End Fangame Prohibition!

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
1

There are a growing number of game projects that have been removed due to a certain rule set in place not too long ago by the administrative body here on BA. I’m sure you’ve seen or experienced it yourself.

Let me explain how the rule came to be:
There was a fangame project called Duck Hunt where a nameless user contributed some work to the project. After a while that person decided they did not want their work to be used in the project, and wanted his work removed. The user called the hosting service of BA and demanded that they shut down BA if they did not remove his content. The hosting service contacted an administrator of BA and threatened to shut down the site if the content was not removed. The user did not contact an administrator or moderator first, he just went straight to the hosting service.

So, as a result of this, what does the administrative body decide to do?

They created a rule where ALL fangames would be removed without question because of the possible threat of a lawsuit by the companies who owned the original games.

Does that make much sense to you?

Normally when you make up a rule like this, it is supposed to prevent THE SAME situation from happening again. This rule was created for an entirely different situation which has never occurred in the history of BA.

Not only is this the wrong way to approach the situation, but it is a very hypocritical rule. Fan art, fan films, and other similar works are allowed to thrive while they pose the same “threat” as fangames. Not only that, but the moderators cannot dedicate enough time to the forum to ensure that the rule is correctly enforced, therefore some fangame threads will linger around while others are removed or locked immediately.

Now for all of you copyright lovers out there who support this, I have a few points to make regarding your support for this rule.

  1. Companies always send cease and desist letters before they sue. In fact, you cant file a lawsuit until you have sent a letter first. Once an administrator recieves a letter like this, you can bet on your grave that the offending content will be removed in order to prevent the lawsuit. In the end, no harm is done.

  2. Fangames are generally viewed as free advertising, so companies are very unlikely to sue BA for fangames. There is very little to no threat at all to the original products. The fangames here are not being sold, and are rarely the same quality as the original. They pose as much of a threat as the drawing of a copyrighted character by a 16 year old kid.

  3. Many of the fangames would fall under fair use laws, since these people rarely use ripped work from the original games, and these games are not intended to replace the original game.

The rule must be changed to accomedate the situation that took place, and not some crazy hypothetical situation that could possibly happen, but never has before.

Anyway here is my question to you:

Do you think this rule should be changed or removed? Why or why not?

2

I want you to know that your complaints have not fallen on deaf ears and the issue is currently under discussion.

3

I stand with you on all your views. I won’t express my opinion. I have once before in another topic, and the mods are fully aware of the issue, as well as my (and a lot of your) standing on the issue.

Now, let’s stop harassing the people running the boards, and let them come to a consensus. We all have better things to do, right?

4

To me, if “fans” use their own “material”, its ok!
But, I’m not the SysAdmin!

5

Oh man get over with it, if they don’t want to allow fangames because they can get in trouble doing so, let them be, this ain’t the only forum in the world anyways.

6

yeah, if only the rule was enforced consistently…

7

yeah, if only the rule was enforced consistently…

True, but why to cry so much over it anyways?
Yeah I also liked to do fan-things some years ago but it wasn’t like “I lost my freedom!” whenever I tumbled over a rule like this one.

8

I believe it was Mmph! Who tried to use legal action to shut down BA. I think fan-games should be allowed only if they were not planning to sell it and proved that point by giving away the .exe, or .blend file.

The fact that member who’s banned now really does show how far he was planning to go when his demands weren’t met, I don’t know why he tried to do that.

Again I say fangames should not be banned only if the creator was not planning on selling it, if sites could be shut down for fangames then sites like the community for people using GameMaker would’ve been shut down a long time ago.

9

Thank you PlantPerson, I’m glad there is finally a discussion taking place on this particular issue.

I dont think making a couple of comments and starting a thread would be considered “harassing” anyone. I started this thread to bring the discussion out into the open.

Now that sounds a lot more reasonable to me, thats how it has always been until recently…

Oh why dont we just all get over everything and not state our opinions or start any discussions at all? That sounds like the perfect world, no annoying users and their crazy challenges to misguided rules and authority figures. I love my rules, I always follow them without question because im a good citizen. If you state your opinions and start a discussion then you’re just a crybaby and should not be allowed to post.

