What other leagues will be pulled?

[rudel.dietrich]

On the bright side, this is the most significant feature the OOTP series has seen in four versions.

[PSUColonel]

Originally Posted by pauwoo

That, “let me keep work shopping it” landed like a perfectly executed Ricky Gervais joke.

I got a hearty chuckle out of that one.

I’ve not updated my copy ( I don’t buy OOTP off steam)… surely the country of Japan is still in the world_default db?

Not sure..I uninstalled everything.

[BaseballGOAT]

Originally Posted by Rain King

How is this issue related in any way to PT?

We don't even have any evidence that this issue wouldn't have occurred if Com2US hadn't even purchased OOTP. They own the game now so have to make this decision, but we have all kinds of evidence that this is a fairly typical approach from *** regarding using their teams and players.

You don't get credit for yelling that the sky is falling because an earthquake happened.

PT brought a lot of new eyeballs to OOTP and probably attracted the new overlords to want to purchase the com0any. So indirectly, it did lead us down this path. L

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by PSUColonel

I don’t think you understand how extensive this is. This won’t be possible.

I just created a test game with the new patch - all fictional "Japan Test".

Created the "Japanese Baseball Association". Two leagues, one division each, 20 teams. Set player creation at 90% Japanese, 10% random to mimic current *** roster setups.

It appears to work (see below). I also created a second test game called the "All Nippon Baseball Championship" that had a two-league, 12-team setup obviously mimicking the current ***, and that worked as well.

What's likely going on is that anything that matches official Japanese baseball league/team names "[league redacted]", "Hanshin Tigers", etc, is being sniffed out and taken away. Official players? No idea, but obviously there's some kind of operation going on there.

This means you can indeed create a fictional *** that's reasonably close to the real thing, but if you try to get too cute with the names then you're going to run into problems. Does this mean you can have a team like one in an anime where a character wears the jersey of the "Hanshan Tikers" in order to get around copyright? Again no idea, but probably best not to try it.

EDIT: You cannot put 'Nippon' in the name of the league. When I exited and reloaded it turned into "South African Baseball" with all the teams based in South Africa. All of the players were still Japanese. This more than likely means that Konami's exclusivity license relates to anything "Nippon" baseball, whether it's the league & its teams or the national team.

[BaseballGOAT]

The problem was never the teams. It's the players. Had someone wanted to do anything remotely realistic, you're talking a crazy amount of work and time

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by BaseballGOAT

The problem was never the teams. It's the players. Had someone wanted to do anything remotely realistic, you're talking a crazy amount of work and time

Well yes that is a completely separate issue, and of course there isn't going to be any kind of an easy fix to that. I was just showing that Japan itself hasn't been completely axed from the game and it's world database, and you can do something with it.

I have OOTP going back to 17 on Steam, and loading that edition back up the "league" had real team names but fake players.

[BaseballGOAT]

Originally Posted by tm1681

Well yes that is a completely separate issue, and of course there isn't going to be any kind of an easy fix to that. I was just showing that Japan itself hasn't been completely axed from the game and it's world database, and you can do something with it.

I have OOTP going back to 17 on Steam, and loading that edition back up the "league" had real team names but fake players.

The issue becomes guys who play the game like I do, we spend weeks, if not months fine tuning all the leagues around the world to our tastes and now we can't ever trust 100% that all the work is safe from being nuked on a whim

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by BaseballGOAT

The issue becomes guys who play the game like I do, we spend weeks, if not months fine tuning all the leagues around the world to our tastes and now we can't ever trust 100% that all the work is safe from being nuked on a whim

And that's tricky, but even then as long as none of the other leagues in the game become part of something akin to an iron-clad exclusivity agreement with a company that's notably litigious the rest of the in-game world should be able to continue on as it is.

In a way, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to run into a situation like this. The game that I do part-time work on, Football Manager, hasn't even been available for purchase in Brazil since 2017 because the football sector of that country is so famously lawsuit-hungry that the people who publish the game decided it would literally be easier to just stop doing business in the country, even via digital download.

