91
Verbal agreements are usually considered valid contracts. But there is an old saying among lawyers:
A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
The problem with verbal contracts is that when push comes to shove and someone goes to court, you have a word-against-word situation where everyone can claim that you agreed on something different ...
52
I don't want to draw too much attention. I don't want to lift my head over the parapet only to have it blasted off, you know?
Either you raise your head and get out, or you starve behind the parapet. If you want to make a living as a game developer, you must get as much exposure as you can. Your revenue is proportional to the number of people who know your ...
49
When a client tells you they don't want you to resell the asset you made for them, then what they really want is to not see a game which obviously uses the exact same asset.
So if you get a very similar request from another customer, then what really matters is that you create an asset which isn't recognizable. They won't care if it uses the same technical ...
34
Getting legal advice on GameDev.StackExchange is not a great idea.
Having said that, if a work is truly in the public domain, you can do whatever you want with it.
31
From both a legal & security standpoint, the single biggest factor I'm aware of is accountability. If you cannot determine who is responsible for the account, you cannot reasonably hold anyone accountable for actions related to the account. For instance, money laundering is easier if you cannot trace account ownership. Forbidding shared accounts won't ...
30
So, yea "IANAL, get one".
However, it seems obvious from your question that your goal is to profit from this game. And the phrase "not interested in treating people like myself as criminals", has little bearing on civil penalties which is your main concern.
Use of a trade mark or IP opens you up to financial damages. And companies have to actively defend ...
29
Yes, you can sell OpenGL-rendered games.
The specifics depend on the library you're using. I'll get back to that.
First: OpenGL is an open standard and related API-set that establishes the protocol for communication between your application and video card / GPU. Typically this communication protocol is implemented by means of an operating system driver, ...
27
In addition to all the other answers:
Prohibiting this has also the benefit of balancing the game from the point of view of players that won't be sharing their account.
Assuming that account sharing is allowed, a player who wanted to have an account only for himself could think:
Ah, even if I dedicate my whole time to this game, and even if I play in ...
22
From the Unity FAQ:
Can we sell games and make money with the free version of Unity?
Yes you can create and sell a game with the free version of Unity,
without paying royalties or any revenue share. However, the free
version of Unity may not be licensed by a commercial entity with
annual gross revenues (based on fiscal year) in excess of US$100,...
19
It can be assumed that all non-trivial software contains bugs.
Unreal Engine 4 has a bugtracker here.
Unity has a bugtracker here.
If you browse these sites you can see the many known issues with these engines.
The licensing agreements for these engines (and most software generally) will contain clauses similar to this:
No Warranty.
THE SOFTWARE IS ...
19
Yes and no. "Public domain" does mean that, by definition, you can do whatever you like with that creative property.
However there's an important caveat here. What's public domain is the underlying story, not every specific creative work based on that story. So, like, you could have a book titled Alice in Wonderland, but its cover can't be Disney's Alice in ...
19
Besides the legalese mentioned in other answers, there are also simple business reasons.
Some games like World of Warcraft charge people by account. If you let two people share an account, you lose 50% of your revenue.
Other games like League of Legends charge people for being allowed to use ingame content. That content is bound to each account. If you ...
19
Lawyers rarely have creative influence on the game itself. But they still fulfill two important jobs in the game industry.
The first is intellectual property (IP) law. Games and all their individual assets are IP which is protected by copyrights, trademarks and sometimes patents. Lawyers are required to advise development teams how to not violate the IP of ...
16
This response only addresses the revenue share aspect of the question.
I have found Back of a Napkin useful in the past. The (free) website is sponsored by a New Zealand law firm and steps you through five questions:
Who is in your team?
What are you building?
If your project makes money, what percentage stake do you each take home?
How will you make ...
13
People I have worked with have done this before.
First time: programmer who worked for me made a PC version of a board game (I made some art for it just because it was a fun little project). This was 25 years ago. He approached the rights holders, a large toy company. They had no idea what to do with the game, and after a few months of considering it they ...
13
Even though hacking the APK seems easy but it will definitely not run, the other option I believe is to upgrade to the Unity Pro version and I found on some research onto it.
See links:
Answer from the Unity 3D page
Forums
Documents about splash screen
13
By the time you can make a living from your fan project, it isn't a fan project anymore.
Nintendo is not one of the (extremely few) Megacorporations that lets the community use their IP to make money. Link to Angry Joe being angry about unusually strict Nintendo IP policy.
Chances are, once they become aware of you, they will go after the money you already ...
12
The word "jutsu" is simply a Japanese word for "technique." The idea of ninja jutsus is very common in anime and manga, and definitely predates Naruto. As long as you aren't using a jutsu name copied directly from Naruto, you should be fine (and even some of the names are likely to be public domain, as they are mentioned in Japanese ninja folklore).
For ...
12
The information you seek is readily available through the Asset Store ToS and EULA. To me, it infers that you are free to do so. The only catch appears to be that you must download the assets through Unity, and that you are purchasing a license for the asset.
All that aside, I am not a lawyer. To make matters more difficult, you can be sued for anything. ...
12
IANAL, get one
Specifically, you probably need an IP/Copyright lawyer.
From my fairly uninformed point of view (CS background, took some law courses in uni), I'd say that in your current state, Nintendo would certainly have no trouble shutting you down if they wanted to.
It sounds like your game is online, a la Pokemon Revolution Online or something (...
12
Is it legal to develop a game using software which is unavailable in my region due to legal reasons?
Unity is not being made available to you due to trade restrictions:
Unity Technologies is listed and incorporated as a business in the
U.S. This means that as a company, we must abide by the legal
sanctions implemented by the U.S Government.
This means that some countries do not have access to the Unity sites.
Currently countries on this list ...
11
Watch for different copyright terms in different countries. Just because a book's copyright has expired in your country does not mean it has expired in all countries in which you plan to distribute the game. Though the Berne Convention sets a minimum copyright term of 50 years after the death of the author, countries are free to set a longer copyright term. ...
11
I worked with the legal team at a Chinese game developer/publisher and one important role they played was to help with cease-and-desist and litigation, as IP theft is a pretty big problem there. One of our RPGs was copied lock, stock and barrel, with even the in-game stats were exactly the same as ours. And of course we had to keep our Western colleagues in ...
10
"Finding Dory" is a registered trademark by Disney Enterprises, Inc. You can look that up on the US Patent and Trademark Office.
A trademark is also violated when you use a name which is so similar that one might confuse it with the trademark. Most people looking for a game about the movie might not remember if the name is written with y or i, so the ...
10
Most users on this site, including myself, are not lawyers, so we are not able to give you legal advice. The best way to be sure is to consult a lawyer.
From the system you describe, it sounds like an artist or someone with the distribution rights to a song could claim that you are making unauthorized use of their identity/intellectual property, just for ...
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