Hi, I am a new unity beginner.
Recently I had taken a lot unity courses from Udemy to enhance and improve my skills. But I am having few questions about copyrights/patents for games and its assets.
1. How can we know that game clones, (such as flappy birds clones, monopoly, endless running games) are legal and will not be sued by any owners? Is that any guidelines or rules exists for us to follow during game development? Since there is so many similar games exists.
2. As one of the course using flappy bird clone, the instructor said we can published the clones to google playstore and start receiving income(if i do not misunderstand/miss up anything) after he finished that section. But I am using his assets for learning, will i get any offends if I publish my flappy bird clone?
3. Some of the free assets we can get from unity, and some instructors(one of my instructor is Awesome Tuts). But how do we know whether the assets is legit for commercial uses or only for non commercial uses?
And 4. Does the meaning of commercial free assets is we can use the assets for develop & sell our games(with prices or free but contain ads) without any offends?
This topic is opinionated - but the 50/50 consensus is - game mechanics can not be legally protected, ALL art, workflow/process, titles, fonts, code, music, likenesses, logos, and even some words - ALL content is legally protected. But - anyone can sue anyone for any reason. So you can never be sure.
Just donât use other peoples content for a game that can make any type of revenue - donât use ANY content or code unless you buy it or its listed as free with accompanying EULA on a reputable store (asset store).
This wonât happen - itâs just to get you excited. If you are concerned - use different content. PS see #1 above.
All legitimate content has EULA that accompany them. See Asset Store EULA. If the content you are using doesnât have a EULA - donât use it.
Reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Reference https://www.awesometuts.com/p/terms
Personal opinion - Although it looks like that site is providing legitimate âfreeâ asset â I would not use any âsecond handâ assets from any site like that. Just me.
To be a good steward so as not to infringe on any licenses - consider researching the assets on the site and read each EULA for every asset you use.
Be aware - âI have gathered thousands of commercial free 2D and 3D assetsâ this does not shield you from being sued by the original asset provider - if one of the assets you use end up with a license that is non-commercial use when generating revenue from the final product.
Thank you for your information, I guess I will create my own assets then.
However, is the link above you gave will help us apply for the copyrights? Such as after we create our own assets then we have to upload to the websites to indicate that âthese assets is created by me and its belonged to me/my companyâ. So they will grant us the copyright permissions after they done verification?
And about the EULA and Terms and conditions for assets, is it be done by the owners? Or the organization who approved the copyrights will help us to do it?
No Copyright is automatic upon creation, at least for Americans. I canât speak for other countries. Trademark and Patents have to be licensed through a government organization. Copyright is legally proven when being adjudicated by a persons ability to prove original creation on/before the date of another creation.
You might also research DMCA - which is a newer rule regarding copyright.
Owners of the assets or through the stores where they are sold. The license on that site you referenced protects nothing - except for the training material they have created and the authors of said training. It doesnât protect you or any other person/developer - at all.