May have missed it? I don’t see any links that specifically filed copyright on “Gameplay only” can you point out? I remember back in the days Nintendo had issues with a game that looked and played too similar to Mario and they created problems for the other studio but that was long ago when Mario was a novel thing and now there are a thousand mario ripoffs. Then again Ningtendo are well known for being extremely picky with their titles and go after everybody for anything.
Personally I have never come across a game that specifically filed copyright on its gameplay. Gameplay falls within the concept of an “Idea” and you can’t copyright “Ideas” or a “Mechanic”.
Don’t go too far they tried to do this recently with “Battle royale” I think it was the case between Epic and PubG. It failed doesn’t work. now there are a million Battle royale spin offs out there.
But when it comes to Art, exclusive characters, Titles, music and code, then yes thats a different story.
I rememebr finding others back then when I was looking into it.
It doesn’t mean that you will run into trouble for sure, but that there could be issues and you wont be able to fight back in court since they have resources and you don’t. (indie dev).
Well copyright in general is not what is right or wrong under the letter of the law but who has the best argument made by the individual who is under the assumption that their rights were violated.
I could come up with a list of game clones, like Pacman Donkey Kong, that proves the point that game play is not covered under copyright but just Google “list of game clones” that the mechanics of game play is a non-copyright issue.
The rule of thumb of copyright it’s up to the holder to take action, being in the right or wrong as to the letter of the law, and is a common trick of the AAA studios to stake their claim even if they are in the wrong for no other reason than to scare of the competition.
For that matter it’s not even clear that said company even owns the rights in the first place if game mechanics could be copyrighted in the first place.
Check out Nintendo vs Universal. Not game play related but covers the idea of game parity