Great thinking!

I don’t know about you, but I have this tendency to stand up for what I believe in.

10

Thanks, mods. That is all we ask.

It is my opinion that fangames should be allowed, so long as it is clear (written down somewhere) that the games on BA are products of users, and not the BA organization (protecting BA). If companies have a problem, their problem should be with the user.

11

I don’t know about you, but I have this tendency to stand up for what I believe in.
I don’t say it is bad thing, actually is quite good to debate if everyone want it, but if you ask for something insistently and the administrator/owners/whatever insistently says he doesn’t want to and besides that they say they got a reason…it gets no where.

I also see it’s rather unjust to see that some kind of fan-art based work is admited other isn’t, but it’s also true that a fan-game compared to a simple fan-drawing it’s a lot more serious matter (note that several artist do not like fan-drawing neither), check out what happened to Chrono Trigger Resurrection, a fan-game remake.

As another example I got a friend that he filmed himself singing a famous song as a homebrew cover, can’t remember with one, on youtube, it got deleted, as well as all the people that use a famous song even as background music on other random (family stuff like) things.

My opinion is that dealing with copyrighted stuff can make easy trouble for all of us, that’s all, and actually I use this chance to apologize for the previous tone of my posts, didn’t want to say you are a crybabe nor anyone, wasn’t the idea.

12

For some reason, you seem to believe that I keep asking them to get rid of the rule in question and they keep denying it. In reality, this is the first time anyone has really opened a discussion on this topic, so this argument fails from the beginning. If I didnt think it was possible to change anything, I would not have started the thread. Its obvious the majority of the voters so far believe that fangames should be allowed with some restrictions, and maybe some of the really high level administrators will see this and decide to change their mind. Its not like I’m constantly asking again and again after receiving the same answer, if this were the case, this thread would not exist.

You mean this?

“However, Square Enix issued a cease-and-desist letter to Resurrection Games before the release for trademark and copyright infringement.[11] Faced with a threat of legal action, the project was publicly closed on September 6, 2004.[12] According to the development team, the website of the project had received significant hits from Square Enix Japanese IP addresses for a period of three months before the letter issuing. They assumed these visits were mostly from employees than top executives,[12] and hoped the company would see the demo as how the team sees it, a tribute to Chrono Trigger rather than a replacement.[8]”

Yes, they recieved a cease and desist letter and they stopped developing the game. Now, who was hurt? Who was sued? What forum was shut down that this game was presented on?

No harm came from this other than the wasted time of the developers, which they should all take into consideration anyway if they are going to make a fangame.

13

I dont think making a couple of comments and starting a thread would be considered “harassing” anyone. I started this thread to bring the discussion out into the open.

That’s honestly not what I meant to write. I should definitely consider not posting right before bed :stuck_out_tongue:

Fangames should be permitted under the following conditions:

  • The game must not use any content/materials created by companies or protected under copyright. All content must be either created by the developers, in public-domain, or some other similar way.
  • The game should remain free. Open-source is an option.
  • The game should not be created to steal spotlight from the company/organization and/or its products.
  • Developers must give credit to the company/organization that created the game(s) it is based on.
  • If a company gives a cease and desist letter to developers, developers must either close the project, or take development elsewhere other than BA (of course, BA mods will close or delete the thread)

I believe if BA makes these guidelines, keeps them posted in plain view for all to see, and developers actually follow these guidelines, companies will see that we don’t intend to steal business, and they will be less inclined to take any action against the developer and/or BA (or any other host site).

14

For some reason, you seem to believe that I keep asking them to get rid of the rule in question and they keep denying it. In reality, this is the first time anyone has really opened a discussion on this topic, so this argument fails from the beginning.
Yes this is the first thread centered on this point, but it isn’t the first time this discussion have been seen on some other threads (can’t rememmber witch ones, but on a smaller scale), and not exactly be you neither.

