Fascinating move by an advertising company to use another company's IP without any permission. It's not as if Stardew Valley is a small, unknown game that doesn't have any money behind it lmao...
Advertising on Reddit has gotten aggressive. I’ve noticed way more ads try to link to known subreddits. Miracle grow probably saw a way to try skirt IP by referencing the subreddit and not the game.
Cheap AI images can be semi-automated (fully if you don't care about QC) so this will just get worse.
Concerned ape will have to see about sueing to have Stardew removed from the datasets to avoid this going forward.
I haven't noticed any ads at all; now is a great time to let people know that a combination of ublock origin, old.reddit.com and reddit enhancement suite keeps my experience ad-free on my browser, and for my stock, non-jailbroken android phone, I simply use the ReVanced App patcher to take the official reddit app and remove the ads.
I remember, as a kid, I once heard a radio ad using the music from Super Mario 64's Bob-Omb Battlefield shortly after the game had come out. I think it was for a car dealership or something, but I honestly don't remember. I always wondered about that.
There was a Korean (I think) MMO I played in the 00's where the classes where different sci-fi fighter-jets and tanks and I swear to gosh dang that I heard the combat music from that game on one of those class-action lawsuit type commercials not long after I stopped playing the game
This stuff is super illegal, too. If it was my IP I would be suing for damage to the IP and the IP's public image, as well. This is an easy win in court, at least in Europe. Not sure if the fact that they obliged to C&D changes anything though. Or something like Walmart being too big to fail and having the legal department size to convince you it's not a good idea to go after them.
It's so fun when you realize that if you're rich enough you can actually break the law with no real consequences…
Sadly it's not as 'super illegal' as you might like to think - fighting court cases like this is a massive PITA, especially if they go 'honest mistake, we complied with any requests'.
Even for places that have the resources to bring court action given potentially entirely disparate jurisdictions.
You say that as if advertisements don't blatantly plagiarise all the time?
Since Palworld came out, I've lost count of the amount of blatant Palworld clones I've seen advertised.
Did they thought players of a video game would …. Be actual farmers ? Have a farm or grow crops flowers ? Because seriously this sounds dumb …. But anyway I don’t know, I play rpg but I don’t go on adventures fighting monsters or people
I went on an adventure once. Went into the woods but I couldn't catch any animals. Had to turn back when I saw a bear was guarding a woman. Didn't see any ancient ruins. Went back to playing games.
I garden, I fish (rarely these days), *and* I forage. SDV was right up my alley. I'm actually really excited for chanterelle season, which is getting really close.
Thanks for posting what the ad looks like. I haven't seen an ad on Reddit since... well, ever (RES for PC, RiF for mobile) so whenever anyone talks about them I genuinely have no idea what they're actually seeing.
Joja grow. I hope it's a special fertilizer in a future update. I hope it has the chance to make your soil require twice as much watering with no benefits.
What does this mean. 😭 I’m not trying to be dumb but quality fertilizer makes crops more likely to be gold star. I thought the speed gro varieties only affected growth speed, and since you aren’t using quality fertilizer, you’ll be more likely to get normal quality crops.
Edit: searched the subreddit and found this - so unless anything was changed in 1.6, seems like my thinking was mistaken.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/s/HBwtMZUoyZ
I would actually love if joja mart sold slightly different "branded" counterparts to what you can buy at pierre's... i'd never go for it, but it'd be cool to have around.
No no no no no make it something that could be used on like the mushroom cave or something and gives like a +1% iridium 2% gold 3% silver for a week or something like that and you can get it out of the trash with a high chance
But it's Joja. So it has to be expensive to get. Like a machine that matches the trash recycler except it's joja so it costs like 25k and can turn the trash into joja fertilizer through a proprietary system.
Honestly the Uno reverse play *would* be to make fun of Miracle-Gro by making a Jojo advertising event where they take credit for Pierre or Farmer's work
And as u/GreyGirlTea said, introducing Jojo fertilizer would be great
Probably because it was so blatantly ripped off from Stardew, they figured it must've been an official collab or they would've been forced to take it down already.
