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The story
News from Spanish-language outlets that Cygames issued a formal takedown request — citing copyright infringement — against the distributor of a mod that strips the clothes off characters in the PC version of “Uma Musume Pretty Derby” sparked discussion on 5ch’s hardware/industry (gaming) board. Since there’s long been a culture of quietly tolerating offline mods, thread opinions split over whether this move signals a crackdown on texture mods in general or draws the line specifically at nudity and sexual content. The discussion also turned to how much real teeth a Japanese publisher’s warning actually has against an overseas distributor — a broader question about how international copyright enforcement plays out in practice.
What people said
CYGAMES Goes After an Uma Musume Mod
Cygames has issued a formal copyright infringement request to take down a mod for the PC version of the game 'Uma Musume Pretty Derby' that strips the clothing off the main characters.
Pull this in an always-online mobile game and
of course the company won't stay quiet.
Visual mods don't get reflected on the server, so that's irrelevant.
If a game sells cosmetic skins, think of it as interfering with their business — that's a no-go even offline.
It's on them for releasing it on PC.
This was completely predictable.
It's no threat at all to foreigners outside Japan's legal reach.
Bragging about being lawless, lol.
They only said strip mods are bad — they never said every texture-swap mod is banned.
It must have crossed a line they couldn't tolerate.
If it were an outfit similar to Shadowverse or Priconne, they might've let it slide.
Scary that someone would actually think this way for real.
Peeling a store's giveaway sticker off a 'Bread Festival' entry campaign and taking it is already theft, you know. (a reference to Yamazaki's 'Pan Matsuri' bread-sticker promotion)
Uma Musume has said from the very start that fan works are okay but porn is not.
yet there's no organization telling modders to hold back on their leering with mods.
Strange.
It's just that the market is still niche.
Once stuff like this goes mainstream, the regulations will come down hard.
Usually the defenders come swarming in, but today nobody's showing up at all.
Why, why??????
Maybe it's still before their work hours end?
Also, sometimes that 'swarm' is really just one guy cycling through IDs. (5ch assigns each poster a new ID daily, so switching devices/IPs can fake a crowd)
definitely carries at least some sexual intent,
no question about it.
I wonder how the horse owners feel about that.
Oh, and yeah, you're right about the copyright stuff.
They properly get permission from the horse owners, so they understand that side of it.
That's why some owners refuse.
Though most owners agree, since retired horses cost money to keep.
Guess it goes both ways.
A lot of owners don't approve of using their horse's real name.
Uma Musume was never a 'proper' game to begin with.
What do you mean?
Refusing approval has nothing to do with whether the game is 'proper.'
They just don't like their horse being turned into a girl and consumed by otaku.
That's exactly why they run the service carefully — getting owner permission and making sure not to cross the line.
So your argument is that the criminal isn't at fault?
Depends on the publisher.
Overseas there are publishers that cooperate with modders,
and talented modders sometimes get scouted
and end up working on actual game development.
Same mentality as cheaters.
Yeah, this is it exactly.
Don't expect decent behavior, it's pointless.
The only real fix is not releasing it on PC — if you do, just accept what comes.
Illegal just because they sued?
Not even close.
Whether something's illegal is decided by a court,
not by Cygames or Nintendo.
What this person's saying is correct.
This person can be trusted.
Amazing~
I really admire them~
there's no way it's going away.
That part's fine, but the fact that the publisher can't control it shows such a huge gap in mindset that it's off-putting.
Well, lately even Japan's doujin scene has people who see other people's work as nothing but a cash grab.
Starting with that guy from the Blue Archive shikishi board incident (a signed fan-art board that got resold, sparking backlash).
What's actually transmitted online is just a few kilobytes of position and flag data — the rendering uses whatever's installed on that player's own PC.
Strip mods just swap out the rendering data, so it has nothing to do with what's happening on the other end of the connection.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
What Cygames actually took issue with this time was the “strip mod” that removes clothing from characters in the PC version of Uma Musume — not a blanket ban on all texture modifications. As pointed out in the thread, fan-made derivative works are an area Uma Musume’s operators have officially tolerated, but sexual content has clearly been off-limits from the start. The reality is closer to this being a response to a mod judged to have crossed that line. Uma Musume is also modeled on real racehorses, and turning them into characters is premised on getting permission from each horse’s owner. A modification like a strip mod risks undermining the very basis of that permission — which may be a bigger reason for the operator’s concern than copyright infringement alone. Another point that’s easy to misread is the claim that “a warning to overseas users beyond Japan’s legal reach is meaningless.” Under the Berne Convention, copyright is mutually protected among member countries, but this is a framework in which each country’s legal system recognizes the others’ copyrights — actually enforcing that right still requires filing suit in the courts of the country in question. Having international law in place doesn’t mean it carries force instantly, and opinions in the thread were split on this very point.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Gaming)) thread “[Bad News] Uma Musume Mod Hit With Legal Action Over Copyright Infringement — Guess Texture Edits Really Are Illegal After All.”
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