Ellen Page possibly suing Sony

I am pretty sure you have to do it to get much better animations for the scene. It is the same with other cut scenes which have a close up of your face. Normally you render the whole body and not only the face. But since I am not involved I can not say it for sure. Also I am pretty sure if Ellen in fact is upset about this we would have heard it already anyway. And as I said before many actresses also use body doubles for scenes they are not comfortable or want to do. And personally I see this case as a body double .

@jadegl Oh yeah, I agree that she's got a case. Celebs have sued over nude photoshops before and (I believe) they've won. It makes sense. Most don't only because they don't want to draw attention to the shops. Some magazines have actually been sued for shopping modeled photos so they looked nude (but covered) rather than scantily clad.

And yes, the fact that someone spent time modelling or texturing nipples is embarrassing and pretty much an admission of fault. If she looked like a Barbie doll, no one would care.

@darji:

You have to have nipples and pubic hair textures to have better animation...

Also a vague orgasm face. It's practically a law of physics.

Again these people are French They have a whole different understanding about nakedness. Hell in Germany you can see boobs at 10 in the morning in movies. They just did a nude female body model that is all. Only in America you would get a outcry about nipples^^

Also they are still artists. If you go into a class and draw a naked female without nipples you will fail that class for sure. Do you really think they did it because they are perverts?

That has nothing to do with any part of his statement. Their Frenchness has no bearing on efficiency or quality of animation, design, or programming of any kind whatsoever.

So having a different understanding of nakedness absolves a party from following a signed legal document, such as a contract? I'll have to let the Judges I work with know about this new wrinkle in case law....

I explained the "need" of nipples and pubic hair and that it is totally natural to draw these nothing else. Again if she has a problem with it she can sue but so far she has said nothing about it all. Not one little bit.

Suggesting that they can do whatever or be absolved of fault because they are French is nonsense. This has to be one of the stranger ideas I've ever seen posted anywhere.

I never suggested that. I am just saying people are not perverts because they draw nipples and pubic hair on a female virtual body. Hell What I am really interested in is how they did it with Ethan in Heavy Rain. We know they did the exact same with Madison and not because they are perverts.

edit: As I suspected. Ethan also has a penis. Oh and link is NSFW. The link is but not if you click on the pictures.

http://www.gamesradar.com/heavy-rain-full-frontal-nudity-see-it-here/

While Darji chooses to dwell on whether this makes them perverts or not I'm more interesting in the actual, legal situation.

Win or lose if this goes to court this could be bad for Quantum Dream and Cage. If QD loses will they may be forced to pay some big bucks or even recall their game. If QD wins it may send a message to actors to be wary of Quantum Dream projects.

Considering the fact that there has not even been legal talk yet isn't it way to early? Even if there is legal talk I am pretty sure Sony will then try to solve it with some compensate money. We do not even know if she knew that there would be a naked model or not. Do you really believe she did not know or was informed about this when the script says: Shower scene twice?

Ellen page is neither naive or stupid so the chance this even happened is almost zero.

Yes, I believe it. If you work your entire life in movies or television I doubt you would suddenly have an intimate understanding of the possibilities that having a debug console could afford to an individual. As someone who plays games and knows about how they are developed, in a very general sense as a fan of games, I don't even understand why they decided to texture and model it as detailed as they did. What's the point? Those man hours could have been spent on things that the player would actually do and see. Again, they could have made a model but just had it be a uniform skin tone, still with nice skin texture sure, but what's the point of adding in nipples and stuff that no one is ever going to see? It's a waste of time. It's also dangerous if there is an agreement in place to not have images of those type be made available to the player public in the first place. It could open QD up to litigation and that is bad news for everyone. QD, Ellen Page, Sony, the players, and other game developers.

It may not have been the work of a pervert, but it's certainly the work of a dumbass if it's true. We'll have to wait and see if more comes out of this besides just rumors.

It is not Ellen Page's year for games, is it?

"Hang on a second, Naughty Dog. I signed off on the rights to use my vocal and mocap performances for Ellie, but not my physical likeness! If you want a character to look like me, then you have to go through the proper channels like Quantic Dreams did for Jodie in this gam- OH SON OF A BITCH!!"

Developer has stated that it was a body double.

What's the problem?

You realize she had nothing to do with The Last of Us, right? She wasn't in it at all.

