I recall a while back a lot of flack and bad feeling (or so it seemed to me) towards some guy who basically took the warehouse demo made next to NO changes and sold it on the appstore.
I’ve a question as to a slightly different scenario…
We want to take one of the demos, we’ve changed the goal of the demo and done some re-coding (not a huge amount just a little to make the objective different and bring it into line with another product which we’ll be submitting alongside it.) We’re adding a couple of scenes one for instructions Introduction and one for ‘see/buy our other game’ type advert at the end of the game.
We are not going to be selling this it’s part of our marketing (for our paid game which it’s advertising) so it’s gonna be a freebie.
So the question is…
How much (if any) flack or bad feeling are we likely to attract if we
a) Leave the unity3d supplied graphics in place
or
b) Replace all the graphics with out own.
As this is a freebie I’d rather not spend a lot of time reskinning the graphics, if the change in gameplay objectives it being a freebie, is sufficient.
Any great sage advice or wisdom would be appreciated.
I would think that the unity supplied graphics and code is protected under copywrite law. I think that UT is distributing the code and images to you under a limited license agreement, which allows you access to the code and images to use in your project. I would imagine that they still have the right to disallow use of their supplied intellectual property at their discretion, IE selling penelope on the app store etc.
However I think that using parts of the images and code in a free advertising product would probably not draw too much attention.
Re-reading some of the old posts from the warehouse guy, an aspect that ppl were upset about was that U3d weren’t given any credit for the work.
I’m happy to say something along the lines of
“NB Portions of art code contained in this app, were developed by the excellent and talented ppl at Unity3d and licensed them to us.” or something along those lines.
One of the main complaints at the time re: the warehouse demo deployment was that it was billed as a ‘first pass’ of a new upcoming FPS and it phished for people to buy it to fund the development. Things like (iirc) “look at the great graphics” and “just wait until the game is finished”. People bought it and walked around and waited for more content, assured that someone who could do such a professional job would of course deliver on their promises…
I briefly read some of the posts in that thread. As I recall it, UT didn’t mind it, in the sense that they want us to use the examples to learn, as well as a base to continue building on.
I didn’t agree with people flaming the creators for using something they didn’t create. Partly because they didn’t break any rules (as far as I could tell?), and partly because I didn’t think they did anything too unethical. I wouldn’t have done it myself and I also would’ve liked to see them credit UT, but meh.
In your case I definitely would not flame. You are using an example project for one of it’s purposes (again, as far as I could. Am I wrong?); using it as a base to build upon. If you on top of that don’t charge anything and also give credits where it is due, how can anyone flame?