Now, who was hurt? Who was sued? What forum was shut down that this game was presented on?
None, because the team behind Chrono Ressurrection step back and stopped developping and none could ever download whatever they accomplished as far as I know, may be wrong.

Dude calm down, I’m not picking a fight, just putting my opinion as you do.

Anyways I find Richard Perkins comment on this rather good, if fangaming is to be allowed it should have some kind of regulation to avoid troubles.

15

Exactly. So what do we have to fear? The lost time of someone else?

I’m not being hostile, in fact, I welcome your opinions when you state them. However, I dislike the false image you seem to have placed on me, as if I were a pestering fly to the administrator for simply stating my opinions. Hence the sarcasm of my previous post. This discussion may have started elsewhere by someone else, but it has never been fully debated because the threads where these discussions start often get closed because they are fangames. We never really get any answers besides “that’s the rule and we’re going to enforce it.”

This is an attempt to circumvent this generic response to get to the root causes of this misguided rule and find the appropriate action that should take place.

I agree, its a great start. Lets just hope the administrators think so as well.

16

Thanks, mods. That is all we ask.

It is my opinion that fangames should be allowed, so long as it is clear (written down somewhere) that the games on BA are products of users, and not the BA organization (protecting BA). If companies have a problem, their problem should be with the user.
+1 to that.

17

but it has never been fully debated because the threads where these discussions start often get closed because they are fangames.

Good point, no wonder can’t find them now XD.

I agree, its a great start.

+1

What about instead “fan games” we leave it to “clone games”? Games that are way too similar to an original, yet not the same thing because of changes either on design, playability, plot, names, etc.

18

@ VenomSeven

You have posted a lot of “here come the fan-game police” comments on other peoples projects, so this really has seen quite a bit of discussion in the forums. This is easily found by simply looking at your previous posts on the forum through your profile. It was also discussed during the ESA scare thread a long time ago, so this is kind of kicking-a-dead-horse in my opinion.

Legalities of fan-made games are a pretty controversial topic. There’s a lot of variables that elevate the threat of a lawsuit, such as use of original content, naming, copyright and trademark usage, etc. Many companies find themselves in a neutral state; they don’t endorse or promote the fan-made games but they find no need to take legal action against the creators. In this case, it’s the actual developer who abandoned the project and found the need to retract his submitted work. His actions should have been directed at project administrators and not at the forum.

In either case, I’m pretty certain BlenderArtists cannot be sued or even shutdown, mainly because the content is not hosted on their servers. It would be like trying to sue every magazine or article that promoted or reviewed the said game, simply for discussing it’s existence. It’s completely ridiculous. The problem I can see with BlenderArtists however, is that the hosting company has a very compliant attitude towards legal threats. They would much rather eliminate the problem then standing up for what’s legally right.

Just my 2 cents on the issue … then again, copper is pretty valuable nowadays :cool:

19

I love you too BrianH. = )

Seriously though, that was more like sarcastic complaining rather than “quite a bit of discussion” lol. Maybe you should look up the definition of discussion…

No it was not. The purpose of that thread was to find out why 10 or so projects went missing out of the blue. Nobody really debated the policy like we’re doing now…

That’s perfect, I coudnt have said it better myself. I agree with you 100% until we get to this part…

They are not eliminating the problem. I will demonstrate this as clearly as I can:

The problem: A user who was concerned about his own personal work, went and made a complaint to the host of this forum rather than trying to resolve the problem with the moderators/admins first.

The solution: Lets ban all fangames and remove them without question.

So all fangames are now banned. Can any user go back and complain to the hosting service about their work on ANY game?

Yes they can. So, has the problem been eliminated? No, because it can occur again at any time.

Not only does it not solve the problem but it also puts a bigger burden on the moderators.

20

It’s probably better to ween people from making fan games, not only for the
lawsuit risk, but if somebody makes a really cool fan game blender can’t
really promote it, but a good original game they can, as much as they do.
If they get 20 good original games they can bundle them up together
on a DVD or something.
Things could also get a lot worse than that duck hunt thread :smiley: