681k views, but at least links to the original, 548k views.
Im glad i didnt try and make a living from socmedia
Pitts is stepping down from Take This, and taking a leave of absence from Escapist:
What was Take This?
His “take your medicine if you’re depressed” charity.
They’re an organization that host quiet rooms at gaming conventions (PAX, E3, etc…), but I don’t know if they offer any other support services. I only know about it because Pete Hines started supporting them after he criticized Pitts’ partner Susan Arendt’s 5/10 review for The Evil Within, and received a bit of backlash.
Funny how the dances of World of Warcraft and other MMOs are not mentioned…they started it.
Are you saying they stole dances from other artists and sold it to players to the tune of billions of dollars because I certainly don’t remember that.
Those dances weren’t monetized.
Not directly no, though the game had a monthly sub and players did spend time fooling with them…
These people are out of luck legally, and Epic has no moral obligation to pay the creators a single penny. The fact that they happen to be black and it’s appropriation makes no difference whatsoever. Short dances can’t be copywritten for a reason.
People did not subscribe to MMOs so they could dance. People playing Fortnite are paying for those dances, and they’re paying a lot of money for moves and creativity from people they’ve never heard of and attributing it to game developers who seem to do little else but copy other people.
The argument I’ve seen is that if Epic didn’t charge for these emotes, then no one would care - just like they didn’t care when WoW or others did it. Money talks, etc.
I feel that argument misses the point that for some folks it’s Fortnite’s pop culture ubiquitousness that makes the erasure of black dance culture more widespread. (Their complaint, not mine.) When WoW did it, no one noticed because only WoW nerds even knew about the dances. To a lot of kids “the shoot dance” is “the Fortnite dance.” BlocBoy JB’s creation of the dance wasn’t even known to many until these lawsuits.
It would definitely be a nice gesture for Epic to give attribution for their emotes, and maybe a link to a YouTube video showing the original. They’re just under no obligation to do so, legally or morally. IMO, of course.
Well not yet. We know how gaming learns. They’ll treat this just like the loot boxes, rely on existing law, ignore morality and ethics and then try and throw tantrums when the laws begin to change to address their scum sucking habits.
My point was a little more subtle than saying they subscribed to dance - people paid for time, then they spent time dancing.
Not as much time dancing as you are implying, and they didn’t pay for those specific dances.
I don’t feel there’s anything morally wrong with using short dances. There’s a reason short sequences of movement can’t be copywritten; your life would be consumed with nothing but searches for prior art otherwise, and those searches would be hella-difficult. I don’t think copyright law will change for this.
WoW dancing was popular. I recall people waiting for new races and wondering what the new dances would be. If you would think it was Not as much time dancing as you are implying, think of the millions of subscribers over a decade+ of dancing, I think that would tally to a few minutes.
Whether it was sold directly or indirectly, it should not make a difference. It was sold.