unfounded. People often act like it's Konami-only thing, but when you do more research into pachinko machines... Just about every relevant Japanese series has bunch of pachinko machines dedicated to it, and they really aren't as packed with content as people seem to think - there isn't full blown MGS 3 remake for pachinko-only. Ace Attorney Trilogy also had "full-3D remake with full voice acting" for pachinko, except it's just the most famous moments from bunch of select cases, it's probably the same for about everything on pachinko.
@@hoyhoy852 Wasn't the problem with SH pachinko that a game got cancelled in favor for developing pachinko machine? CAPCOM has RE and AA pachinko machines, but it is an adaptation (to my knowledge) of a console game so development of new games for the franchise were not hurt. Development of Silent Hills were hurt in the case of Konami which was what fans were upset about.
@@hoyhoy852 It's less that people are mad about Pachinko machines, and more that people are mad about Pachinko machines to the exclusion of any actual games. If Konami was still releasing quality games at a decent clip, no one would care. The new Silent Hill projects sound promising, but the fact that they had to outsource development says dire things about the situation in-house.
On the NES- PS1, they were loved by most people. I even considered them my favorite company. It was a few years into the PS2 era that I started to see it all fall apart. They were making absolutely stupid decisions with Suikoden, Castlevania, DDR, ZOE and most of their other series. And every developer who could was running away from them. But as the video points out, it started even earlier than that in the 80s. We just didn't realize it until internet sharing became more mainstream.
@@maxis2k That's because Konami for most of it's early history had two-three(depending on the year) mostly independently ran game companies. In the early years there were two. One focused on the PC and none of those games really made it outside Japan. And the other focused on consoles, the one we know. They had their own management, their own game design teams, etc. Really they were two completely separate subsidiaries under the larger Komani group of companies, Konami's main business is casinos. Video games were, and still are, a side hustle. Anyway. For a little over a decade the different video companies named Konami, which were actually separate companies, were allowed to do whatever they wanted with little oversight from the main company so long as they turned enough of a profit the main company didn't have to bail them out. Because the main company wasn't going to bail them out. Which brings us to the problem with the larger Konami group, and why everything went to crap. The CEO and founder of Konami had a habit of just opening subsidiary companies in wildly different areas with a sink or swim mentality. He'd toss some starter cash at a company, hand off a few veteran managers into this new venture, the ones that made it made it, and if they failed they failed. Unfortunately for Konami.. for awhile way more was succeeding than failing and the adhoc nature of how they went about starting all those businesses meant there was never an overall manager. Which made the entire thing unwieldly. Noone could keep it all in their head what they owned and didn't. There were hotel chains, casino chains, resorts, tv production studios, video game studios, manufacturing, the original playing card company, etc etc etc. All of them somehow successful businesses, and all of it came about in around 20 years. Konami exploded everywhere very quickly. So in the 90s Konami started restructuring to try to bring all this stuff into some sort of manageable form. Everything got more centralized control. All the video game companies got merged into one company, Konami Digital Entertainment. And in a mistake of epic proportions that often happen with these types of restructures, none of the people put in charge of KDE had anything to do with anything digital at all. In their entire careers. Finance people got put in charge of it, but not finance people who'd been with those companies and knew the market. Bank managers and hotel chain managers ended up in charge of a massive video game company. So, that's the simplified history of Konami.
Kinda crazy they went from being the enemies of visual novel fans to being desperate enough to revitalize the franchise thanks to one of the most prolific visual novel writers in history.
Konami's revenue is up 10% from 2021, and 33% from 2013. I don't think they are desperate for anything - they are out of the videogame-market and aim for something else. Most likely they will sell the IP's they have, one by one and be done with it completely.
Wow, I didn’t know Ryukishi07 was involved in Silent Hill f until now. I didn’t give a crap about the SH revival and thought it was just another cynical Konami cash grab so I was ignoring most press releases. If he’s involved, I *might* keep an eye oh SHf.
@@Psy-J They're actually not. It's normal if you don't notice it since the games that revitalize Konami are Japanese-only Switch exclusive games. Ah, and also YuGiOh game I guess.
@@AlexanderPR2 yeah, the remake looks like garbage and it's being made by people who clearly don't understand Silent Hill, or horror in general. That one is dead on arrival.
The fact that Konami destroyed the code for the original Silent Hill Trilogy 'to make an example' of rogue developers was pretty petty and destructive.
I never knew Konami was a copyright troll. I love this obscure niche stories. I remember back in the good old days where you can find blogs that talk about such things in detail. But now everything is so centralized and google search do not give good results anymore which makes it more difficult to find these old stories.
it's not like i'm fine with it but isn't konami just like any other japanese company with 30+ years? Konami is just a few steps ahead the typical yearly Nintendo scandal
It's funny how people in the west only noticed Konami's crap after Kojima was outed, because they've pulled this stuff for far longer. Igarashi was kicked off of Castlevania (killing a metroidvania styled PS3 game in the process), Team Silent was kicked off Silent Hill (also killing a PS3 game), and even the Contra creators were kicked off their series during the PS1 era. Konami's always worked to make the gaming landscape worse in exchange for money, I'm just glad Japan feels the same way.
