Kickstarter shuts down indie game project Meifumado over copyright dispute

Meifumado was a goodlooking indie game with detailed 16-bit style pixel art and smooth animation that OldBit pitched on Kickstarter earlier this year. It reminded me of a hit indie game from a few years back, Shank, but with a samurai theme and setting.

Meifumado was a good looking indie game with detailed 16-bit style pixel art and smooth animation that OldBit pitched on Kickstarter earlier this year.

Today Kickstarter took down their project page temporarily pending resolution of a copyright dispute from one of the project’s contributors, who claims they have not been paid for the music they contributed, which was used in the trailer video.

Meifumado [Submitted by private individual]

Date: 2022-08-23T10:56:53.000+01:00

Sender

[Private]

Sent via online form

Recipient

Kickstarter, PBC

58 Kent Street

Brooklyn, NY 11222

USA

Re: Meifumado

Description of copyrighted material: The music in the trailer is created by me , but I havent received any payment and cant reached the creator and devs of the game. I dont know the developers personally and only had briefly contact during the creation of the trailer music.

Several backers are asking for an update, but receive no information, like me. This comes off as a scam.

Under the section “Team” I and my music are mentioned and linked too.

Bc of this situation I am asking to be removed from the text and campaign page and further more ask the kickstarter team to look into the situation.

I am very saddend and disappointed by all of this, esp. for everyone who supported this project. Everyone has been very patient, but I worry a bit that the frustration at some point might be redirected at me, as its seems I am the only “real” and reachable person.

Here is a personal link I gave Marco (german ks support) as proof. This is the trailer track and the soundcloud profile linked to. https://soundcloud.com/more-sound/marco-kickstarter/s-0qrEefYer5I

Thank you for your help and I hope this matter can be resolved. Best regards, Moritz

Description of infringing material: Trailer music as linked here : https://soundcloud.com/more-sound/marco-kickstarter/s-0qrEefYer5I

The use of me as a team member under “Team” and the link to my soundcplud page.

[Submitted by private individual]

Kickstarter

Backers have not heard from OldBit since the project achieved its funding goal — no updates from the project team in months. Meifumado’s twitter account has been silent since April 1 of this year. The project had a page on Steam, which also appears to have been set up and abandoned not long after.

It’s looking more and more like this project was a scam, or fell apart due to poor project management or bad business practices. Kickstarter is not returning funds to backers at this time, and likely will not do so per Kickstarter’s terms of service.

Some indie dev teams are made up of non-professionals, complete amateurs, and skilled kids who can collaborate despite lack of formal business structure, and based on the account given above by Moritz, and its lack of proofreading, it seems like that must have been the case with the Meifumado project.

It remains to be seen how this will resolve.

Update: Meifumado’s kickstarter page is back up, apparently the copyright issue must have been resolved. But there still has been no update from the team since the project hit its goal. There is virtually no chance that the project is still being worked on at this point.

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