Wonder if Ben Fritz will write an article now about how unethical IGN's watermarks are?

wow and that ones even more blatant that the last

also to your opening statement
Misery loves company
And company loves more
More loves everybody else
But the hell is all of hers

Not sure if it could be mentioned but do you think IGN would be able to file a lawsuit for the unauthorised use of its Logo?

@sheeeillaaa:

Sorry, "no sure it is HAS been mentioned" **

My lord, this whole Okami-IGN watermark thing is hilarious and disgusting and cringe-worthy and so, so many other things all at once.

I've been saying for years that people need to just stop watermarking screenshots. It's a hideous practice.

Then again, I guess so is hot-linking images. Drains the bandwidth. So people feel a need to advertise whose bandwidth is being drained. Which in turn is kind of a clever strategy.

Man, if only everyone on earth would just be, like, really . . . nice. You know?

@sheeeillaaa: actually you have a point there, the watermark is there for a reason. and i can totally see a site like ign jumping on this sort of thing.

How does this happen exactly? Did IGN actually make the picture? I thought they got it from Capcom.

@sheeeillaaa: no, one thing you do not want to do is piss of capcom, one of the largest companies in the industry. If Capcom blackballs Ign, they lose revenue. They can't afford this like kotaku, since they are more about profit than fanservice. Thats why IGN listened to Sega about the Sonic videos and Kotaku didn't back down at all.

@jambe: I have to assume that when Capcom came to make the Wii cover art they'd lost or misplaced the concept art that they wanted to use, so they had to grab IGN's version.

The sad thing is, IGN probably have their images backed up pre-watermarking, and I'm guessing Capcom never even asked them about that. Just saved the watermarked art and thought they were being clever.

As others pointed out when the box art watermark was discovered, this is the sort of stupid mistake that costs people their job.

I wish someone would come forward to Kotaku and just give us the dirty on why that image was used. Did IGN create the image or did Capcom give them the image and IGN stamp it only to have Capcom use the stamped one? I don't get how crap like this happens.

I don't think IGN would Sue... First off, Brady pays Capcom to use Okami Images. since Capcom originally made the images in question, it doesn't matter what source Brady used to obtain the Images as long as Capcom gives the OK...

Second, this is great (free) advertising for IGN...

IGN got the images from Capcom, watermarks it to advertise their site to hotlinkers.

It is very likely that these whole shenanigans is just a simple cock-up by the boxart artist from Capcom/RAD, who probably thought it was a good idea to use the images that IGN was hosting simply because he or she could not locate a none-watermarked version from Capcom themselves.

@Kazzahdrane:
So basically increadible lazyness and stupidity on someone's part.

@dunetiger : the mekuri master: The images are owned by Capcom and were provided to IGN etc. Even Gamespot is hosting their own watermarked version:

[image.com.com]

@jambe: I think it is less about lazyness and more about stupidity. The stupidity that is the closure of Clover Studios who originally made Okami. The reason they are having such a hard time finding their original works is because the closed and liquidated the studio that made the game in the first place. I read it before Capcom was to the point of recovering old hard drives to retrieve data.

With Clover's closure I bet the lost A LOT of the original concept art and like.

@jambe: My thoughts exactly, just thought I'd put it a bit more succinctly :-)

Let me guess. Some einstein in Capcom assembled a bunch of marketing images for the game, including some watermarked images and has been posting them around internally and to commercial partners.

@sheeeillaaa: lol, that makes less sense than your original :P

They should have just used these high quality scans: [downloads.thespectrum.net]

You know, because the watermark is in a different place, its as if they put it back in. Maybe they felt IGN still deserved kudos for providing the reference screenshot.

What I don't get is that the watermarked IGN image is nowhere near of a sufficient resolution for printing, for neither a dvd nor a book cover. They'd have to extensively retouch/reprocess the image, and as a professional graphician, I can't imagine how anyone can overlook a watermark in this process. At least four different persons didn't do their job thoroughly.