But no, the advertisers just have that much audacity
You can also report the advertisements if you see them on your page.
It may not actually do anything, but if enough people actually report it reddit might actually take action.
An *official* SDV collab with reputable gardening brands would go so hard, but something like this without consent is bonkers, given how well-known SDV is within the games-sphere.
It's kind of hard to do that in a case like this one.
A money advantage can be hard to overcome when the facts are ambiguous, or the law doesn't have a lot of precedence, or there's just a lot of work involved in the case. Like if you're infringing on a patent it's rough. But using someone else's logo without their permission? Wal Mart and Miracle Gro would lose quickly and very painfully.
Maybe that could be true for "Stardew Valley community", though, since that raises some interesting questions re: trademark law. I don't know; I'm not a lawyer, I've just been to court a few times.
But it really seems like a stupid thing for Walmart/Miracle Gro to do. Which is probably what's really going on: stupidity. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance, etc.
The update with a new store maybe? a guy in between corperate and country like aldis vs liddels accept he already won. He would know mr qi and do anything for you.
Hey what about a dangerous quarry with 300 levels and a new difficulty, deadly, that gives it 500
I am glad this got picked up by Concerned Ape. I saw the ad and was taken aback by it. On top of the AI, it just didn't seem like companies he would collaborate with. At the time everyone was saying it was official, but I could never find anything about it when researching. I assume they will still be using the AI art though, unless anyone here has seen something indicating the contrary? If so, it is unfortunate, given that the art was similar enough that people may still associate it with Stardew Valley and continue assuming a collaboration.
Yeah, I think CA is pretty picky with who he wants to associate the Stardew name with.
They are indeed still using the art. All I know for sure is that CA is not happy about it at all, but I'm not sure if additional action is being taken.
Just calling it “IP theft” insinuates they stole content or code and are using it for their own gain (unrelated to the original IP). This is just using the logo (keeping references to the original “Stardew valley”) without consent. Two very different cases.
Lawyer here. “IP theft” definitely refers to copyright infringement. Copying code is also copyright infringement in some cases.
Ironically, what you seem to be referring to is “trade secret misappropriation,” which actually isn’t IP theft because trade secrets are usually distinct from intellectual property. Intellectual property broadly covers trademarks, copyright, and patents.
I literally just called it IP theft. Which is exactly what it was, no more, no less. And they correctly took it down when asked.
Idk why you're making this sound like I am making a fuss. I accurately described what happened. Not my fault you don't know what IP is.
I'm a cyber security professional, trust that I know what I'm talking about
> Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect.[1][2] There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others.[3][4][5] The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
This is the future of AI in creative fields. Just tons and tons of IP theft. I can’t believe people in businesses are so excited for this as it’s going to make defending your intellectual property a nightmare. This will make Napster and that whole mess look small by massive margins once companies realize how hard they’re gonna have to fight to keep their intellectual properties safe.
I think accidental theft can happen to anyone generating images about a subject that they lack familiarity with. Machine learning image generators will serve up copyrighted characters, celebrities, and/or straight-up screenshots of games and movies without the user explicitly asking. If you don't recognize what's being generated, there's a chance it could be a part of existing IP (which makes sense, since popular content will represent a larger portion of the training data).
If "AI" companies learn any lesson from this stuff, it will probably be that they should only rip off content that isn't well known.
From the sounds of things I thought it was that they literally used SDV's name and images, but it looks more like they've used the general SNES era artstyle and house design.
Which, ironically, SDV copied 90% from Harvest Moon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldRksFA8_vQ&list=PLMfPU_BxnPBZuQbjhZXQJ4djV0xktfFZY&t=12m50s
- According to other people, they used the SDV logo.
- The visual style of the ads is more in line with SDV vs Harvest Moon.
- I was able to find one ad where they used the exact house the farmer lives in
I feel like this is part of the issue with not showing any of the offending ads. It's gonna be harder for people to see with their own eyes what's going on and that'll probably get worse as the offending companies scrub the campaign.
That's in reference to USING REFERENCE. Not stealing copywritten materials or the art of actual artists to build up an LLM. AI generated content is not art.
