During the Tokyo eSports Festa 2025, Koei Tecmo participated in a lecture where they stated that they remove between 2,000 to 3,000 pieces of fan art, annually, that they deem inappropriate.
Specifically addressing doujinshi (self-published works like manga, magazines or other print mediums), Koei Tecmo’s Tomotoshi Nishimura, who’s the general manager of their legal affairs department, discussed how they handle fan creations in relation to their Dead or Alive Intellectual Property (IP).
Nishimura said outright that Koei Tecmo has no issue with users making derivative works based on their intellectual properties, and they will openly support this otaku culture, as they’ve even sponsored events where people sell creations based on their IPs.
However, if artists create derivative works for games that are not out yet, or alter their characters for “adult purposes,” that may be when Koei Tecmo steps in to issue a take down notice.
Nishimura said that his company’s creators view their characters “like daughters,” which is why they’re forced to take action in such cases.
He added that they’ve taken down about 200-300 doujinshi based on the Dead or Alive franchise.
With a property as large as Dead or Alive, spanning 17 games and running for nearly 30 years, 200-300 take downs isn’t a considerably high number, nor even is 2,000 to 3,000 images annually.
As such, it seems like Koei Tecmo gives the community quite a bit of leeway when it comes to producing artwork and other material based on their IPs, only stepping in when they deem things have gone too far.
Given the the Core Values situation that happened at Evo Japan 2019 and the fact that the Dead or Alive series is well known for its sex appeal, it makes sense the Koei Tecmo gives the community similar standards that they have in their games, even if the statement about the characters being their daughters is a bit hard to process.
With Koei Tecmo being quite a bit more active these days regarding the Dead or Alive franchise, it’ll be interesting to see if a 7th game is announced in the future as part of its 30 year anniversary.
From GameWatch via Automaton-Media.
Source: Event Hubs