1. That's why I said "if" it goes to court.

2. The money that Sony settles this with (or even worse a recall) could be the difference between this game being a financial success or a financial failure.

3. Have you ever been sued or sued anyone? You seem to be under the impression that if this was true Paige's legal team would be telling her tweet her thoughts on the matter as soon as possible. This isn't game journalism, comments aren't going to be made for page impressions, these people actually plan their approach in an attempt to win a legal dispute.

4. Many (most) shower scenes don't involve nudity, and despite what you believe most of these scenes are done while wearing special skin-tone clothing.

5. Thinking that reading "shower scene" in a script automatically means "prepare for full frontal nudity" is, for lack of a softer term, completely idiotic.

6. You don't have to be stupid or naive for someone to breach your contract.

Oh, I didn't realize that, my mistake. I must have conflated the things said about The Last of Us and Beyond back around E3. I thought it was a voice/likeness deal for B2S and a voice-only deal for TLoU. But then I suppose that very confusion does lend some merit to Page's concerns. Or at least stands as evidence that I'm not very perceptive.

O_o

You can't possibly be serious.

What the flying fuck does nationality have to do with Ellen Page's desire to never be seen publicly nude, even if that public nudity is a computer representation and not her actual body?

And don't cite that bullshit about "needing the nudity for animation". That's poppycock and you know it.

@jadegl: You keep bringing up a contract while ignoring the debug portion, and I can't wager why. As said in my previous post, the facts of this case closer resemble unedited production footage being leaked which shows nude actors, hired to perform a scene that once edited features no nudity. Sony's position remains that the actions necessary to access the nude model are themselves violations of Sony's rights and illegal; the actions of third parties, especially illegal actions, do not qualify as a first party's intent to breach a contract. This would be like suing a security firm for breach of contract because a client was robbed or attacked.

Where she may have a case is regarding negligence, that Sony should have taken reasonable precaution to make sure she does not come to harm (physical, social, otherwise) through performance of either party's obligations. Whether or not the situation qualifies is up to a judge who knows more about tort policy than I do. Something tells me that's not what the court of public opinion wants to hear.

Yeah Darji is like that. 8/

This is the interesting part. I am not inclined to assign fault but there was clearly a misunderstanding here. I would even say that the fallout could very well be scaring away any other actors from these small scale video games and have effect on "franchise games". The result would be making it more expensive to make video games with anyone who has a recognizable name.

@extomar: I don't know how much of that is true, regarding actors. This is not the first game to hire A-list talent (or wherever you place Page and Dafoe), neither is it the last. Hollywood actors will be ready for games as long as the money is there, and the money will be there as long as Hollywood people make sales.

I was going to say that Beyond would be unique in prioritizing the actors over any other aspect of development, but even that isn't true. Vin Diesel IS The Wheelman. Jack Black was basically on the cover of Brutal Legend.

@brodehouse: I think negligence is what I am talking about. They took the time to fully model and texture something that wasn't even going to be seen by a player, and that they may have agreed would not be seen at all, and now they have no culpability when a third party uses tools to extract that data? I don't care that someone else pulled the data out of there, they created that data, they are responsible for that data existing in the first place, and they had to know that someone could pull it out if they had the tools and the knowledge. So no, I am not saying that I think it's malicious or that they expected someone to do it, but that they do have some amount of responsibility for it being out there. It would not exist without them programming it.

He should ask Lena Dunham for help.

Nude Ellen Page isn't all that much to look at anyway.

If this story is true (given that Sony was trying to pull screenshots off the web I'm guessing some aspect of it is), I can't blame her for being upset.

If she made that a stipulation in her contract, then Sony really messed up by having it anywhere in the code. Even if it's somehow found not to be a legal violation of the agreement, they really violated the spirit of it. And it makes them look really terrible.

They have to be pretty naive if they didn't somehow would try to hack the game

Then you throw in the Last of Us thing, and this starts to look worse all the time.

This could end being a landmark case that could set a lot of precedents if it ends up going to trial.

Wait wait wait, the internet got into something it shouldn't have? And now there is a message board of people arguing about nationality (cause somehow that's fucking related)? Bullshit! The internet has always respected things that are hidden! And message boards always say on topic!

