stonefoxstudios

Chasing Sunsets Ch5 - The Artlist Dilemma

Added 2022-04-24 23:54:20 +0000 UTC

"If you ever want to make God laugh, just tell Him your plans" --Ancient Proverb

To our surprise and shock, a fellow developer got a DMCA notice from Artlist this week. Artlist changed their Terms of Service at some point, and they are now enforcing a new obscenity clause.

Takedown notices are designed to protect the IP of an artist from being used without or in violation of a license, and many artists are understandably skittish about their work being associated with adult content.

Unfortunately, it also creates a lawfare extortion racket that we want to steer clear of.

Luckily, we only began using Artlist with Chapter 4, but it appears as if before we release Chapter 5, we will have to remove any music we obtained from Artlist for Chapter 4 and 5 and find replacements.

Just to clarify, Stone Fox is not in trouble, but rather than tempt fate, we will adjust proactively.

When served with a takedown notice, all platforms (Patreon, Subscribestar, Itch, and Steam) will unlist your game and de-monetize it until the terms of the takedown are met and the new product can be reviewed.

Needless to say, this is a gut punch, and will lead to an estimated two week delay before the Chapter 5 release. Not only that, there are a few songs I doubt I will be able to replace with anything comparable via other resources. This is not the news we were hoping to post this weekend.

While I work on that, we'll use the extra time to add some extra animation and content to Chapter 5 to compensate you for your patience.

The animation completed so far absolutely raises the bar and we hope you'll agree.

I will keep you posted as this unfolds.