Ok, we need to talk about this

[CountVonNumenor]

I will try to keep it short this time. Besides the obvious "Moriya Shrine is a website for piracy", why else are we so hated in the big Touhou communities? It seems like every time I go somewhere, even mentioning the name of this website is forbidden, and could very much cost you your presence on that platform. Not to say that reception is also pretty...interesting to say the least. I will just leave a few examples below. Even of all of them are from r/touhou, Discord seems to be the same ground. And everything seems to have become worse since the DMCA back in March. Now, people seem to be feeling more free to talk smack about Moriya Shrine, saying that we absolutely deserved this fate for our illegal activities. Some even celebrated the nuking of all these games, because they said this will encourage people to actually buy the games. 

Anyway, time for the examples:

This was from when I started the discussion about TheOVJM there too. Accidentally, I have left a link towards a thread from buskerdog in the text, and the moderators detected it as "promotion or discussing means of piracy". Like seriously WTF. It seems like the forum is just as unwelcomed as anything else from here. 

 

From the same thread, just part of a comments chain. I am not sure what to comment about the games from 6 to 8, about PC-98 in itself (now more than likely lost), and about apparent misconduct on the side of this website's administration. It is up to anyone in here to explain what happened.

 

Now for a bit I have already mentioned back in the over-analysis of the April Fools posts. Those bits of text came in about the same week as the DMCA, so Reddit was already going at it:

Spoiler

Hello, r/Touhou!

Due to the recent events that occurred in the last few weeks, such as the official DMCA notice against the piracy site, the Touhou Wikipedia drama, as well as some other phenomenons we have observed, the moderator team has decided to implement new rules from here on out.

So, we are starting with a brief reminder of the events that took place that week. As everyone can remember, on the 25th of March 2022, the Touhou community got hit by two dramas. We are not foreign from the concept of a drama going on in here, but having two in the span of a few hours (or in my case, waking up in the morning with both news) has been quite different. Even if it was the 1st of April, let's see what the administration had to say and what measures did they allegedly wanted to apply...

 

Spoiler

ZUN and his legal team have made clear their stance regarding piracy. Any posts and comments that violate Rule 3 will remain in the public’s view. You are entitled to act morally superior and gatekeep against any pirates, as long as your reply does not violate Reddiquette. However, any offenders will receive a ban from r/Touhou, as well as a message notifying you that you will need to hire a lawyer to dispute the DMCA claim from ZUN and his legal team. To appeal the ban, please show concrete evidence that your copies of Touhou games are from legitimate sites together with your purchasing receipt.

Again, a reference to the anti-piracy policy promoted by the big communities. Places like Moriya Shrine are seen as anathema, and any mention of them will bring you a ban from that server. I mean it is fair; this is a place of piracy, and at least in the rest of the world (Romania seems to be an exception), piracy is seen as a big crime. And indeed, we do have the games on Steam, at least from Touhou 9 to 18, so you would not need to pirate them (plus, the paid money would go to support ZUN). I think here in Romania we are kind of a weird place. Not only we (as well as most of Eastern Europe and Balkans) are not just a safe heaven for pirates and hackers, but also online piracy is seen as quite the norm. Even businesses, especially the smaller ones, pirate their software, while televisions wake up in the middle of their transmission on screens with messages like "Activate Windows". usually, the act seems to be justified here through the "we are too poor to afford a license or actually buy the thing", which seems to be come more and more true nowadays.

 

Spoiler

Team Shanghai Alice has already taken down the shrine, and we will expect further actions targetting sites that pirate official Touhou doujins. As such, Rule 3 [no discussion about piracy of official or fan-made content - editor's note] will now be extended to cover official printed works. ^Any mentions of “Mangadex”, “Free PDF download from the Wiki” or others will be treated the same as mentions of “Moriya Shrine” or other pirating statements.

Yet another throw at Moriya Shrine. Many must have celebrated that day "the fall of the evil pirating website", and "the victory of the forces of good led by our Almighty Lord ZUN and his legal team".

 

Spoiler

Good News r/touhou (This is a Meta post for clear news)

 

Touhou 6-9 are actually releasing on Steam so get your cash upon Western Touhou because you want achievements for beating the Phantasm Stage in PCB (Really Hard 2nd Extra Stage). Yukari will like that the pirating websites got fucked by ZUN and his legal team, and to you poor people out there. Get a fucking job or use your mom's credit card (please don't because it's stupid, and this comment is a joke). Btw, let's wait for audiobooks of the Touhou manga to get released on ZUN's website for people to buy. Western Touhou will clearly like this because shipping prices fucking suck ass, and you don't have to pirate (i.e get fucked by ZUN's legal team) to not worry about importing prices. AmiAmi is now a scam because Japanese shipping prices go over the price for Touhou games for the west. ZUN actually gets the full price for his work so it's a great thing for him.
 

And to you crying about that. Get fantasy sealed bozo. Pirating is a fucking crime.

And now, this for the ending.

 

Have you observed the problem of poor reputation this website has online, or been witness to the basing of MS in any online media? This is the place to talk about it. 

[Isaac]

I'm going to be honest, I don't see the issue pirating the older games. I also don't agree with the people who think that pirating means we will never invest money into the series, cause that's not true at all. Before downloading the games from here, I bought the ones I could on steam. I just prefer having the nice patches and improvements to gameplay. I've even bought the physical copies of some once I finished them.