The icons that link to other sites you mentioned is called a 'webring' which was a popular thing for fan sites to be members of both in Japan and here in the west in the era of Geocities and Angelfire. Many now are unfortunately broken, but when I was younger webrings where how I connected with fan bases, fan artists from around the world in Beyblade, Final Fantasy 8 and old school Yaoi websites as a teenager trying to find my tribe. Godness I miss those days.
Man. People hate ea and Activision nowadays but Konami originated bad business practices in this industry. They killed off castlevania and somehow alienated hideo Kojima. I mean, hideo Kojima should be able to do whatever he wants with Konami at this point even if he is a bit out of touch nowadays.
i hate to tell you but konami is just a little bit worse than most japanese companies and honestly if nintendo stoped making games they could've easily surpass konami in hate and bad practices. It's systemic
I would argue that Sega and Nintendo were earlier pioneers of bad business practices when they partnered with yakuza. Konami is definitely the current reigning king though.
all japanese companies are ran with terrible practices. all use to be friendly with the yakuza and all are terrible places to work for. with Hideo he laughed at the terrible idea from the wrong guy and that dude ended up becoming CEO cuz his terrible idea made the company a shit ton of money. so thats why Hideo got forced into a closet and not able to finish MGV.
It may also have some analogies with the "Secret Nuclear Disarmament Event" of Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain and the legal dispute between #FucKonami and Kojima Productions studio on its name & logo in progess since 2015.
You didn't touch on the connotations of "visual novel" and "sound novel" terms in Japan. Japan doesn't use "visual novel" as to-go term for the genre, they use "novel game" or just "adventure game". And the term "sound novel" is a property of Chunsoft, which trademarked it when they made their games. The term "visual novel" was used by Leaf, who were inspired by Chunsoft, but came own with their own term to avoid trademark. "Visual novel" is very rarely used in Japan, so Konami not knowing the term wasn't theirs wouldn't be that surprising - especially if there were communication problems between people who wanted to use term in their marketing and people on the business side who decided to trademark the term.
Just came across this video and didn't know about this. It's sad seeing Konami fall off the way they did but to imagine it started years ago blows my mind.
I will never forgive Konami for what they did to Jaleco's Stepping Stage series. They threatened arcades carrying it. If I was Jaleco back then, I would have been tempted to hire a Yakuza hitman to go after them.
They also threatened SEGA for helping to bring Pump it up (a korean ddr clone) to japan despite being a success almost everywhere else in the world, they probably know that everyone are making their games but better so they just throw lawsuits at everyone hoping that no one would stand up against them.
I feel like this isn't really news, even if I've never heard of it before, because in hindsight this well and truly checks out. It just fits. Piece of the puzzle, etc etc. Really am reminded of the beef between Capcom and Koei-Tecmo when Capcom got KT to change the way their Dynasty Warriors games worked because Capcom apparently trademarked "moving things between different versions of a videogame by using the savecard" or something, preventing KT from letting people like, transfer savefiles between regular Dynasty Warriors games and their upgrades. People doing that, preventing QoL in other games.. to the Unending Lego-Fields with you. You, and Konami. Gonna try and link this where I can, just to spread the word of what they've been doing for a looong time now.
Saying a prayer to all Silent Hill players out there. Life can be unpredictable. Just take it one day at a time. And there's something over there in that fog. Might want to go check it out.
My favorite patent story is the one with Andamiro. Konami sued Andamiro over Pump It Up. Andamiro hired Saul Goodman who got wind of what Konami had been doing with these patents. They then discovered an expired patent for a game called Stompin (1986) which used a "Stepping Aparatus". Andamiro aquired the patent, then sued Konami back saying, "Oh no. You are infringing on OUR patent." They settled out of court and while the terms were never revealed, it's been rumored to be something a long the lines of "Andamiro has to pay $100,000 for every new version for Pump It Up for the next ten years. Andamiro is blocked from releasing a CS version for the next five years.". Pump It Up still active today.
Not only that, konami also went after in the groove (a DDR clone made by fans desperate of konami not bringing their latest games to the west) which had the help of both red octane and andamiro, and konami obviously won because in the groove was made at first to run on ddr machines. And then konami went for seconds by threatening SEGA for bringing pump it up to japan in 2015, which is funny because both pump it up and stepmaniax (in the groove's spiritual successor that uses classic DDR and itg music) are a great success everywhere but japan, because konami (and actually all other Japanese game companies) makes it impossible for the average arcade to import their latest games.
