Gameloft used a fan copy/mod of existing copyrighted/commercial font in an upcoming game

[whoiam989]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

That's right. Gameloft is using Celestia Medium Redux, a fan modification of copyrighted Generation B. Someone needs to stop them.

Generation B, made by Harold's Fonts, is inspired by film logos and posters between 1950s and 1960s. It is one of the official fonts of Hasbro's current My Little Pony line up of toys, media franchise and official merchandises. It's also in the subtitle part of the logo of the current generation's well-known cartoon show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

With the rise of the cartoon's fandom, some fans tried to create their version of Generation B. One user created a thing called Celestia Medium, but soon gave up after some concerns. Then, another user came up with small letters and Greek/Cyrillic letters, and named it Celestia Medium Redux, the font in question.

Apparently, Gameloft is using Celestia Medium Redux in their upcoming official My Little Pony mobile game, instead of Generation B.

 

We can't blame some individuals using knock off fonts on their unofficial, personal fan works because counting all of every single person who used it is impossible and suing them is technically a waste of time and money (unless you are from Disney). But this is a different matter. It's the official merchandise. Gameloft is using a fan-made font that (technically) infringed copyrighted font design (or, in the U.S. terms, a digital font file that might have altered from the original file) in an official game, instead of the original and official one! It's more like the developers involved didn't know anything about the font (If it's not, this is more serious problem!).

Now, someone needs to stop Gameloft from using Celestia Medium Redux before they officially release the game on 8 November, and put them on the pressure to change the font. But honestly, I don't know what should I start with as a third person.

Before you go, here is opinion from a professional-skilled artist who likes Friendship is Magic:

• "Why You Shouldn't Use The Celestia Medium Font"
• "Why You (Still) Shouldn't Use Celestia Medium"

[hrant]

Agreed.

Harold's Fonts should hire Frank Martinez - he specializes in font protection.
http://www.martinezgroup.com/

BTW, may I ask what your interest in this is? Your only other post to Typophile also involved reporting possible font plagiarism.

hhp

[Zuhair Albazi]

Spam, should be removed, just advertising the game.

[hrant]

I'm pretty sure it's not.

hhp

[cerulean]

It's kind of a terrible lazy design to be using anyway. Gen B works in its limited role as part of the logo, but its herky-jerky style is not suited to slapping on every darn thing that needs text. At the least, they ought to use Woodrow, the nice readable face in the show's titles and credits.

[whoiam989]

BTW, may I ask what your interest in this is? Your only other post to Typophile also involved reporting possible font plagiarism.

Well, back then, I meant to find some Latin fonts with exact design because those Hangul fonts had good-shaped Latin characters (unusual in Korean fonts).

Spam, should be removed, just advertising the game.

I put those pictures because I wanted to show the evidence right there. If it looked like some sort of game adverts to you, I'm sorry.

It's kind of a terrible lazy design to be using anyway. Gen B works in its limited role as part of the logo, but its herky-jerky style is not suited to slapping on every darn thing that needs text. At the least, they ought to use Woodrow, the nice readable face in the show's titles and credits.

You know something! At least Woodrow is more legible than Generation B. But from what I know, it has no Greek and Cyrillic letters so I think it may cause a little trouble for internationalisation.

[Chris G]

@Zuhair
I'm not sure that the members of Typophile are an untapped market for this sort of game...

[Diner]

Thanks for your post on this and Harold and the Font Bros are well aware of this situation . . .

At the end of the day, legally there's really nothing we can do . . . A close comparison would be that a client specified Futura for their App and rather than buy Linotypes, they bought URW++s or Paratype's . . .

We know the folks from Hasbro have properly licensed the font and specify it in all the styles guides for the MLP product line but do not provide it to vendors.

Oddly, Gameloft DID contact us and we negotiated a license for them for this use, but then radio silence until we received word about their new game using a knock-off version of Harold's original font.

Again, legally they haven't done anything wrong but of course we're disappointed they chose the course of action they did.

[whoiam989]

Thanks for your answer. Seriously, why Gameloft choose that way? Nevertheless, we should keep spreading this news everywhere and put Gameloft folks on the pressure until they entirely change that font to a proper one. Remember, for economic reason, not everyone can count and sue every person using knock-off fonts in their personal fan works. But big and well-established company like Gameloft using it in that officially licensed game? This is more than a serious problem.

Remember the Hadopi logo incident? Although that would be a slightly different case from this because it was about logo designers using a legal font intended for exclusive corporate use in a logo of another, unrelated French government agency for copyright protection, people have noticed the infringement and soon, after lots of complaints and pushing, the agency had to change the font to a properly licensed one, before making another change in years later.

[hrant]

Public pressure is indeed a key weapon. And even if it doesn't work in a given case you get some exposure as a future deterrent.

hhp

[Thomas Phinney]

Who: "Remember, for economic reason, not everyone can count and sue every person using knock-off fonts in their personal fan works."

But the relevant parties are saying that this particular case of knock-off is NOT illegal and they have no basis to sue.

This is often true. Knock-offs can be unethical, or just poorly done, without being illegal. In these cases, absent a violated contract or the like, there is usually no basis to sue the offending party.

