Using "borrowed" assets as placeholders

[MoonJellyGames]

Edit: The community has made it crystal clear that using assets without permission, even for private use, is not acceptable. Knowing this, I promptly removed the image that was in my project. Shortly after, I (somewhat amusingly) discovered that the image is public domain after all, but the point still stands.
I was feeling anxious and obligated to reply to folks who only read the first post here and weren’t up to speed on my situation, so now everyone who pops in will know what’s up…

Hey all,

I have a question that I think I know the answer to, but just in case, I’d like to hear some feedback.

My WIP game is currently using a (very poorly-tiled) space-y image that I ripped from Google images. It will absolutely be replaced once we get to the point where we’re ready to create our own, but for early playtesting, it’s important to have something vaguely similar to what we’ll end up with in there for now.

I assume that this is common practice and not a big deal on its own. Here’s the concern though: I decided that I’d like to start tweeting about this project with links to the YouTube dev logs (which are currently unlisted) I’ve been making. Most of these have (and will continue to have, for some time (Edit: No, they will not)) these “borrowed” assets. I don’t expect a significant number of people to even see my tweets, let alone click on my video links, but if this is bad practice, I don’t want to do it.

Would it be enough to dig up the image and give proper credit in the description of each video? Or am I just being silly about this?

Thanks!

[neginfinity]

@MoonJelly

I assume that this is common practice and not a big deal on its own.

Actually that’s something you really shouldn’t be doing.

You shouldn’t ever pirate assets for your game, because you if THINK they’ll absolutely be replaced, that doesn’t mean you won’t forget it and that creates a possible legal landmine in your project.

Learn to respect the authors since the beginning and do not “borrow” assets without permission, ever.

@MoonJelly

Would it be enough to dig up the image and give proper credit in the description of each video? Or am I just being silly about this?

No, if you are using pirated images in your game, you should remove them from your project. If you aren’t complying with the license to begin with, then “crediting” is not going to cut it.

There are many legal image sources with permissive licenses. Use those.
https://pixabay.com/images/search/space/

Basically, by using someone else’s work or intellectual property without permission you give them a way to kill your project. Why would you ever do something like that?

[bobisgod234]

@MoonJelly

Hey all,
Would it be enough to dig up the image and give proper credit in the description of each video? Or am I just being silly about this?

All that does is tell people that you know you’re using assets that you don’t have the rights to use. That looks worse!

There are plenty of sources for copyright-free images. You can even throw together some crappy placeholder and use that instead.

[MoonJellyGames]

Thank you both for the info. I honestly had no idea that it was even a problem to use placeholders privately. I absolutely do not want to misuse anybody’s work-- that’s why I asked, after all.

I’ll be removing the image file immediately. Thanks again.

[MoonJellyGames]

@bobisgod234

All that does is tell people that you know you’re using assets that you don’t have the rights to use. That looks worse!

There are plenty of sources for copyright-free images. You can even throw together some crappy placeholder and use that instead.

I never even thought of it as “pirating” given that the image is freely available online and I only intended to use it privately.

I made the thread because I wasn’t 100% sure what the rules are when it comes to placeholders in WIPs featured in screenshots and videos, especially when used by a “nobody” hobby developer.

But, I got the answers I was looking for, as well as a good resource (thanks, neginfinity). This has been equal parts embarrassing and enlightening.

[angrypenguin]

@MoonJelly

I never even thought of it as “pirating” given that the image is freely available online and I only intended to use it privately.

And in that context I wouldn’t call it “pirated”. But you’re talking about using it in social media content, which is a different context.

As someone already said, the real issue with the “personal use” case is the risk that it’ll accidentally get left in there. Something like that even happened in one of the Last Of Us games. Don’t let it happen to you.

As others have said, there’s plenty of cheap / free stuff. Be in good habits from day 1 and you don’t need to put in the effort of swapping it out later.

[neginfinity]

@MoonJelly

I never even thought of it as “pirating” given that the image is freely available online and I only intended to use it privately.

Basically, pirating is breach of copyright.

