Could Death "legally" be a character in Bloodstained?

Igarashi can use any public domain monster including the Alucard name that don't belong to Konami either since it appeared in a old Dracula movie called Son of Dracula.

Now the question is if the character designs are owned by the company Konami or by Koji igarashi or the ones who drew and painted them like Ayami Kojima among others.

I mean, I know there was a desire to make a unique game out of this. I just wonder why they didn't do a vampire type game. I mean it's not like Castlevania will ever get legitimate sequels from this point on. So it seems like a missed opportunity to make a legit castlevania under a new game.

The publisher for a game is normally granted copyright for all of the assets, regardless of who made them.
The person who made them has (in theory, anyway) the right to claim authorship, but not the right to distribute and sell the work - that's the right ceded to the publisher.

I remember reading or seeing something about IGA getting to keep the rights to Bloodstained (I think Ben mentioned it when talking about their relationship with their publisher), but this type of arrangement is very, very rare, and it just doesn't happen when you are an employee of the publisher.

In fact, when you join a developer of any kind of content - even business software - your contract will stipulate that you cede all of your copyrights for any and all things you may create in or outside the company to them. It's more of a precaution so that you don't do stuff for competitors in your free time, but it's real.

"Death" and the "Grim Reaper" are synonymous concepts. Death was even called the Grim Reaper in Castlevania 1 (at least the English version). The conversation has become less "can Bloodstained used Death?" (the answer to which is obvious if you look at popular media for a few minutes ) and more "if they want to use the concept, how should they differentiate it from how Castlevania used it if at all?".


I just picked Lost Painting at random off the top of my head because I know its a song Yamane wrote. It wasn't a comment on the specific composition of the song or instruments used. My point was that her instrument choice is going to be informed by the needs of the production and what she wants to do - not some fears of self-plagiarism.

IGA has always found it fun to surprise us, hasn't he?

I hope that Death is somehow incorporated into the game, though I do think he's due for a re-design. :p

lol or just change his name to "Shinigami" Cuz i think thats how Zangetsu would know him. that or Just a Reaper. or just get creative and animate a dark evil skeleton with a torn/worn black coat with fog emitting out form it and call him "The Undertaker".

 Right, all it has to do is literally not be a copy-paste of one of the graphics in konami's games.

Ah! Gotcha. Sorry I missed that.

I was just a bit on the confuzzled side.

Specific designs of Death are copyrighted (like they can't re-use the visual design from Portrait of Ruin, for example), but of course Konami can't copyright the character "Death" itself.