Damn I never knew Konami tried to copyright "visual novel". Especially since they don't really specialize in making them (and who knows what would have happened if they were given it since they pivoted their focus to pachinko machines).
That's the thing, that one visual novel, is one of the most important series in visual novel industry, Tokimeki Memorial. And it's on brand with konami, of just making it a one long franchise. 45 Tokimeki memorial games, mains and spin-offs, starting from 1994 to 2021. They also made Love Plus btw. So, even though they don't "specialize" it, they made one of the most important and longest franchise in visual novel history.
There was a patent troll named Tim Langdell. He actually managed to copyright the word 'edge' because he owned a company called Edge Games. This got so bad that Soul Edge was renamed in the US to Soul Calibur to avoid the copyright.
Soul Edge was renamed to Soul Blade, wasn't it? Back before Soul Calibur 1 even came out. Also they snuck it in at least in arcades, since I remember playing a Soul Edge cabinet back in the 90's.
Here's hoping one day Konami might screw up something so bad, it cost not only their own customers not buying their games and other products anymore, but their developers and investors quit on them.
Still find it so funny that Shiori was apparently so hard to date that someone bought a memory card to make it easier, like talk about pay to win before it became a thing lol
Hah. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We know what Konami are. But we gobble up any scraps of artwork or dev notes on the upcoming SH projects, pretend that they've seen the error of their ways and angrily shout down anyone with a brain and a knack for pattern recognition. At least they didn't copyright the "otherworld" mechanic, I guess.
1:43 Otogirisou even has a sort of remake that links the events of the game with Danganronpa. It would be great if you could talk more about obscure games like that one and all the sound novels from the Super Famicom and Playstation 1, or at least, some of them.
This was short and sweet I really enjoyed this episode muse cheers and thankyou so much xo my membership is paused as I ran out of funds but I can rejoin on Monday wen i get paid xo your fan and friend Daniel Meredith
Konami seems to still be pumping out arcade games here in Japan (DDR A3, Bomber Girl, etc.). I’ll have to ask some locals to see if Konami is as despised as it is in the West, but I wouldn’t count on it.
I was looking forward to Silent Hills Konami ignored the Great enthusiasm the fan base had and canceled it. I only bought Konami games because it had hideo kojima's name on the cover
You are conflating trademark and copyright. While they are related concepts they are not synonymous. The doujinshi cases are mostly about copyright while Konami laying claim to the term visual novel is a matter of trademark law.
Very interesting. I know we in the west aren't the biggest fans of Konami anymore, but I never would've guessed the Japanese themselves were past that to the point of boycotting.
Ironic how protective they were of Tokimeki Memorial back then when it is another one of their dead IPs now. I wonder how Japam thinks of their mistreatment of Hudson Soft IP?
@@Kaimax61 Using one spinoff game to gauge the life of the IP is like saying Konami still uses Castlevania because Belmonts are DLC characters in Smash, Bomberman and Dead Cells. Actually, it is even more silly, because Girl's Side is divorced enough from the original games that if you removed the Tokimemo branding, no one would even think they are meant to be directly related products, especially since they do not even have the same target audience demographic. (Which, even if you think that keeps the IP alive, STILL says a lot about how loose Konami has become with it.)
Unrelated but anyone here absolutely flabbergasted by the very concept of a SH2 remake? It's my favorite game of all time and I've played it countless times... imagining it remade in over the shoulder camera angles and shiny Unreal graphics just really melts my brain. I'm 90% sure bloober will mess it up royally but we'll see. Until then I'll keep having stress nightmares about playing it and it's, like, become a battle royale or something.
Well, good luck. Even if it's not "Metal Gear Survive" levels of insult, I'll stick with the original. I just find those remakes _less_ creepy than their grainy, foggy, low-res originals.
It's crazy how far Konami has fallen and how far they are disconnected with fans compared to back then. I'm happy we have years of amazing games from Konami before there downfall. Cool video. ^_^
And today it means nothing as the company makes more money on gambling machines than they ever did on video games. Now they just keep the trademarks for their gambling machines and to go after modders and TH-camrs for some pocket change.
I really liked the play novel. It was cool reading more about the inner thoughts of the characters and seeing sh1 from a different angle. And I always wanted to know what Cybil was doing.
I say America should boycott Konami. The Konami USA cannot take request for remastered silent hill 4, or metal gear games. If our opinion doesn't matter than neither do your games. Plus their games have sucked for years now.
You know this use to be lost media but more recently someone FINALLY dumped the rom online and now it has a fan translation and is now playable through emulation. I think we need another Boycott Konami. Hell I refuse to buy any of their rereleases. They don't deserve peoples money.