If an image is available online, that actually doesn’t mean that you’re allowed to reuse it in any form. If you want to reuse, you should check its license. CC0 and CC-BY are good free license to look for, where CC0 is public domain, and CC-BY requires attribution.

The “private use” is a lawyer territory, but you see when you want to showcase what you’re working on and want to post it on youtube/social network that’s not exactly private use anymore.

That’s why the best idea is to avoid unlicensed content from the day one.

Another royally bad idea is making a game with someone else’s characters or intellectual property. Nintendo, for example, is famous for shutting down fan projects, even when people worked for years and decades on them.

[HIBIKI_entertainment]

[quote=“MoonJelly, post:1, topic: 856148, username:MoonJelly”]
Hey all,
I have a question that I think I know the answer to, but just in case, I’d like to hear some feedback.
My WIP game is currently using a (very poorly-tiled) space-y image that I ripped from Google images. It will absolutely be replaced once we get to the point where we’re ready to create our own, but for early playtesting, it’s important to have something vaguely similar to what we’ll end up with in there for now.
I assume that this is common practice and not a big deal on its own. Here’s the concern though: I decided that I’d like to start tweeting about this project with links to the YouTube dev logs (which are currently unlisted) I’ve been making. Most of these have (and will continue to have, for some time) these “borrowed” assets. I don’t expect a significant number of people to even see my tweets, let alone click on my video links, but if this is bad practice, I don’t want to do it.
Would it be enough to dig up the image and give proper credit in the description of each video? Or am I just being silly about this?
Thanks!
*[/quote]
*
I’m sorry for the mega post here, but it’s good to at least be aware and may give you at least some piece of mind with the level and scale of things

As you and most others have noted, it is a form of pirating.

Even for private use.
but it’s the mindset and that’s bad practice and the biggest problem.

You said it yourself

[quote=“MoonJelly, post:1, topic: 856148, username:MoonJelly”]
*[/quote]
*[quote=“MoonJelly, post:1, topic: 856148, username:MoonJelly”]
Ripped
I assume that this is common practice
not a big deal on its own
these “borrowed” assets
[/quote]

The good side, is you are feeling maybe guilty about it, you very much wish to do the right thing.

giving credit through legally fine, if that isn’t what the original owner has outlined then it’s just not good enough,
for example, pirating an asset from a unity asset store but giving credit to the owner anyway.
it happens all the time and some see it good or bad really, a very common phrase " If my product is being pirated, i must be onto something good"

they may not mind, they may not even care, but what is good practice is reaching out and asking about it.

if that’s just way too much effort, not feasible, then at least legally that would make sense for you to not chase them up, you wouldn’t chase every single minute thing that you apply that might not be your original thought and skill, after all, cause nothing would get done.

But a bad
Scenario:
You find an image on social media you like it you want to use it in your project.

later you find out that that image was taken from an artist put on social media to distribute and they earned no pay, no royalties nothing. their life’s work.

This isn’t your fault of course.

but, say you wanted to move forward and start tweeting about your new project and this artist sees their work in your project, they’re going to be extremely hurt, and very angry, they probably no longer have the funding to challenge it though.

as you could probably imagine the scenario could just get worse and worse for anyone.
OR nothing could happen at all ( at least that you’re aware of).

In the really high-level law of things.

If you download a paid music asset for free, and only you listen to it, pirating.
If you bought a CD at a store( physical or digital) and then played it at someone wedding, it’s still another form of pirating because you don’t have the licence/right to do that, you don’t own that content.

Similarly, if you go to google, google doesn’t always have freely available images, most are hot-linked so they display them anyway. ( boo to google for making people think this is okay)
also social media, technically they often state, they ingest the media it becomes theirs, rights are lost to the IP holder etcetc they simply get away with it just because ( burning bridges and ladders).

Most of this just gets diluted with time and the expansion of megacorps, but it will always affect the lil’ guy.

---

So for the most part, as also stated, it’s best practice not to do this kind of thing, so that you can make it a habit not to.
but also to set examples to peers too.

god, forbid if you grow into a studio and one of your artists uses something they found on google on social media to build off into one of your integrated systems. the owner of that would absolutely be in their rights to take a large share ( and damages) of $$$$$$$$$.

