I’m still learning everything about 3d modeling and video game making and need a bit of help understanding copyright sort of things. Honestly I don’t even know anything about copyrighting other than basically don’t use other people’s work.
If I do get to the point where I’ve made a game and I’m ready to sell it, can I sell it anywhere, or just Unity? What sort of copyright stuff do I need to know. How do I prevent people from stealing my stuff? I don’t know how any of this works…
Also, since I’m the one that made the game, can I use any of the resources I used to make that game, for other stuff? Like, can I sell the models I made for the game, can I use the models in other games, can I use basically anything I made for the game, for other stuff.
Like I said, I really don’t know anything there is to know about copyrighting and what you can, and can’t do with all this stuff.
If there are articles, websites, anything you guys can point me to, that would be fantastic. I’ll try to do some of my own research, but there’s only so much I can figure out when I’m not even sure what to look for, and I prefer to ask directly so I can get answers to specific questions instead of stumbling over things.
Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated. I don’t want to go into this blindly and end up screwing myself over some how ):
Hi - You do not need to publish your stuff with Unity. You can sell it anywhere. To prevent people stealing your stuff… Well, I don’t think you can. You can implement several different copy protection schemes (like key generators, etc), but if your game is good, people will still steal it, nothing you can do. Probably best to just publish under the big app stores, and let their stuff handle it (the windows store, the Mac app store, the IOS app store, Google Play, etc).
As for copyright, your work is automatically copyrighted when you create it. But that isn’t copy protected, just copyrighted. Again, not a lot you can do if people steal your work, unfortunately. Some people just think the world owes them for living.
I do understand that it is nearly impossible to prevent people from taking your work. So I guess to explain the question more clearly is, how does copyrighting work with this sort of stuff. Because (from what I’ve gathered), if you have something copyrighted and someone clearly steals it, like coding and such, if you have some sort of copyright, you can fight against the people stealing the code, or something along the lines of this.
I’m just trying to get a more clear understanding on how everything works, sorry if it’s all confusing hehe.
In the US, you can register your copyright, and it gives you additional protections (you can sue for more money). But it’s not required.
Otherwise, that’s it really. There is no governing body looking for stolen work, or anyone policing it. It’s really up to you to catch anyone, and notify the ISP and/or Host of the stolen material of the infringement, and demand they take it down. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. If they don’t then you can sue.
But I’m not a lawyer, just a guy that’s been around a lot, and have had my work stolen. I’d suggest to consult a lawyer for more detailed info. I recommend using the stores above, and letting them worry about it all, and spend your time on games.
I was just thinking about small indie games, and their company logos that pop up before a game starts, and figured that I should work on something like that as well. I did some research and learned how to get a copyright name for something like this, but I honestly don’t even know how it all works.
I guess what I’m trying to figure out is, once I get a name copyright, how does it work? I was hoping that I could create 3d models, make animations, art, games, or sell them if I choose, and I wanted to know how I can copyright protect myself, and have a copyright name to use for all my projects.
I know this might not be the right place to ask these questions, but honestly this is only place I can think of to get help on this when I really have no idea what I’m dealing with, so I appreciate your help greatly. It’s hard to google something when you really don’t know what you’re looking for.