Comment by krige
6 hours ago
It's not 2018 anymore, so that's not quite true. By now free models have been there forever, and indies have been using them for as long. I mean, Filian has already been using one over 4 years ago.
Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
> Which caused some problems with merchandising, but that's a different can of worms.
Can you expand on this? Are they not able to sell merch since they don't "own" their design?
How popular are they? Have they considered buying the model from the authors?
It's a complex/murky matter with lots of allegations in every direction that's hard to summarize properly.
The absolute barest bone / neutral summary is that Filian is very popular (3.2 mil subs on yt, 1.3 mil subs on twitch, although she may be retiring currently, or is doing an extensive publicity stunt as her channels and socials are wiped clean). Two years ago, the model's creator announced [0] that Good Smile is making a nendo based off his model for an unnamed vtuber, and that they were not informed beforehand, let alone credited or compensated. They were trying to contact Good Smile and said vtuber to resolve the matter. After a few days Jingo posted an extensive message [1] that the situation was resolved and the parties are cooperating, further noting, among other things, that "free to use in VRchat" does not mean "free to do anything without any credit".
Note that this was not the first time Filian made merch off this model, and it was not stated clearly why Jingo took steps only at that point. Possibly because they never heard about Filian and only realized what's going on since Good Smile is a well known Japanese company.
[0] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809101855655670159
[1] https://x.com/jingo_1016/status/1809811423125729396
that fillian controversy gives me flashbacks.... suprisingly little of that controversy seems to have survived, even though its only been 2 years.
this one is the only thing i could scrounge up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsXOyo1BM6Y - but always take what he says with a barrel of salt, he'S more trying to drum up drama then actually portrait things truthfully