You’re not going to prison or anything, but it’s good to be considerate of what you feel is as honest and fair.
Even if the world has many who will just take take take for good or bad reasons.

At the very least, the image asset you have.
find the original owner and contact them or find their licence to see how much of that image you could use.

There was a high-level dev conference once where a developer simply said " torrent everything, who cares"
and well, honest living people and probably those getting the shtick for having their assets pirated.

So as much as the asset you have is just super super super minor, and probably does come under fair use in some way or another. Just be aware that as soon as that becomes public, you have taken another step on the ‘bad practice path’ and it’s a whole new ball game, so to speak.

on the other hand, it may simply just be so completely unrecognisable that and at this stage, really have no impact at all, that, okay fine, because otherwise, it might take you 5 years and $6k later to find the owner.

As you can see, it’s hard, there are many situations, circumstances and variables to consider.
and I completely understand your point, you’re starting something, it’s small, maybe it doesn’t matter yet, and you’re probably being fair at that stage

Just remember if you do make it public and later down the line you make it big, it only takes the asset owner to scroll back through your videos, or you to do this again at a later stage with a high profile asset.
That’s what mostly makes it ’ bad practice’

if you made it this far, congrats, maybe go get something to eat, you must be starving.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

If the game isn’t being played at some official event or being distributed to a bunch of people you don’t know, don’t worry about it.

If it is just replace the offending variable. You only need placeholder art at this point so just take 20 minutes to make something new.

Here is basic idea about risk management:

E.G. - how serious is the risk, how easy is the solution?

In this case risk is potentially serious, but solution is dead easy. So it’s hardly worth time to discuss if you are operating from a model like this.

[MadeFromPolygons1]

Its not placeholder images if they are viewed on social media. Thats the same as having it in a released game, point is its in your game and you dont own the rights and are now marketing said in development game using images you do not have the rights to.

Basically, remove them immediately and never do it again, and really you should take down the tweets and videos (And anything else you have shared with them in) as they are not within your rights to distribute any longer.

Nobody here is a lawyer, important to bare that in mind so be safe rather than sorry.

This is literally the need asset packs exist on the asset store to fill

[Coin9]

This is like adding some random supermodels pictures from google to your tinder profile and let it collect lots of likes and then replace back your own pictures and hope people will still be interested Basically you are illegally taking someones ip and using it to gain a fans

[MoonJellyGames]

@Coin9

This is like adding some random supermodels pictures from google to your tinder profile and let it collect lots of likes and then replace back your own pictures and hope people will still be interested Basically you are illegally taking someones ip and using it to gain a fans

Yeah, I get that. I think part of why it didn’t strike me that way in my case is because of how obvious it is that the image was placeholder. I blew it up much much bigger than its resolution intended, and had it overlapping in some places, and with big gaps in between in others. As everyone has made abundantly clear (which, I appreciate), it doesn’t matter, but that was my thought at the time: “Nobody in their right mind would think that this is anything but placeholder”.

[MoonJellyGames]

@MadeFromPolygons_1

Its not placeholder images if they are viewed on social media. Thats the same as having it in a released game, point is its in your game and you dont own the rights and are now marketing said in development game using images you do not have the rights to.

Basically, remove them immediately and never do it again, and really you should take down the tweets and videos (And anything else you have shared with them in) as they are not within your rights to distribute any longer.

Nobody here is a lawyer, important to bare that in mind so be safe rather than sorry.

This is literally the need asset packs exist on the asset store to fill

I had some videos in my WIP thread, which I took down. The funny thing is that I actually accidentally deleted those videos and a bunch of others (including my trailer for my released game trailer ) shortly before creating this thread. I didn’t think I made any of these public outside of the WIP thread, but after checking my Twitter, I found that I actually had posted one early on. Apparently I didn’t even consider this whole issue at the time. In any case, I’m glad it’s gone so I can move on. I absolutely do not want to misuse anyone’s work.

