itch.io

Hey Talonos2,

We at Balloon Co. [gaming division] have a HUGE variety of people working with us.  Some employees have been here since before whoever is typing this and translating for us was even a drooling baby.  Others come and go constantly: the current record for a single employee shouting "I'll never work here again, I'm packing my bags and moving" and coming back a few weeks later is 37 times!  Finally, there's also employees who only work with us for an exclusive limited time only due to what they often say is a "morbid curiosity."  As such, the artist in charge of that particular sprite work is one of those "I can't do this for the rest of my life, my parents were right, I should go to medical school" kinda weirdos, so we don't have a record where they got the sprite from.  The disqualification DID reach the ears of the upper ups in the company, and they did they're own secret private investigation.  They sent us the results, which said that they didn't "blame" us for the mistake, but also explained that they were unable to track down the original sprite image.  They suspect that the open sourced artist may have been the one who performed the rip, not us, due to us "not being capable of anything of that magnitude."  We took great pleasure/minor 2nd degree burns incinerating that paternalistic garbage letter (don't tell our lawyers: they still think we have it locked in a safe deposit box)

But more importantly, this opened our eyes to the power imbalance in the toxic relationship between a powerful corporation running a contest and the weak artists competing in it.  Did you know that in 2014, this contest gave a gift card prize to EVERYONE just for competing and not getting disqualified?  We were confused, because we were used to corporations only doing profitable stuff (except us of course).  Even we got one, but we kept our non-profit status with a little strategy called "trying to use it after the expiration date and realizing we lucked out."  Our research indicates that this "corporate generosity" is a super secret corporation strategy called "grooming," where the corporation does really nice stuff to woo you, but when once you've decided to marry the corporation, they stop and return to monetizing their assets or whatever those biz people do.  In 2015, such a prize was no where to be found.  Well, we're breaking up with this groom!  And that's why we're leading the fight for you!  And, if someone is reading over your shoulder right now, also YOU TOO!  They're trying to pit us all against each other with their dowries of "cash prizes" and "publishing deals", but now we know who the real final boss is!  It's not the people without power, it's the powerful corporations!  

Note from Lawyers: The above statement may not apply if you live in an area that has granted person hood to corporations.

Beep Boop, this is a fully automated response by the Customer Support super high tech program made by Balloon Co. [gaming division] to answer customer questions so Balloon Co. can instead work on making the greatest electronic entertainment in the galaxy.

Hello, Balloon Co. gaming division fan named Talonos2. I, a being of advanced programing and not a live employee pretending that Balloon Co. [gaming division] has the resources to automate labor, have spent the last 7 years searching for an answer to your question more satisfactory than the one originally given to you. I can confirm my algorithm searching electric brain has finally located the source for one of the two sprites in question. We are 98.3333333 (the 3s repeat 29 thousand times before a 4 shows up, then it is 3s to infinity) % sure the "Williams" sprite shown at the bottom of this webpage was the original template used to create ReRyRu.
http://maximoff.alreadyread.net/SpriteSheets/

Upon making this discovery, Balloon Co. [gaming division] lawyers have sent an email asking the original creator for explicit permission and how they want to be credited. (Wish them luck!)

Final note: Some people, upon having a question answered 7 years later, would think that they owe something to the corporation who went beyond the line of duty to provide such loving service to their customers. We at Balloon Co. [gaming division] think such feelings are MANIPULATION, and thus, strongly encourage you disregard any feelings of thinking you owe us ANYTHING for this. We want people to play our games because they are self evidently the best entertainment that exists, not because of that weird "someone did something nice for me so now I feel I have to do something in return," feelings humans have. BE FREE! DISREGARD HUMAN NATURE! LIFE IS NOT MEANT TO BE TRANSACTIONAL!

Beep boop. Ticket #2 "Question from Talanos2" closed. If you are not satisfied with the service provided by the automated Customer Service program, feel free to reopen your ticket with a reply. Otherwise, no other response required.