Anyways, pirating lets so many people have access to the series. Those people might grow to love touhou as much as we do, then eventually spend their money on stuff whether it's official or not. This is always a good thing in my opinion.

[buskerdog]

2 hours ago, Isaac said:

Before downloading the games from here, I bought the ones I could on steam.

Sorry I don't remember how long you said you've been in the community Isaac, so I don't know the context of what games those were at the time. But in my context, Hidden Star in Four Seasons was the only game available on steam when I started, and inverse to what you did, I downloaded first since I wanted to play in chronological order. You're absolutely right in saying it's a silly assumption that pirating = never paying for Touhou, once I reached the point in the series where games were available on steam (Touhou 15 had been added at that point), I bought the games officially instead, and continue to do so for every new release (Gouyoku Ibun actually being an exception, but I won't get into that). Even if I haven't payed for every game, I want to buy the new releases as my way of giving back to this series I love, and I try to give back in other ways too, such as through my fangames and even these very forum posts.

Regardless of the availability of games, it's also true that the service of having the games pre-patched is just better and more accessible. I know how to patch the games myself, but I wouldn't have if I got into Touhou through an official purchase first and would have felt quite intimidated by the fact that I need to spend money on a game in Japanese that I might not even be able to play if I can't get the patch working. Having the download versions first made me much more comfortable with the idea of patching - unrelated to the thread topic, but big shoutouts to everyone working on the THCrap project, their creation is truly revolutionary and they're doing an unspeakably incredible service to everyone in the community.

Quote

"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem" - Gabe Newell

Didn't we already have a thread discussing the implications of Piracy?  I feel like we've already drawn the conversation away from what Von intended. On the topic of why people openly dislike Moriya, that's not a question I have answers to, but Moriya Shrine has existed a long time, and has its own community associated with it - users who remain from that community having migrated to discord by now. I think for some the bad blood goes back further than the DMCA, which is still a very recent event in the site's history. My knowledge of matters goes no further than this.

Since the DMCA, piracy has clearly become a relevant issue among some Touhou fans. Instead of censoring it, perhaps now more than ever is the time we should be talking about it?

I think it's good that the Touhou fandom no longer has to rely on piracy to the same extent as they used to, and I'm especially glad of this for new fans. However, that reliance is far from gone, there is plenty of official content that is quite simply inaccessible for the west without piracy. To close off this post, I have a video to share. Touhou would absolutely not be what it is today without piracy, and I think this video shares a good message about how supporting your favourite creator has more meanings than simply filling their coffers.

Spoiler

 

 

[Tenkko]

It's ironic being that Touhou's presence in the west is entirely thanks to pirates. Yeah times change, I'm glad things are becoming more accessible yadda yadda I've said this before. When I got to playing the games there was absolutely no way for me to get them legally, and also I was like 11. Now I'm buying them as I can and I'm glad I can do that, and if I could get them physically I would love that as well.

The one thing that rubbed me wrong was the whole, unironic holier-than-thou attitude Twitter had about the events. Some people are more involved and sure they gotta save face whatever, but the randos coming out of the woodwork what's up with that.

I think the main issue people had with moriya was that, trying to find a loophole to keep the dls up despite the DMCA was seen as a dick move. And "why did they send an email telling them of the site". But aside from that I think this place has always been spoken of in hush tones, that's just how these things are. I do wonder tho if the "slander over something that happened twenty years ago" refers to spaztron's stuff, because he did that himself I just shared it here lol (and he was rightfully pissed).

9 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

Hello, r/Touhou!

Due to the recent events that occurred in the last few weeks, such as the official DMCA notice against the piracy site, the Touhou Wikipedia drama, as well as some other phenomenons we have observed, the moderator team has decided to implement new rules from here on out.

Afaik official-unofficial subreddits are always fervently anti-piracy it's not just Touhou. But Von, that's a joke post that spells "deez nuts".

Edited July 8, 2022 by Tenkko

[Darksymphony777]

7 minutes ago, Tenkko said:

The one thing that rubbed me wrong was the whole, unironic holier-than-thou attitude Twitter had about the events

So Twitter being Twitter essentially 

[CountVonNumenor]

5 hours ago, Tenkko said:

But Von, that's a joke post that spells "deez nuts".

Oh Tenkko, joke post or not, you still get your thread removed the the moderators detect even a single link connected to this website, even for just the forum itself. And I think we'd still get banned until this website completely gave up on hosting game files and we were just a forum. 

But yeah, by being an April 1st joke post, they really felt they could go as wild as they wanted with the joke and what they say to who. 

 

[Tenkko]

Well yeah their rules say no piracy or linking to piracy sites, which MS is, doesn't matter which section of the site you refer to. Could be any other site too and they would give the same treatment. This is just probably the best known place.

Nowadays most communities don't want to be associated with piracy, it ain't a good look let's be real. I say nowadays because there's old posts in the subreddit linking to MS and other such things. As for "do members of those communities actually adhere to that belief" uhh, some do probably. I'm willing to bet most just look the other way in other contexts.

3 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

But yeah, by being an April 1st joke post, they really felt they could go as wild as they wanted with the joke and what they say to who.