[BaseballGOAT]

Originally Posted by tm1681

And that's tricky, but even then as long as none of the other leagues in the game become part of something akin to an iron-clad exclusivity agreement with a company that's notably litigious the rest of the in-game world should be able to continue on as it is.

In a way, I'm surprised it's taken them this long to run into a situation like this. The game that I do part-time work on, Football Manager, hasn't even been available for purchase in Brazil since 2017 because the football sector of that country is so famously lawsuit-hungry that the people who publish the game decided it would literally be easier to just stop doing business in the country, even via digital download.

For me, as much as I do with my baseball world, I'm done progressing forward. I'll stick where I'm at with 23 especially since this is the very end of the developmental cycle and any other changes along this line would probably be in OOTP24

[tm1681]

Originally Posted by BaseballGOAT

For me, as much as I do with my baseball world, I'm done progressing forward. I'll stick where I'm at with 23 especially since this is the very end of the developmental cycle and any other changes along this line would probably be in OOTP24

Yeah - at this point it would probably be smart to wait until all the new release info is out before making a decision if real-world immersion is your thing.

As someone who, even if only part-time, has worked on games that have had to make quick pivots on this kind of stuff regarding real, researched data, if I really had to make a snap guess about all this it's that what happened today - awful as it was - was an emergency measure and that a better solution will be found.

Also, if the dev team has the ability to apply that kind of a data patch to saved games then I'd wager there are other things they can do later that could make the changes less...harsh?

[BaseballGOAT]

At least I can say OOTP23 is a wonderful game and if I have to stop here... it will continue to give me many many hours of enjoyment

[Markus Heinsohn]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

I’m pretty sure they get the KBO license more or less for free because Com2Us already has it. There’s no oodles of money to spend on anything.

That's not how it works. Of course we (OOTP) pay for the KBO license fully.

[MathBandit]

I really love the "[redacted] being pulled is a sign the game is completely dead and I should uninstall it and no longer purchase it...also why bother even paying for a KBO license or including KBO, everyone knows MLB is the only thing that matters for OOTP" takes.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

That's not how it works. Of course we (OOTP) pay for the KBO license fully.

Thanks for the clarification! That said, I’d kind of love to hear why the messing around with saved games was necessary…

[OmahaBaseball]

Originally Posted by rudel.dietrich

On the bright side, this is the most significant feature the OOTP series has seen in four versions.

Nicely Done - I needed a good laugh this morning.

[FleetWalker]

I would think anyone making NCAA leagues should have concerns, and those concerns may extend beyond just NCAA-based leagues. The NCAA has bigger pockets even than league at issue here, and they have sued video game companies on similar issues in the past.

By doing what it did, the company has basically admitted that it believes it is liable (or at least potentially liable) for trademark and licenses violations even when it is only end users using the game engine to create leagues that use those marks. By showing that the company can take (effective?) action against users who are using those marks, the company may have establish that it IS liable if it allows other such violations to happen with its game engine.

The only real difference is that the league in question initially came with the game (which wasn't a great business decision in retrospect) whereas all aspects of an NCAA league would be homebrewed. But I'd still be concerned. This could implicate a lot of fictional leagues that simply use NCAA team names like the Manhattan Jaspers. And it might extend just to the nicknames even, because, for example, Blue Devils is so closely associated with Duke that it may simply not be allowed for any team.

There is a user recreating the European football leagues as a baseball universe. Some of those leagues have the biggest pockets there are in the sports world. What about people using NBA or NFL marks for team names?

This is a big can of worms that was opened, and I think anyone homebrewing really needs to consider using older versions of the software or a moving on to something else honestly, because there is obviously no telling when this might happen again or to what it might extend.

[BaseballGOAT]

Originally Posted by FleetWalker

I would think anyone making NCAA leagues should have concerns, and those concerns may extend beyond just NCAA-based leagues. The NCAA has bigger pockets even than league at issue here, and they have sued video game companies on similar issues in the past.