False equivalent: you have to get permission to use a sample. Companies that create LLMs do not get permission first - if they did, they wouldn't be getting sued for copyright infringement.
> False equivalent: you have to get permission to use a sample.
You most emphatically do not. Do you really think everyone is writing to The Winstons every time the Amen Break is used?
EDIT: I'll go so far as to say that AI art is now where DJ culture and hip hop were in the late 70s/early 80s. Fragrantly and liberally stealing work from other artists and using it to lay the foundation for entirely new genres.
Incorrect!
You do in fact have to get in contact with the copyright holder in order to sample a song. If you don't get permission you're liable for copyright infringement!
Hope this helps :)
> You do in fact have to get in contact with the copyright holder in order to sample a song. If you don't get permission you're liable for copyright infringement!
That's assuming you're making a commercial work.
Call me crazy but I'm not sure doing an advertisement targeting farming sim gamers that includes blatant copyright theft from what is literally one of the most popular and financially successful farming sims of all time is the best way to attract said gamers to your product...but hey, I'm not the marketing genius here, obviously 🤣
I figured this was the case & even reported one of the ads when I came across it. Imo it’s incredibly shitty and unprofessional for an advertising agency (or whatever they are) to do this kind of thing. I’d also assume it’s illegal. I’m glad that we can clear this up here but I hope the entire ad campaign gets withdrawn.
I guess the reason the company did this with farming games was to attract people to start gardening more, therefore using popular farming games was the marketing strategy. They could’ve asked for permission, but alas some companies don’t.
WHOA, this is so sad but I was definitely wondering! You can tell they didn't know enough about it or they would have instantly realized they would have been compared to the game's literal villain.
I was mildly surprised people thought it was an officially approved post. Although I didn’t realize it originally had the logo in it. I’ve worked with people who like hopping on trends in that way, i’m not shocked they can get away with it.
I get annoyed every time I see these ads. I think one even specifically mentions Stardew Valley by name. I suspected they were not officially partnered. Now that it’s confirmed I won’t be using MG products any further. 🫤
Just saw a new version of the ad, it no longer resembles an AI version of Stardew, instead it is a more realistic (probably still AI) picture of someone gardening.
Interesting, what is the legality of someone using a recording of a video game as promotional content without permission? I feel like it wouldn't be exactly the same as using a song without permission, since you can use the video game to create arbitrary content. Like, I've seen music videos that were made entirely using the Sims games, but I never thought that EA might want to (or be able to) sue the people making those videos. An advertisement seems sketchier, but I'm not sure where the line is drawn.
what in the hell. reminds me of an ad I keep seeing on reddit and instagram for an afk battler that literally is just footage of "terror of hemasaurus" and the game itself has ripped assets. I actually went out of my way to report it in detail with examples, a real person on instagram said they couldnt do anything
Fascinating move by an advertising company to use another company's IP without any permission. It's not as if Stardew Valley is a small, unknown game that doesn't have any money behind it lmao...
Advertising on Reddit has gotten aggressive. I’ve noticed way more ads try to link to known subreddits. Miracle grow probably saw a way to try skirt IP by referencing the subreddit and not the game.
Bunch of idiots, like a person on Reddit needs to buy anything that will cause them to go outside.
yeah it's called /r/indoorgardening for a reason
Also /r/spacebuckets
Omg so right. !
Cheap AI images can be semi-automated (fully if you don't care about QC) so this will just get worse. Concerned ape will have to see about sueing to have Stardew removed from the datasets to avoid this going forward.
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They probably do it all the time. As long as they take down content when they get a C&D, no court is going to rule against them.
Yeah. For some businesses 'legal action' is a cost of doing business, and sometimes it's cheaper to just fend off people who object.
I remember, as a kid, I once heard a radio ad using the music from Super Mario 64's Bob-Omb Battlefield shortly after the game had come out. I think it was for a car dealership or something, but I honestly don't remember. I always wondered about that.
