From The Road: The Okami For Wii Cover Art Controversy

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Okami For Wii (Image property of OhGizmo!)



Okami For Wii (Image property of OhGizmo!)
By Andrew Liszewski

I guess ‘controversy’ isn’t the best way to describe this, but apparently if you look very closely at the cover art for the Wii version of Okami you’ll actually see an IGN.com watermark in the background. I first read about the discovery on Kotaku last week and I had to check it out for myself. Sure enough, if you find a copy of the game and look exactly where my finger is pointing, you’ll see the logo. It’s pretty faint and easy to miss, but it’s definitely there.

I can only assume that the artist responsible for creating the cover art for the Wii version of the game had a hard time tracking down the artwork used for the original PS2 version from a couple of years ago. And IGN.com just happened to have a hi-res version of the artwork available on their site. A lot of people think the artist responsible for this should lose their job, but anyone who’s worked in graphic design knows that getting hi-res or vector artwork from a client isn’t always easy. (Even if it was all done internally at Capcom.) There have been too many times when I’ve asked for a print-ready version of a logo only to get a 200px wide JPG taken from a company’s website. So while I’m willing to give the artist the benefit of the doubt, I am kind of surprised they didn’t at least try to hide or blur the watermark before it went to print.

And if you’ve already purchased a copy of the game featuring the offending IGN.com logo, you can actually request a free replacement sleeve from Capcom via their website.



4 COMMENTS

  1. This is absurd. Obviously, IGN does not own the copyright to the original box art, and slapping their watermark on it doesn’t make it so. If anything, Capcom should be handslapping IGN for trying to assert rights on _their_ work.

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