I'm a fan of the Metal Gear Solid Series and Kojima. But I totally understand why Konami finally ran out of patience. If I remember correctly, Metal Gear Solid V was very long. The production cost was expensive. In fact, the longer the production, the greater the opportunity cost of lost revenue. That said, as far as I know, it was Kojima who decided to end the MGS series. Kojima felt it was time for Konami to move on and make a new series. And suddenly Kojima made this announcement to the public unilaterally. This made Konami officials angry, because Kojima was actually needed by Konami because of MGS. Without MGS, Kojima became worthless in Konami's eyes. On the other hand, Konami itself has several games that are actually a cash cow, apart from mobile games, one of which is the PES Series. Yes, inevitably they have to part ways. I still remember very well when Sony Computer Entertainment managed to get Kojima, this SCET official looked very happy when making the announcement with Kojima on NHK World TV station. For Death Stranding, I haven't played it yet because maybe the age factor and responsibilities as a father so I don't know if this game is good or not. But it must be admitted that Kojima is too brave to work on a game that seems to be uncommon and the market map is not yet clear. This is what distinguishes Kojima from most game producers. And it's things like this that make Kojima worthy of being called a legend.
This is why "slander" is illegal. Under what I assume was Shinzo Abe's law, may he rest in peace from everything that happened from all sides of this discussion....
6:10 "More reasonable" lol, it's the exact same argument about ownership and intelectual "property" which says you don't rights to the things you own or the words you use
![ตีสิบเดย์ [FULL] | อาจารย์โอเล่ ญาณสัมผัส ผ่าดวงคนดัง ประเทศไทยจะเป็นยังไงหลังจากนี้!](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gszT2O76fL4/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm glad that Japanese fans were on the same page as everyone else when it comes to Konami. Honestly wish we had better communication with them in the past when all this was happening with the pachinko drama
Fukku Konami-san!
I'd say pachinko drama is rather unfounded. People often act like it's Konami-only thing, but when you do more research into pachinko machines... Just about every relevant Japanese series has bunch of pachinko machines dedicated to it, and they really aren't as packed with content as people seem to think - there isn't full blown MGS 3 remake for pachinko-only. Ace Attorney Trilogy also had "full-3D remake with full voice acting" for pachinko, except it's just the most famous moments from bunch of select cases, it's probably the same for about everything on pachinko.
@@hoyhoy852 Wasn't the problem with SH pachinko that a game got cancelled in favor for developing pachinko machine?
CAPCOM has RE and AA pachinko machines, but it is an adaptation (to my knowledge) of a console game so development of new games for the franchise were not hurt.
Development of Silent Hills were hurt in the case of Konami which was what fans were upset about.
@@hoyhoy852 It's less that people are mad about Pachinko machines, and more that people are mad about Pachinko machines to the exclusion of any actual games. If Konami was still releasing quality games at a decent clip, no one would care. The new Silent Hill projects sound promising, but the fact that they had to outsource development says dire things about the situation in-house.
So what I’m hearing is that Konami as a company has always been more interested in screwing fans than releasing new games. Cool cool.
Even the new games they release are dumpster fires, so... Konami can keep the pachinko.
Reminds me of the "react" controversy for the Fine Bros. Companies are so desperate to own the public's ideas and profit off of them.
Man, has Konami ever NOT been a hated company? Even with Yu-Gi-Oh! they're often despised for making awful decisions.
On the NES- PS1, they were loved by most people. I even considered them my favorite company. It was a few years into the PS2 era that I started to see it all fall apart. They were making absolutely stupid decisions with Suikoden, Castlevania, DDR, ZOE and most of their other series. And every developer who could was running away from them. But as the video points out, it started even earlier than that in the 80s. We just didn't realize it until internet sharing became more mainstream.
@@maxis2k That's because Konami for most of it's early history had two-three(depending on the year) mostly independently ran game companies. In the early years there were two. One focused on the PC and none of those games really made it outside Japan. And the other focused on consoles, the one we know. They had their own management, their own game design teams, etc. Really they were two completely separate subsidiaries under the larger Komani group of companies, Konami's main business is casinos. Video games were, and still are, a side hustle. Anyway. For a little over a decade the different video companies named Konami, which were actually separate companies, were allowed to do whatever they wanted with little oversight from the main company so long as they turned enough of a profit the main company didn't have to bail them out. Because the main company wasn't going to bail them out.
Which brings us to the problem with the larger Konami group, and why everything went to crap. The CEO and founder of Konami had a habit of just opening subsidiary companies in wildly different areas with a sink or swim mentality. He'd toss some starter cash at a company, hand off a few veteran managers into this new venture, the ones that made it made it, and if they failed they failed. Unfortunately for Konami.. for awhile way more was succeeding than failing and the adhoc nature of how they went about starting all those businesses meant there was never an overall manager. Which made the entire thing unwieldly. Noone could keep it all in their head what they owned and didn't. There were hotel chains, casino chains, resorts, tv production studios, video game studios, manufacturing, the original playing card company, etc etc etc. All of them somehow successful businesses, and all of it came about in around 20 years. Konami exploded everywhere very quickly. So in the 90s Konami started restructuring to try to bring all this stuff into some sort of manageable form. Everything got more centralized control. All the video game companies got merged into one company, Konami Digital Entertainment. And in a mistake of epic proportions that often happen with these types of restructures, none of the people put in charge of KDE had anything to do with anything digital at all. In their entire careers. Finance people got put in charge of it, but not finance people who'd been with those companies and knew the market. Bank managers and hotel chain managers ended up in charge of a massive video game company.
