Getty Images Watermark Shows Up In Latest Square ‘Final Fantasy’ Game

Square Enix, the game studio behind famous video game franchises like the Final Fantasy series, is well known to be a big believer in intellectual property enforcement. Just on our pages alone, we've talked about the times they struck out against folks selling replica swords from its games, or fan-made productions featuring Square IP in them. As we're always careful to mention, Square Enix can do this, but it doesn't mean it should or has to handle its intellectual property concerns in the most draconian manner possible.

Plus, it's always fun when the shoe is suddenly on the other foot. And that may be exactly what we're seeing when some gaming sleuths uncovered at least one asset in Crises Core - Final Fantasy 7 - Reunion that appears to have a washed out Getty watermark over it.

During chapter eight of the game, you'll enter a Shinra mansion. In this very nice-looking and opulent home you'll find many fancy paintings hanging on the walls. Look closely and you'll discover these are real paintings. Look a little closer and you'll clearly see where Square Enix grabbed the art from.

You can see the Getty watermark nearly dead center in the image. Now, did someone at Square properly license this image? Maybe, though it would be weird for them to have used the watermarked version if it did. More likely some Square employee somewhere in the development of the game needed an image depicting art, grabbed this one, and perhaps thought it would never get found out.

It appears that whoever grabbed this image from Getty-and possibly didn't pay to license it, as the watermark is still there-stretched it out and cropped most of its top to make it fit in the frame. And this isn't a one-off error. The resulting painting appears at least three times in this area of the game complete with the Getty watermark. Whoops!

Whoops in multiple ways. First, this can open the company up to a lawsuit if it turns out the image was never licensed. Second, it does at least some reputational damage for any future attempts by Square to claim itself to be a true believer in copyright enforcement.

But what it means perhaps more than anything is to serve as yet another reminder for just how easy it is to infringe on intellectual property rights. It's all too often the pot becomes the kettle.