About the recent Touhou takedown drama

A lot of misinformation has been flying around over the past few days about this whole Moriya Shrine situation. I'd like to start by explaining my role in this, then clear up some misconceptions I've seen, and lastly I'd like to put my thoughts about piracy in the doujin scene out there.


--------My side of things

--What I did and why I did it
I put out an open offer for Touhou fangame circles, saying that if they wanted their content removed from the Moriya Shrine, they could reach out to me and I would contact them and ask on their behalf.

My whole thing is that outside of some cases where circles are inactive/missing and I can't get in touch with them, my fangame translations are done together with the circles that created the games. I encourage circles to put their games on more accessible platforms for Western fans as well.

With the recent DMCA by ZUN/Ruw (Ruw being his legal guy from my limited understanding) that hit the mainline games on Moriya Shrine (as well as some other sites, if I'm not mistaken), I figured word would spread to the Japanese community and some of them would learn about the site. As someone in direct contact with various circles, I felt like it was my responsibility to step up and assist any circles who found their games hosted on there. I figured there would be some circles who were aware of their works being pirated, but never did anything because contacting foreigners can be a pain, so I wanted to take this opportunity to give them a chance to have it done for them hassle-free.

I also reached out to two circles -- Desunoya and Chiyuudou -- of my own accord. The head of the former is someone I've spoken with a few times, and we may work together on a project (possibly Amapani) at one point in the future. Chiyuudou is the circle behind Gensou Garden Monogatari (AKA Harvest Yuuka), who I'm working with on the game's English translation. I alerted them both about their games being up on the Moriya Shrine and asked if they'd like me to request for them to be taken down, and they said yes. The reason I reached out to them on my own is because I didn't feel right knowing that their works were being shared on the biggest overseas Touhou piracy site and not telling them.

I contacted a Moriya admin and provided proof that I was acting in place of the circles through screenshots I gave translations for (as well as raw text for them to plug into a translation tool if they doubted my authenticity). They politely agreed and took the games down with absolutely no fuss.

As of present, that's the end of things.


--------Misconceptions I've heard

--You were the one that DMCA'd the mainline games!
This is entirely untrue.

--You snitched to ZUN/Ruw about the Moriya Shrine!
This is also untrue. I've never had any contact with either of them.

--You DMCA'd fangames from Moriya Shrine! That's illegal!
I never DMCA'd anything. I contacted one of the site's admins in private and asked for the games to be removed. No legal action was taken at any point nor will I be taking any. Doing so would be both outside of my field of expertise as well as outside the bounds of my (very limited) authority. I'm aware of the legal ramifications behind sending DMCAs, but that's never something I engaged in from the start.

--You just want these games to be harder to pirate so you can make money from their sales!
This is incorrect. I don't profit from the sales of any of the games I've translated thus far, and if I did, I would be open about it. All of my income from my Touhou fangame translating comes from Patreon/Ko-fi donations. When I first started doing this, I did some fangame translations on a commission basis as well.

--You're doing this in an attempt to suck up to devs to get more translation work to profit!
As stated above, all of the income from my Touhou fangame translating comes from Patreon/Ko-fi donations. As of present, I haven't received any money from any circles. I've also never asked them for any. When contacting circles, I make it clear from the start that I'm not asking for them to pay me for my work, and I explain where my translation income comes from.

--You're going to have all of the fangames on the Moriya Shrine taken down!
I don't have the authority to do that and I wouldn't do it even if I did. I only asked for the games of two circles I was in direct contact and acting as a proxy for to be taken down. Outside of that, it's not my place, nor would the Moriya Shrine be under any obligation to respond to such requests. If I were in contact with more circles, I would have asked for more fangames to be taken down, and if I were in contact with fewer circles, I would have asked for less.
The exception to this would be if prepatched copies of games I've translated were uploaded to the site, in which case that's not only the devs' work being put up but also my own. I would have no place to ask the Moriya Shrine to stop hosting the game altogether, but I would reach out to them and ask that they don't bundle my patch with it.


--------My stance on everything

--Stance on modern mainline games getting removed
I fully stand behind all of the mainline games available digitally on Steam or other platforms being removed. They're easy to purchase there, and thcrap (the English patching tool) is compatible with those versions.

--Stance on older mainline games getting removed
Though ZUN is within his rights here and I'm not certainly not criticizing his decision, I'll definitely concede that ordering the older games (like EoSD) physically from Japan and having them shipped to you can not only be an intimidating process for first-timers, but it can also be rather expensive. For those willing to go the extra mile for this route, I recommend buying from Suruga-ya and using White Rabbit Express for shipping, and buying your games in larger batches to save on shipping. It's not as scary as it sounds.

