At 10/12/15 01:53 AM, Patcoola wrote:
Well yeah if you steal art and sounds, that will be wrong if you're not using for personal or educational use.
Ultimately it is up to the IP holder if they want you to stop. (which is almost impossible to enforce if the violation is not doing harm to the IP)
However, there is something called the fair use act, which allows everyone to use an IP under conditions.
Those fair use exceptions are more restrictive than you think. Following your advice, someone would find themselves in "iffy" water. While it's true that ultimately the IP-holder must follow through if they wish to enforce anything, and oftentimes they choose not to, still the OP did ask to keep things strictly legal.
Even if you drew all the artwork yourself and made all the sounds and music yourself, but you used the official characters that belonged to someone else, provided it wasn't covered by one of the few fair use exceptions, they could sue you and win money if they wanted to. This is why tributes, except for parodies and in cases where a company has publicly stated they allow tributes of particular IP or where the licensing allows it, are always at risk. They're never "safe".
Like I said before, fan work is considered FREE PROMOTION for the IP holder. You don't see Lucas Arts suing Star Wars Fans for fan created content or fan film edits.
The Lucas Arts case is a special case though -- they tend to choose to allow it although they are in no way legally obligated to, unless they've made a formal declaration of it being allowed, which that I don't know. But point being it's mostly at their mercy.
But if you start using Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck stuff, especially if your game gets popular, and you better believe Disney will be down your throat. And now that Disney owns Lucas Arts, Star Wars fan material becomes a more risky venture unless there's some formal declaration of its allowance somewhere, which I am unaware of such a thing.
At 10/11/15 02:39 AM, Cherubas wrote:
I could have worded my post a little better. What about a game like Kill the Plumber (which you could search for here on Newgrounds) which is very clear in what it's referencing, though the gameplay's been changed up a bit. Suppose that author wanted to make a version with 200 stages and sell it on steam. How likely is it that they'd have to go to court? That would be a more precise example of the kind of thing I'm curious about.
Kill the Plumber is indeed parody which uses its own hand-drawn graphics and music. If it went to court it would likely be deemed in the clear and an allowance of fair use via parody exception.
Secondly, what if I had a character who seemed original at first, like Richard the Badass Biker who rode his motorcycle around beating up bad guys and carried weapons in his backpack, then later I told people that Richard and his backpack were inspired by Batman and his utility belt, which is why Richard has no parents and frowns at people a lot and is voiced by Kevin Conroy. Would that admission alone get me sued?
It would depend how similar they were. You can draw inspiration but just make sure it's different enough it isn't obvious plagiarism.
Motorcycle dude with weapons in his backpack? Seems generic enough I doubt it would be a problem -- Batman would hardly have a monopoly on "motorcycle dude with weapons in backpack". But the closer the similarities the more iffy it becomes. If all of the villains were basically Batman universe clones, and your Richard the Badass Biker was an eccentric millionaire who had a lair then, yes, you might have a problem.
Don't copy stories. Don't copy names of characters. As I've explained however, copying basic gameplay mechanics, strangely, seems to be allowed though, which is why there's so many clones of so many games and not much the original game authors can do about it. Refer to the clone game link I posted earlier and read that page for the information you might need on this issue.
So in a nutshell you can probably make a basically the same game, but with changed level layout, changed character designs, changed storyline, changed music and sound effects, and probably be in the clear. Whether someone would allow that on their app network is up to them. They could disallow whatever they want for any reasons, even if it's legal. You are at their mercy if you wish to use their services, period. You don't have to use their services though and could choose to independently host and sell it yourself through your own website.
Let's just put it this way as to how uncreative and absolutely unoriginal modern popular games can be though. And yet they can be vastly popular despite being complete ripoffs made for a quick buck. Take Angry Birds as the prime example.
Okay, so Angry Birds is just a ripoff of Crush the Castle. They absolutely stole that idea from that game. But Crush the Castle itself is a ripoff of far better games such as Worms. Worms is a ripoff of the old DOS game Scorched Earth. Scorched Earth itself is a ripoff (though it improves greatly on) the old GORILLAS.BAS and so on. And so yet people are crazy about Angry Birds but know nothing about the far better games it ripped off. Ditto with other popular modern games.
