Quote Originally Posted by Sigma-Astra View Post
Yes, it would. Drawing what they want to showcase by hand, with their own entire toolkit of artistic skill would be different, the style WOULD BE DIFFERENT. They would be spending far more time and effort into drawing and recreating an ENTIRE scene from scratch than they would be lightly spending a few hours doing some editing work in Photoshop using a pre-existing screenshot from the game that they don't have to touch other than pasting down another image on top of it.

It's not illegal to draw fan-art using reference shots as tools to help. It's illegal to steal something that has a direct copyright on it and looks EXACTLY as it does, for example, the background of Costa Del Sol, and pass it off as your own entire work of art.

I've been in the art industry for over 12 years, it's illegal, and it can get you in trouble if the company feels like being that petty. I bet you think taking stuff from Google isn't illegal either.
You really need to re-read what I said, and go look up copyright law while you're at it.

It's illegal to edit a screenshot of copyrighted works, as it is illegal to draw it, or even write about it.
I don't care who you are, or how long you say you've been working in a field completely irrelevant to law, but it's stupid to make a stink about this particular commission when every single fan art that has been posted is equally as infringing on copyright.

Furthermore, copyright is different from trademarks, so Square Enix doesn't explicitly need to defend screenshots taken from their game or risk losing the copyright. Just in case you thought that was a thing.

Again, SE isn't going to crack down on a small time artist and editor that is making players happy and potentially sparking more interest in the game.