A post regarding copyright

This is a rather important post, so please read it throughly.

Copyright. Everyone knows it, some love it, some hate it. For me personally, I think it can be pretty awesome. You can protect stuff you made and even punish people. Now, you are probably asking: Why am I talking about this?

Well, some might have already realized where I am going. There's an increase in games created where the copyright actually belongs to larger companies, such as Mojang, Sega or Nintendo for example. And again:

Copyrighted content is not allowed on this platform.

This is something many people don't seem to realize. And even if it wasn't for the explicit mention, it can still cause legal trouble. With the extreme growth of microStudio as a whole, it can cause a lot of issues in the long run.

I won't bat an eye on knockoffs, like Bokemon for example. But the issue arises with trademark and again, copyright. Anything that it clearly taken from another game or uses their actual name is an infringement. And that is the issue. Heck, I don't want to be the one striking down fangames either, but I want to avoid, that you get into massive trouble. As soon as you share it, it's not private anymore. And unless you have explicitly written permission from that company, your remake / fan game / whatever can cause massive issues.

So don't risk it. Copyright is not great in this case, but it's better to avoid disasters. And yes, the copyright and trademarks account EVERYTHING the companies ever made.

If you truly need some assets, go to https://opengameart.org/, there are awesome people who make awesome resources. The only thing you need to do, is credit them appropriately.

I hope this kinda cleared up my position in this situation, and why I am doing this. If you still have questions, I am willing to answer them for you.

• confusedcatgirl :3

Something relating to this: Even if you have permission to use specific assets, you still can't post games using them on this platform unless you have permission to distribute them as well (check the license on the assets before using, especially if they are free assets from the web). This is because any assets used will also be available for download for anyone on the platform.

Well thank you for reminding everyone, good job. :)

Yeah. Even though we dabble in this sandbox with toys and programming, it's an adult world. I don't see the point in toning down the rhetoric. Other people's copyrights are not just a problem. It's an extremely dangerous story. You can easily become a lifelong debtor to the copyright owner for copyright infringement. And a lifetime of giving them a portion of your paycheck as compensation for the infringement of their rights. And you can even go to jail.

It's an adult world. And adult responsibility reigns here.

Another extension of this post. I will now provide a list of games that are NOT allowed inside microstudio. They cannot contain names, sprites, textures, Voicelines, sounds or songs from these games. These include fangames or direct clones of:

• Minecraft
• Hello Neighbor
• Any Hoyoverse Game
• Any Nintendo Franchise (yes, ALL of them)
• GTA
• CoD
• FiFa
• Fallout
• Resident Evil
• Final Fantasy
• Yakuza
• Elder Scrolls
• etc.

Games that are allowed:

• The full catalogue of valve games (for non-commercial use)
• Classics such as Pacman
• FNAF (but no donations)
• etc.

If you cannot see the game in your list, or it falls under the Company names, use Google. Valve is probably the only company that actually allows fangames of their own games, for non-commercial purposes of course.

Ok! nice to know! :)

I will start canceling the planned remakes and ports.