Beyond: Two Souls is at best "a modest production" where getting actors that are more than "professional voice actors" can be a trick because lets face it this isn't exactly the most glamorous career building move compared to even small movies or theater. Why would other actors subject themselves to that even if it is a passion project? Unless she has some other unrevealed motive, Page makes her "real money" out of acting in movies. If she can't get roles she wants because of what happened, then why would another actor bother with the risk? And lets not forget there were other controversies with this game where I would not be surprised if anyone else never bothers due how she was treated.

You will note I also mentioned "franchise games" where those contracts are often rolled into the movie and are treated as "media support" and are already strict. The fall out from this could very well be other agents for other actors make their contractual requirements even more strict than now where they add to triple check to make sure there are no assets or models or anything exist anywhere that aren't exactly the pre-approved ones. All of this is more overhead that makes creating those silly movie based video games that much more expensive. I generally don't care about these video games but I do care about how this can effect companies taking on riskier projects for less reward.

The more I think about it the more I wonder why the offending nipples exist. The only conclusions I can draw are two. One, the rendering artist was annoyed by the lack of nipples and decided to just do them anyway because who seriously wants to look at a photo-realistic face attached to a goddamn featureless Barbie? In which case, human error, completely understandable. The second conclusion is that they used the same method as Infinite Realities and scanned the body double (it'd have to be a body double considering Page's refusal to get naked*) and more or less attached Page's head to it. This conclusion explains why the offending nipples were not removed because why waste the resources? They also probably figured it'd fulfill their "obligation" to not feature a naked Ellen Page for two reasons. One, it's not her body, and two, nobody is going to see it unless they hack they goddamn console to enable debug features. In any event, I don't see how Quantic Dream (much less the publisher, Sony) could be found culpable for a consumer being an asshole.

If it really is the second option I really don't see how Ellen Page could have a case**. If it's not her body (well, in either case it isn't, ignoring the fact that it's a video game), and it's just her fake head attached to someone else's fake body (body doubles and cgi have been used like that before, even in film), then it sounds even more shaky. And if all of this is the case, then this isn't about the "violation" of the "spirit" of their agreement and more about the fact that her fake head attached to someone else's fake body is likely being spanked to.

Which, really, if we're going to start suing people because random people on the Internet are beating off then just hit the EJECT button and bail out.

*that probably sounded more asshole-y than I intended, but that is the heart of the issue. She doesn't want to get paid to be naked. Fair enough. Not judging.

**I'm not a lawyer.

The court of public opinion feels offended because someones privacy and dignity have been harmed. She asked for no nudity and Sony have let a situation occur where this has been violated. You are correct that the legal issues here maybe more opaque (but at best I think Sony will be guilty of negligence) but I think most people recognise that some hurt has been done, so find for Paige in a moral sense.

I think that is pretty understandable. Don't you?

Ellen page's nudity is a failure of the game design.

(I just wanted to use that stupid quote again.)

Oh no, fake nudity, almost as bad as real nudity. I'm so angry and shit.

Explain how this is in any way an invasion of privacy? As far as I know, you can't actually sue for feeling indignant.

When people say "a violation of human dignity" they're talking about torture and depravity, not offending someone's taste.

She asked for no nudity and Sony have let a situation occur where this has been violated.

You don't actually know what she asked for, or what she agreed to. You don't know the details but have already reached a conclusion.

You are correct that the legal issues here maybe more opaque (but at best I think Sony will be guilty of negligence) but I think most people recognise that some hurt has been done, so find for Paige in a moral sense.

I think that is pretty understandable. Don't you?

What most people feel is not what's actually true. That you and allegedly 'most people' feel that Page has been socially damaged only means that 'most people' feel she's damaged. You don't even know whether the victim in this case feels damaged. Why have you decided how she should feel for her, especially deciding that she should be hurt?

How damaged has Camilla Luddington been from video game porn gifs using the Lara Croft model?

@brodehouse said:

She hasn't, but I most certainly have.

Feels like sandpaper down there. Christ.

I can understand the need for a "nude" model but did they have to texture the parts that weren't meant to be seen?

Exactly. Paige was never naked on the set, she had to wear a MOCAP suit. Still, this thing is kinda icky.

I am working on the supposition that she has a no nudity clause and was thinking of suing Sony, if that is not the case then obviously the situation is different, but I was under the impression that these were facts, please correct me if I am wrong. I think most people are on her side because they put themselves in her position and imagine how they would feel. If I had asked for a someone not to show me naked and then they did (however it happened), I would feel embarrassed and hurt, I guess I just feel empathy for her.