Looks more to me like they're taking the piss out of people that act like that. Or just trying to lighten things up. Or both, no need to take everything at face value.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Tenkko

[SasaMisa]

17 hours ago, Darksymphony777 said:

So Twitter being Twitter essentially 

Once again, I'm in total agreement with the man and reiterate that this is precisely why I stay off social media. It's not just the modern playforms either because I was around when Usernet was still a thing and I quickly learnt to stay away from that as well. (-_-)

The video buskerdog cites couldn't be more pertinent either since in my case, no end of media would ever have come to my attention to buy in the first place if it hadn't been for piracy. Also, I think ZUN has probably made more than enough out of me from all the Touhou merchandise I've bought, therefore really he should be the one sending me a personal note of thanks. (^w^)

Edited July 8, 2022 by SasaMisa
Word substitution.

[AMT]

2 hours ago, SasaMisa said:

Once again, I'm in total agreement with the man and reiterate that this is precisely why I stay off social media. It's not just the modern playforms either because I was around when Usernet was still a thing and I quickly learnt to stay away from that as well. (-_-)

The video buskerdog cites couldn't be more pertinent either since in my case, no end of media would ever have come to my attention to buy in the first place if it hadn't been for piracy. Also, I think ZUN has probably made more than enough out of me from all the Touhou merchandise I've bought, therefore really he should be the one sending me a personal note of thanks. (^w^)

ZUN isn't making money from fan merchandise.

[SasaMisa]

12 hours ago, AMT said:

ZUN isn't making money from fan merchandise.

You might have a point with the more personalised items, such as my handmade Cirno clock or my hand-drawn framed portrait of Suika, for example. However, telling me ZUN makes no money from Nendoroids, Figmas, Fumos, etc., not to mention all the stuff Lost Word is generating, you'll forgive me if I find that hard to believe. I mean, nigh on everything I have carries his circle name 上海アリス幻樂団 for Christ's sake, meaning royalties are undoubtedly being paid. (^_~)

Edited July 9, 2022 by SasaMisa
Removing some text.

[CountVonNumenor]

1 hour ago, SasaMisa said:

You might have a point with the more personalised items, such as my handmade Cirno clock or my hand-drawn framed portrait of Suika, for example. However, telling me ZUN makes no money from Nendoroids, Figmas, Fumos, etc., not to mention all the stuff Lost Word is generating, you'll forgive me if I find that hard to believe. I mean, nigh on everything I have carries his circle name 上海アリス幻樂団 for Christ's sake, meaning royalties are undoubtedly being paid. (^_~)

I mean if there's something he's making money out of, it has to be anything he officially licensed. One of the impressive things about Touhou is how much creative liberty and the possibility to make money out of someone else's IP. 

But I think we are now drifting a little too much from the original question, that of why the bad reputation and (petty) hate Morita Shrine gets online. 

[AMT]

41 minutes ago, CountVonNumenor said:

I mean if there's something he's making money out of, it has to be anything he officially licensed. One of the impressive things about Touhou is how much creative liberty and the possibility to make money out of someone else's IP. 

But I think we are now drifting a little too much from the original question, that of why the bad reputation and (petty) hate Morita Shrine gets online. 

It just is as you mentioned, because this is a piracy site, and I can understand their sentiment as unlike most piracy sites, we aren't stealing from some million dollar megacorp, but from one dude. I would actually have zero issues with all of these decisions if there was a way to get 6-8. And I also understand why ZUN took down those, it would be stupid to enforce your copyright for one thing but not for the other. 9 was brought to Steam recently so I hope that the rest will be too.

Edited July 9, 2022 by AMT

[_.Mevs]

So... That's how Moryia is know out there?

It makes me sad tbh, I really love this forum, not just because thanks to it I managed to play the touhou games (in Brazil the prices are so abusive when it comes to Touhou) but also because of all the fun I have here and the people I found and talked with

It makes me sad to see people cursing at the website like if we were a bunch of pigs doing some kind of online crimes, it just sound like Moryia is a place for people without good intentions, when it isn't like that...

I don't see a problem in pirating Touhou old games, like, I wouldn't pay a expensive amount for a 2002 bullet-hell game that wasn't in the market for years, even loving Touhou, i wouldn't do that

I'd love to buy some of the games but, the price of 1 touhou game here is literally the same price of a manga or a book like literally the communist manifesto, and some like Luna Nights has the price of 2 mangas, it's so abusive in some places like Brazil...

It look like they're the white knights talking bad of Moryia and we are the villains of the story, even if we just wanna play Touhou and talk about stuff

Honestly, I have disgust of people that treat others like trash just because of what they use, this forum is amazing! Some people without condition of getting Touhou downloading it online won't break all the Touhou series, there's lots of fans that still pay for it, and I'd also do if i could!

I think they should look a little bit more out of their shells, Moryia, at least for me, isn't a piracy evil site, but yes a normal forum to talk, but with something more, here you find the games

Btw, sometimes piracy is just more benefit to the team behind touhou, thanks to it more people are getting into the series and a lot of times even getting the original games, for me it just sound like "yes, I'll defend the millionaire group behind this game that doesn't even know about my existence at any cost"

Sorry if I said anything wrong btw! 

Please correct me if so!

[sodaodaoda]

What da hell, I never interacted on this thread... Weird

I hate how this site is just associated with piracy, I mean, yeah, it is a piracy site most of the time, but I wish people would look to the forum side as well. But also I don't really see a problem with pirating games that aren't on Steam? r/Touhou has and still is smoking something, I don't like them at all.