[MoonJellyGames]

@BIGTIMEMASTER

If the game isn’t being played at some official event or being distributed to a bunch of people you don’t know, don’t worry about it.

If it is just replace the offending variable. You only need placeholder art at this point so just take 20 minutes to make something new.

Here is basic idea about risk management:

E.G. - how serious is the risk, how easy is the solution?

In this case risk is potentially serious, but solution is dead easy. So it’s hardly worth time to discuss if you are operating from a model like this.

I appreciate your input, but I wasn’t really looking at any of this from the perspective of trying to minimize risk to myself for being “caught”. Rather, I wanted to know if what I was going to do would be wrong in the first place. As it turns out, I had already crossed that line, which I’m extremely frustrated with myself for.

[MoonJellyGames]

@HIBIKI_entertainment

I’m sorry for the mega post here, but it’s good to at least be aware and may give you at least some piece of mind with the level and scale of things

As you and most others have noted, it is a form of pirating.

Even for private use.
but it’s the mindset and that’s bad practice and the biggest problem.

You said it yourself

The good side, is you are feeling maybe guilty about it, you very much wish to do the right thing.

giving credit through legally fine, if that isn’t what the original owner has outlined then it’s just not good enough,
for example, pirating an asset from a unity asset store but giving credit to the owner anyway.
it happens all the time and some see it good or bad really, a very common phrase " If my product is being pirated, i must be onto something good"

they may not mind, they may not even care, but what is good practice is reaching out and asking about it.

if that’s just way too much effort, not feasible, then at least legally that would make sense for you to not chase them up, you wouldn’t chase every single minute thing that you apply that might not be your original thought and skill, after all, cause nothing would get done.

But a bad
Scenario:
You find an image on social media you like it you want to use it in your project.

later you find out that that image was taken from an artist put on social media to distribute and they earned no pay, no royalties nothing. their life’s work.

This isn’t your fault of course.

but, say you wanted to move forward and start tweeting about your new project and this artist sees their work in your project, they’re going to be extremely hurt, and very angry, they probably no longer have the funding to challenge it though.

as you could probably imagine the scenario could just get worse and worse for anyone.
OR nothing could happen at all ( at least that you’re aware of).

In the really high-level law of things.

If you download a paid music asset for free, and only you listen to it, pirating.
If you bought a CD at a store( physical or digital) and then played it at someone wedding, it’s still another form of pirating because you don’t have the licence/right to do that, you don’t own that content.

Similarly, if you go to google, google doesn’t always have freely available images, most are hot-linked so they display them anyway. ( boo to google for making people think this is okay)
also social media, technically they often state, they ingest the media it becomes theirs, rights are lost to the IP holder etcetc they simply get away with it just because ( burning bridges and ladders).

Most of this just gets diluted with time and the expansion of megacorps, but it will always affect the lil’ guy.

---

So for the most part, as also stated, it’s best practice not to do this kind of thing, so that you can make it a habit not to.
but also to set examples to peers too.

god, forbid if you grow into a studio and one of your artists uses something they found on google on social media to build off into one of your integrated systems. the owner of that would absolutely be in their rights to take a large share ( and damages) of $$$$$$$$$.

You’re not going to prison or anything, but it’s good to be considerate of what you feel is as honest and fair.
Even if the world has many who will just take take take for good or bad reasons.

At the very least, the image asset you have.
find the original owner and contact them or find their licence to see how much of that image you could use.

There was a high-level dev conference once where a developer simply said " torrent everything, who cares"
and well, honest living people and probably those getting the shtick for having their assets pirated.

So as much as the asset you have is just super super super minor, and probably does come under fair use in some way or another. Just be aware that as soon as that becomes public, you have taken another step on the ‘bad practice path’ and it’s a whole new ball game, so to speak.

on the other hand, it may simply just be so completely unrecognisable that and at this stage, really have no impact at all, that, okay fine, because otherwise, it might take you 5 years and $6k later to find the owner.

