CC#3 [Operation Cinder] BGM Plagiarism Update
Translation Credit:Talon#1815
This is a follow-up to the article posted last month about the plagiarism of the CC#3 [Operation Cinder] BGM by Mixian. For more information about the specific tracks, see the original article here:
Below is a summary of this article, with translations by Talon#1815.
What Happened
1) Around May, Mixian contacted the company saying they love Arknights a lot and wanted to make music for Arknights in the form of either a BGM or independent single. Hypergryph recognized the artist's past work and liked the quality, so they immediately contacted them and paid for some trial work. These aren't used in the games, but are used for reference of timeline.
2) Around August, Hypergryph started preparing 2 songs for CC#3 [Operation Cinder] and proposed idea of commissioning 3 BGMs from Mixian. Because the specific requirements for the BGM hadn't been decided yet, Mixian proposed to use 《Strayer》as a reference, and Hypergryph provided《Calling》as another reference.
3) Around September, Mixian made 2 demos of the songs, and they passed the initial screening so Hypergryph didn't give many suggestions for modification. They received full versions of the 2 songs in mid-Sep to early-Oct.
Hypergryph knew about the reference track so they didn't review the problem of Mixian copying the structure of the reference track.
Hypergrph goes on to say (to refute purported accusations by the artist) that they will never deliberately instigate or take part in plagiarism because of violation of law, ethics and the company's values. Also, it would damage their reputation.
Lessons Learned
They then provided two possible reasons for the misunderstanding:
1) Providing the reference during demo drafting stage
It's a normal and needed process for collaborations to allow the artist to understand the company's music style and direction of music
During the process of drafting the music the company, out of respect for the creator's own expression and style, will usually let the creators create independently without too much interference, as long as the emotional expression of the music matches the direction of whatever they're making the music for in game.
Simply put, based on trust in the artists, they didn't propose any specific amendments, and the contract signed by the artist before making the drafts clearly requests that all content provided by them must be independently created original works, and shall not harm the creative interests of third parties. Therefore the so called "business insider" and "forced plagiarism" are really all nonsense.
2. There no structure for how much is considered "excessive reference"
Hypergryph says that they're very sorry, that this mistake is because of the way they review. Since they've almost never encountered anything like this in past collaborations, they started to take it lightly which caused negligence in reviewing Mixian's work.
Due to the limitation of the genre, Trance music has a lot of "sounds that sound the same". Other professionals also pointed out that even if they knew about the possibility of "excessive reference", it's not good to directly assume there is at first glance. It's also necessary to import the referenced music using an audio processing software to carefully compare and finally draw out a conclusion, but due to their negligence they didn't do that this time.
Discussion and Controversy
On Nov 15, CC#3 [Operation Cinder] was launched and the 1st song caused controversy over "excessive reference". At first, Hypergryph didn't fully understand the accusation because there wasn't any substantive evidence at that time, so they thought that the public had a misunderstanding and chose to believe in the artist.
However, later on the same day, the 2nd track was also accused of "excessive reference" and there was a relatively professional and rigorous analysis article, so on Nov 17 they contacted professionals inside and outside the company to conduct a strict analysis on the 2 songs.
After their rigorous comparison, it was confirmed internally that the music provided by the artist was indeed "excessively referenced", and on this basis, they contacted various internal departments for an urgent maintenance, and under the premise of ensuring stability of the game data and package, they removed the tracks from the game and made an announcement.
What is described above is the whole process of Hypergryph accepted the artist's request for a collab, and then ultimately terminated the cooperation.
They didn't interfere much with artist's creative freedom in the early stage and paid them as agreed in the middle stage After the incident had occurred, they considered that the artist is still young, so they didn't seek compensation from them despite the breach of contract. After the incident, the artist proactively contacted the company to admit that they didn't consider the issue of similarity and positively admitted their mistakes with the correct attitude.
Once again, Hypergryph apologizes for the incident, that they didn't fulfil their review obligations and thus didn't present the best gaming experience for the players as they should have. They are deeply sorry. At present they have strengthened their inspections and improved the way they review drafts with more strict standards. They thank everyone for the support, tolerance and encouragements. Arknights is their most cherished work, and they don't want to give up creating music because of one incident. Cooperating and supporting artist creations and styles is something they have always been actively trying to do, and music is one of the most important aspects and ways to do so, so they hope to continue partnering with outstanding creators to create unique and interesting works
