Temporary Removal of Echoes of Home (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

As you may have noticed, Echoes of Home has been temporarily taken down. During the creation of CGs, specifically visual cut scenes, our team drew inspiration from another visual novel, which led us to use references to achieve artwork that closely resembled that of another visual novel. Of course, that was not the purpose... I want to emphasize that we are referring solely to CGs scenes here nothing else. The story, character design, sprites, backgrounds, etc., are all products of our creativity. There was no intention to copy someone else's work, and I can guarantee that. So, what's the issue then? While creating CG scenes and animations, we used references someone else's work modified in our own style, all under my supervision. This decision inadvertently supported the creation of plagiarism and garnered attention that I did not intend to attract. It offended the creators of the original novel and harmed our game's reputation.

I sincerely apologize and take full responsibility for this. I assure you that it will not happen again, and I honestly can't understand how I could have let this happen. Of course, our job is not to draw based on references but to create our original content. I do have an explanation for why this occurred, but I don't want to make excuses. What happened has happened, and it is important to take responsibility for it.

I'd like to mention two more things. In the game, there are two characters one from anime one from popular visual novel. Initially, this was meant to be an Easter egg, but after this scandal, we will redesign these characters to ensure that the game does not contain any references to someone else's work. Or really make an easter egg that only lightly points out.

What is our plan? CGs that are in direct contradiction or are borrowed will either be permanently removed or completely redrawn to reflect our creative vision and have 0% inspiration from someone else's work, as I promised earlier. Four scenes will undergo revisions to emphasize our creativity. Any gaps will be filled with new scenes from a new setting. Although this may be a lengthy process, we have a plan to execute it efficiently and quickly. Therefore, I expect a release at the beginning of next month. We also used unused work that we have for new version.

I have apologized to the creator, and once this is more or less resolved, we want to take further steps to improve the situation.

For a moment, let's turn the page. Aside from the CGs, we have received a lot of positive feedback and some criticism that has been very helpful, and we will work on it before releasing the corrected version. This shows us that we are heading in the right direction, but of course, we must rectify what we have messed up.

Thanks,
Shifi