is eso stealing fanart?

kumenit_taeynav

I'm gonna start this off by saying I've just learned about this today and this is a very new situation, like within the past hour or so of me posting here. as of now I don't think the eso team even knows about the situation or has had time to come up with a proper response. i think its something people should be aware of and on the lookout for.
it seems as though the eso team has stolen the fanart from artist going by relan-daevath depicting Sotha Sil and used it for their Mercymother Body Art without asking for permission or giving credit! i dont know if this was intentionally stolen or perhaps the eso team simply mistook it for canon depictions of the tribunal from the actual games and just decided to use it.
i would very much like to see the response from the eso team and what they can do to make amends with the original artist, relan-daevath.

here is a link to the original fanart from relan-daevath on tumblr, the post is dated to July 19th, 2020.
https://www.tumblr.com/relan-daevath/624076534773366784/vivec-sotha-sil-almalexia-almsivi-to-you

and heres a link to the artists initial response which was posted just today on April 9th
https://www.tumblr.com/relan-daevath/714132763526217728/hm-well-i-am-a-bit-shocked-19-jule-2020-i

nirnroot_llama

Saw this, as well. They really should take those tattoos off the crown store immediately.

WrathOfInnos

What was the art based on? It's conceivable that both that and the skin were referencing some old Morrowind concept art.

Amottica

It is unlikely to be considered stealing as that is merely a style, not an actual design that is similar. I doubt that is the first time that style has ever been used to start with let alone copyrighted or even copyrightable by anyone.

LukosCreyden

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_Kevin If this is true, it could be trouble.

Liedeke

That is disappointing. I hope ZOS responds to this and has a proper explanation and apology for the artist. This is not a good look for ZOS to say the least.

Liedeke

Amottica wrote: »

It is unlikely to be considered stealing as that is merely a style, not an actual design that is similar. I doubt that is the first time that style has ever been used to start with let alone copyrighted or even copyrightable by anyone.

They traced it at the very least, it's not just the style, you can lay the original over the tattoo and it matches up pretty much perfectly.

kumenit_taeynav

Amottica wrote: »

It is unlikely to be considered stealing as that is merely a style, not an actual design that is similar. I doubt that is the first time that style has ever been used to start with let alone copyrighted or even copyrightable by anyone.

its not merely about the style, the design itself is lifted from the fanart and copied into the game. the artist provides comparisons in the tumblr post talking about their stolen art

deGarcia

Amottica wrote: »

It is unlikely to be considered stealing as that is merely a style, not an actual design that is similar. I doubt that is the first time that style has ever been used to start with let alone copyrighted or even copyrightable by anyone.

This isn't just the art style, it's 1:1 copied Sotha Sil fanart that's sold as Almalexia-inspired tattoos. You can see here > https://twitter.com/_sphynx7/status/1645077426274287617 < that it's not just similar, but is the same thing.

LukosCreyden

A lot of people are tagging ZOS about this on twitter, including the OG artist. I hope it gets sorted properly soon because this is a really bad image for ZOS to have.

fjord55b14_ESO

Wow… this is really messed up. It’s not even like, inspiration they took- it’s straight up copy pasted. [snip]

[edited for bashing]

Soarora

This is shocking. Thank you for posting this here.

hexnotic

the tattoos don’t even make sense… they are called mercy mother body art but only have sotha sil depictions in the body markings. seems like outsourced work that didn’t go through any qc. rip

kumenit_taeynav

hexnotic wrote: »

the tattoos don’t even make sense… they are called mercy mother body art but only have sotha sil depictions in the body markings.

in my humble opinion i think that it might be best if the devs created their own almalexia art to replace the stolen sotha sil art

LukosCreyden

@kumenit_taeynav Absolutely. I bet what happened is that someone, maybe a contractor, was tasked with this and just nabbed something off google search thinking it was official art and called it a day. The fact that the wrong member of the Tribunal is depicted is enough of a red flag on its own. This was not checked over by ANYONE before it was chucked into the game.