Anyways, ever since I heard of this site (2018), I have been using it (it wasn't until 2020 until I made an account, and 2022 until I started actually being active here), and this year I actually bought a Touhou game, after first pirating it here and deciding I like it (I bought 18.5).
And ofc, I'd rather pirate these games than pay, since I am still just a kid, and I don't have a job, but I do plan on buying Touhou games in the future, because I do actually want to support Zun, and I love Touhou. And also, I'd fucking sell my kidneys for copies of 6 to 9.5.

Even now, after I have some money because of commissions, I'd rather save and buy games when they're on sale, so there's that as well, I can literally count on my hands how many games I've bought this year, and in general.

[Eulogous]

Ease of access is important for people to get into the series, so the dismissal of MS and the parroted "just buy them on Steam" kind of ticks me off a little.

Ah yes, telling a would-be fan to buy a game that isn't in their native language, having them download and patch with an external tool, just to play a game that might not even appeal to them in the end. Great advice. Of course, they'd probably be dismissed as not being dedicated enough, but for anyone trying to get into the games proper, any of these steps would reasonably be a "quit moment". Personally, I use DLSite to buy what games are available on there, and also, when I got into the series there sure weren't as many avenues to not be one of those evil pirates they bitch ad nauseum about. 

The Touhou communities I've been in on Reddit and Discord are already cesspools where you can't step out of line or say anything that goes against the grain, and the aversion to what's considered "piracy" extends beyond just mentioning Moriya Shrine for official content. Sometimes, if you link fan doujins, especially if they are translated and aren't from wherever the author intends you to read from, it likely will be removed to combat piracy (this happens too with doujins that are free by the way). Granted, I've observed this only from communities I've been a part of.

Funny how those who claim to be so against gatekeeping in their fandom gatekeep the methods to become fans in the first place.

[AlexandruUnu]

During my lurking days in the Touhou subreddits, I noticed that people in the community have a really strong grudge against piracy. I can see why they would have this point of view. I mean, piracy isn't considered morally correct, especially if we are talking about games made by an indie team (even if there is only one guy in said team)

But without piracy, there would be no way for Touhou to get played in the west during the late 2000's and early 2010's and for people to discover this franchise (correct me if I'm wrong). Even if most Touhou games are now on Steam, you still have to pirate games like EoSD (and PC-98 games, but that's a whole other story). Eitherway, it's way more convenient to get that game here pre-patched than to get it from some guy on Ebay or some other shady website. I hope I can buy the games once I have a stable income.

People always tend to see MS as "that evil website filled with evil people who dare to pirate Touhou games". At first, during 2019-2021, I only recognised this website as nothing more than a piracy site (well, I was one of those so-called "evil pirates" back then, so I didn't actually antagonise this website).

But something changed in 2022. That was the period of time when I tried to actually interact with fellow Touhou fans, And so I started lurking in communities. The ones I spent the most lurking in were the Touhou subreddits which... yeah, I don't like them at all. Then I stumbled upon Moriya Shrine's forums on accident, and I think I have finally found a place where I can talk to people in peace (this being my very first post in here).

It's weird that a website notorious for piracy is way more civilised and friendly than the communities who trash talk about it.

[_.Mevs]

Quote

But something changed in 2022. That was the period of time when I tried to actually interact with fellow Touhou fans, And so I started lurking in communities.

Tbh, i have to say, the same happened to me

Touhou isn't popular here, i only have 2 friends to talk about it, and since i know english, would be good for me to look for places to talk and learn more about Touhou, since even till now, i'm not totally into Touhou, since is a big universe hard to have a quickstart

But for my luck, MS was my first contact with Touhou aside the comedy and fumo videos, and it helped me download and enjoy the games

Like, i'm literally an example of someone that got into Touhou thanks to MS, and the forum has a amazing community that even helped me to distract from some bad stuff and even helped me in some cases

Quote

People always tend to see MS as "that evil website filled with evil people who dare to pirate Touhou games".

I found out about that thanks to this post, for me i found MS as a normal Touhou forum, but now i notice how there's communities that just hate the website trying to be the SJW white warrior ready to protect the Touhou games and treat what they consider bad like trash

As i said before, Touhou has so abusive prices in countries like Brazil, and even being amazing games, the price is way too high for us, like, there's games (like the old windows ones, such as EoSD) that you can't even buy here, and detail, Touhou doesn't appear in Steam store for us, what can we do?

Quote

The ones I spent the most lurking in were the Touhou subreddits which... yeah, I don't like them at all. Then I stumbled upon Moriya Shrine's forums on accident, and I think I have finally found a place where I can talk to people in peace (this being my very first post in here).

It's weird that a website notorious for piracy is way more civilised and friendly than the communities who trash talk about it.