That being said, I really do hope that the older Windows games get released digitally sometime soon, be it through ZUN having someone help him do any necessary tech work (since he doesn't have the source code), or be it through official remasters (which would be really cool but that's probably getting my hopes too high).

I think it's really silly that even the PC-98 games were asked to be removed, though. Again, ZUN is within his rights to do so, but foreigners (and even natives) definitely can't be expected to buy a PC-98 and the physical games to run on it. I feel like there was either some sort of miscommunication that resulted in them being taken down, or maybe there was a fear that not including them in the DMCA could legally be considered as consenting to them being shared, which could maybe cause rights issues or something (I'm not a lawyer and probably have no idea what I'm talking about though).

--Stance on digitally available fangames getting removed
Games that are available on Steam? Those should absolutely not be shared on piracy sites, regardless of whether their Steam versions are translated or not. Games only available on places like DLsite? I don't think they should be shared either. DLsite isn't terribly difficult for foreigners, and even has an option to turn the site's UI into English. Yes, this will usually still leave game titles and descriptions in Japanese, but asking fans to Google around for what'll likely take less than a minute to find a game's Japanese name so you can find it isn't too much. Heck, you could ask in any Touhou-related Discord server and I'm sure someone would chime in and tell you pretty quickly in most cases.

--Stance on physical-only fangames getting removed
I understand that this is the big sore point for a lot of people. Someone was kind enough to provide me with links with information on piracy stats and an article about Gabe Newell saying he considered it a "service problem." I get the logic behind that and I agree with it on principle, but I still think pirating physical doujin games of active circles is bad for a reason I'd like to explain. If you're pirating physical-only games from a circle that's been inactive for years, nobody will stop you.

I'll admit that my knowledge on publishing and the business side of the gaming world is probably pretty limited, but I assume that non-doujin games created overseas are probably brought over to the US for one of two reasons -- either the game did really well in Japan and they'd like to bring it to a new audience, or other games in the series performed well over here so they intend on bringing the game over because they already have expectations that it'll perform well. I assume developers and publishers probably keep this sort of thing in mind when looking at their sales numbers and are asking themselves "should we bring this to other places?".

The process for doujin games is different. The majority of them are developed by small groups of people for conventions like Reitaisai and Comiket, and translating their games into English just because they sold well at the convention and through consignment services afterwards likely doesn't even cross the mind of many circles. There are exceptions to this, of course -- these days, some circles create games with the purpose of being put on Steam in multiple languages from the very beginning. They're not what I'm talking about here, though (and it should go without saying, but please buy their games, don't pirate them).

A lot of physical-only circles will only see that there's a demand for their games if it's brought to their attention by us directly. My goal with my free translating is to make the process as painless as possible for these circles so more people can play their games.

However, while showing them that my overview of their untranslated game on Twitter got a few hundred likes helps convince them that they should sell their games overseas, seeing that the West is full of rampant piracy on sites like the Moriya Shrine is directly detrimental. It'd be a big shame if a circle decided to not translate their game and sell it digitally because from their point of view, it looks like it'd probably just get shared around on piracy sites anyway. So that's the big reason -- because it gives the West a really bad look that could scare us off from getting games. If what we want is convenience (circles bringing their games to Steam in English), we really ought to behave ourselves a bit better so they see it's actually worth their time.


------A couple other things

--Where can I get the games that were taken down?
You can buy Desunoya's games digitally from their Booth page (I think all of the removed games are up there). As for Chiyuudou, their games are almost entirely physical-only, but I'll be asking them to consider putting them up for sale digitally regardless of whether they're available in English or not. I can't guarantee they'll be interested, nor will I promise this will happen on Steam -- DLsite is probably what they'd go with for their Japanese-only releases, if I had to guess.

And it goes without saying, but please don't harass either circle over any of this -- they're acting within their rights here, and piracy is viewed as far more of a black and white issue in Japan.

Going after other circles I've worked with is also a very low blow. Please don't do that.

--Some of the English patches provided with the games on there are gone now! (like Fantasy Explorer Nitroid)
Sorry -- that isn't something I considered when asking for the games to be removed. I hope that someone in the community has those files and can share them (just the patch, preferably, since you can easily buy Nitroid from Desunoya's Booth page).