[kentlew]

On the other hand, “Celestia,” used in the context of typefaces and fonts, is a registered trademark of Mark von Bronkhurst. So, he might have a legitimate case to pursue against the maker of Celestia Medium Redux, if he cared to — at least to change the name, if not to cease distribution.

[whoiam989]

But the relevant parties are saying that this particular case of knock-off is NOT illegal and they have no basis to sue.

This is often true. Knock-offs can be unethical, or just poorly done, without being illegal. In these cases, absent a violated contract or the like, there is usually no basis to sue the offending party.

Hmm... This is becoming a bit more complex problem than I thought. What should be the attitude to the knock-off/fake/unlicensed fonts, especially when major company making an officially licensed product?

Simply getting a license will cause no problem, and it will bring original and quality fonts. But it costs so much if it's too expensive, and in major cases, using the font for different purposes may require to buy another licenses.

On the other hand, knock-offs are technically not illegal, only a little different from the original, and it will help reducing costs if it is free. But someone will notice it anyway, and even if there is no basis to sue, some will still tackle and complain. Besides, some of them has inferior quality than original.

This is getting more puzzled...

Anyway, despite not being illegal, it still shows how terrible Gameloft is at choosing fonts. And still, the people at Font Bros. are disappointed with what Gameloft have done.

I think that, normally, big major companies with such scale as Gameloft would just end up buying a proper license. Why did they act like... Um... 'Hey, I have no money for this.'? (Just my shallow idea, though.)

On the other hand, “Celestia,” used in the context of typefaces and fonts, is a registered trademark of Mark von[sic] Bronkhurst.[sic] So, he might have a legitimate case to pursue against the maker of Celestia Medium Redux, if he cared to — at least to change the name, if not to cease distribution.

This is kinda interesting. In the universe of the current line up, Princess Celestia is the co-ruler of the "magical land of Equestria" who raises the sun, along with Princess Luna who raises the moon. That is where the name of the original Celestia Medium knock-off font came from, and I guess the maker of that font may have not know anything about it. (And yes, it has absolutely nothing to do with Mark van Bronkhorst's Celestia Antiqua)

[JamesM]

> would just end up buying a proper license. Why did
> they [Gameloft] act like... Um... 'Hey, I have no money...

A quick Google search finds that Gameloft has been criticized for copying other games, and that some employees have complained of 100-hour work weeks.

Many game companies are under a lot of economic stress because the rise of small game apps for smart phones and tablets. Used be that computer games routinely sold for fairly high prices; now people go app stores and buy games for a few bucks each. So companies may feel the need to cut corners to keep prices down.

[Ryan Maelhorn]

I find it interesting that everybody thinks this is so horrible, but yet nobody except the original poster has disscussed the fact that Gen B was pretty much a straight copy of someone else's ( T. Hee, Bill Justice and Xavier Atencio) work to begin with.

So, copying someone elses work to make an "original" font - A.O.K.!
Copying the copy? Bad bad bad!
Really?

[hrant]

Many game companies are under a lot of economic stress because the rise of small game apps for smart phones and tablets.

The good ones are under a lot of economic stress because crappy ones like Gameloft cut corners...

Gen B was pretty much a straight copy of someone else's

Links?

hhp

[Khaled Hosny]

Plagiarism, yes! We all know that type designers invented the alphabet, they didn’t plagiarise it from the Romans.

[Ryan Maelhorn]

The link is the first one in this thread. The designer admits to it himself.

"Plagiarism, yes! We all know that type designers invented the alphabet, they didn’t plagiarise it from the Romans."

Yes I've brought this up before. The whole idea of plagiarism needs to be looked at differently in an area where everyone's work is 90% identical anyway. However this seems to make most around here very uncomfortable.

[hrant]

Do you mean the "inspired by film logos and posters between 1950s and 1960s" part? That's not good enough. Do you have actual fonts in mind that Generation B is copied from, to the same extent that the Gameloft font is copied from Generation B?

And you guys can't be serious that making a font implies plagiarizing a writing system. You can only do that with another writing system, and even that's stretching the definition of "plagiarism".

As for "90% identical": that's a very shallow way of looking at it.

hhp

[Ryan Maelhorn]

Inspired by the animated opening titles of the classic live-action Disney film, The Parent Trap (1961), designed by T. Hee, Bill Justice and Xavier Atencio

[hrant]

Can you post some images of said titles so we can see how close it is? But if even Disney isn't suing it's probably not close enough. :-)

hhp

[Ryan Maelhorn]

Yawn... Seems like a lot of work considering the designer admits on his own site where he got the "inspiration" from. How about you go out and rent the movie, take the screen grabs, and then tell me how they are different? Or you can just not believe me, I don't really have a dog in this fight anyway. I just think I smell a bit of hypocrisy in this thread, that's all.

[Ryan Maelhorn]

OK, funk it, here's a youtube video of the beginning of the movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWy2HpQpKCM

[JamesM]

The title cards of most movies can be found using Google Images.

[hrant]

Ryan, why put "inspiration" in quotes? Do you think it necessarily equates to plagiarism?

And when you make a claim, you're the one who needs to show evidence. "whoiam989" has shown his.

hhp