A Nintendo Switch dating sim titled Summer Sweetheart has apparently made use of music from Nihon Falcom games without securing the appropriate licenses.
GoNintendo reports that a user on Twitter have discovered music from Nihon Falcom titles in this dating sim. Here is one of the examples of the music reportedly being used in-game:
THIS IS FROM YS ORIGIN #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/xcyb7v2wKR
— 🍞 Brad 🍞 (@Baust528) October 19, 2019
And here is the same song from the soundtrack hosted on YouTube:
It should also be noted that Summer Sweetheart is published by a company called Fengyun which doesn't appear to have any sort of relationship with Nihon Falcom as far as we can tell. Assuming that the videos showing the usage of this music are genuine and no licensing was secured, this could turn out to be a pretty bad case of copyright infringement.
Unfortunately, it turns out that there may indeed be something to this story after all.
Summer Sweetheart Developer Issues Apology
According to Japanese Nintendo, Summer Sweetheart developer Fengyun has issued an apology over the use of Nihon Falcom's music in their game.
謝罪文
— サマースウィートハート (@fengyunhuyu) October 21, 2019
この度は弊社が『サマースウィートハート』にてfalcom社様の曲を無断で使用してしまい、誠に申し訳ございませんでした。@nihonfalcom @Baust528 pic.twitter.com/1IvgZX8Aw0
Japanese Nintendo states that the reasoning behind the use of this music boils down to a misinterpretation of Nihon Falcom's Free Music Use Declaration. Essentially, this allows people to make use of Nihon Falcom's music for non-commercial purposes — the key word in that statement being "non-commercial".
Summer Sweetheart is still on sale on Nintendo's eShop at the time of writing, including in the U.S. store. What will happen to this game in the future and whether or not Fengyun and Nihon Falcom can successfully resolve this situation remains to be seen.
What do you think of Summer Sweetheart apparently using music from Nihon Falcom's games? How do you think this situation will be resolved? Let us know in the comments below!
