Questions tagged [legal]

As a business, game development is fraught with legal concerns and issues, especially on copyright, terms of service, and licensing fronts.

Disclaimer: Most of the users of this website are game developers, not lawyers. Keep this in mind with regards to any legal advice received here.

If you have concerns about running into copyright issues, or about the legality of the publishing of your game, there may be an answer to be found. If a question is about possible legal worries, use this tag to indicate such.

Furthermore, in many jurisdictions it is illegal to give legal advice without having a licence to practice law. Use caution when answering questions.

See also:

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How closely can a game legally resemble another?

Most games build on other games' successes and many are downright clones. Where is the limit of imitation before legal issues come into play? Is it down to literary or graphic work like characters and storyline that cause legal problems, or can…
Fuu
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Making an indie with friends: Legal considerations

I am close to finishing a game I am making with 3 friends. 1 other coder, and 2 graphic designers. We agreed from the start to split revenue (40/40/10/10). However we have no contract, and I know that I don't own the graphics/sounds in my game just…
Green_qaue
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Why is account sharing so bad?

In games where you have to use an account to sign in or otherwise authenticate yourself (e.g MMO games), it is often prohibited to share your account with other people. For example in the World of Warcraft Official Terms of Use Agreement : [...] You…
Applekini
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Licensing (or similar) for my fan-game?

For the past 8 years, I've been working on a Pokémon fan-game. It's been awesome, well-received by players, and I'm very proud of the community we've built. But, as with all things "fan-game", there's always that looming grey cloud of "will a C&D…
Niet the Dark Absol
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Is it legally possible to make a clone of the game?

With board games like "Monopoly", "Domino", "Checkers", or "Chess", can game developers make clones and sell them? Also, can I make a clone of ZX Spectrum games? Are there many parts of the game with which can do the same?
Saulius
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39
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Is Tetris public domain?

is the concept for Tetris in the public domain or is there someone who is still collecting royalties on the concept? I mean, if I were to write a variant of Tetris would I owe somebody some money? Thanks.
Friend
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What makes MMOs with real-money economies legal?

I beieve most MMOs with an in-game currency tied to a real-world currency (e.g. Guild Wars 2 's gems or Eve 's PLEX) do not allow in-game items to be traded back into real cash for a bunch of reasons—partly because they may be subject to changes to…
Ross Taylor-Turner
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Can I legally remove the default Unity splash screen by removing it from the APK?

While using Unity I export an Android game as an APK. When the APK is run, the first thing that is displayed is the Unity splash screen. I worked out that I could replaced that image by opening the APK like a zip file, looking for the splash screen…
David Dimalanta
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Legal issues for a "fangame" of a commercial franchise?

I've played around in the past of the 2D Flash fan-made version of the popular Valve game Portal. It has basically the exact same mechanics, but as a 2D side-view flash game. Lately I've toyed around with creating a simplified flash version of some…
Justin L.
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Can I run into legal issues with random names?

I'm currently building a game whose NPC's are going to be assigned a random gender and a random name for the right gender. To do this I will be using a "database" of names (actually a text file with tuples). There would also be a list of last names,…
Jonathan Pitre
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Can I include a public domain book in my game?

Just for fun, I want to include a bookshelf in my game with a real book (or few) that you can actually read. Would I run into any legal trouble if I included an out of print book in the public domain, such as Pride and Prejudice or Alice in…
Entity
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Can I use popular classical music as my game's soundtrack?

Can I use popular classical music in my game as a soundtrack? I'm concerned about copyright protection. I don't plan to make money off of my game. Will I break some law if I do that?
Pavel Ryzhov
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How can I create an exclusive asset for multiple clients who all want basically the same thing?

This is more of a legal question than for example a coding question, but I hope that it's allowed as well. I recently started working as a freelance VFX Artist and do a lot of work with shaders and particle systems. Now, I am currently working on…
iQew
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Am I allowed to sell a XNA game by myself?

I've just started the development of an XNA game, and I'm asking myself if it wouldn't be better to use an open-source alternative since I absolutely want to keep the complete control over my game. I need to be able to sell it to whoever I want,…
user6244
19
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Set up indie game studio (UK) - how?

I am UK based and am looking to set up my own game studio - essentially, just myself working from home, looking to build casual game apps. I want to ask you guys what steps or process i need to go through and do to make this happen, specifically the…
tifbs
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