There was a Korean (I think) MMO I played in the 00's where the classes where different sci-fi fighter-jets and tanks and I swear to gosh dang that I heard the combat music from that game on one of those class-action lawsuit type commercials not long after I stopped playing the game
This stuff is super illegal, too. If it was my IP I would be suing for damage to the IP and the IP's public image, as well. This is an easy win in court, at least in Europe. Not sure if the fact that they obliged to C&D changes anything though. Or something like Walmart being too big to fail and having the legal department size to convince you it's not a good idea to go after them. It's so fun when you realize that if you're rich enough you can actually break the law with no real consequences…
Sadly it's not as 'super illegal' as you might like to think - fighting court cases like this is a massive PITA, especially if they go 'honest mistake, we complied with any requests'. Even for places that have the resources to bring court action given potentially entirely disparate jurisdictions.
Literally the most-played game on Steam last month. The most valuable Farming Sim IP there is at the moment, this brand is lucky to not get sued.
They are counting on the fame of Stardew to sell more products, it wouldn't do them any good to use some kind of niche IP.
The game may be indie, but they should hear the words sike when they see the shear size
> shear sneaky, but I see you
?
Oh I thought you were making a pun about garden shears?
I don't see what is shears shear and there Idk maybe i should shear it off
You say that as if advertisements don't blatantly plagiarise all the time? Since Palworld came out, I've lost count of the amount of blatant Palworld clones I've seen advertised.
https://preview.redd.it/oax59r3lfb0d1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b89fa213943122a8debae75cdaeafc20428828a8 Funny timing
looks like an AI rendition of the farmhouse
Did they thought players of a video game would …. Be actual farmers ? Have a farm or grow crops flowers ? Because seriously this sounds dumb …. But anyway I don’t know, I play rpg but I don’t go on adventures fighting monsters or people
Buying a bag of miracle gro and having a garden bed is a bit shy of being a farmer lol the ad isn’t for commercial equipment.
>I don’t go on adventures fighting monsters or people Not with that kind of attitude you don't.
I went on an adventure once. Went into the woods but I couldn't catch any animals. Had to turn back when I saw a bear was guarding a woman. Didn't see any ancient ruins. Went back to playing games.
Ok but the first time I played SDV, the following summer I actually tried having a bit of a vegetable garden so.... It's not the most wild of things?
I garden, I fish (rarely these days), *and* I forage. SDV was right up my alley. I'm actually really excited for chanterelle season, which is getting really close.
My husband and I both play video games and have a large garden, so yes.
It's not that silly tbh. I love sdv and do also garden!
I have a garden and I forage! There's definitely some overlap
I play SDV all winter and keep a decent sized veg/flower garden all summer. Also know plenty of actual farmers that are huge gamers.
I have started a backyard garden since SD…
My rosemary plant has been in my possession dead longer than it has been alive. I need to get rid of that thing
Thanks for posting what the ad looks like. I haven't seen an ad on Reddit since... well, ever (RES for PC, RiF for mobile) so whenever anyone talks about them I genuinely have no idea what they're actually seeing.
And for us Europeans out here
LMAO oh that's great
r/tombstoning
Now I am waiting for the stardew valley corporate copyright update
Joja will try to sue you if you go your own route but don't kick both people out
Sounds like something Joja would do
Joja grow. I hope it's a special fertilizer in a future update. I hope it has the chance to make your soil require twice as much watering with no benefits.
Crops grow faster, but have decreased quality
Occasionally you crop will get replaced with trash or irradiated bars.
Just grow wheat and boom the actual wheat is the least useful part, hay, trash, and radioactive bars are super useful
Oh I like this idea! And still has a small chance to need double watering.like maybe in the middle of the day or something. I think that could be fun!
Is that not already the tradeoff with using the speed growers vs. quality fertilizer?
While speed grow doesn’t increase the crop quality, it certainly doesn’t lower it.
What does this mean. 😭 I’m not trying to be dumb but quality fertilizer makes crops more likely to be gold star. I thought the speed gro varieties only affected growth speed, and since you aren’t using quality fertilizer, you’ll be more likely to get normal quality crops. Edit: searched the subreddit and found this - so unless anything was changed in 1.6, seems like my thinking was mistaken. https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/s/HBwtMZUoyZ
They have the same quality
I would actually love if joja mart sold slightly different "branded" counterparts to what you can buy at pierre's... i'd never go for it, but it'd be cool to have around.
I've been boycotting Joja for so long I don't even remember what the inside of the store looks like.
Depressing.
It's got what plants crave
It has electrolytes!
Brando-lizer?
Now come on man even trash has a way to be beneficial so
You'd make the fertilizer with trash! 😂
No no no no no make it something that could be used on like the mushroom cave or something and gives like a +1% iridium 2% gold 3% silver for a week or something like that and you can get it out of the trash with a high chance
But it's Joja. So it has to be expensive to get. Like a machine that matches the trash recycler except it's joja so it costs like 25k and can turn the trash into joja fertilizer through a proprietary system.
Ah I was thinking something like the joja cola
Provides special growth boosts to patented JojaCorn, but outright withers everything else.
Crops grow faster, but Joja takes 90% of the money when you sell them
Taking something that's not theirs, and claiming credits from it. Ohh I know someone in town that's just like that
And it ain't joja that's for sure
Honestly the Uno reverse play *would* be to make fun of Miracle-Gro by making a Jojo advertising event where they take credit for Pierre or Farmer's work And as u/GreyGirlTea said, introducing Jojo fertilizer would be great
Woah not the twist to this story I was expecting. So many people were sure it was an intentional collab I didn’t question it. Interesting.
Probably because it was so blatantly ripped off from Stardew, they figured it must've been an official collab or they would've been forced to take it down already. But no, the advertisers just have that much audacity
Yeah that's why you've got to defend your trademark!
But they haven’t used anything trademark-able that I’ve seen.
Thank you for getting clarification on this!
You can also report the advertisements if you see them on your page. It may not actually do anything, but if enough people actually report it reddit might actually take action.
An *official* SDV collab with reputable gardening brands would go so hard, but something like this without consent is bonkers, given how well-known SDV is within the games-sphere.
wtf? Like Walmart and Miracle gro don't have a legal department.
They have giant well-funded legal departments that happilybog down other people until they go broke from legal fees.
It's kind of hard to do that in a case like this one. A money advantage can be hard to overcome when the facts are ambiguous, or the law doesn't have a lot of precedence, or there's just a lot of work involved in the case. Like if you're infringing on a patent it's rough. But using someone else's logo without their permission? Wal Mart and Miracle Gro would lose quickly and very painfully. Maybe that could be true for "Stardew Valley community", though, since that raises some interesting questions re: trademark law. I don't know; I'm not a lawyer, I've just been to court a few times. But it really seems like a stupid thing for Walmart/Miracle Gro to do. Which is probably what's really going on: stupidity. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance, etc.
I also assume with the logo gone it’s just enough to scrape by without being truly illegal.
I really wonder. I think they would need to change the house since it's literally the house from the game.
They probably purposely tried to pick on a small time developer who likely WON'T have the legal department to sue them.
Waiting for this fiasco to come in update 1.7 as joja stealing the farmers stuff
The update with a new store maybe? a guy in between corperate and country like aldis vs liddels accept he already won. He would know mr qi and do anything for you. Hey what about a dangerous quarry with 300 levels and a new difficulty, deadly, that gives it 500
that’s good to hear, i definitely didn’t think concernedape would do a partnership with monsanto jr so it’s good to have confirmation
I am glad this got picked up by Concerned Ape. I saw the ad and was taken aback by it. On top of the AI, it just didn't seem like companies he would collaborate with. At the time everyone was saying it was official, but I could never find anything about it when researching. I assume they will still be using the AI art though, unless anyone here has seen something indicating the contrary? If so, it is unfortunate, given that the art was similar enough that people may still associate it with Stardew Valley and continue assuming a collaboration.
Yeah, I think CA is pretty picky with who he wants to associate the Stardew name with. They are indeed still using the art. All I know for sure is that CA is not happy about it at all, but I'm not sure if additional action is being taken.
Shit they even used the Stardew logo? That's some gross IP theft
That’s not IP theft, it’s just copyright infringement.
