I make a game using the assets I bought in the marketplace. I want to recruit development members online, but I don’t know if I can share assets.
I understand that this question is related to EULA’s “Distributions to employees and contractors”, but since we are not employees of the company, I don’t know if a group of individuals falls into this category.
Can online members gathered for a project share assets for that project? Also, in this case, I’m asking if I can share my assets. Is it possible for each member to bring in assets that they purchased individually for this project?
You are generally not permitted to share marketplace assets. An exception to this is employees and contractors that are genuinely building a project on your behalf:
You also may Distribute Content to an Engine Licensee who is your employee or your contractor regardless of whether they have rights under their license to the same Content, but only to permit that Engine Licensee to utilize that Content in good faith to develop a Product on your behalf for Distribution by you under the License, and not for the purpose of Content pooling or any other Distribution or sublicensing of Content that is not permitted under this Agreement. Recipients of such a Distribution have a limited license to use, reproduce, display, perform, and modify that Content to develop your Product as outlined above, and for no other purpose.
You don’t need to form a corporation, as the members can be treated as contractors. It is generally a good idea to have agreements with each of your contractors that set forth your relationship. In addition, each individual member must be a licensee, i.e., have accepted the UE4 EULA independently. However, in order to share marketplace content, members must be working on a project on behalf of one licensee. In other words, the project will be released under one member’s license. None of your examples are violations of the EULA provided that the foregoing is true.