As a lore nerd and someone who likes to support independent artists, I am doubly peeved about this and I shall continue to raise a stink on Twitter about it until something is done.

kumenit_taeynav

why not replace it with the tattoos og Almalexia had back in the Tribunal dlc from tes3? itd go well with the replica mask and her outfit which are both available in the same crown crates as the tats were dicussing here

Jaimeh

kumenit_taeynav wrote: »

it seems as though the eso team has stolen the fanart from artist going by relan-daevath depicting Sotha Sil and used it for their Mercymother Body Art without asking for permission or giving credit! i dont know if this was intentionally stolen or perhaps the eso team simply mistook it for canon depictions of the tribunal from the actual games and just decided to use it.
i would very much like to see the response from the eso team and what they can do to make amends with the original artist, relan-daevath.

I also heard about this, and find it really upsetting on behalf of the artist. The art was posted on tumblr and it clearly had the artist's signature on it, so I can't see how they might have easily made that mistake. The other weird thing is that although the marking's name references Almalexia, it's clearly Sotha Sil who is depicted, so this makes it seem there was no evaluation in the process of creating these markings (that are sold for real money in the store, no less).

FeedbackOnly

Oh my!

You can see direct comparison here

https://imgur.io/8CrIFnQ?r

It's a direct copy and paste...my teachers would not approve of this

sharquez

Matter will likely be handed internally and we wont see the results, [snip]

[edited for bashing]

FeedbackOnly

https://imgur.io/a/TzhULpy

Color coordination to show it again was copy and paste project.

FeedbackOnly

LukosCreyden wrote: »

@kumenit_taeynav Absolutely. I bet what happened is that someone, maybe a contractor, was tasked with this and just nabbed something off google search thinking it was official art and called it a day. The fact that the wrong member of the Tribunal is depicted is enough of a red flag on its own. This was not checked over by ANYONE before it was chucked into the game.

As a lore nerd and someone who likes to support independent artists, I am doubly peeved about this and I shall continue to raise a stink on Twitter about it until something is done.

It concerns me where was the quality control

Soarora

sharquez wrote: »

Matter will likely be handed internally and we wont see the results, [snip]

There has to be something public about this or else there's going to be this fear that fanart = could be stolen by ZOS.

[edited to remove quote]

Animar111

I wonder how many people spent a lot of cash on crown crates to acquire that tattoo…..?

Dojohoda

oof

chessalavakia_ESO

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

What was the art based on? It's conceivable that both that and the skin were referencing some old Morrowind concept art.

From what I can tell, the style is based on Morrowind Concept Art but, I think that the actual details might be original to the fan art.

Here's the page from 2020

https://www.tumblr.com/relan-daevath/624076534773366784/vivec-sotha-sil-almalexia-almsivi-to-you

Here are some examples from UESP of the similar Morrowind Concept Art:







https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Concept_Art

Reverse image searches for it don't turn up many results outside of tumblr which makes it harder for it to be an honest mistake.

Soarora

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

What was the art based on? It's conceivable that both that and the skin were referencing some old Morrowind concept art.

From what I can tell, the style is based on Morrowind Concept Art but, I think that the actual details might be original to the fan art.

Here's the page from 2020

https://www.tumblr.com/relan-daevath/624076534773366784/vivec-sotha-sil-almalexia-almsivi-to-you

Here are some examples from UESP of the similar Morrowind Concept Art:







https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Concept_Art

Reverse image searches for it don't turn up many results outside of tumblr which makes it harder for it to be an honest mistake.

The entire thing (not the art style obviously, you're right) is original to the fanart. If you check the details you can see that the body markings and the original art are straight-up the same exact thing.

chessalavakia_ESO

Soarora wrote: »

chessalavakia_ESO wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

What was the art based on? It's conceivable that both that and the skin were referencing some old Morrowind concept art.

From what I can tell, the style is based on Morrowind Concept Art but, I think that the actual details might be original to the fan art.

Here's the page from 2020

https://www.tumblr.com/relan-daevath/624076534773366784/vivec-sotha-sil-almalexia-almsivi-to-you

Here are some examples from UESP of the similar Morrowind Concept Art:







https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Concept_Art

Reverse image searches for it don't turn up many results outside of tumblr which makes it harder for it to be an honest mistake.

The entire thing is original to the fanart. If you check the details you can see that the body markings and the original art are straight-up the same exact thing.

I went with might because I can't guarantee 100% that the visuals aren't off some concept art I'm unaware of. None of the reverse image searches I ran showed the elements in the fan art elsewhere in Elder Scrolls related materials but, that isn't always perfect . (A few years back I incorrectly stated that a developer did something badly based off of years of posts from various people that turned out to be inaccurate so I now try to avoid saying developers definitely did x or y based on things from when I wasn't actively paying attention)

markulrich1966

Copyright on Elder Scrolls is owned by Zenimax/Bethesda.
Someone may create tattoos for personal use if this is tolerated by the copyright holders, but he does not have any copyright on them, as this is hold by the companies.