Copyright is an intellectual property protection mechanism Edit: also this is trademark, not copyright
Just calling it “IP theft” insinuates they stole content or code and are using it for their own gain (unrelated to the original IP). This is just using the logo (keeping references to the original “Stardew valley”) without consent. Two very different cases.
They stole the logo and are using it to advertise their product (miracle-gro), unrelated to Stardew, without consent.
Lawyer here. “IP theft” definitely refers to copyright infringement. Copying code is also copyright infringement in some cases. Ironically, what you seem to be referring to is “trade secret misappropriation,” which actually isn’t IP theft because trade secrets are usually distinct from intellectual property. Intellectual property broadly covers trademarks, copyright, and patents.
I get that I’m wrong but he made it sound like they murdered someone when in fact they brushed shoulders on the sidewalk.
Did I though?
Considering they took it down immediately when confronted by it, no lawsuits or any legal action… yes.
I literally just called it IP theft. Which is exactly what it was, no more, no less. And they correctly took it down when asked. Idk why you're making this sound like I am making a fuss. I accurately described what happened. Not my fault you don't know what IP is.
Congrats. Not my point.
I'm a cyber security professional, trust that I know what I'm talking about > Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect.[1][2] There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others.[3][4][5] The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property
Then you should also know that calling this IP Theft is vastly overblowing what they did.
It's an accurate description. I'm not saying it's worth a lawsuit or anything, I was just describing what happened
Other person is malding, you are a champion of humanity for your patience with them
Sementics my guy
Sementics? lmao
More importantly, if they used the logo, it's trademark infringement.
This is the future of AI in creative fields. Just tons and tons of IP theft. I can’t believe people in businesses are so excited for this as it’s going to make defending your intellectual property a nightmare. This will make Napster and that whole mess look small by massive margins once companies realize how hard they’re gonna have to fight to keep their intellectual properties safe.
Sure, but dont even think this was theft cause of AI. Just some good ol' fashion IP theft.
I think accidental theft can happen to anyone generating images about a subject that they lack familiarity with. Machine learning image generators will serve up copyrighted characters, celebrities, and/or straight-up screenshots of games and movies without the user explicitly asking. If you don't recognize what's being generated, there's a chance it could be a part of existing IP (which makes sense, since popular content will represent a larger portion of the training data). If "AI" companies learn any lesson from this stuff, it will probably be that they should only rip off content that isn't well known.
From the sounds of things I thought it was that they literally used SDV's name and images, but it looks more like they've used the general SNES era artstyle and house design. Which, ironically, SDV copied 90% from Harvest Moon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldRksFA8_vQ&list=PLMfPU_BxnPBZuQbjhZXQJ4djV0xktfFZY&t=12m50s
- According to other people, they used the SDV logo. - The visual style of the ads is more in line with SDV vs Harvest Moon. - I was able to find one ad where they used the exact house the farmer lives in I feel like this is part of the issue with not showing any of the offending ads. It's gonna be harder for people to see with their own eyes what's going on and that'll probably get worse as the offending companies scrub the campaign.
Yeah one post mentioned the SDV logo, though I couldn't see it in the image, so maybe there were multiple images?
That's what I suspect as well.
I mean... AI is built on theft. Use of AI is inherently theft.
"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." -Picasso
That's in reference to USING REFERENCE. Not stealing copywritten materials or the art of actual artists to build up an LLM. AI generated content is not art.
Have you never listened to a song with samples?
lol have a good life making soulless art and hopefully being sued by the real artists that you steal from.
"Soulless art"? You're being too kind to them. AI-generated slop isn't even art.
False equivalent: you have to get permission to use a sample. Companies that create LLMs do not get permission first - if they did, they wouldn't be getting sued for copyright infringement.
> False equivalent: you have to get permission to use a sample. You most emphatically do not. Do you really think everyone is writing to The Winstons every time the Amen Break is used? EDIT: I'll go so far as to say that AI art is now where DJ culture and hip hop were in the late 70s/early 80s. Fragrantly and liberally stealing work from other artists and using it to lay the foundation for entirely new genres.