So, that's the simplified history of Konami.
mpfff u konami haters are frankly even much worst than the konami itself.
It's so weird how far a company can go when they want ALL the money in the world and not just try to do better and better to make said money.
Why would Konami "do better" by investing millions to make it happen when their minimum efforts earn them so much already
And a good example of that is all the awful SH announcements they made, and now everybody loves them!
Kinda crazy they went from being the enemies of visual novel fans to being desperate enough to revitalize the franchise thanks to one of the most prolific visual novel writers in history.
Konami's revenue is up 10% from 2021, and 33% from 2013. I don't think they are desperate for anything - they are out of the videogame-market and aim for something else. Most likely they will sell the IP's they have, one by one and be done with it completely.
Wow, I didn’t know Ryukishi07 was involved in Silent Hill f until now.
I didn’t give a crap about the SH revival and thought it was just another cynical Konami cash grab so I was ignoring most press releases. If he’s involved, I *might* keep an eye oh SHf.
@@Psy-J They're actually not. It's normal if you don't notice it since the games that revitalize Konami are Japanese-only Switch exclusive games. Ah, and also YuGiOh game I guess.
@@KaoruMzk This remake looks awful.
I didn't like what was shown so far.
It's unfortunate what Konami still CONTINUES to do with this franchise.
@@AlexanderPR2 yeah, the remake looks like garbage and it's being made by people who clearly don't understand Silent Hill, or horror in general. That one is dead on arrival.
Turns out Konami have always been the Japanese version of EA.
Silent Hill person: *Breathes*
Konami: "LAWSUIT"
I had no idea the discourse in Japan around Konami was so tense. It's an interesting footnote in the company's record and history
The fact that Konami destroyed the code for the original Silent Hill Trilogy 'to make an example' of rogue developers was pretty petty and destructive.
This is why you don't see next gen console ports of these titles. Konami nuked the code.
Time to sail the high seas
I never knew Konami was a copyright troll. I love this obscure niche stories. I remember back in the good old days where you can find blogs that talk about such things in detail. But now everything is so centralized and google search do not give good results anymore which makes it more difficult to find these old stories.
So Konami have always been a slice of somewhat shady ass. Colour me aghast.
it's not like i'm fine with it but isn't konami just like any other japanese company with 30+ years? Konami is just a few steps ahead the typical yearly Nintendo scandal
It's funny how people in the west only noticed Konami's crap after Kojima was outed, because they've pulled this stuff for far longer. Igarashi was kicked off of Castlevania (killing a metroidvania styled PS3 game in the process), Team Silent was kicked off Silent Hill (also killing a PS3 game), and even the Contra creators were kicked off their series during the PS1 era. Konami's always worked to make the gaming landscape worse in exchange for money, I'm just glad Japan feels the same way.
The icons that link to other sites you mentioned is called a 'webring' which was a popular thing for fan sites to be members of both in Japan and here in the west in the era of Geocities and Angelfire. Many now are unfortunately broken, but when I was younger webrings where how I connected with fan bases, fan artists from around the world in Beyblade, Final Fantasy 8 and old school Yaoi websites as a teenager trying to find my tribe. Godness I miss those days.
Man the JP bros must have been like "welcome to the club" when F*ck Konami trended in the west, they knew!
Man. People hate ea and Activision nowadays but Konami originated bad business practices in this industry. They killed off castlevania and somehow alienated hideo Kojima. I mean, hideo Kojima should be able to do whatever he wants with Konami at this point even if he is a bit out of touch nowadays.
i hate to tell you but konami is just a little bit worse than most japanese companies and honestly if nintendo stoped making games they could've easily surpass konami in hate and bad practices. It's systemic
True
I would argue that Sega and Nintendo were earlier pioneers of bad business practices when they partnered with yakuza. Konami is definitely the current reigning king though.
all japanese companies are ran with terrible practices. all use to be friendly with the yakuza and all are terrible places to work for. with Hideo he laughed at the terrible idea from the wrong guy and that dude ended up becoming CEO cuz his terrible idea made the company a shit ton of money. so thats why Hideo got forced into a closet and not able to finish MGV.
@@Kris-wo4pj i don't call being hired by Sony and given an almost limitless fund to create death stranding, a "closet"
Konami: Pissing people off since... forever!
so back in 2016 fine bros. really looked at konami stupidly trying to copyright a concept and said "hold our beer, we can top that"
Or LeBron James trying to trademark "Taco Tuesday"
The litigiousness of some Japanese game companies seems more based on knee-jerk reaction rather than reason.
Well, yeah, what did you think happened with Capcom and SNK, after Street Fighter 1. lol
It may also have some analogies with the "Secret Nuclear Disarmament Event" of Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain and the legal dispute between #FucKonami and Kojima Productions studio on its name & logo in progess since 2015.
You didn't touch on the connotations of "visual novel" and "sound novel" terms in Japan. Japan doesn't use "visual novel" as to-go term for the genre, they use "novel game" or just "adventure game". And the term "sound novel" is a property of Chunsoft, which trademarked it when they made their games. The term "visual novel" was used by Leaf, who were inspired by Chunsoft, but came own with their own term to avoid trademark. "Visual novel" is very rarely used in Japan, so Konami not knowing the term wasn't theirs wouldn't be that surprising - especially if there were communication problems between people who wanted to use term in their marketing and people on the business side who decided to trademark the term.
Just came across this video and didn't know about this. It's sad seeing Konami fall off the way they did but to imagine it started years ago blows my mind.
So Konami has been angering fans for a longer than I thought.
I will never forgive Konami for what they did to Jaleco's Stepping Stage series. They threatened arcades carrying it. If I was Jaleco back then, I would have been tempted to hire a Yakuza hitman to go after them.
They also threatened SEGA for helping to bring Pump it up (a korean ddr clone) to japan despite being a success almost everywhere else in the world, they probably know that everyone are making their games but better so they just throw lawsuits at everyone hoping that no one would stand up against them.
I feel like this isn't really news, even if I've never heard of it before, because in hindsight this well and truly checks out. It just fits. Piece of the puzzle, etc etc. Really am reminded of the beef between Capcom and Koei-Tecmo when Capcom got KT to change the way their Dynasty Warriors games worked because Capcom apparently trademarked "moving things between different versions of a videogame by using the savecard" or something, preventing KT from letting people like, transfer savefiles between regular Dynasty Warriors games and their upgrades. People doing that, preventing QoL in other games.. to the Unending Lego-Fields with you. You, and Konami. Gonna try and link this where I can, just to spread the word of what they've been doing for a looong time now.
Saying a prayer to all Silent Hill players out there. Life can be unpredictable. Just take it one day at a time. And there's something over there in that fog. Might want to go check it out.
My favorite patent story is the one with Andamiro. Konami sued Andamiro over Pump It Up. Andamiro hired Saul Goodman who got wind of what Konami had been doing with these patents. They then discovered an expired patent for a game called Stompin (1986) which used a "Stepping Aparatus". Andamiro aquired the patent, then sued Konami back saying, "Oh no. You are infringing on OUR patent." They settled out of court and while the terms were never revealed, it's been rumored to be something a long the lines of "Andamiro has to pay $100,000 for every new version for Pump It Up for the next ten years. Andamiro is blocked from releasing a CS version for the next five years.". Pump It Up still active today.
Sounds like Andamiro got ripped off. Imagine if Konami tried to sue Harmonix over Guitar Hero.
@@cabbusses Konami didn't sue over Guitar Hero, but they did for Rock Band.
Fun fact though, Konami assisted in the development of Guitar Hero Arcade.
@@ShiningEternity What backdoor deal did Harmonix do with Konami behind the scenes? How wacky
Not only that, konami also went after in the groove (a DDR clone made by fans desperate of konami not bringing their latest games to the west) which had the help of both red octane and andamiro, and konami obviously won because in the groove was made at first to run on ddr machines.
And then konami went for seconds by threatening SEGA for bringing pump it up to japan in 2015, which is funny because both pump it up and stepmaniax (in the groove's spiritual successor that uses classic DDR and itg music) are a great success everywhere but japan, because konami (and actually all other Japanese game companies) makes it impossible for the average arcade to import their latest games.
Damn I never knew Konami tried to copyright "visual novel". Especially since they don't really specialize in making them (and who knows what would have happened if they were given it since they pivoted their focus to pachinko machines).
That's the thing, that one visual novel, is one of the most important series in visual novel industry, Tokimeki Memorial.
And it's on brand with konami, of just making it a one long franchise.
45 Tokimeki memorial games, mains and spin-offs, starting from 1994 to 2021.
They also made Love Plus btw.
So, even though they don't "specialize" it, they made one of the most important and longest franchise in visual novel history.
There was a patent troll named Tim Langdell. He actually managed to copyright the word 'edge' because he owned a company called Edge Games. This got so bad that Soul Edge was renamed in the US to Soul Calibur to avoid the copyright.
Soul Edge was renamed to Soul Blade, wasn't it? Back before Soul Calibur 1 even came out.
Also they snuck it in at least in arcades, since I remember playing a Soul Edge cabinet back in the 90's.
