The least Cover could've done was let them leave the company while retaining the IP. Cover already made the decision to basically abandon Holostars, so at least follow through and let them go indie if they wanted to. Not like Cover was still expecting them to make lots of money, so what's to lose?
From what I understood reading around, that might be a copyright issue. Barring VShojo which had a very different contract from the start, I’m pretty sure no other company ever allowed talents to walk away with their IPs before shutting down completely.
Maybe it’s a mess from a legal standpoint, maybe it’s something shareholders might complain about, maybe it’s something else entirely. But either way, (to my knowledge) it’s not something that ever happened in standard VTubing companies, so I think there might be valid reasons behind it.
No, it's happened before (idol corp after it got absorbed by Brave Group), though not for free. Copyright can be transferred.
Either way, this would've been a good time to set a good precedent for the wider industry and take some damn responsibility for the careers Cover more or less destroyed.
I’ll admit I’m not that knowledgeable about Idol Corp, but from what I know they had a simil-VShojo approach (they signed multiple indies without redebuting them), and they’re not based in Japan, so contracts and copyright law might’ve been different.
I’m pretty sure transferring copyright would still be possible, but as you’ve mentioned it would definitely not be for free, probably even too costly considering how high-profile Cover often goes for illustrators and riggers and how much merch/advertising they already got so far.
Would’ve definitely been a good precedent for the industry, but I don’t know how hard that would’ve been, we can only theorize at this point.
And hopefully, their careers don’t end up being “destroyed”. We’ve seen plenty of holomems go on to be successful as indies, though we don’t have a “sample size” big enough for stars, among the 3 examples in the past 5 years, one of was already more popular (Magni) and another apparently had some personal issues (Gamma). Vesper seems to be doing okay, but definitely less popular than in holo (which happened to girls like Ame and Shion as well).
We’ll see what happens with these six, I personally think Aruran has a huge chance of having an indie popularity as big, if not bigger than before, and the others are definitely not incompetent either. I think one of their biggest hurdles is that they don’t get clipped enough, and when redebuts rely almost entirely on word of mouth, that’s a huge disadvantage.
Idol Corp, but from what I know they had a simil-VShojo approach (they signed multiple indies without redebuting them)
There are some, but most started out from scratch, like Hololive and those definitely didn't have IP ownership (Rin Penrose mentioned as much I believe).
and they’re not based in Japan, so contracts and copyright law might’ve been different
True, although it happened after the merger with Brave Group US, a US subsidiary of the Japanese Brave Group Inc.
Yeah, it was extremely expensive for Rin to keep her persona when going indie.
Ouch, they got cut in half… though I guess it’s understandable considering how bad the deal seemed, at least from an outside PoV.
Wish them all luck, they all have genuine singing and/or streaming talent and it would be a shame if it went unexpressed from now on.
Not surprising but sad nonetheless. I can only wish the boys luck in whatever they're going to do next and perseverance to those who decided to stay - hopefully it'll work out for them.
Community dedicated to discussing the Japanese Vtuber group Hololive!
Rules: