Hi,
I am planning on creating a Super Mario 3d game where Mario is the main character.
Is this legal? Or I have to take permission from those who created Super Mario?
This forum is for Unity specific technical questions.
Rather ask these sort of questions that can be discussed on forum.unity3d.com
No it is not legal in countries where copyright or similar author right protection exist.
But if you do not intend to make money with this game, maybe it can be classified as a “fan game”. And Nintendo will perhaps not sue you. Are you willing to take the risk?
This question is covered in the forums: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/86090-How-to-make-a-fan-game-without-getting-all-the-legal-issue-stuff
My thought on this is, if you use your own character art and block designs AND don’t sell it for money AND say its a fan game you should fine. Valve never sued the maker of TF2 arcade, because its a fan game
Actually, you can create absolutely anything you want as long as:
- It is considered parody, which is basically anything so you’re good there.
- You do not make any money off of it.
It’s called Fair Use and I use it all the time. Here’s a 1.
Now, that being said, this question is not relevant to this website and should probably be taken down soon.
Heeeeell no. Especially for nintendo. Don’t go with the “It’s parody” or “I’m not making any money”.
Nintendo won’t care. They will simply shut it down the moment they see it with a “we are working on something like that so you are harming us and/or the image we want to have for the mascot.”
Seriously, don’t think that there are loopholes. Not even fair use is being obeyed. Many things are considered ok by people because too many are telling that it’s ok and then the company just ruins the one that did it.
Nintendo has the lawyer money to simply run something to the ground just by taking things to court, even without winning.
As long as you do NOT make ANY KIND of money out of it, DECLARE it as “Fan Fiction” explicitly, state that everything is copyright of Nintendo and cease all your rights on the game, and - the best - leave its source project for other unity users out of here, e.g. make it open-source, THEN you are fan-fiction and as such it’s perfectly OKAY. However, Nintendo may STILL decide to sue you / threaten you if they dare. I have been made a Mario game before (in Yoyo games’s Game Maker) and this is not a problem for today. Still. But Nintendo DID shut-down projects that ended up on .com domains before, even if their source code is still there.
If you are okay with these “terms”, go for it.
If you want to develop commercial game for Nintendo, sign to Nintendo as a developer, pay your license, read your NDA, You will receive a devkit for the console you want (Wii U), then feel free to use Unity Pro’s Wii U exported and make your own Mario game… LEGALLY.