Could i be sued?

I want to make a spiritual successor to megaman. I have a really nice platformer kit from the asset store and i have been up all night tweaking it and making models in blender. do you think i could be sued if i used a similar name like "gigaguy" and the gameplay was close to megaman?

 

You could always be sued - justified or not. The farther away or the more you are your own product the better. Just have a look at "Mighty No.9". If you make it your own in some way then it's your game. If you just change names but otherwise make it a complete clone it's more likely to attract trouble.

As always: in doubt consult a lawyer. Just by the definition "spiritual successor" nobody here can predict how close or far you are actually going to be. Forums can never replace legal advice from a professional.

 

In America anyone can sue anyone for any reason.

That's not cynicism, that's actually the point of the law. In fact, a prisoner serving a life sentence exploits this by submitting daily lawsuits for ridiculous things to ridiculous (and often fictional) people. The prison in turn has to honor his legal requests and abide by the craziness.

The problem with suing everyone for everything is that if you lawsuit is unfounded, then you can get can get counter suited right back. In the case of that prisoner, he'd be happy to get to go to court I'd imagine so a counter suit would be fun for him.

Now as far as Capcom goes, they can't own the rights to the Megaman game play or story concepts. They could, however, successfully sue if they could show that your intent was to copy characters. The only way you can copy characters is if it falls under "fare use" which includes parody, news worthy, and historical.

 

My main three points to this would be :

• Do you plan to make money from this, if not your most likely in the clear, although as stated above they can try and sue you.
• Do you intend to make a parody or sully the name of it in some ways, if so be prepared.
• Lastly how big is your fan base, if very small , they may not ever notice.

Again as stated above If your that concerned about ti go visit a lawyer , and if you do get sued I wouldn't quote me to defend yourself.

My main advice is try being a bit more creative, keep similar to the game, but do a different Idea, its always better to be inventive than to piggyback off someone elses ideas.

If you do get into trouble :

 

Thank you everyone for your input. As for mighty #9 I was looking at that last night. The kickstarter page says that it was creates by megamans co creator so I guess they had immunity? I do plan on having very similar game play but it will have RPG and inventory mechanics that the asset already has built in. I guess I will try and keep the art style my own. I didn't know if gigaguy sounded too closeor what.

 

And yes commercial, I want toake money. I haven't heard of any of the countless minecradt clones being sued yet.I think it should be OK. That's actually the art style I am aiming for lol. I am usinga tool on the asset store that converts organic meshes into voxel meshes, looks amazing. Think mega man framework, with slightly more detailed voxel art then mine craft. Your killing viruses in the internet which I am making a real world. One of my background buildingings is called #tag discounters. Get it.

 

No. Keiji Inafune did not have immunity just because he created Mega Man's design. THat's why Mighty No.9 is a product of it's own. Capcom still holds the rights and currently it seems they aren't interested in making a new entry in the franchise. Mighty No.9 is unitque enough to be its own product and does not copy any existing IP. Also it's of course relevant where you and the company are located as local rights may apply.

Just in case - if you really make something big and you put a lot of effort and money behind it you should get legal advice if you are uncertain.

 

I will do that that that thank you. I did plan on having an indiegogo but I doubt I would ever make as much as might # 9

 

Putting that other game on hold already?

 

That was my thought too

 

I'm not a lawyer, first.

That said, game mechanics are generally not copyrightable; having a game with similar mechanics to Mega Man likely won't get you sued. Where things get icky, though, is if you make a game that's demonstrably too close to Mega Man/Mighty No. 9/whatever.

What you should build in this case sounds like something that is still a side-scrolling platformer where the character can take on the traits of enemies. That said, you need a way to differentiate it from everything else out there, and for that differentiation to be one of the core points of the game, that could lead to no one possibly being able to confuse Gigaguy with Megaman™. For safety, I wouldn't use the name Gigaguy, either.

 

Not true. Games can't copyright game concepts or rules. They can copyright megaman; they can't copyright games where the player has different stages to pick from and gains the ability of the boss.

You can straight up do that.

 

Megaman... gigaguy... both names are kinda lame I know how popular they were for the era and have obtained everlasting fame, but you should consider something else. And no, not busterbro either. Samus and Cyborg are more modernized megaman concepts. Those names are better. Make something cool

Just label your game 'metroidvania' and then don't worry about anything mechanically similar to anything else.

 

Lol hey buddy, no i havnt. I ussually work on two projects at a time. Not a good practice i know.

 

Play the webdemo of the action platform kit, I have tweaked some of the scripts to suit my needs so far.

 

Lol busterbro! Thats solid gold dude. I have been thinking this morning. It hurts.I came up with another name and a little one sentance intro. Just tossig ideas around. For the backgroubds of the game im going o have buildings inspired by current internet popculture. Like a night club called yolo. Get it? Anyways.