As you can see, it’s hard, there are many situations, circumstances and variables to consider.
and I completely understand your point, you’re starting something, it’s small, maybe it doesn’t matter yet, and you’re probably being fair at that stage

Just remember if you do make it public and later down the line you make it big, it only takes the asset owner to scroll back through your videos, or you to do this again at a later stage with a high profile asset.
That’s what mostly makes it ’ bad practice’

if you made it this far, congrats, maybe go get something to eat, you must be starving.

Thank you for the response. I’ve made threads specifically asking if some coding design I’ve come up with is “bad practice”-- a totally separate issue, but my point is that I do make an effort to do things the right way.

Heck, I even make a point to buy CDs of albums that I like even though they’re freely (and legally) available through Spotify and/or official YouTube channels. I want to support the artists.

I’ve been looking at my first post and thinking, “of course you can’t do that, ya big dummy!”

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

the internet makes it really easy to accidentally “borrow” without hardly thinking about it. I wouldn’t beat myself up - if you got some benefit from somebody else’s work and you can actually track down who they are, you can buy some of their work, tip them, etc. Maybe even hire them. That’s actually how I’ve found a lot of the people I’ve hired.

[Joe-Censored]

I’ve done it for prototypes or just to try out a few things in the game before actually choosing. But I found it to be a mistake. You’ve got to be pretty meticulous about tracking what you’ve licensed, and what you haven’t, and 6 months later it is pretty easy to forget. If you’re not keeping good track, you might have to spend a few days going through your entire project auditing where you got everything from, and what is and isn’t licensed.

One time I “borrowed” some music that worked really well in the game, and when I decided I wanted to pay for it months later, I found the artist pulled it down. No longer available. Damn, I should have just paid the measly $5 or whatever they wanted in the beginning. It turned into a big waste of time trying to hunt down where else I could get it from, or who the original artist was, to no avail.

So my recommendation is to not “borrow” any art during development. It isn’t worth the hassle. You think it is getting you a head start for free, but that isn’t the case. My 2 cents.

[MoonJellyGames]

@Joe-Censored

I’ve done it for prototypes or just to try out a few things in the game before actually choosing. But I found it to be a mistake. You’ve got to be pretty meticulous about tracking what you’ve licensed, and what you haven’t, and 6 months later it is pretty easy to forget. If you’re not keeping good track, you might have to spend a few days going through your entire project auditing where you got everything from, and what is and isn’t licensed.

One time I “borrowed” some music that worked really well in the game, and when I decided I wanted to pay for it months later, I found the artist pulled it down. No longer available. Damn, I should have just paid the measly $5 or whatever they wanted in the beginning. It turned into a big waste of time trying to hunt down where else I could get it from, or who the original artist was, to no avail.

So my recommendation is to not “borrow” any art during development. It isn’t worth the hassle. You think it is getting you a head start for free, but that isn’t the case. My 2 cents.

That seems to be the prevailing wisdom. I had placeholder music in my last game, and it actually helped me get a sense of what kind of music worked best in the game. But I understand the risk and (now) the ethical/legal issues with doing this.

Just to update my situation: I found the source of the image I was using. Turns out it’s free to use (personal and commercial, no credit needed) if you sign up for a free trial with shutterstock. I’m sure I’ll hear the collective facepalms at some point while I’m working.

[Mauri]

Just a tip: A good source for free images is Unsplash. Texture-wise, there’s ambientCG (formerly CC0 Textures). Everything is under CC0 license on both sites.

I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to use borrowed art assets as placeholders for prototyping only (unless you plan to tweet or devlog about your project - that’s a no then), but then I also get what Joe-Censored says.

[BIGTIMEMASTER]

I’ve got a third party tool for windows, cant remember what the name is, but it allows you to put color coded tags on files in explorer. You can filter via tags as well. Things that need to be replaced I have red flag on. I do same thing with code to. Like to-do list things get a tag.

Then you dont have to hold anything in brain memory, just at some point you have time when you go through project and clean up all the tags.

I think joe has made excellent point about preventing human error from onset, but using some sort of tag system like this can help for those times when you just wanna grab some art quick and keep the ball rolling. For me, if I start digging around internet that can became distraction and hurt productivity.