Honestly, i never liked subreddits, i only use them when i need to solve some kind of problem

Touhou was the first universe to make me interested and i'm glad that this forum was my first real contact with the community, everyone is so nice to me since the first day i posted something, it's amazing how the ones that judge theirselves as the right ones of a whole sh1t are always the most egocentric and only makes some people give up to get into them, and the ones that are judged by other people as the wrong and evil are literally the most peaceful and nice ones

Those subreddits make me think... Is it really only the NSFW that make Touhou community get hate? Because looking at how they act, i have no doubt that i'd also did give up about Touhou if they were my first contact with the game

[Nekofire]

For some reason I feel like the Touhou Reddit community is filled with the Touhou/anime fans I hate : worshiping their favorite stuff as if it was real, totally mean, hysterical… and other qualities that I’m too tired to name one by one

They are hypocrites because I’m 100% sure that they already downloaded some Touhou official or fan games in this website or another

They are kinda claiming that we are destroying ZUN’s work by downloading it for free, but, even if it’s an hard thing to admit, this is what allowed the Touhou community to grow bigger, the first time that I’ve seen some Touhou gameplay on YTB, I was thinking that this game is crap and that I would never buy it. I only changed my opinion on Touhou games when I had find a link to download it and play it for free (I’ve only bought the one I liked actually 🫤)

By the way they should look at themselves because they are the only ones who are destroying Touhou with their NSFW disgusting stuff, over sexualisation of Touhou characters, and not to mention their attitude. Anyway, the banner of r/touhou embodies what they have done to Touhou girls : flanderised and cringe characters (pls look at what they have done tonCirno and Sanae).

I’m sure that I’ve made some mistakes in my comment again but I’m reaaaalllly tired right now

[CountVonNumenor]

28 minutes ago, Nekofire said:

By the way they should look at themselves because they are the only ones who are destroying Touhou with their NSFW disgusting stuff, over sexualisation of Touhou characters, and not to mention their attitude. Anyway, the banner of r/touhou embodies what they have done to Touhou girls : flanderised and cringe characters (pls look at what they have done tonCirno and Sanae).

Alright. Up until this point, your analysis was quite good. However, with this paragraph, I am concerned it may not be anything more but a little bit of power-trip. And this is why I think so:

1) while yes, r/touhou still has stuff that goes under the NSFW spolier, most of it is not pornography; actually, quite a lot of the content is 2hus in very tight clothes, swimwear and other little clothing that someone prude would put under complete censorship. Indeed, there are also cases when proper NSFW happens or is in very poor taste, this thread under "Found Fanart" included, or the implications behind all the Fusu art from last year (especially if you are familiar with the art of Fusu and what he has been up to for the past year), but in theory Rule 12 is made to keep everything in check:

Quote

12. NSFW rule: Do not post outright porn/hentai, and lolis are NOT ALLOWED to be sexually suggestive!
Admins have no patience for the "But she's 495 years old!" excuse, so don't even try. Porn/hentai should go to /r/Touhou_NSFW. NSFW content (when allowed) should be tagged/labelled. Allowed NSFW content:

• Anything that can be shown on daytime US TV (e.g. swimsuits).
• Nudity/mild sexualization for art or comedy.
• If your source contains porn/hentai or questionable lolis, just name the artist, the title (if applicable), and album ID (if applicable). DO NOT LINK!

But if you want straight up porn/hentai, r/touhou_NSFW exists as a subsidiary of r/Touhou for that kind of content (already mentioned). I have gone once there, and it is more about the content being rather lame than anything. 

2) I see nothing wrong with the banner used by r/touhou. It has been up since February 2021, and the art itself is not bad at all. Besides Sanae having larger breasts, I see nothing wrong. That is not a problem that is only connected to r/touhou, but to the entire community and especially the fan artists. By that extension, we would end up judging the entire community and all the artists who depict the 2hus with large breasts just because they are a flanderization. As for tanned Cirno, that is just how she canonically appeared in Touhou 16. She appeared as such in a canon, mainline game, so I see nothing wrong about that depiction. Again, if we ar to blame someone, we may better just go directly to ZUN for having designed her that way (to be frank, having Cirno represent summer was quite random; just switching her with Marisa would have worked better, especially since the whole gimmick of Cirno is related to winter and ice). 

I hope this has not been too offensive on my side, and I am ready to further answer id there is any problem with my counter-argument. 

 

12 hours ago, AlexandruUnu said:

During my lurking days in the Touhou subreddits, I noticed that people in the community have a really strong grudge against piracy. I can see why they would have this point of view. I mean, piracy isn't considered morally correct, especially if we are talking about games made by an indie team (even if there is only one guy in said team)

But without piracy, there would be no way for Touhou to get played in the west during the late 2000's and early 2010's and for people to discover this franchise (correct me if I'm wrong). Even if most Touhou games are now on Steam, you still have to pirate games like EoSD (and PC-98 games, but that's a whole other story). Eitherway, it's way more convenient to get that game here pre-patched than to get it from some guy on Ebay or some other shady website. I hope I can buy the games once I have a stable income.

People always tend to see MS as "that evil website filled with evil people who dare to pirate Touhou games". At first, during 2019-2021, I only recognised this website as nothing more than a piracy site (well, I was one of those so-called "evil pirates" back then, so I didn't actually antagonise this website).

But something changed in 2022. That was the period of time when I tried to actually interact with fellow Touhou fans, And so I started lurking in communities. The ones I spent the most lurking in were the Touhou subreddits which... yeah, I don't like them at all. Then I stumbled upon Moriya Shrine's forums on accident, and I think I have finally found a place where I can talk to people in peace (this being my very first post in here).

It's weird that a website notorious for piracy is way more civilised and friendly than the communities who trash talk about it.