I mean who knows, maybe she has a no nudity clause because she wants to wait until someone is prepared to offer her loads of money to get her kit off. Similarly she might be rubbing her elfin hands together in anticipation of the big pay-off she is hoping to get from Sony, or she might just be crying into her beer. I don't know. But the situation here seems to be that she has asked for something not to happen, and it has, and to me that seems wrong. Definitely in a moral sense, maybe in a legal one. I suppose I just don't have the ability to wait until I know every last fact until I have some sort of emotional reaction to this story. Of course we don't know for sure. I just think most people imagine this happening to them and know they would feel embarrassed or hurt so instinctively empathise. It is a natural human thing to do. Its not about deciding how someone should feel, its about being able to put yourself in their shoes and know how you would feel.

I could have saved on writing all this crap if I had just written 'The court of public opinion is offended because they feel someone's privacy...blah blah.

To me this seems like one of those situations which morally is an open and shut case but legally is way more complex.. If she has got this no nudity clause, then morally I think she definitely has been wronged in someway, as this totally seems to be against the spirit of such an agreement. Legally it seems way more complex and tangled, but it could be really interesting if there has to be some ruling in the courts. I don't know if there have been cases before where people have used the law to challenge digital depictions of their naked bodies, but this could set some interesting precedents as to what the courts define as nudity etc. It probably won't get that far or it will come down to the wording of the contract rather than any interesting law making or legal judgements, but I am always fascinated when the justice system has to grapple with new and developing technology.

Of course they have the responsibility but even then these people accessed this data due to "illegal" activities. It is like someone is doing a topless photo shooting for some magazine and someone secretly films or takes photos of it. These pictures and videos were obtained by non legal means therefore Sony can say sorry but they will never be the ones getting sued at all.

The best thing we someone should do is asking her on twitter if she is even offened or upset or not and if she say yes and wants to sue Sony now we have a conclusion. If she says no she is not and she knew that there would be some body double for these scenes than we came to a conclusion as well^^

There has been nothing substantial or credible said to that end, only the data points This Image Exists and Ellen Page Has Said She Doesn't Do Nudity. That doesn't say anything about this specific situation, or what her contract stipulates. Like I said, evidence is not present, but you're reaching for conclusions anyway.

I think most people are on her side because they put themselves in her position and imagine how they would feel. If I had asked for a someone not to show me naked and then they did (however it happened), I would feel embarrassed and hurt, I guess I just feel empathy for her.

But the situation here seems to be that she has asked for something not to happen, and it has, and to me that seems wrong.

If she has got this no nudity clause, then morally I think she definitely has been wronged in someway

I don't know if there have been cases before where people have used the law to challenge digital depictions of their naked bodies, but this could set some interesting precedents as to what the courts define as nudity etc.

Every single one of these points falls down with the fact that it's not her body being displayed. Four times you've stated that Sony has shown Ellen Page's naked body and that's not what happened here. What's happened here is the same thing that's been happening for a decade now; a celebrity has had their face digitally placed on someone else's naked body. How 2001 of Sony. It might set some interesting precedents if the judges are completely bonkers; it now means that artistic interpretations of people qualify as those people. We could call it the Muhammad Law. It means that any celebrity pornshop you can pull up with google image search is now a criminal act, and by defacing an image of a person, I'm in fact physically attacking them.

If you create a nude 3D model and place Michael Rooker's big Call of Duty head on it, is that an invasion of Michael Rooker's privacy?

Ellen Page has a non nude policy. Whats in her contract with QD or Sony we do not know. Also it was not her body and if you even would look at these scenes they had to make a body model. A body that is not hers. Now you can argue if it had to had nipples and pubic hair and people only can tell you that QD is doing it all the time. Madision had nipples and pubic hair and Ethan also had a penis and they did not do it because they are perverts like some of thse people here think but because there is nothing wrong with it. If you are supposed to draw a naked body you also would ad these things because it is just natural. .

The whole article is just click and bait because Ellen has never said anything about this matter at all. There is no official word on both sides except Sony has said that they used not Ellen Page's body and that people should not harass Ellen or QD with it.

