lol

Former photo researcher here, and the situation is likely as innocuous as it appears. Not that it’s going to stop the breathless conspiracy theories or self-righteous chest-thumping about copyright law.

They could force you to install an update before you are allowed to run the disc, that disables the music. Digital vs. physical is a red herring in this topic.

Can’t the digital image files be converted into blockchain NFTs? That would ensure ownership.

“In 1961, the Soviet Union became the first country to invent Erotic Violence.”

Pretty weird how such old historical footage is not in the public domain. IP laws are fucked up.

Reading through the list of games, I was thinking, "at least the Xbox One version isn't being delisted. That's weird." Then quickly realized it's the 360 version backwards compatible :(

Until everything's streaming...

of course the games don’t get removed from players library but content in the games does get removed and that’s the important thing. basically all of the historical footage used in these games is important to the story for one reason or another and if these games get added back to the store new players will get an…

Agreed, but I will point out that these are happening to PS1 and PS2 games. Much like the questions around the GTA Trilogy’s radio stations, we’re dealing with contracts written up and signed decades before the current gaming landscape.

I don’t disagree, but just to be clear: Previous incidents like this have shown that games just get removed from storefronts, not from the players library, because it’s the distribution for money that infringes on the copyright, not owning it.

Actual pachinko, not pachislot, right? Because I’d like something with actual pachinko, not slot machines. (I’m looking right at you, Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Team.)

The license should be perpetual from the moment the media is first shipped. It’s a finished product already sent to market. This shit of “modify it later” is only enabling greedy behaviour that hurts the media, and the people that perpetuate it need to sit and spin.

Or they could’ve not cheaped-out during development and gotten perpetual licenses to use that footage,

From Konami’s statement, it does sound like they’re simply going to re-up the licensing rights to retain the footage, rather than going back and re-editing old games. There’s been a few games that have digitally disappeared briefly to re-appear again once license stuff gets worked out.

This isn’t a uniquely Konami thing - this is an industry-wide thing. The industry itself treats video games as temporary and ephemeral, and so publishers tend not to go for long-term licenses in the way film and TV do for assets like this.

This is so fucking stupid. It’s like re-editing a film to completely remove an actor or song just because they couldn’t re-negotiate the rights. Wouldn’t Titanic without “My Heart Will Go On” or Pulp Fiction without Samuel L. Jackson piss you off just because of the sheer pettiness of it?

People are way to keen on assuming intent whenever Konami has an issue of any kind with any of its franchises. This happens semi-regularly to a whole bunch of publishers, big and small. Re-upping these timed licenses is easy to miss and sometimes hard to execute, especially if any amount of them have changed hands in…

Another reason why phasing out physical media altogether might not be so great. You cant take hard copies away from their owners due to licensing issues but with digital, if they dont want to renew the license (or cant), then that game is gone until they do.

Maybe Konami should replace the historical footage with playable pachinko minigames.