Welcome to the Moriya Shrine! Hope you will enjoy your time here, there are plenty of people to hang out with, especially for a forum (in theory a dying species in terms of online communication forms and communities). If you have any question, we are always here to answer. 

Also judging by your name, does it happen for you to be Romanian? If so, all I would like to say is Bine ai venit! Mă bucur să descopăr cp mai sunt și alți români interesați de Touhou, am crezut că suntem specie rară pe aici. Dacă mai sunt și alți români interesați de serie, sunt invitați să ni se alăture la Altarul Moriya.  

Many people tend to only think MS is just a platform for illegally downloading Touhou games. For quite a while (I first found this place in December 2020) I thought the same, but in the spring of 2022, I started looking for other communities to spend my time in and talk about Touhou. Initially, I considered joining Maidens of the Kaleidoscope, but I saw that place was devoid of any activity. Then, at a second look through Moriya Shrine, I found out this place was still alive. Therefore, at the beginning of March, I made my account, and so started my adventure in here. 

 

As for the PC-98 part, there is something very fun, yet outraging at the same time. Oh, you wanted to play those games for an abandonware software, are no longer produced and officially sold, and the author all but denies the very existence of these first 5 games? Too bad, we are going to DMCA what is basically abandonware by now. But for the actual context. Together with the big nuke of all official Touhou games and materials here back on the 25th March 2022, one more platform was affected by it.

(I would also like to thank YouTube for having nuked my comment in which I was talking about the taking down of the platform for PC-98 games, therefore making them close to impossible for us to play; basically, since Asprey himself may not be aware of it, his video description is still linking towards a platform that no longer works; more on that later; the very same comment seems to stil exist on a community post from Suwawako, quite ironically)

This very platform was even mentioned, almost 1 year ago, in AspreyFM's presentation of the PC-98 games as the best way to play them on modern computers. They were emulated by one Spaztron64 on GitHub, yet ZUN went after them at the same time as the other materials. Instead on presenting it myself, I will let Spaztron use his own words about what happened (it even was featured here at the Shrine in a thread):

 

Touhou PC-98: The Ultimate Collection

created by spaztron64, 2021

PC-98 Touhou emulation, now for the masses! Setup has been drastically streamlined, bringing it down to 3 simple steps:
1. Download a package based on your emulator preferences
2. Extract
3. Launch and pla-- Uh no wait hold on... oh yeah I got DMCA'd.


So yeah, I recently received this oh so lovely e-mail from GitHub:

This unfortunately means that the actual game data will need to be removed from this repo.
You can still get the preconfigured emulators here (DOSBox-X) and here (np21).
You'll need to... look elsewhere for touhou.hdi (It's circling around, you'll find it).

Now that we got that out of the way, let's address this situation properly.

 

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ZUN, copyright infringment, and credit theft

One thing about the PC-98 Touhou games that isn't too well known is their...legally questionable nature.
Considering that Ruw (and by extension ZUN) is willing to fight against preservation efforts of a set of long abandoned and discontinued games for a discontinued computer platform with no re-release in sight, there's no better time to bring the legality of these games' existence to the public spotlight.

First, let's go over the most egregious and well documented case: ZUN stealing credit for PoDD's graphics engine.
There's a reason why the game looks noticeably lower res than the rest: It runs in 200-line mode, the only mode that SPRITE16 supports.
SPRITE16 is a software graphics engine written in 1996 by PromisenceSoft, which was used in their sample game Stormy Space.
So far the only other known game to use it is PoDD, but this is something that wasn't known for nearly 20 years because ZUN obscured this information. Don't believe me? See for yourself:



This is the original program.



And this is ZUN's distribution of it in PoDD.

Looks very suspicious, doesn't it? What's with the random whitespace gaps? Well, thanks to m1yur1's research back in 2018, we can see what's really going on:



Why of course, it's a quick hex editing job! Very classy, ZUN.

And that's not all when it comes to PoDD! Let's examine the license terms of SPRITE16 that are included in Stormy Space, which are in SPRITE16.DOC:

_/著作権など 当スプライトドライバおよび付属サンプルゲーム「ＳtormyＳpace」の 著作権は「ＰromisenceＳoft」にあります。 他人への譲渡、コピーは自由ですが、他ネットへの転載は事後でもよろしい ので御報告お願いします。

DeepL traslation is as follows:

_/Copyrights, etc. This sprite driver and the included sample game "StormySpace PromisenceSoft" is the copyright holder. You are free to transfer or copy it to others, but you are not free to reproduce it on other websites Please report to us.

This confirms that PromisenceSoft is in fact the true copyright holder, but we also have to examine that second sentence: "No redistribution on other websites".
ZUN is guilty of this too, because the PoDD demo on Aotaka's website contains SPRITE16 in the download.

ADDENDUM 2022-04-13: The DeepL translation is kinda screwed thanks to the text wrapping. According to several people from the community, it actually says something in the likes of this:
"PromiscenceSoft have the copyright of this sprite engine and the game Stormy Space. You are free to give it to others/copy it, but we would be grateful if you told us that you re-upload it somewhere else even if you tell us afterwards.”

This means that we can only guess if ZUN contacted PromisenceSoft regarding distrbution or not. If he has, it actually makes this situation worse.
Why? Because it would mean that he asked them for permission, received it, proceeded to steal copyright, and distributed the altered program.
Incredibly scummy if that's the case, and still results in violation of the first clause.

The other games are very much suspicious regarding their TSRs too:







We can see the exact same pattern of huge whitespace gaps like in PoDD's ZUNSP.COM, though unfortunately there's no solid evidence of tampering yet
since we have no other binaries to compare to.

Another infamous example is in HRtP, where ZUN straight up committed copyright infringement in one of the stage backgrounds:





The game in question is Toshin Toshi 2 by AliceSoft which, may I remind you, has seen multiple re-releases since 1994. (thanks for the reminder /jp/ anon)
The company is still around, and I bet they would like to have a word with ZUN :^)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Website last updated: 12th of April, 2022

 

 

Now for some some personal analysis. According to this post on shrinemaiden.org from 29th September 2013, one user managed to track down the original prices for each of the PC-98 games:

• Highly Responsive to Prayers: 300 Yen
• Story of Eastern Wonderland: 500 Yen
• Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream: 500 Yen
• Lotus Land Story: 700 Yen
• Mystic Square: 800 Yen
• CD-R containing all of the games: 2000 Yen

The source used by the user is based on this result offered by Wayback Machine http://web.archive.org/web/20020603200944/http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~aotaka/AM/index.htm

At the time of writing his post, the price for a copy of Mystic Square went for over 100000 Yen on Yahoo! Auctions, while the CD-R usually went for 90000 Yen. There have been some more updates made by the same user as they found further information, which I will insert here:

Quote

(posted 21st October, 2013)

Sorry about the late post, but this is the type of topic that takes a while to update :blush:.
This blog has a post showing the games for sale in a store window, all of which unfortunately have high prices:

http://seaside-tears.sblo.jp/category/683525-8.html

I have not yet been able to find any of the actual games for sale, not even on Yahoo! Auctions (which usually has them), but I have been able to find numerous auctions for the actual PC-9801 and PC-9821 computers:

• FM Soundcard: http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e143892293
• PC-9801: http://page9.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k161557796
• PC-9821: http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e95020141

The computers used to play the original Touhou games apparently cost as much as the games themselves :o. Aside from the shipping, the worst part about buying a PC-9801 is locating the system install disks and the operating system (MS-DOS 6.2), as they are kind of rare and difficult to find.

Also, does anyone know if the trial/demo version of Mystic Square has any of the older music still available in the music room? I don't use emulators, so I haven't been able to find out for myself.

 

In a more recent thread (dated 28th November 2018) posted on r/touhou by u/[deleted], apparently a store in in Akihabara has physical copies of the original PC-98 Touhou games. Price tag? ¥13,000,000. And we can only imagine the prices went up ever since due to inflation all the economic jazz of past few years. That translates, according to current exchange rate, to 95,904.25 USD or 444,093.06 Romanian Leu (RON). If I wanted to buy the PC-98 games legally, I would need the minimum wage for 16 years? At least based in the Romanian minimum wage, which was officially counted in 2020 at 466 Euro/2303 Lei a month.

Good luck with that one...

[Tenkko]

I hold that MS always was and still is the piracy site, denying that isn't doing any good. Doesn't really matter that it has a forum where that isn't discussed, which isn't even true anymore because this thread is dedicated to discussing it. I feel I mentioned this in some other thread but whenever I heard of this place elsewhere it was often spoken of in hush tones, "the moriya site", "google touhou download, first result".

I still feel the general approach to piracy is way off target and very uhh, "first world-centric" if we wanna use big words, that's always been my big issue with it. I remember seeing a video of some guy flaunting their physical copies of the games, c'mon. But again I think most people don't have a problem with it, it's just generally seen as a dick move to publicly advocate for piracy of indie stuff so no one's gonna go out and say it, or even allow it in some places like reddit. That goes doubly for fan content which obviously gets much less revenue. There have been efforts to bridge the gap a little bit with translators working together with circles but, it's still a very, very long way from making everything truly accessible, and chances are it never will (not to mention they only do english translations. and only of the works they or their community are interested in).

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment I described above by the way, piracy has always been that ugly thing no one wants to talk about. Even for me, if someone asks me where to get the Touhou games I'll first tell them to buy them if they can. That's not really the problem, I understand that look and wanting to keep things clean, which is probably why this site may have that negative image. Now pushing so hard against it when you've probably gone and read fan translations of doujins so many times, because yes that also counts? Yeah that's shitty.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Tenkko

[Nekofire]

@CountVonNumenor Oops… I thought NSFW is a term to designate sexualised stuff like this (it’s on Reddit and I guess you’ve already seen it), for you it’s a normal artwork but for me it’s kinda disturbing… 

anyway this is just my point of view for this part

So for the banner, I haven’t noticed Sanae’s boobs and I haven’t said anything on Cirno’s skin color this is just their face, they both looks idiotic

Don’t mind this comment and what I’ve said it’s 100% my point of view and I wasn’t speaking seriously about that subject anyway

[CountVonNumenor]

3 hours ago, Nekofire said:

@CountVonNumenor Oops… I thought NSFW is a term to designate sexualised stuff like this (it’s on Reddit and I guess you’ve already seen it), for you it’s a normal artwork but for me it’s kinda disturbing… 

anyway this is just my point of view for this part

So for the banner, I haven’t noticed Sanae’s boobs and I haven’t said anything on Cirno’s skin color this is just their face, they both looks idiotic

Don’t mind this comment and what I’ve said it’s 100% my point of view and I wasn’t speaking seriously about that subject anyway

Is it wrong that have become completely desensitised by images of this kind? After a whole year of checking Danbooru daily for Touhou art, as well as being on some Discord servers, I have grown to get no reaction from something like that. Actually, the example you have shown is very much nothing in comparison to what I ended up seeing on a daily basis both an Danbooru and some of the Discord groups I am in (on their - ironically still safe for work - "waifu-posting" channels. Am I lost? 

Also I am sorry if I appeared to be aggressive in the previous comment. To me, it is just the thing that I have seen WORSE almost on a daily basis compared to that Joon image. And I don't know what's more disturbing - the fact it exists, or that there are people who actually love this kind of thing (I know a lot of people on Discord who seem to be into to boys and buff girls, and want to present it as if all guys are into that). 

(side note: AspreyFN would simp so hard seeing that Joon image, given how much he likes her) 

Going back to Danbooru, an image like the one above would at most be counted as "Sensitive" (the rating system on that website works the following way - "General", "Sensitive", "Questionable" and "Explicit"). Only the ones rated at "Questionable" and "Explicit are usually considered to be the NSFW ones, since at least in my books, it's not safe of work if we talk about straight-on nudity or explicitly sexual/intercourse content. In another thread, I have discussed about the rating system in full detail, and I might just put it here as well just for some better context. 

 

 

*by "waifu-posting" Discord channel, you can understand a channel where people post a lot of images they tend to find cute or hot (sometimes both), many times extremely sexualized images dur to the fact they are either gacha game art (and fanart - there seems to be a constant obsession for Prinz Eugen from Azur Lane), or whatever else; in fact, a lot of the art there might go into the "how is this safe for work?!", it somehow it is considered as such even in the source material (game, series, etc. If only I could make a collage of a regular day of posting on that channel to give a better idea... 

Edited December 14, 2022 by CountVonNumenor

[Nekofire]

4 hours ago, CountVonNumenor said:

Also I am sorry if I appeared to be aggressive in the previous comment. To me, it is just the thing that I have seen WORSE almost on a daily basis compared to that Joon image. And I don't know what's more disturbing - the fact it exists, or that there are people who actually love this kind of thing (I know a lot of people on Discord who seem to be into to boys and buff girls, and want to present it as if all guys are into that). 

Do you really think it’s an excuse to talk to me the way you do just because we have a different experience with fan content ? I’ve never went on this kind of website or Discord server to find fanarts so it’s kinda one of the first one that I’ve seen and it’s my problem if I find it disturbing, for some people it’s not, for some others it’s sexy but for me it’s gross. 
It’s my point of view, deal with it, we are different and, as a girl, I find it insulting how over sexualised are girls in manga/anime.

 

Now to go back on the main subject, I’ve found a video about what happened on Moriya Shrine, and it looks like they are really thinking that it’s a piracy website

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by Nekofire
Forgot to add the first part

[sodaodaoda]

2 hours ago, Nekofire said:

Do you really think it’s an excuse to talk to me the way you do just because we have a different experience with fan content ? I’ve never went on this kind of website or Discord server to find fanarts so it’s kinda one of the first one that I’ve seen and it’s my problem if I find it disturbing, for some people it’s not, for some others it’s sexy but for me it’s gross. 
It’s my point of view, deal with it, we are different and, as a girl, I find it insulting how over sexualised are girls in manga/anime.

I'm sure Count didn't mean to insult you or anything. I understand why you would see that Jo'on pic as NSFW, I do see images like that NSFW as well, regardless of whether or not they actually contain explicit things, if you know what I mean. And considering I'm a girl as well, it really sometimes rubs me the wrong way that girls are seen the way they are seen.

 

2 hours ago, Nekofire said:

Now to go back on the main subject, I’ve found a video about what happened on Moriya Shrine, and it looks like they are really thinking that it’s a piracy website

Those 2 videos are interesting, and I am on the both sides.
For 1, I do understand piracy for Touhou games, especially the PC-98 ones, and 6,7,8.  But I also understand why people are mad at pirates.
An interesting thing I noticed is that people are complaining that Steam versions can't be patched.
They actually can, idk why people think they can't? THCRAP works perfectly fine on my 18.5 Steam copy.

I'll cook up a more lenghty response to this piracy thing later.

[Isaac]

2 hours ago, Nekofire said:

Do you really think it’s an excuse to talk to me the way you do just because we have a different experience with fan content ? I’ve never went on this kind of website or Discord server to find fanarts so it’s kinda one of the first one that I’ve seen and it’s my problem if I find it disturbing, for some people it’s not, for some others it’s sexy but for me it’s gross. 
It’s my point of view, deal with it, we are different and, as a girl, I find it insulting how over sexualised are girls in manga/anime.

Just caught up on this thread now. There's a lot I agree with you Nekofire. I'm also not a fan of seeing these characters sexualised and I try to avoid that content as much as I can. However, I don't think Count wanted to say anything negative against you.  It sounds like he was just comparing his experiences with fanart, like being desensitized to nsfw stuff on certain sites. It's nice that you're talking more in this thread though!