One great feature in BYOND are the fangames that are made to imitate the fun we have had in other games. Are these games BYOND legal limits? Below are some helpful hints, and some warnings, about your legal rights.
Is -my- game BYOND my rights?: It depends; Copyrights balance with the fair use policy, in other words, you can't copyright most of the games considered fan games, even if they are legal. In other words, desptite the laws saying, you have to consider the copyrights held by the company who created the original game.
The actual game: Most of the time, it's fine to make a fan game. Sometimes, however, you may use graphics from the game, where then you -MUST- learn the laws. Using the graphics can be legal, but editing them might not be. It's tricky to use the graphics, so be careful.
Income: Good luck finding a legal way collecting under the name of the game. This is what companies look for; they can sue you for all the profit you made, shut your game down, and collect fees that they may have lost to your business. It's often the reason anyone could become legally infringing. I wouldn't charge, or accept donations.
Your own game: The best idea, and while BYOND's owners Dantom hold authoring rights for their site, Dantom's user agreement is flexible to allow you to host it elsewhere, and still profit. Making your own original game is never infringing, unless it includes illicit material.
Well, that's all.
~CalmStorm
Project Immerse Team Supervisor
ID:190816
 Dec 4 2002, 5:55 pm
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Hey, no need for sarcasm. The man is explaining a shadowed concept to those of us who are uninformed of the ways of "legit."
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OneFishDown wrote:
Ok, so they can sue me for $23, wow. They'd also get Odds are, the court would also award the company sueing you for court costs (which *you* might have to pay) - so the financial burden is more on you, not them. If this happens, $23 easily starts to turn into 100's or even 1000's of dollars. | |
Theres still the part about the company not even caring, I mean so what if you used their icons, they wont take it to court for using their icons! If its a bigger type company I see no way of seeing such crap.
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Except that it has happened. Rarely do these things get to court, but video game companies do have their lawyers send cease and desist orders to people using their intellectual property. Look up a game called "Zelda Online" (not on BYOND). It was quite popular... but it suddenly changed it's name and all of it's graphics. You can find it now as "Graal Online". No, they never went to court with Nintendo... but you can be sure Nintendo threatened them with it.
-AbyssDragon | |
Excellent example Abyss. The main problem with them going to court, or threatening it, is that you now have to deal with that problem, for probaly a year. It's time consuming, and there's no way you're going to win against corporations, unless you know the law.
About them not caring...There is a company that backs gaming companies. They surf the net, and spot roms, illigial image archives, and rips. They sue you, nintendo collects, and noone goes home happy. Just warning you about the possibility of a gaming company seeing BYOND-They'd had fun. Especially the DBZ games...that'd be a hole to fill. As for YOUR game being copyrighted, find the location of a law office that deals with copyrights. I called down, was guarenteed I was covered. I may also purchase copyright protection for the game once it's made, but everything so far is good. Sometimes, all you need to copyright your game is knowing it's covered. ~Calmstorm Project Immerse Team Supervisor | |
Why not personal copywright infringement as well, try this on for size:
I log into a game called "DBZ Zeta: Gohanz Madnezz" and it says on the information tab: "This game is and was made by Dracon, you will respect him in full. The use or sale of this game without permission is prohibited." I asked if he knew it was there, he says: "Yes, I made this game." I say: "No you didn't Dracon did." He says: "No, Dracon is a liar, he hacked my game codes and I can't change it." I say: "You are a complete idiot if you think I would honestly believe that." This goes on this way for about another five minutes until: He says: "Yeah, but I bought this game, it's not stolen. I PAYED for it, I LEGALLY OWN IT." I say: "You LEGALLY OWN STOLEN property." anyway, all I'm saying is: some people don't understand that even if you payed, you still are under possession of stolen property, files or no. | |
Just because you can't get into all that much trouble for it doesn't mean that it is right...and I think that that is the more important issue.
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I doubt a company would waste their time and money shutting down games on BYOND. If it was such an issue that it would jeopardize that many games on BYOND, I'm sure some measures would have been taken to avoid games like that from appearing on the hub, or being on the hub for very long.
In some cases it is wrong, and you could get in trouble. It's not that the trouble/fines that you'd get are insignificant, it's the slight risk of that ever happening. However, the slight risk doesn't make it anymore right; it just means that I am not going to panic over Rockstar Games shutting my game down. Companies are out to make money, not win moral victories. They'd spend more money to shut a fan game down than they would make, so it's not worth it for them. Yes, they could if they wanted to, but I don't think they would. | |
Ok, so they can sue me for $23, wow. They'd also get money for business lost to my game. Still, that's not nearly worth it for a company to sue me. This doesn't make it violate copyrights any less, but what would a large company do: come to BYOND, see my **game, and sue me for what, a few hundred dollars? They would lose so much money for such a worthless moral victory.
I think it's ok to make fan games. I don't think you should charge money to play it, especially if you use content from the 'real' game. Basically, I don't think any game on BYOND would catch a software company's eye, there isn't enough money being generated from BYOND to make it worth their time and money. They won't come and shut you down because they can, they'd do it for money.
* This mostly takes place in south east Asia; Thailand seems to ring a bell. And this has been going on for I'd guess at least 10-15 years, so billions of dollars being spread over that time isn't as much as it sounds.
** I'm just using my game, GTAonline, as an example.