Important Announcement From ProtomanZxAdvent

[ProtoX]

Effective immediately all my mods currently being on indefinite hiatus with links being no longer active. After this last week learning that Square Enix took Mcindus's FF8 mods and put it in the Remaster that released back in December i can no longer support Sqaure Enix's Squaresoft devs until they decided to remove Mcindus's work from the FF8 Remaster. I took over a week to think about this whether or not to continue mod support for FF7 for the fans while fellow modders like Mcindus get screwed over or do i put my foot down and say enough is enough. At the end i choose to put my foot down. I'm sorry to those who like and used my mods on here or on Tsnuamix's Echo-S Discord, but i can't in my own good conscience continue down this path. My mods are archived in my MEGA cloud storage just in case Square Enix decide to do what is right and remove Mcindus's work. But until then links to my mods are dead until further notice.

[dkma841]

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[ProtoX]

Mcindus is the one who broke the info months back when he was streaming on his Twitch channel. When he said that Square Enix use old versions of his mods i thought he was joking and like you thought there was no way they do that. So one week ago as was i trying to play catch up in the one chats in Tsunamix's discord and i saw a link to this article https://blog.julianxhokaxhiu.com/2020-02-19-final-fantasy-vii-running-on-vulkan/. At first glance this is where i thought the inspiration for the new FF7OpenGL Driver in 7thHeaven 2.0 came from. In the article they noted that the FF7 Steam driver used Aali source code that mentions a direct folder two times that shouldn't even be in there. Then i recalled Tsunamix's statement in one his past streams on his Twitch channel when he said that Square Enix relies on Aali's source code. So then it hit me that this wasn't the first time that they used someone else's work and profited off it hence the ports to xbox/ps4/switch. Then i recalled Mcindus's statement months ago that they used older versions of his mods, 3.2 of his SeeDReborn UI, Lunar Cry 1.5, and Project Hellfire 1.2. So what i did is look the texture files of those mods that i backed up to my onedrive, then got a hold of FF8 Remaster files from a friend who owns the game from steam. I extract the textures just like Mcindus did in his stream. To my own disbelief he was right. The dark truth and claims about Square Enix were verified. I took my time thinking about it the situation. Then yesterday i deleted all final fantasy games/mods/tools on my pc and did the same with my Onedrive as i did with my Google Drive yesterday minus the MEGA backups just in case Squaresoft Devs at Square Enix decides to restore my faith in them and made my post as seen above your post.

[nfitc1]

They aren’t the first company that did this nonsense and they won’t be the last. There’s some weird legal issues that prevent them from making the modifications themselves and allow them to take 3rd party mods if they credit them appropriately. If they did not credit the author, that author CAN sue them. However, there is probably some weird line in the EULA that allows them to do this clearly exploitative and otherwise illegal action. It sickens me that game companies will make these awful decisions and don’t regularly get punished for them.

[orichalcon]

They did do it.

actually, they didnt

the studio that made the remaster, Dotemu, did

its very very possible that square-enix didn't even know  (not that i'm defending SE, they stink)

[ProtoX]

Even with the evidence found Aali can't sue Square Enix or DotEmu, he put his driver is under a GNU General Public License. Under sections 15 and 16 both Square Enix And DotEmu easily are dismissed automatically of liability or damages unless where Aali lives can seek his government laws that can allow a lawsuit.

Mcindus on the other hand can sue for plagiarism if he wants, but with i've been seeing of his work he just wants to one up over them.

[orichalcon]

Mcindus on the other hand can sue for plagiarism if he wants, but with i've been seeing of his work he just wants to one up over them.

he certainly can sue, but he would not win anything, and the case would just cost money, i'm sure he knows that

its really hard to sue the people who own the rights to the original game/content that was modded and then stolen... and win

again - not justifying, just keepin' it real

the punishment must come from people spreading the word and not buying

[obesebear]

If memory serves me correctly, Aali was contacted by SE for use of his driver.  They clearly struck a deal, because work on the driver halted immediately, and it wasn't until years later that he released his "source code"

[ProtoX]

If memory serves me correctly, Aali was contacted by SE for use of his driver.  They clearly struck a deal, because work on the driver halted immediately, and it wasn't until years later that he released his "source code"

If that case the case then why didn't he simply inform us that he struck a deal with them and was forced to stop? I checked all of his post not any of them mention such a thing ever happened.

[unab0mb]

If that case the case then why didn't he simply inform us that he struck a deal with them and was forced to stop? I checked all of his post not any of them mention such a thing ever happened.

Aali has actually denied this and expressly asked people to stop spreading that rumor.