Dear Reader:
Prima's Mega Man 11 book include sprite sheets directly from a fan-site
Mega Man 11 Prima Guide borrowed some stuff from The Spriters Resource, I see. https://t.co/z51YtARcbh pic.twitter.com/t8gvNVEkj5
— Brian (@Protodude) October 4, 2018
Prima recently released Mega Man 11: Celebrating 30 Years of the Blue Bomber, a book to celebrate the launch of Mega Man 11, as well as the series' history. In the book, you can find sprites from various Mega Man games throughout history. It seems that the gang at Prima didn't get these sprites on their own, and instead used sprite sheets put together by The Spriters Resource, a fan-site that specializes in creating sprite sheets. The page in the Prima book even features the watermark for the person who ripped the sprites.
This is a pretty interesting case. Did Prima do anything wrong here? I mean, they included the sprite sheet with the watermark. Going a bit deeper, they're simply sharing sprites from a game/series that Capcom has the rights to, and the Spriters Resource never got explicit permission from Capcom to rip sprites from their games. It'll be interesting to see if future prints of this book remove that asset altogether.