Goddess of Victory: Nikke is an immensely popular gacha game, we may have talked about it once or twice, however its South Korean developers certainly have been doing all that they can to attain maximum player engagement and enjoyment, such as how they’ve seemingly reduced imposed “censorship” by making characters more revealing similarly to Blue Archive.
The game recently hit a milestone of $600 million dollars in revenue and it certainly isn’t hard to see why, given how the game like many other mobile oriented gacha games essentially sells you on sex, with many enticing characters to choose from and unlock with the entire gameplay loop of NIKKE revolving around watching ladies in revealing outfits jiggle their ass and tits as they shoot and enemies on screen.
Not that I have any general issues with these sorts of games, I believe the female characters featured in Goddess of Victory: NIKKE are very attractive, however I take issue with the general monetization manner of gacha as a whole. These companies produce immense profits by drip feeding players with enticing babes frequently, especially with limited time banners creating a FOMO (fear of missing out) desire.
And now Goddess of Victory: NIKKE finds itself in some sort of minor scandal over alleged plagiarism for a characters design.
An immensely popular character designer and illustrator who goes by neco_person posted onto Twitter that they personally received a direct message from the management team behind Goddess of Victory: NIKKE for apparent similarities between a character designed by themselves and characters present inside of NIKKE.
Neco is recognized for their contributions to Girls’ Frontline and the FALSLANDER series of illustrations, to which the mentioned character belongs.
The NIKKE management team acknowledged the similarities and apologized to the artist directly, as Neco then claims that both parties were investigating and discussing future measures over the whole kerfuffle.
Goddess of Victory: NIKKE recently introduced the character of “Scarlet: Black Shadow” as a new playable character to celebrate the new year.
However, enthusiasts were quick to observe that her appearance and design resembles that of FALSLANDER Samurai, an original character created by neco.
The FALSLANDER series, which features characters like Samurai, Lanze Reiter, and Hemet Nethel, is currently being adapted into figma figurines by Good Smile Company.
Given how both designs predominately feature a similar colour pallete, with striking similarities formulating with the inclusion of red stringpiece, with general armor placement, similar hair style and of course the samurai motif.
Honestly, the character design does share some striking similarities, certainly enough to cause concern, though of course plagiarism isn’t anything new in this field however it’s somewhat commendable for the South Korean firm to outright own up to what could easily be an honest mistake or being caught red handed.
Given the provocative nature of character designs when it comes to “anime” styles there’s a solid chance that this wasn’t intentional and that they only created something similar by pure coincidence, it’s quite literally impossible to actually be “original” when it comes to designing enticing anime girls in this day and age.
There’s only so many character designs and tropes you can actually make, had Scarlet: Black Shadow featured a different hairstyle altogether along with a different colour I doubt there would be anyone complaining however given the immense similarities especially with the hair choice and the color of that hair, to me this is an obvious rip-off.
Either way Shift Up management have apologized for the confusion towards the artist as they both look for a resolution which might very well end up in a slight character adjustment, or maybe a fat paycheck might come in the mailbox for Neco.
It’s not just the issue that their hard work has clearly been used as a reference, the issue really falls upon Shift Up printing millions of dollars in microtransactions for gacha rolls for obviously stolen work.
I’m not here to defend corporations in the slightest, bigger enemies and tyrants such as Disney and Nintendo have gone after fans for similar issues over far less, why should an artist remain quiet and refuse to stand up for themselves when their work is blatantly being copied?
I hope that Neco rightfully finds a suitable resolution to the matter at hand, be it that Scarlet’s appearance is altered in-game or perhaps it will be retained and Neco will be given some hush money for his “understanding”, though given the nature of corporations it’ll likely be the former that plays out.
Good thing to note from this whole ordeal is that the words plagiarism and copyright infringement accurately translate into the Korean language, as witnessed with Tower of Fantasy the same can not be said for a translation of those words into Mandarin.
Tower of Fantasy, a Chinese developed open-world gacha game was essentially born into the world as being the perpetrator of plagiarism, with their own promotional video clearly taking notes and resemblances of a small indie developed animated video.
This of course is only the surface of Perfect World’s tomfoolery, with Tower of Fantasy being caught pilfering assets from MiHoYo’s Honkai Impact, their main rival and competitor, and when Tower of Fantasy introduced their own premium currency, they outright stole the design of Fate/Grand Order’s Saint Quartz, but just changed the colour so nobody would notice.
Given that Shift Up is a South Korean outfit and not a Chinese one, it makes sense how they’d treat accusations and the law for that matter a little bit more seriously by giving affected individuals a little bit more respect, at least Shift Up have acknowledged the problem and hopefully will credit and pay Neco what he truly deserves.
