Please note that this timeline does not include the majority of X posts made by Watasi. For many, the posts and actions she as made resulted in people disliking her, and siding to Kit9. Please view her account for a full understanding of what happened.
- JUN 05 2024
- Kit9 Studio issues first DMCA against watasi_tokomi on X
- Copyright infringement report 1, page 4
- Upon receiving DMCA, Watasi states that she will no longer be producing merch but will fulfill orders and sell any stock she had remaining.
- According to Loading_Screen_ Watasi deleted all tweets about the merch she was producing.
- JUN 10 2024
- Kit9 issues a second copyright claim against Watasi on X relating to discord themed stickers.
- Copyright infringement report 2, page 3
The reported user has declined the request to discontinue these activities, andhas expressed intentions to continue to exploit our IPR for their own financialbenefit using off platform sites
- JUN 11
- Kit9 Issue’s 3rd DMCA on X regarding several fan art posts, and specifically targets Watasi’s alt account kimito_watasi
- Copyright infringement report 3, page 3 onward
- 14 posts linked. This DMCA also includes to Identifications.jpg (TO DO PUT IN LINK), which is the crackpot image with a bunch of lines and circles.
- Steam Community Discussions:
- Members of the community began to ask questions about Kit 9’s recent legal actions, but many were met with bans. Kit9 answered one post, but between the 17th and 19th Kit9 removed the post from the form.
- https://kit9sucks.com/2024/06/18/kit9-responses/#contentpolicy
- JUN 12
- Kit9 Issues 4th DMCA on X, claims Watasi is a repeat offender
The reported user has expressed intentions to continue to exploit our IPR for
their own personal promotion to benefit their unlawful retail activities off
platform to sell merchandise based on our intellectual property.
…We’d also like to note this user is a repeat infringer, and kindly ask that you
Copyright infringement report 4, page 4
consider applying any internal platform policy.
- JUN 14
- 7th Copyright claim issued against Watasi’s alt account where fan art was archived
- Watasi responds with the following emails and twitter posts:
- Kit9 did not respond to emails, and stated:
“[Watasi] publicly asserted they maintain special rights to our intellectual property for their own personal benefit” – Copyright #7
- JUN 15
- Watasi received alerts from Discord that stated the account had violated community guidelines. The alerts were based on posts that promoted the unofficial merch on twitter.
- Shortly after, Discord suspended the account.
- JUN 18?
- Sometime later, Watasi was hospitalized due to not being able to eat food and placed on a nutritional drip. Initially this was thought to be due to a suicide attempt, but Watasi’s Discord manager stated otherwise
- Note: This is just my opinion but the whole hospitalized thing felt very weird, I swear that Watasi implied it to be from suicide but that is probably due to her mental state in that moment. It felt kind of link an attention grab and left a bad taste in my mouth. Moments like these are why a lot of people don’t like Watasi.
- Sometime later, Watasi was hospitalized due to not being able to eat food and placed on a nutritional drip. Initially this was thought to be due to a suicide attempt, but Watasi’s Discord manager stated otherwise
- JUN 19th
- Community manager Jang posts the following:
- JUN 21
- Some Korean people wanted to brigade the subreddit and discord server, detailed here
- This resulted in the subreddit mods locking down discussion of the Kit9 Situation ‘until further notice’. The mods would then establish a dedicated thread for people to comment and discuss things.
- Overall not really that related to the whole Kit9 issue
- Community manager Jang releases the following statement. Full post can be found here
@everyone @English
- After the notice, we will no longer write a notice regarding Kit9/TCOAAL
- Watasi and Jangnam Quit to TCOAAL Completely.
- If Kit9 receives additional revenge reports or mentions of the incident in the devlog in July, additional notices may be Write.
Our team has no intention of challenging the Merchandise sale, and we have acknowledged and apologized for that. When I first received the DMCA report, it was my first time experiencing it, and I was extremely Upset and criticized kit9. After receiving a report on goods during the 2nd DMCA, we acknowledged it and stopped selling it. However, Kit9 even filed a DMCA report to the non-commercial Fan-art, and the report bomb poured out without any time to complain So far, we have received over 120 DMCA reports, including Discord, Twitter, and Google. Even the Google file attached with evidence for Complain this situation reported DMCA by Kit9. This is obviously a shameless act of using the name of a private business operator to take personal revenge. They ignore all objection mails and apologize mails, and whoever claim about this for us. they got banned permanently. just by mentioning related topics to the Steam Forum. There is no proper announcement of the position by kit9, and I protest against Kit9 Studio’s actions that do not operate properly according to the guidelines made by themself.
https://discord.com/channels/915552956621918228/1227527383792484442
- JUN 22 (rough date)
- https://www.reddit.com/r/CoffinofAndyandLeyley/comments/1dlx6c0/the_mod_team_is_no_longer_supporting_kit9_studios/
- Subredit announces “The Mod team is no longer supporting Kit9 Studios”, stating that Kit9 has DMCA’d other artists besides Watasi, specifically Vel and Kosa
- Vel:
- DMCA’s due to sticker pack
- Also caused Ko-Fi account to go unpublished
- Around JUN 11 2024
- Kosa:
- DMCA’d due to creating a Kickstarter for enamel pins
- Around NOV 4 2023
- Inkbat:
- Created key charms, but was allowed to sell remaining stock
- Around DEC 12 2023
- 8th DMCA against Watasi
- In brief, emails states that Watasi was posting straight assets, in addition to redrawing characters without transformative value being added.
- Discord account 21 recieved additional reports, one of which was for a message that linked to a google document that archived fanart.
- Reddit account was also suspended with 22 total posts removed.
- Youtube account recieved a copyright strike for a fanart speedpaint
- Totals:
- “In total, artist watasi_tokimi had 76 tweets, 22 reddit posts, 21 discord messages, 2 google files, and 1 youtube video removed. Out of these, 2 tweets were about their fan merch.” – u/Loading_Screen
- JUL 5 2024
- Twitter Security Teams states that Kit9 has been abusing DMCA
- Taken from Discord community leader Jang
- “Of the 200 reported posts, 50 were released first. About half of it has already been deleted and cannot be returned. Watasi and me can upload TCOAAL Drawing. This act is confirmed that Kit9 DMCA misuse was wrong. We gonna keep fighting with Kit9 Keep abusing DMCA Kit9, it will only ruin your image Kit9″”