Sotha Sil is integral part of Elder Scrolls lore and Artwork, so he has no right to complain.
The violation imho was done by the self-proclaimed artist, who used the artwork and lore of Zenimax as inspiration for his tattoos.

Btw. I'm not whiteknighting Zenimax, in contrast lately write pretty critical and even play Fallout 76 more often than ESO meanwhile, still copyright is copyright, wheather you like it or not.

Animar111

markulrich1966 wrote: »

Copyright on Elder Scrolls is owned by Zenimax/Bethesda.
Someone may create tattoos for personal use if this is tolerated by the copyright holders, but he does not have any copyright on them, as this is hold by the companies.

Sotha Sil is integral part of Elder Scrolls lore and Artwork, so he has no right to complain.
The violation imho was done by the self-proclaimed artist, who used the artwork and lore of Zenimax as inspiration for his tattoos.

Btw. I'm not whiteknighting Zenimax, in contrast lately write pretty critical and even play Fallout 76 more often than ESO meanwhile, still copyright is copyright, wheather you like it or not.

So what does this mean…? Does it mean that they can use any fan art and sell it without even telling the artist.

Or is fan Art not allowed…..?

Because I’d be pretty surprised if I did a design using eso characters as inspiration and then saw it for sale on the crown store.

markulrich1966

Animar111 wrote: »

markulrich1966 wrote: »

Copyright on Elder Scrolls is owned by Zenimax/Bethesda.
Someone may create tattoos for personal use if this is tolerated by the copyright holders, but he does not have any copyright on them, as this is hold by the companies.

Sotha Sil is integral part of Elder Scrolls lore and Artwork, so he has no right to complain.
The violation imho was done by the self-proclaimed artist, who used the artwork and lore of Zenimax as inspiration for his tattoos.

Btw. I'm not whiteknighting Zenimax, in contrast lately write pretty critical and even play Fallout 76 more often than ESO meanwhile, still copyright is copyright, wheather you like it or not.

So what does this mean…? Does it mean that they can use any fan art and sell it without even telling the artist.

it means he can use ESO grafics in unmodified or modied form for personal use like a personal desktop wallpaper or as tattoo, but does not have any property rights on the material he uses. So he cannot complain if anyone uses it again, as the only owner is the copyright holder.
Afaik he even had to ask the copyright holder if he may use and alter the material, before he had created the tattoos, as they are not only visible for him personally, but displayed in public. So I think he violated the copyright. A company certainly will not make a big fuzz about it, as it counts as "peanuts", but if he starts to suddenly claim intellectual property on this copyrighted material, it might become a case for the lawyers.

Animar111

[quo

markulrich1966 wrote: »

Animar111 wrote: »

markulrich1966 wrote: »

Copyright on Elder Scrolls is owned by Zenimax/Bethesda.
Someone may create tattoos for personal use if this is tolerated by the copyright holders, but he does not have any copyright on them, as this is hold by the companies.

Sotha Sil is integral part of Elder Scrolls lore and Artwork, so he has no right to complain.
The violation imho was done by the self-proclaimed artist, who used the artwork and lore of Zenimax as inspiration for his tattoos.

Btw. I'm not whiteknighting Zenimax, in contrast lately write pretty critical and even play Fallout 76 more often than ESO meanwhile, still copyright is copyright, wheather you like it or not.

So what does this mean…? Does it mean that they can use any fan art and sell it without even telling the artist.

it means he can use ESO grafics in unmodified or modied form for personal use like a personal desktop wallpaper or as tattoo, but does not have any property rights on the material he uses. So he cannot complain if anyone uses it again, as the only owner is the copyright holder.
Afaik he even had to ask the copyright holder if he may use and alter the material, before he had created the tattoos, as they are not only visible for him personally, but displayed in public. So I think he violated the copyright. A company certainly will not make a big fuzz about it, as it counts as "peanuts", but if he starts to suddenly claim intellectual propety on this copyrighted material, it might become a case for the lawyers.

So all fan artists work can be used and sold without them knowing……I see. Thankyou for that information.