Attention journalists, stop using this 'Five Nights at Freddy's' image

 

This fan-made image is used in articles constantly. Image credit: Trycon1980

It’s no secret that the horror game franchise “Five Nights at Freddy’s” has a cult following. Every day on social media people is posting their own drawings, characters, and renders showing their support for the series. 

But this outpour of fan content has caused a lot of confusion among those unfamiliar with "Five Nights at Freddy’s", even leading to some artwork being mistaken as official and appearing on commercial news sites such as Comicbook.com and Screen Rant. This is especially true of this image featuring the animatronic Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie the Bunny, and Chica the Chicken in both their classic (pictured left) and toy versions (pictured right). 

Now while usage of the picture has been considered acceptable due to it being posted by someone to Flickr, journalists should refrain from using it in any “Five Nights at Freddy’s” news articles. Not only is it disrespectful to the original artist who doesn’t get to profit off their own work, but it looks bad from a journalistic perspective to incorporate fan-art rather than images from an official source. 

The picture first surfaced online on June 31st, 2015. It was posted to the art showcasing platform DeviantArt by a user known as Trycon1980. 

Although they use animatronics from the series, Trycon1980 is not in any way affiliated with Scott Cawthon, the developer of "Five Nights at Freddy’s." In fact, these particular versions of Freddy and the gang aren’t even official and were created in 2014 by I6NIS on the 3D model platform Sketchfab. Unlike Trycon1980, who didn’t specify a license, I6NIS labeled their models as noncommercial meaning they did not want anyone to profit off of them.

Fan image by Trycon1980 (left) and official image by Scott Cawthon (right)

So could there be a legal case revolving around the use of Trycon1980’s image in news articles? While Trycon1980 does own the rights to the picture, the characters are still Cawthon’s property so it falls into a legal gray zone that would have to be debated in court. Not to mention the image has been used in news media for over 3 years so there would have to be a good enough reason to take it up in court

At the very least Trycon1980 should receive credit whenever the image is used. It does not belong to Scott Cawthon nor should it be associated with official “Five Nights at Freddy’s” artwork. Unless the creator has granted a news organization permission to use their image, only official content should be used. 

If there are any journalists reading, Steam is a great source to find proper "Five Nights at Freddy’s" images to use commercially. There is also an unofficial website known as thefnafarchive that hosts original teasers from Cawthon that were once used to advertise each game. Given that these pictures were used to officially promote the game, they should fall under fair use.

Teaser for the third game. Image Credit: Scott Cawthon

With the audience of “Five Nights at Freddy’s” getting bigger due to the announcement of their new game “Five Nights at Freddy’s Security Breach” journalists need to be more careful with which images they choose to represent the game with. If they want to avoid upsetting members of the "Five Nights at Freddy’s" community they need to do the extra research and find official images.