Re: "Big News for Kimochi & Nutaku"
This addresses mostly my posts I guess. At no point did I assert that they (nutaku, not komichi) were legally/contractually obligated to immediately contact any devs with games on the kimochi store. You are right that without knowing anything about those contracts nobody should make a statement in that regard.
Yeah, I was more addressing how sure you seemed to be that you were right when you couldn’t actually know what was agreed on though. For me, it was more your assumptions of what the story was and less about what you felt was the right or wrong thing to do. Although I’ll admit that I probably ended up blending the parts ultimately. I have no problem with saying; I’m sorry for misunderstanding your meaning.
As for the rest of your reply, well… that’s now getting a lot more into personal opinion and it isn’t too far off from a stance I often take. I’d feel like too much of a hypocrite if I tried to take a contrary stance to that. All I can say is that everyone makes mistakes and its even easier for a company to make then since they have a lot more opposing needs at play. You’re obviously frustrated with Nutaku over a string of things. Please try to consider how much of the issues that frustrate you may not be something they could fully control because of outside forces. Also please don’t let your frustration prevent you from seeing future attempts to “be better”. We (the global we) usually do better at giving a person a second chance than a non-person. I’m betting that’s tied to something hardwired in our brains but I also don’t feel that it’s right. And that just makes it even harder to be fair.
Although it seems at least many of the major players in AAA are working on changing their stance lately, slowly but surely. One can only hope that in the long term this will also influence how things go on "our" side of the spectrum.^^
Yeah, I’ll give an Amen to that.
Well, it'd be nice if someone could get them to address it. Or to address whatever happened to Taimanin Asagi which was supposedly coming LOOOONG ago.
Also, I'm curious as to why they edited this card to plant tentacles.
Sorry, I know absolutely nothing about that issue. Though I find it interesting that the change in the first card you showed doesn’t actually make the tentacle that is doing the penetration a plant. It’s blurred but it’s still the same color as the original. It leads me to the question of; if the trouble was over a non-plant tentacle, then why is the most “offensive” portion not a plant? My follow up thought on that is; maybe the problem was not what is assumed it to be. I know that’s of zero help though so sorry.
So unless Nutaku actually says something about it, I'm still getting a tentacles are bad but plants are fine message.
What is making this VERY difficult on a lot of people is that Nutaku cannot make simple rules that always apply saying “These things are bad” and “These things are good”. The complex reality is that what is and isn’t allowed is often changed ON Nutaku. There are a whole list of influences both within a company and outside a company that come into play here. I don’t want to get into that list because it is a tedious and outstandingly complex thing to debate due to dozens of different competing but valid points of view. And I’m only talking about those that come in BEFORE the decision is made. All I can say is that I was told directly that other than two specific issues, pretty much everything needs to be determined on a case by case approach. However, now that I’m more aware of what the history is with tentacles, I’ll see if I can quietly find out anything. Obviously, I can’t promise anything.
The real issue is that Kimochi/Nutaku did not promptly communicate to Devs that it was not closing earlier this year. While I cannot speak for US Law, UK Law would interpret this as Kimochi giving it's intent to sever the contract on the announced closure date (as it effectively announced that it would not sell the goods after this date, which breaks the contract). In this case any change in this status should be communicated as soon as possible (i.e. as soon as Nutaku reached out to Kimochi), even if the message was 'we might not be shutting down quite yet, although we can't disclose the details of why this is'. As Nutaku/Kimochi failed to do this in a timely manner, UK Law would not look favourably upon the assertion 'it's the Dev's responsibility to provide up to date contact information' because the Dev's had every reason to believe the contract was severed and therefore they had no responsibilities or obligations under that contact - the fault is entirely on the poor communications of Nutaku/Kimochi. And, bluntly, I would be amazed if US Law found differently.
UK and US law are VERY different when it comes to burden of responsibility. It seems to me that is actually where the biggest difference between them is. In the US, closing down does not necessarily sever a contract. The most visible example of that is warrantees. Not all warrantees are honored after a business shuts down but its fairly common that they are. Ultimately, that depends on terms in the contract. Additionally, the contract may cover points that are not tied to the sale of the good (confidentiality promises, copyright/trademark leases, and conditions of breaking the agreement are fairly common). If any ONE condition can hold a contract open then whole is still open. (At least until it gets moved off to a new contract.) Personally, I’d think that there has to be something addressing that idea in UK law. No clue what it would be though.
even if the message was 'we might not be shutting down quite yet, although we can't disclose the details of why this is'.
That example isn’t really too far from what happened. Less than a week after posting about the coming shut down (shut down had not happened yet) it was made public that the team was still pursuing a number of avenues to reopen Kimochi but the client had to shut own to stop the ongoing loss of money. I’ll admit that what that legally means is beyond my knowledge and I strongly suspect that, if the courts were involved, it would take quite a bit of effort to come to a determination. (Rather than being a simple issue.) As for the actual assertion; if a person changes their contact info and doesn’t let the other party know, it now becomes a potentially unreasonable burden on the other party to find that new contact. When forwarding addresses and the standard things are usable, that’s a lot less burden. However, when emails attached to aliases designed to hide a person’s true identity to the general public are involved; it gets a lot more complicated. In the US, proof that a good faith effort to contact was made is often sufficient. Keep in mind too that not all of the responsibility would be viewed as contractual. If you buy a car and register it with the manufacturer so you can receive recall notices and then move but don’t communicate your new address; it’s ridiculous to hold the manufacturer responsible for not sending a notice to your new address even if there was not a clause in the contract absolving them of responsibility.