ISO: THE SCAN BEGINS

meet iso,

Iso is a internet security officer. And he doesnt stop working after 30 days!

Or does "And he isnt a 30 day trail either!" Sound better?

Thats as far as i got. the theme is that you are an antivirus program inside the internet

 

@radar089 Just try to keep game features to the game they belong in. A common criticism of games that do something well is that they over value it so it shows up more frequently than it should and then it annoys the player. This would be doubly bad if it ended up in multiple games Reference - indie games played by Markiplier.

"He doesn't stop working after 30 days" is much better than the second quote.

You're a security program called iso that hunts malware. Awkward, there's a website called isohunt that is dedicated to piracy and circumventing security The concept is good, but the names are really important if you're going to try to make a techy pun.

A megaman-esque game where you hunt computer viruses? That's getting awful close to the "mega man battle network" series. It's going to take a lot of innovation to avoid becoming a ripoff, but good luck!

 

At the very least the current rulings in the States is that you can't patent game mechanics, so there is seemingly no reason to worry about patent claims. As long as you don't infringe on trademark violations, then there shouldn't be a problem.

 

uuuuugghhh dammit your right, ill get back to you when i come up with another name. or theme. shoot man, damn isohunt.

 

"I object!"

"Objection sustained."

Gigi

 

now im going to go crazy thinking of an original theme for the game. Last human vs robots? or One of the last humans vs robots? as far as mechanics go it is very close to megaman, thats how the asset came, and i tweaked it a bit to slow things down combat wise. added a spawning system for bosses. i didnt know about megaman battle network... so i guess ISO is out. the whole internet/tech theme just fit so well with the art style i chose. have you guys seen this?

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/14060

im picking it up friday, going to convert some characters i have stockpiled. first one i want to do is a wasp.
as for terrain, i am using probuilder to make platforms n such.and then for the mesh textures,
i take a seamless texture and pixelate it in photoshop. (mosaic mode pixelation) perfect minecraft style

 

I wouldn't use it in part because it sounds silly. Gigaguy sounds like a perfect [insert country known for piracy here] ripoff of Megaman.

 

Or you could go off the japanese name and make him granitedude or punkschmuck.

 

Making money often makes little difference. If you are being sued for damage to their brand, it is about what they lost, not what you gained. And the bigger the brand, the quicker the damages mount up, and the better equipped they are to sue.

 

That was the idea, not to rip them off but to make a cute clone. But now I see how dangerous that is.

 

I guess I better scratch my other two game ideas. Call of honor and orecraft

Jk^

 

Radar099

 

Oo I know! Call it Sundisk - The main character is a supersoldier named after his rank, who has a pet AI named after a legendary weapon, who frags aliens that behave like insane religious fundamentalists - oh, and their field commanders say, "Wort!", until zombies get involved. No one's ever seen that before.

 

You know... I have a feeling some people actually wouldn't get it. You're modifying name SanDisk, right? Probably better than iso or gigaguy. Is the artwork solaire's colors over a flash drive?

Praise the sun.

 

I can never tell if you're acting retarded or actually retarded.

if (! acting) :
Sundisk = a halo.

else:
How about "OceanFence" or "Eastern Analog"?

 

@radar089 - Know what I'd enjoy more than these chats? Seeing you finish a game by the end of summer. Design, polish, publish - done-Done-DONE!

Gigi

 

\o/
Wait, Bloodborne is out.
lo_

Unless we're going the Amaterasu (I'm freaking out because the spellchecker knows that's a word) route, with a literal disk that is the sun and used to bludgeon things to death.

 

It's a fine line - and enjoyable! Screw those who say 'never go full retard', everyone loves a Poe these days!

My interpretation is more valid for technology puns :3

My shinto knowledge is a little spotty, but isn't Amaterasu the flame/light god who is also the left eye of Izanagi? Also impressed spellcheck knows of that - lol but not izanagi.

Heresy!

 

It's something like that. Sun god, usually depicted as a wolf, has a much better game than Twilight Princess.

 

Well, you can make gameplay the same, but you have to design your own levels, world, characters and graphics. Look at Shovel Knight. Gameplay-wise it's as close to Megaman as you can get (with extra Duck Tales mixed in) but it's absolutely awesome and no one sued them.

 

in the 80's / 90's we got all our games from the east and I only knew and played "rock man" .. only later did I find out he was called megaman in western countries.

 

If i was doing something simple like an endless runner or slingshot type game sure.. I could prototype something like that in a month or two. That mideival game was revived recently and colony game on the back burner. I need to choose one and stick with it. Right now I have guildwars2 fever.