There's no need to model every last detail of a model if there is no need for that detail. And assuming that Page's contract with Sony/Quantic Dream does contain a no nudity clause, then she can make a case against a fully nude model identifiable as her. It doesn't matter if the model is actually based on her own nude body or not. Legally, if the no nudity clause exists, she can make a case against her being depicted as nude in the game and its code.

Also, Quantic Dream had no need to create an anatomically correct nude model of Page's character. If the game is never meant to depict full nudity, then that level of detail in the model simply isn't necessary. Nudity being "natural" has nothing to do with it and is an absurd argument in this case; this entire argument is over the level of detail in a character model in a game that does not depict full-frontal.

Yeah. Don't even pretend this is a gender double standard or puritanism or something. They paid Ellen Page for her likeness and there is a nude image bearing Ellen Page's likeness in the game. Whatever hoops one must jump through to see it don't matter because it is still in the game's code regardless, there to be seen. You've been using this argument that it's like if somebody sneaked a photo of an actor in the midst of a nude scene while shooting a movie in which their nudey-bits were obscured in the released cut. It's not the same. The nude image in that case doesn't make it into the finished product of the movie like it has in this game. I know you can't resist siding against the woman in any given dispute but you are failing to look at the simple nuts & bolts of the agreement that Quantic Dream and Sony failed to uphold. She has grounds to sue if she has a no-nudity clause. Your argument about negligence is faulty and irrelevant because 1) they proactively built a detailed nude model which is presumably more difficult than leaving her privates blank and 2) "negligence" isn't a thing that would factor into making the breach of contract less serious and wouldn't shield them from any legal consequences.

Crystal Dynamics didn't create a nude model of Lara Croft and keep it in the game (no matter how buried it might be in Beyond) and they didn't break an agreement with that actress as Quantic Dreams did with Ellen Paige (or we can pretty safely assume the contract was written as such).

This is the whole thing for me. I get that she may not have grounds in the court because the specific aspects of the character model that broke her contract (reportedly), i.e. the breasts and vagina, were not explicitly model after her. But that this behavior can be anything, at all, besides completely disgusting on the part of Quantic Dreams amazes me. That people, not you per say you just happen to be the one I'm quoting, can shrug their shoulders at this, roll their eyes, and just move on blows my fucking mind. Even if the legality is unclear isn't the idea that this behavior is against her wishes bad enough to make us embarrassed for the medium, sad for the actress, and just bothered all around? It does for me. I don't even want to mention this story to people who I know that don't follow games because, honestly, it's shameful. It makes the medium just look childish and completely shitty. Like it's fitting of all the wild beliefs of people who want to bring down video games always use when they start their crusades.

Again if you are an artist and you are asked to draw a nude body you do the same. Why would you not do it? It is not like it will take much much longer anyway. Artists are perfectionists they do not stop in the middle. Just there are existing nude body models for games like Skyrim etc they do exist here as well. It is a common practice to do so these days. And Quantic Dream does it since at least Indigo Prophecy. This whole issue is just laughable in my opinion. If Ellen is offended sure it is her right to do so but people arguing that it is not necessary just shows me how much of a taboo nudity still is in the US or this industry. Lets decapitate her and it would be a non issue but hey a naked fake body in a video game? This is just pervert and not necessary.....

And I think it matters a lot if its not her body but I am no Lawyer nor do I know another case like that.

Contractual obligations. End of story.

You do not even know if there are any at all or even if Ellen Page knew that there would be a fake body in a SHOWER scene....

Her contract seems to be pretty consistent and for all projects she's involved in. It's safe to assume she had the same contract with this game. Thus it is 100% safe to assume she didn't want a naked model connected to her head and motion captured performance. One thing that you don't seem to be grasping here Darji is that any possible excuse that would allow for nudity is ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT if she did not want it to be so. Which, again, she hasn't explicitly said this but a child could assume.

We do not now if she was informed of it or did not want it at all. Maybe she is pretty smart and thinks it is not her body anyway so she does not care. Maybe she has a non nude policy for herself because she does not want to sell her own body and that is totally fine. Maybe she does not care if there are fake pictures or something like that of her at all. Or does she also go against all these fake pornographic pictures you can find with google?

We do know nothing at all and this whole article is based on the fact that she has a non nude policy in her movies not on an actual statement or other evidences. Do you really think Sony is that stupid to not think about stuff like that or if it was an accident don't you think you would have already seen some sort of official apology?