Cover Corp's guidelines tell fans exactly what they may create

The setup

COVER Corp. operates hololive production, one of VTubing's two largest talent agencies, and publishes its Derivative Works Guidelines on the same site that lists hololive's talent roster. The document is the company's working rulebook for fan art, clip channels, derivative digital games, cosplay and fan-hosted events, organised under one Overall Guidelines umbrella with topic-specific addenda layered on top. As retrieved on 16 September 2026, the page states a creator who stays inside the guidelines need not contact the company for permission, and that COVER reserves its underlying copyright regardless of how permissively the guidelines are applied.

What the documents show

The guidelines distinguish a derivative work, meaning original creative additions to a character, from copying, meaning reposting official art with only trivial edits, and state copying has no protection under the policy. The Overall Guidelines prohibit derivative activity carried out for business purposes, including cases where a company funds an individually credited project, and reserve the right to pursue an injunction or damages. The Guidelines for Derivative Digital Games add that adult content is barred outright and paid distribution requires passing a separate holo Indie screening process; the Guidelines for Clips require a source link in the description and let the company request deletion without explanation. Together the documents show COVER separating what it will not enforce against from what it licenses back to itself: publishing a derivative work is treated as consent for the company to reuse that work in official channels or merchandise.

The craft

For a maker, the practical reading is narrower than fan content is fine. A model-swap video, a translation with added commentary, or an original illustration clears the bar; a straight re-upload does not, and neither does a for-profit convention booth run under an individual's name to route around the corporate-activity ban. Clip channels need a visible source link and tolerate no edit misrepresenting what a talent said. Anyone selling a printed or sculpted derivative at a market needs to check whether the event holds the licensing arrangement the guidelines call for.

Keeping the creator in control

The guidelines are COVER's control document, not the fan's: the company keeps its copyright, disclaims responsibility for a creator's legal exposure, and can change terms without notice. What they give a maker is predictability, since a creator who reads the current version knows in advance what will not draw a legal response, itself a form of protection for people building on someone else's character. This is an editorial read: the guidelines protect COVER's characters first and fans' labour only as a byproduct.

• Does the planned project involve any commercial money changing hands, even indirectly through a sponsor or paid platform tier?
• Is the source stream or archive clearly linked, if the project is a clip or edit of existing footage?
• Has the guidelines page been rechecked recently, given that it can change without notice?

Reading the guidelines directly, rather than relying on fan-community summaries, is the only way to know where COVER actually draws its lines, and those lines protect the company's intellectual property far more precisely than any individual creator's plans.