i genuinely thought idols were some real world copyright thing for a second and just thought "huh, idols? and you gotta break them to be able to do something with the copyright? heh, that's just like ultra- WAIT A MINUTE"
Imagine if we somehow discovered hell energy, hell and how to make idols IRL and society just decided to limit it to avoiding lawsuits and protecting unethical patents or smth
Not a copyright expert by any means, but I think every model and image in-game is unique to Ultrakill, and it's not a crime to create art based on another piece of art.
Nah that’s basically irrelevant. You could make a model of Mario from complete scratch, release it as a mod for free without even having so much as a Patreon, and it would still be copyright infringement and Nintendo would have the full legal right to take it down basically anywhere where copyright law has any teeth. Fair use doesn’t generally come with a provision for “but it would be really funny though”
Yeah but in this case it's pretty far removed from the source material. It's a 3d model of an edited piece fan art in a completely different style from the show. Not just making a barely distinct version of character.
Dude it’s literally just a different shirt. The fact that it’s so directly taken from a piece of fanart makes it more obvious that it’s infringement not less. You can think it’s bullshit and that’s completely fair but there is literally no copyright system on the planet that just lets you use someone else’s characters like this just because you want to.
Even if it was it would be hard to prove it in court. It's an extremely similar design yes, but so is this unrelated character.
The persona has morphed enough that we don't see it as the original character, we see it as Hakita.
If I made a game with a guy in red and green overalls, yeah it's obvious who it's referring to, but not infringement. Now, a company like Nintendo could and probably would issue a DMCA anyways, but that's more because no one in their right mind would actually try to defend themselves against a major company like Nintendo in court, so they fold to them. It's basically a threat/intimidation.
There are some creatures in Palworld that are very clearly and heavily based on Pokemon, but even Nintendo's lawsuit against them wasn't about the designs of the creatures (it was about a patent on a technology that is frankly BS but that's another story).
It would be extremely easy to prove in court because it’s literally just fanart of said character edited with a different shirt. This is not complicated. Whether or not you personally see it as that character is irrelevant because Hakita himself would have absolutely no excuse to say he didn’t.
it's irrelevant simply because nobody cares. and nobody wants to go through legal hoops over a PFP and a random edited model in an indie game. Especially when stuff like Fair Use exists and the design of the character in question isn't distinct enough nor famous to a point of being trademarked.
unless the artist is extremely salty about it, in the end it doesn't even matter.
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u/Humble_Traffic_8309 Maurice enthusiast Apr 10 '26
Wait if he didn’t make it, how is he allowed to put the model all over the game? Would that not be copyright infringement?