Here's hoping one day Konami might screw up something so bad, it cost not only their own customers not buying their games and other products anymore, but their developers and investors quit on them.
too late, they're too big now.
This was like the Fine Bros situation on steroids.
Yep. That sounds like Konami alright.
Still find it so funny that Shiori was apparently so hard to date that someone bought a memory card to make it easier, like talk about pay to win before it became a thing lol
You know, pachinko era Konami doesn't look so bad now...
Hah. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
We know what Konami are. But we gobble up any scraps of artwork or dev notes on the upcoming SH projects, pretend that they've seen the error of their ways and angrily shout down anyone with a brain and a knack for pattern recognition.
At least they didn't copyright the "otherworld" mechanic, I guess.
Konami deserves its billions loss
Ahhh I remember reading translations of this games lore a good 15+ years ago now! Would love a more in depth video on the story some day
1:43 Otogirisou even has a sort of remake that links the events of the game with Danganronpa. It would be great if you could talk more about obscure games like that one and all the sound novels from the Super Famicom and Playstation 1, or at least, some of them.
There is a reason Konami titles remain on the high seas for me..
Reminds me of Sony going after 'lets play'
Trade marks and copy rights are not the same thing.
good stuff, did not know this. I always thought of Atari as the king of copyright shenanigans, lol. congrats on finishing the book! ^_^
Amazing content, neat as always my dear Muse.
This was short and sweet I really enjoyed this episode muse cheers and thankyou so much xo my membership is paused as I ran out of funds but I can rejoin on Monday wen i get paid xo your fan and friend Daniel Meredith
HEy DAn how are youu doing pal?
Konami seems to still be pumping out arcade games here in Japan (DDR A3, Bomber Girl, etc.). I’ll have to ask some locals to see if Konami is as despised as it is in the West, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Didn't you hear what this youtuber said at the end about the boycott "with little success"
@@Kaimax61 Sure, but I’m curious about public opinion in Japan.
oh... so konami been messin up?...makes sense
Great content as usual, Muse.
I was looking forward to Silent Hills Konami ignored the Great enthusiasm the fan base had and canceled it. I only bought Konami games because it had hideo kojima's name on the cover
This kinda reminds me of the REACT copyright and the Disney trying to copyright Day of the Dead
And people wonder why I'm not looking forward to the upcoming Silent Hill garbage dump. Jesus Christ.
I cannot express how much I value this channel and the work you do. It's exceptional
KONAMI was plenty popular before the 2000s here in the U.S., Hell look at their Nintendo catalog. They produced some of the best NES games.
And SNES games.
@@DanJackson1977 and PS1 and PS2 games
Don't forgot the arcades
Growing up, Konami and Capcom were always head to with each other.
Konami used to actually make many different types of good games, but they slowly neglected everything.
You are conflating trademark and copyright. While they are related concepts they are not synonymous. The doujinshi cases are mostly about copyright while Konami laying claim to the term visual novel is a matter of trademark law.
Very interesting. I know we in the west aren't the biggest fans of Konami anymore, but I never would've guessed the Japanese themselves were past that to the point of boycotting.
"with little success"
Konami is basically what would have happened if HUMAN had been wildly profitable but still had its awful management at the reins.
The Duke Nukem guys?
Konami is Konami, and Konami is the worst.
Ironic how protective they were of Tokimeki Memorial back then when it is another one of their dead IPs now.
I wonder how Japam thinks of their mistreatment of Hudson Soft IP?
Dead IPs? the last game was 2021.
@@Kaimax61 Using one spinoff game to gauge the life of the IP is like saying Konami still uses Castlevania because Belmonts are DLC characters in Smash, Bomberman and Dead Cells.
Actually, it is even more silly, because Girl's Side is divorced enough from the original games that if you removed the Tokimemo branding, no one would even think they are meant to be directly related products, especially since they do not even have the same target audience demographic.
(Which, even if you think that keeps the IP alive, STILL says a lot about how loose Konami has become with it.)
@@Kaimax61 yeah and metal gear is still alive and well thanks to metal gear survive
Will you be making videos on the history of the post-Team Silent games?
yes i will!
@@thegamingmuse Awesome, can't wait!
@@thegamingmuse cant wait for Orphan!
Unrelated but anyone here absolutely flabbergasted by the very concept of a SH2 remake? It's my favorite game of all time and I've played it countless times... imagining it remade in over the shoulder camera angles and shiny Unreal graphics just really melts my brain. I'm 90% sure bloober will mess it up royally but we'll see. Until then I'll keep having stress nightmares about playing it and it's, like, become a battle royale or something.
Well, good luck. Even if it's not "Metal Gear Survive" levels of insult, I'll stick with the original. I just find those remakes _less_ creepy than their grainy, foggy, low-res originals.
@@Orpheusftw oh I completely agree. But I just feel like I have to play it.
Personally, after Metal Gear Solid V, I wouldn't play anything with Konami's name attached to it if I was paid to.
hating konami is my religion. Great video!
