Memes vs (c) and Stuff...

Hi everyone! Need some help here! I want to create a game full of memes, parody, referrings to the various popular culture creations(and not that popular too, lol), and other stuff like that, which is hard to dealt with because of copywrite and all thislike, you know? So I have a qustion: If I'm about to create a not a commercial game and will share it and give away for free without any monetization or profit, of course reffering to and give credits to all the respective owners of the content that I've wanted to use in my game(like sounds, music, videos, models, and all things like this. For example voices or music from movies or other games tho) can I do this game, or it will be some issues with it thereafter? Peace out, yo!

 

There have been many fan games in the past that tried to use the approach of giving it away while crediting the authors. It didn't protect them against the cease and desist letters that came from their respective IP owners. Two immediate examples that come to mind are Chrono Resurrection and Them's Fightin' Herds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Resurrection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them's_Fightin'_Herds

By the way I found an article almost immediately where someone put a meme image on their website which had part of a copyright image in it. You can read the details below but long story short they ended up paying a sum of money to the owner of the image that was used to create the meme.

http://artlawjournal.com/internet-meme-getty-letter/

 

@Ryiah Thanks for your time. I guess the point of a question was taken and it is not a matter of debate anymore.

 

There is a devlog that side step these issues by having their own interpretation:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=58900.0

 

Creating your own interpretations from scratch would likely do the job though I want to point out that the example given there isn't completely side stepping the problem as at least one of those examples (Spider-Man) is a copyrighted work.

 

@neoshaman Yea, this might work in case of a fair usage, which was mentioned in the article that was kindly posted by Ryiah, as Parody or Satire, but I'm not sure will it count as a fair usage in other case, like what if I put some well-known and beloved by many people voicelines from old movies or other games, you know. It might work as fair usage after all, like short reference to those films or games in case of parodying or satirise them, but it might not as well.

 

One seldom mentioned thing to note about media that frequently makes parodies is that they often have permission to make the parody from the owner of the work. A quick example of this would be the Three Kings episode from Family Guy which parodies the works of Stephen King. The production team obtained written permission from him prior to making it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kings_(Family_Guy)

 

@Ryiah After all, it looks like better is to hold onto your own project that is not rely on the other source or origin. Pretty simple it is, and should've been anticipated by a common sense all along. Maybe there's a way how to handle it properly and create such a project combining all the human memes-legacy, but I think my life will roll faster than all those written permissions will be granted.

 

Don't forget to add open source PEPE the frog.

 

No, pepe the frog is a character created by a comic artist in a comic called boy's club and was co opted by 4chan and was later co opted by the racist part of chan in the thread /pol/ then classified as hate symbol when gamergate was itself co opted by the alt right ... and the original author condemn those uses, it's sad pepe story indeed, from rare pepe, to smug pepe and ending up hate pepe! I purposefully left out wizardchan community from this history and many more.

/history, the more you know

 

Lol, I hear you man.

Yea, unfortunately PEPE was a bit screwed in this way, and there in after many people refer to it like a hate-symbol. But I guess everything depends on the context and/or situation where and what it used for. So I believe it is not that hard to give the PEPE a new way of interpretation, you know. It just depends on how you will serve the new PEPE. PEPE the Frog 2.0, if it pleases you, #topkek.

 

The point was still it's a copyrighted character with a definitive origin, the extra was to show where the perception of "open source" come from and is false. Ie it's still a legal problem.

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▲▲ <- not compatible with this forum

 

@neoshaman I understand that this is complicated matter and I do not aim to prove you wrong. All I wanted to mention is, you know all these poops and other vids on the internets which full of memes, outtakes from games, movies, and etc. So the point of this game, if it were real and existed, would be same like those videos except that the game is the interactive and user takes action in it by itself. I didn't notice that all those vids really get banned by default without any exceptions and/or excuses on every source or platform of sharing content. So I thought if the game could stick to this kind of a style and format it could pass the troubles of creating, sharing and etc.

 

I get that, I was just setting the status of pepe straight for no surprise. After all fan game and fan art don't get ban unless they start become too big, in general.

 

@neoshaman

#litandlegit

Spoiler

xDxDxDxD

Spoiler

soz. i knew it's really dumb. but i can't stand it.

Spoiler

XOXOXO

Spoiler

xDxDxDxDDDDD

Spoiler

/dev/null

 

What you believe or not doesn't matter, not even what a lawyer believes or not matters in terms of protection from getting sued or not. You can be sued for anything, and defending yourself against legal action (even if it's totally unfounded) always has some cost attached to it.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...e_over_alleged_Breakoutthemed_Kit_Kat_ads.php

A good channel to watch regarding copyright is this channel, he is a lawyer:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChBJtu4BhT8b8t9Qe9R-EZg

Thanks for the explanation of "kek" by the way, I always wondered what it means.

 

Remember that even if you believe your use of someone else's image or other IP would fall under fair use, even if you are correct that you would win in court, that does nothing for protecting you from having to fight it out in court in the first place. For a game you'd plan to give away for free, the risk vs reward doesn't seem nearly favorable enough to dive into.

Lawyers are not free.

 

Since Pepe is intellectual property created and owned by Matt Furie. Saying your frog is different than Matt Furie's might hold water if you hadn't purposely named it Pepe to associate it with his work. So you're certainly at risk of legal action from either himself or his publisher Fantagraphics. And since Pepe is a character in his for profit comic and book series, there's a risk of real monetary damages. Anyone who uses your asset in their own games also shares that risk, and you have risk of any of them coming back on you if they get sued for using your asset. Your risk increases the more your asset is used, especially if it ends up being used in any for profit games.

What you've done is the same as making a Chewbacca model, specifically naming your model Chewbacca as well, and just altering it by using a different shade of brown. Then expecting The Mouse to leave it be since Chewbacca is also used in a good number of internet meme images in addition to the for profit works the character features in.

I notice in the asset you say it is free to use in non-commercial projects, but since the Asset Store license specifically says assets can be used in commercial projects your statement there does nothing to protect you, as you're not allowed to override the Asset Store license even with your own.

 

All artifacts have a creator, even meme, and there is sites dedicated to trace back all the most popular one to their origin, like Know your meme: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pepe-the-frog

 

This make sense. Guys, if you do something with this Keke the frog 3D model i made, please don't make it big

 

I deleted the pack. I noticed it started to draw attention from some non game dev related people on some strange forums. They even made some comments on me personally. I don't need that kind of stuff... I also deleted my messages from this thread.

Those of you from this thread who downloaded Keke the frog if you have questions and need custom work done, you can still contact me.