By doing what it did, the company has basically admitted that it believes it is liable (or at least potentially liable) for trademark and licenses violations even when it is only end users using the game engine to create leagues that use those marks. By showing that the company can take (effective?) action against users who are using those marks, the company may have establish that it IS liable if it allows other such violations to happen with its game engine.

The only real difference is that the league in question initially came with the game (which wasn't a great business decision in retrospect) whereas all aspects of an NCAA league would be homebrewed. But I'd still be concerned. This could implicate a lot of fictional leagues that simply use NCAA team names like the Manhattan Jaspers. And it might extend just to the nicknames even, because, for example, Blue Devils is so closely associated with Duke that it may simply not be allowed for any team.

There is a user recreating the European football leagues as a baseball universe. Some of those leagues have the biggest pockets there are in the sports world. What about people using NBA or NFL marks for team names?

This is a big can of worms that was opened, and I think anyone homebrewing really needs to consider using older versions of the software or a moving on to something else honestly, because there is obviously no telling when this might happen again or to what it might extend.

Well said, the can of worms that has been opened may not be able to be shut again.its why I've made the decision going forward .. I'll play basic MLB games only with future versions of OOTP. The fun stuff I create, will stay on a different version. of the game.

[Fabtron7]

Originally Posted by BaseballGOAT

PT brought a lot of new eyeballs to OOTP and probably attracted the new overlords to want to purchase the com0any. So indirectly, it did lead us down this path. L

It did bring a lot of new eyeballs (and will continue to)… and from what I can tell none of those eyeballs care about any of this stuff. Or are even aware it’s happening.

[FuzzyRussianHat]

Originally Posted by FleetWalker

I would think anyone making NCAA leagues should have concerns, and those concerns may extend beyond just NCAA-based leagues. The NCAA has bigger pockets even than league at issue here, and they have sued video game companies on similar issues in the past.

By doing what it did, the company has basically admitted that it believes it is liable (or at least potentially liable) for trademark and licenses violations even when it is only end users using the game engine to create leagues that use those marks. By showing that the company can take (effective?) action against users who are using those marks, the company may have establish that it IS liable if it allows other such violations to happen with its game engine.

The only real difference is that the league in question initially came with the game (which wasn't a great business decision in retrospect) whereas all aspects of an NCAA league would be homebrewed. But I'd still be concerned. This could implicate a lot of fictional leagues that simply use NCAA team names like the Manhattan Jaspers. And it might extend just to the nicknames even, because, for example, Blue Devils is so closely associated with Duke that it may simply not be allowed for any team.

There is a user recreating the European football leagues as a baseball universe. Some of those leagues have the biggest pockets there are in the sports world. What about people using NBA or NFL marks for team names?

This is a big can of worms that was opened, and I think anyone homebrewing really needs to consider using older versions of the software or a moving on to something else honestly, because there is obviously no telling when this might happen again or to what it might extend.

I think I read that it's legally covered because it's just database information, but I've wondered about the historical players considering the lawsuit that sank the NCAA Football series over name and likeness.

A lot of this requires someone to care enough to try to sue though, which I'd imagine most players either don't care/know or think it's cool they're in a game. With other smaller leagues too, it's probably not worth the fight or they're happy with the added exposure. How many American fans only know Honkbal Hoofdklasse is a thing because it is in OOTP? Granted, Japan's contributions to the sport are far more prevalent than a lot of nations and its absence is going to be far more noticeable than if Honkbal got axed.

[BaseballGOAT]

Originally Posted by Fabtron7

It did bring a lot of new eyeballs (and will continue to)… and from what I can tell none of those eyeballs care about any of this stuff. Or are even aware it’s happening.

With more users, came Com2uS which led to a bigger worldwide audience and I'm guessing to the attention of the league that got angry. So not sure how you can say that