Incorrect! You do in fact have to get in contact with the copyright holder in order to sample a song. If you don't get permission you're liable for copyright infringement! Hope this helps :)
> You do in fact have to get in contact with the copyright holder in order to sample a song. If you don't get permission you're liable for copyright infringement! That's assuming you're making a commercial work.
[удалено]
It is a slave it doesn't have feelings and it isn't intellgent
I kind of figured that CA was not involved in it at all considering the Ai usage.
Me who doen't know wth is goin on
Uhh so joja made world 8 and took stardew there
Cool
Call me crazy but I'm not sure doing an advertisement targeting farming sim gamers that includes blatant copyright theft from what is literally one of the most popular and financially successful farming sims of all time is the best way to attract said gamers to your product...but hey, I'm not the marketing genius here, obviously 🤣
They still have a stardew valley hashtag on their Twitter
Thanks for letting us know, I'll pass it along!
concernedape should go after any revenue they generated by using his ip
I figured this was the case & even reported one of the ads when I came across it. Imo it’s incredibly shitty and unprofessional for an advertising agency (or whatever they are) to do this kind of thing. I’d also assume it’s illegal. I’m glad that we can clear this up here but I hope the entire ad campaign gets withdrawn.
I guess the reason the company did this with farming games was to attract people to start gardening more, therefore using popular farming games was the marketing strategy. They could’ve asked for permission, but alas some companies don’t.
Does anyone have a screenshot of the ad?
DM'd you a screenshot of the ad. Not sure if sharing it in the replies is against the rules too.
Send me it too please
Posted elsewhere in the the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/s/FF9GsC1Cma
Walmart being the joja of our reality really makes this hit home
The IP theft notwithstanding, the whole stunt is hilarious tone deaf lmao
And I got downvoted to hell a while ago for saying it wasn’t a sponsored ad. Smh
Welp, time to add miracle grow and Walmart to the block party
I don’t understand why it’s not taken down all together. How is that anyway allowed or legal
Law suit law suit law suit law suit LAW SUIT LAW SUIT LAW SUIT SUIT SUIT SUIT SUIT SUIT SUIT SUIT SUUUUUUUUUIT
WHOA, this is so sad but I was definitely wondering! You can tell they didn't know enough about it or they would have instantly realized they would have been compared to the game's literal villain.
Screw miracle gro, I want deluxe speed gro and they don't have it.
Wait that's illegal
That's so sketchy.
a real life joja mart stealing from a smaller company to advertise a product, this is proof life imitates art.
I was mildly surprised people thought it was an officially approved post. Although I didn’t realize it originally had the logo in it. I’ve worked with people who like hopping on trends in that way, i’m not shocked they can get away with it.
I get annoyed every time I see these ads. I think one even specifically mentions Stardew Valley by name. I suspected they were not officially partnered. Now that it’s confirmed I won’t be using MG products any further. 🫤
* "Fertilizer controversy rocks Stardew Valley subreddit."
Honestly, this \*is\* newsworthy.
Just saw a new version of the ad, it no longer resembles an AI version of Stardew, instead it is a more realistic (probably still AI) picture of someone gardening.
I feel like this is going to be an inspiration for a lawyer character in Haunted Chocolatier
Interesting, what is the legality of someone using a recording of a video game as promotional content without permission? I feel like it wouldn't be exactly the same as using a song without permission, since you can use the video game to create arbitrary content. Like, I've seen music videos that were made entirely using the Sims games, but I never thought that EA might want to (or be able to) sue the people making those videos. An advertisement seems sketchier, but I'm not sure where the line is drawn.
I blame Pierre
If it were me I have them slap Stardew Valley in big letters on there and enjoy free advertising
I actually saw this ad on my TV, while watching Hulu. I thought it was legit
Glad to see it all worked out.
I’m really happy to see this post- I posted about it a couple of weeks ago and got downvoted with no answers and thought that nobody gave a shit.
what in the hell. reminds me of an ad I keep seeing on reddit and instagram for an afk battler that literally is just footage of "terror of hemasaurus" and the game itself has ripped assets. I actually went out of my way to report it in detail with examples, a real person on instagram said they couldnt do anything