Hi. I have a few questions regarding fan made games.
I have heard that if you release a free fan game without getting permission, you could get sued. Otherwise, if you don’t release it, but post videos of it, it falls under fan art.
If you make a fan game just to learn game development and post videos on YouTube, without ever releasing it, could you get sued ?
If you make a fan game, then post videos on YouTube showing people how did you made it (teaching them ) but you never release the game itself…could you get sued ?
If you make a fan game with your friends, then one of them releases it ( uploads it somewhere for anyone to download), will he risk getting sued or all the guys that developped the game share the same risk ? Practically, the uploader breaches the copyright, otherwise, unreleased game is considered fan art.
Copyrights laws is a complete mess and more so depending on what country your in.
1: No but a take down notice and a strike can be applied to your account.
2: No but once again you face take down and a strike and you will have to argue your rights under fair use.
3. Depends. If you sell the game and make millions then yes you will get sued. But if you us someone else IP then SOP is take down.
Rule of thumb don’t use anyone eases IP for any reason and you can not consider a game as being fan art.
Here in an interesting case.
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It’s Joe so there will be language that is not work safe.
Rule of thumb number 2. There is no power in copyright except for the willingness on the part of the copyright holder to enforce their rights. Put a Mickey Mouse image on your site Disney will go after you, same with Fox and in most cases directed at what ever service you are using.
It also depends on the company. Some of them are very strict and they want nobody to use/create stuff that looks like their things -> e.g one of my friends made a simple let’s play about a browser game and uploaded it to youtube. Just after some few days he got a “copyright strike” and the youtube channel was closed… luckily there were no other consequences (bad example, but such stuff happens pretty fast)
But as said, copyright always depends from country to country and most companies wont do anything as long as you dont earn any money ^^
In point 3 … if the leakuer/betrayer beggins selling the game you done with your friends and gets sued, you also get in trouble, even if you don’t earn anything and he breaches the copyright.
Some fan games might require testing. Others could have multiplayer elements.
If you make a fan game, want to share it with your friends/guild , but not let them distribute it , is there a way to add some copy-protection DRM trough Blueprints only ? If a download link is found by the ip owners, they would send cease and desist letters.
A DRM for this scope may require
A permanent connection to internet/your server. If the server is not enabled, the game won’t start
A key generator. You could controll internal distribution by sending keys to your friends. Once they get the key from you, they could create an username.
In the case that some of your friends share the game externally, it is not usable.
Is this a good way to protect your fan game from external distribution ? Do Blueprints have the nodes necessary for a DRM system ?
