Hello forums! I was wondering if anyone knew some specifics regarding the rules for the new modding contest being put up by Alienware. I also made a post over there but wanted to cover my bases. Are items from the marketplace usable in this contest? It was pointed out to me that it could be seen as unfair to allow this, but I was given a free credit to the marketplace at some point and was unsure if this was given to everyone. I can definitely see where something like that could get out of hand, but also know that there are many pay sites out there where people can purchase premade things like materials that wouldn’t be so easily tracked through the Epic launcher, (or all they would have to do is claim to have made them with no way to say for sure). Mainly I’m hoping someone can give me some official clarification on the contest’s view of ownership/rights of things used in the contest. Thanks for any info you can give!
hogscraper
The rules are so vague its scary.
From the Official Rules.
(i) is the original work of the Entrant;
(ii) has not previously been submitted in any competition and has not won an award or prize of any kind;
(iii) does not include trademarks, logos, or copyrighted material not owned by Entrant or material that is used without permission (including but not limited to company names, photographs, works of art, or images published on or in websites, television, movies, or other media) or that otherwise infringes or violates the rights of any third party (including but not limited to, copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, logos, contract and licensing rights, rights of publicity or privacy, moral rights (i.e., droit morale), or any other intellectual property rights)
i would say that you can use them but i’m not sure ^^
i don’t see why not, you can found easily many free asset so why could you not use the one you pay for :s like mentionned, just be sure that it is not something from a marks, like for example they will not accept it if you take gordon freeman from hl² and port it onto the dev kit but if it is something another created and distribute i really think it’s ok ^^.
“THE ORIGINAL WORK OF THE ENTRANT”
This means it must be your items/creations being used in the mod you are submitting.
well they want to use your work to make a profit off of, therefore, materials licensed only to you would not be possible, they would also require to attain a license of assets
, if instead it is all created by you, then the agreement is solely between you and them.
“All Entrants hereby waive and agree not to assert any moral rights in and in connection with the Entry.”
iam a little irked by it, but not so much…
i wonder, the 3d meshes i create for this, i can simply modify them and use them for my own works? *(but not the exact replicate, i cede ownership of my entry)
*
If that were the case, then using any of Studio Wildcards assets would also invalidate your work.
As would pretty much everything generated from any tutorial out there if it lead to an exact copy of the previously created materials in that tutorial. And if changing those things slightly makes it original wouldn’t editing the marketplace items be the same thing? The part that screws it up for me is that part i makes part iii irrelevant if taken literally and leaves room for interpretation if permission is granted to use the material. if both are taken literally. If I made an entire island from scratch but had one material that someone had created and gave me permission to use, would that invalidate my entry or would use of that material somehow make the island not my creation? I’m not talking about buying a weapons pack or models, converting to in game and entering that, but what if I created the models from scratch and used a metal type material I found on the marketplace? I guess my question centers around what they classify as own/permission and how the usage rights for marketplace items work. If I buy something from the marketplace I have a lifetime license to use that item even in commercial applications but I can’t transfer ownership of the item. As a free mod for players to download I don’t see that being in conflict but who knows from the wording.
I would say that anything included in the devkit itself is fair game. Anything that you need to import, needs to be your own work. I’m not really sure though. Some clarification on this would be nice. For now, I’m just creating my own assets, mats and using what is in the devkit.
lol nevermind guess im wrong about this
(iii) does not include trademarks, logos, or copyrighted material not owned by Entrant or material that is used without permission (including but not limited to company names, photographs, works of art, or images published on or in websites, television, movies, or other media) or that otherwise infringes or violates the rights of any third party (including but not limited to, copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, logos, contract and licensing rights, rights of publicity or privacy, moral rights (i.e., droit morale), or any other intellectual property rights)
This clause could be up for quite a a bit of interpretation. Assuming that commercial rights are given upon purchase as permission, i would assume that you probably could use marketplace content legalistically.
(i) is the original work of the Entrant
This also could be interpreted in who knows how many ways. Whether they interpret this as “Work as whole” or all included content should be pointed out as well.
Overall, if you plan to use marketplace content, i would use it very sparingly and stray away from using blueprints from the marketplace.
To be clear, we (or rather Alienware) are not gonna reject anyone for using Marketplace Assets. You own those for use in UE4 games when you buy them from Marketplace, it’s that simple. You have the rights, they’re yours for UE4 projects.
That said, you won’t get an advantage in the Contest either, so use them as you need or as may help you, but no need to overwhelm your Mod/Map/TC with 'em 
And of course, use all of our assets as you wish! 
(Any FREE assets online are also fine, but only if they are completely free for Commercial works, not just non-Commercial works – because as this a Contest with a prize, you may be deriving Commercial benefit from them)
Well ****… time to change my map name 
Thank you very much for the response!
lols my comments were held up by the moderators, as iam new to the forum, i made assumptions i guess
thats cool i guess, maybe i use some public domain textures to help me out… probably not, maybe?
Just make sure of the license! I learned the hard way a long time ago that just because something was given to the public doesn’t mean the author is ok with people using the item commercially.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
So would it be okay if I included a structure building mechanic pulled directly from another game?
Because sometimes a game will simply do something better than how all other games approach the same issue. However if I were to implement the mechanic in Ark it’d feel like a direct copy paste.
You can take the idea and approach and copy it.
You can only directly copy it (taking the files, models, sounds, etc.) if its allowed by the creator/owner of the distribiution rights.
It’s a dangerous topic to begin with since copyright is different from state to state, but lets say you want to rebuilt capture the flag from UT. You can do that, you can make it identical in function, but you can not use their files.
Could be that I am totally off here. So someone pls speak up if what I said is ********.
Just to be safe I recommend doing everything on your own. You grow on even more.
Oh I wouldn’t be using any code or content created by anyone, just their idea, for lack of a better one.