Tecmo wins naked Kasumi court case
A Japanese software company is ordered to pay two million yen after a court ruled that its Dead or Alive 2 hack violated Tecmo's copyrights.
The Japanese Supreme Court has upheld a ruling by the Tokyo district court that software company West Side's 'naked Kasumi hack' for the PS2 version of Dead or Alive 2 violates Tecmo's copyrights, according to Japanese news reports. West Side has been ordered to pay two million yen (around €14,500 or £10,000) in damages.
However that probably won't offset the legal costs incurred during the four-year court battle. West Side first released the save editor, which swapped the regular Kasumi model in the PS2 version for a naked one used elsewhere, back in 2000, and included it on a CD-ROM given away with a magazine it published. Tecmo promptly took action.
Originally the developer won the decision in a Tokyo district court in autumn 2002, but now the higher court has ruled on West Side's appeal, and Tecmo finally has the promise of reparations for what it has always viewed as a violation of Kasumi's dignity. The ruling will only affect Japan though, and, as anybody with a Datel Action Replay device can attest, West Side's wasn't the only way of unclothing Ms. Kasumi.
DOA2 wasn't even the only Tecmo game that you could do this in, either. Hacks for Xbox title Dead Or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball that strip all the DOA girls naked have existed more or less since the game was first released. Although, quite frankly, we can't think of too many people who would find something like that terribly arousing in any event. Surely there are better sources of titillation at our fingertips these days than fictional bikini and airbrush-clad piles of polygons? West Side should have stuck to Google image search...