Hi, I plan on releasing a level sharer for my game soon. I was hoping to be able to use some of the best levels made by gamers in future updates of the game. Now I’m sure there must be some sort of copyright issue here so what I want to know is, could I put something in the upload menu that users have to accept that would allow me full copyright to there levels?
yes you could. Blizzard has always owned any level created with its warcraft and starcraft editors for example
Awesome, any ideas of what you should put there? e.g. “By uploading this level all copyrights are given to the developers of “Game” and it may be used in future updates.”
I’m just really bad at putting words down so that they sound proper, would that be enough?
You should contact a lawyer 
why not open up a Blizzard game and see what they write, copy it, etc
Of course, the best thing to do is always to just ask your customer. I mean, if you get 1000 levels, and you like 5 of them, why not just ask the 5 users if you can honor them by including their SUPER-awesome creation in the next game. You can even give them a nod in the credits! That helps to build community and promote your product. And… all it costs you is… the price of an email. Who would say no?
Gigiwoo
i super second that , that would be awesome for your costumers, you could even make contests to feature the best levels in the game in a official manner. this could potentially increase your user base
In warcraft3 at least, the map maker does not own the map. Anything you make with the editor (or turn into a wc3 file) is owned by Blizzard.
Of course ideas can’t be owned.
Uh… patents?
Anyway, back to the topic. Anything that is created with your tools or is based off your work is known as “derivative work,” and the law allows you to set the conditions associated with redistributing derivative work. You can make it illegal, or you can let it be distributed freely and everything in the middle.
Based on business models, different companies allow different levels of freedom. Obviously, companies like UT or Epic would be laughed off the internet if they stipulated anything created with their engines belonged to them. They obviously allow a great deal of freedom based on the license they sell you (royalty, full-use, etc).
I was definitely gonna give credit to the creator, guess I might just put some little clause in then email people as well
Yer was thinking of doing contests as well. Think it could be fun
I was thinking about doing this for my FPS game. (as long as there is not much legal hurdlges) Though to me, the issue is not the copyright, but actually making the level builder and map format itself 
Trust me, this is not a small task! Think I must of spent more time making the level builder than the main game!