You always bring up content nobody else has ever found.
Sounds like when Bethesda tried to copyright scrolls lol
Konami is essentially Japanese EA.
How expected. And disappointing.
Somewhere in the world, Kojima is smiling.
It's crazy how far Konami has fallen and how far they are disconnected with fans compared to back then. I'm happy we have years of amazing games from Konami before there downfall. Cool video. ^_^
And today it means nothing as the company makes more money on gambling machines than they ever did on video games. Now they just keep the trademarks for their gambling machines and to go after modders and TH-camrs for some pocket change.
And you're still going to give them more by purchasing the new sh releases like a drone kek
Cope and seethe
@@Ordoabchao-x9k oml people actually say these things unironically
@@toceeno874 White nationalists are not exactly known for their social skills.
the only ones of the fandoms that will defend Konami till death is the Yugioh TCG Players and Kojima MGS era fanboys.
Konami seems to be the inspiration for the Kardashians.
Yet another certified Fuck Konami moment.
The missuse of IP terms in this video hurt my soul. Patenting a copyright hurts.
1:28 Oh man, To Heart/Shizuku/Kizuato, I've got a soft spot for those games.
So Konami was pulling a Tim Langdell.
I was going to say they pulled a Fine Bros myself lol
how did they even find that poor man who sold the disc
Wow, Konami was Konami before Konami being Konami.
it seems fucknami is the Japanese EA
And here I am merely complaining about them being stingy with gems sometimes.
I really liked the play novel. It was cool reading more about the inner thoughts of the characters and seeing sh1 from a different angle. And I always wanted to know what Cybil was doing.
It seems the Fine Bros are fans of Konami seeing as they tried to copyright the word "React" back then.
Can you do a video about LSD Dream Emulator ?
Fantastic piece of work - thank you! Can you please tell me where can I buy your book? I cannot find it. 😔
I say America should boycott Konami. The Konami USA cannot take request for remastered silent hill 4, or metal gear games. If our opinion doesn't matter than neither do your games. Plus their games have sucked for years now.
Now i know where SanDisk got their SD card design inspiration. Lol
The kind of content I love ! Thank you muse ;)
i boycotted them also after kojima. 8 years now. still mad about PT. ill play silent hill f and maybe 2 remake if the reviews end up being good.
You know this use to be lost media but more recently someone FINALLY dumped the rom online and now it has a fan translation and is now playable through emulation. I think we need another Boycott Konami. Hell I refuse to buy any of their rereleases. They don't deserve peoples money.
Up • Up • Down • Down • Lawsuit • Right • Lawsuit • Right • B • A is so good. Video was worth watching just for that nugget.
So Konami was always evil good to know
It wasnt in the 80s and 90s. Their games were a big part of making the NES the hit it was.
Konami being Konami
I'm a fan of the Metal Gear Solid Series and Kojima. But I totally understand why Konami finally ran out of patience. If I remember correctly, Metal Gear Solid V was very long. The production cost was expensive. In fact, the longer the production, the greater the opportunity cost of lost revenue. That said, as far as I know, it was Kojima who decided to end the MGS series. Kojima felt it was time for Konami to move on and make a new series. And suddenly Kojima made this announcement to the public unilaterally. This made Konami officials angry, because Kojima was actually needed by Konami because of MGS. Without MGS, Kojima became worthless in Konami's eyes.
On the other hand, Konami itself has several games that are actually a cash cow, apart from mobile games, one of which is the PES Series. Yes, inevitably they have to part ways.
I still remember very well when Sony Computer Entertainment managed to get Kojima, this SCET official looked very happy when making the announcement with Kojima on NHK World TV station. For Death Stranding, I haven't played it yet because maybe the age factor and responsibilities as a father so I don't know if this game is good or not. But it must be admitted that Kojima is too brave to work on a game that seems to be uncommon and the market map is not yet clear. This is what distinguishes Kojima from most game producers. And it's things like this that make Kojima worthy of being called a legend.
It's not surprising Japanese fans were pissed at Konami too. The company makes it pretty easy to hate on it.
Should make law " word cannot be own."
This is why "slander" is illegal. Under what I assume was Shinzo Abe's law, may he rest in peace from everything that happened from all sides of this discussion....
Things that were seeming frustrations and mysteries are now coming to light and even Sonic's creator isn't safe anymore from accountability.
"Signatures in chat rooms"? What? ETA: Wait, your sources are machine-translated articles? FFS.
Nice video you eally go deep :D Thanks for sharing :D
Reminds me of that American company who wanted to own the term Ugg Boots. :)
I live in Japan and I've never heard of this. LOL
Great Video☺👍
6:10 "More reasonable" lol, it's the exact same argument about ownership and intelectual "property" which says you don't rights to the things you own or the words you use
the banners were called "webring" if i recall correctly.