As for the different placement of the watermark: It is in the exact same spot of the background image, just the other elements of the cover have shifted. Bradygames probably received an Illustrator document and blindly reused it.

@zosh: Graphician, I like it. You're hire.

you don't have to be a conspiracy-nut to see how this isn't very accidental at all.

@Lokno: I don't think it's in a different spot. If you compare the pictures the watermark is always seen directly at the roots of that tree in the background. Just the wolf is placed somewhere else.

@zosh: Following on from that, what if they asked IGN for the original, which was larger than one they serve to the internets, and THAT higher-res one still had the watermark? Because I agree, a rescale+clean could not miss the logo (or make it so "crisp").

Bwah hah hah hah hah hah xD

I noticed the watermark on the store display sleeves Toys 'R Us uses as well.

Updated for Wii indeed.

Maybe IGN paid to have some subliminal advertising put in.

Haha! This is great...
I got the game with the IGN cover and I'm keeping it.

I'm not quite sure why everyone seems to think this is because of some kind of unusually singular oversight.

We know that Ready at Dawn / Capcom had to spend a lot of time digging through old clover assets and trying to figure out what they had - and as BeniBluemchen points out above, the watermark is always the same place on the bg plate... it's just Ammy that's moved.

So somewhere in that mess of assets (or not) someone threw together a temp background using an IGN screenshot (or not noticing the watermark) - and that background has been used in a couple of covers. Since most of the attention would be put on the Text / Ammy / Logo elements (and if you see the actual covers the logo is *really* hard to see... I was looking for it on my Wii case and still didn't see it initially) nobody picked up.

@zosh: Not really. The background has been heavily treated from the original screen and is surprisingly low-rez... like I said, I just think they never re-made the background as was someone's original intent. All the other elements are much higher rez which makes the whole thing confusing.

Relax folks, it means we all get nice very, very cool new cover slip-art for the wii box (which is much cooler looking than the commercial packaging)! Win. Win, right?

@fuchikoma:

AFAIK you don't have to return the old art to get one of the cool new alternates... so there's no reason not to put in a request for one!

It almost looks like the wolf/Okami mascot is about to devour the IGN logo anyway.

@thebigsmoke: Yeah, I'm guessing that's what happened as well, although I'm wondering if IGN had watermarked versions of print-size assets, or did the designers at Capcom actually uprez web ready IGN images, completely missing the watermark along the way?

Looks like it says "place price-tag here" to me...

@ban_hammer:
No, the reason IGN can't afford it like Kotaku is that Kotaku can make at least one story out of being blackballed (probably at least a couple, as history has shown). In fact, they might be able to turn the situation around and get Capcom to give up the blackball status, as they've managed to do before. Negative PR is a big deal to corporate decision makers. Especially when it's so obviously true that the threat of lawsuits won't do jack.

@Not-Witzbold:
Remember, though, that part of the reason they closed Clover was that three of the people who made Clover what it was quit to go form their own independant studio. Therefore, Capcom closed Clover in name only. There really was no Clover left.

@Lokno:
More likely they just reframed the foreground on the background for the strategy guide, using artwork supplied by Capcom...which in turn was unknowingly supplied by IGN, which in turn was originally supplied by Clover.

goes that the person whos responsible for this is already fired.. :|

Don't worry, I'm sure alternate-art book jackets will be made available to BOTH of the people who were lame enough to actually buy a strategy guide...

Wow. I can't believe nobody has actually looked at the location of the watermark.....

Its in exactly the same place as the game cover. This is because the same image was used. The difference is that the image of the Wolf and the title are both moved. Which makes sense, because these were just superimposed over the picture at a later time.

how lazy can a cover artist be?

Do I smell subliminal advertising?

@RubyMars: Hey I'd buy the guide just for the artwork.
Course I could just wait three weeks for the official art book to come out...