Slashdot Mirror
Licensing an Abandonware Game?
WolverineOfLove writes "I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed further in a Slashdot journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away."
Contact the owners and ask them if they mind. You might be surprised.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Make your new game. Don't use any exact names or words from the original. By all means select your names so that people know this is a successor to the original.
After all, open office exists along side microsoft office. Afterstep came after nextstep. You need a name like "afterstep" so that people know what you are on about.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
As long as it isn't covered by a dreaded software patent, you should be fine. Software patents need to die in a fire.
Disagree != mod troll.
These guys have done exactly what you're aiming to do. You should probably get on their forums and talk to them for some insight. You should also check out their remake, it's a really good game! Warzone 2100
What would 3DRealms do if someone just went ahead and wrote / released an open source version of Duke Nukem Forever.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
I don't understand why you want to create an exact port of the original game.
If you want to preserve the original game, then use an emulator like DOSBox on the original executables. It will save you a load of time.
If you want to popularize the game, then contact the owners to see if they'll sell it to you or put it under an open license. That way you can redistribute the game for use on emulators without legal worries.
If you want to make something new, then you should really put your energies into a new game inspired by the old one.
By the way, I once made a game that was a clone of a game on a portable system (with the intent of adding Internet play). It was an unexpectedly massive undertaking and by the end I was wondering why I was pouring so much energy into a derivative project that I might have to worry about lawsuits over when I finished it. It's really not worth it. You'll feel better in the end if you spend that time making something new that you can proudly take credit for.
I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but...
But nothing. You're asking a legal question, you need to go to a legal expert. Slashdotters are not legal experts, they just think they are, and their advice is worse than useless.
Whether or not you think the copyright "no longer matters" is irrelevant. If you do not get legal permission it is breaking the law pure and simple.
See the case of "Alien Abuse", an iPhone port of Abuse by defunct Crack.com. The authors released the code and graphics as public domain, but the whole game (including SFX) was redistributed without legal permission. This resulted in a nasty dispute with former Crack.com founder Dave T. Taylor, and the game being removed from the iPhone app store.
The lesson I would take from the above is that even if the company responsible for producing the company may no longer exist, it's founders certainly do and may not take kindly to unauthorised redistribution of their IP.
They re-released several abandonware adventure games after corresponding with the original programmers. They even got source code and permission to use all the assets for freeware release. I agree with most other posts here that you should try contacting the original developers first (might take some digging, try to get a hold of the original production manager). If they refuse you can still salvage most content and rename the characters to stay out of trouble. Most other projects don't make that effort of asking and are then shot down right at the finish line (look at basically every fan remake out there). Maybe you can also ask the people that did Zak McKracken 2 (zak2.org) they probably got some advice on how to handle someone else's IP w/o getting screwed.
It's open source. Presumably, you are not doing it for a profit.
Release whatever code you want. No human should ever be punished for creating a work of art. I don't know what the laws are. But, I will fight (with you) to the death to allow my fellow humans to create art.
There is a difference between creating art and creating Intellectual Property. Art is used for free by experiencing it.. viewing it, listening to it. Sure people artificially can profit from art. Which is why we create artificial trade restrictions to protect people's ability to profit from art. But, if your creation is so easily usurped by something, because it's obvious, then maybe your creation doesn't deserve the special artificial protections afforded by society.
If the game company has gone bankrupt it might be a situation where the company was liquidated and its assets sold. If that is that case then the company no longer owns the copyright.
In any case I doubt it is worth purchasing the copyright. You state that you will be remaking this game from scratch which means purchasing someone else's copyright when you aren't going to use it will be a waste of money. Also you have to take into account that purchasing copyright is very expensive, requires a lawyer and at the end of it you can't really be guaranteed that you own it.
If you wish to use the original name then you should check and make sure any registered trademark has already expired. If it has then you should have no issue naming your game with the same name or something similar.
When making your own version of the game you should make sure that the names of things in the game, artwork, etc are all of your own work. This means they should be different from the original game. Copying how the original game plays shouldn't be an issue however.
If you feel that is not an option and that you need the original names of characters etc in your remake then you could have an expansion pack hosted someone else away from the project which adds the original content. That way if you do get in legal trouble you can pull the offending content without causing any problems where your project is hosted.
www.hardwar.org - A remake of the old classic Hardwar
imo instead of bionic commando it should be bionic fartmando. instead of having a bionic arm you eat cans of super beans and fart to kill enemies. you also fart to jump, so the amount of beans you eat means that your jumps are limited. so to clear levels in the best way you have to conserve your farts and figure out how to do the least jumping. anyway bionic fartmando. code it up and i'll buy it. also i'll buy a second copy for my son marticock.
WSL3
The people you want to talk to, by the way, are the publishers, not the developers. In some rare cases the developers own the copyright, but in 99.9% of cases games are works for hire and the publisher owns the copyright.
Now, as to what they'll do? Well who knows? There have been varied results. You may well find them very amenable to the idea and they may want little or no money. You may find they flat out say "No," or don't even respond. However you don't know until you try.
A recent example of a success in that regard is Stardock just got the license to distribute and update Total Annihilation. The CEO is a big fan of it and talked to Atari and got the rights to sell it on Impulse, as well as the rights to update it with new features. So this sort of thing can happen.
However there have been failures too. In one case, Xcom I think, it turned out the original source code had been lost so the publisher couldn't license it out, even if they wanted to since they didn't have it.
You don't know until you try what will happen. However, do be prepared that they may blow you off. One thing that may improve your chances is if you have a solid plan for what you intend to do with it. Show them a business plan, more or less, that shows you have seriously thought out how you'd improve it and so on. They may be more likley to deal with someone they believe will make something rather than someone they think might just be playing around.
How about coding yours so that it loads resources it needs from a copy of the original game which you leave it up to the end-user to acquire? This is how Quake reimplementations work and ID don't seem to have complained about it.
Remember, just because they haven't "done anything" with their copyright over the last 30 years, that doesn't mean they don't still have copyright. Or more importantly, that SOMEONE could still have the copyright, and that they might not be very nice.
Writing any code on the basis of "they probably won't care" isn't a great idea, and other projects have been burned by that in the past.
As said elsewhere in the comments, contact the owner or creator first. If it really is abandonware then he probable won't mind (might even be flattered). And if he is sue-happy (or if the rights have passed to someone else other than him) it's better to find out now rather than later.
It's this thread again. Did something change since last time this was discussed?
The main trouble you might run into and which many other projects have run into are naming conflicts. Publishers like to protect their trademarks, so any name that is a little to close to the original will give you a cease&desist, but those are mostly harmless, as you just need to change your project name then.
Taking over gameplay ideas and concepts is however a non-issue, lots of games do that, even commercial ones.
If you want to create a pixel-perfect replica using original artwork and stuff you shouldn't have much trouble either, as long as you do not include the graphics directly. Many hobby projects like to "steal" graphics from commercial projects and while most of them don't get into trouble it will put you in legal limbo, as what you are doing is illegal. This will also have practical implications such as not getting included in Linux Distributions and such.
Long story short, a recreation based on ideas of the original game won't get you normally into trouble. A recreation based on original graphics, title, names and other copyrightable details however might.
And in the end you have of course to get an idea why you want to recreate it. If its for preservation purposes, adopting to new hardware, etc., it might be best to try to contact the original author and ask for source. There have been quite a few cases where older games have released source code, figuring out however who the current copyright holder is can be troublesome.
First thing I did was emailed a few of the principal owners of the game, and told them about my intent, and asked about who holds the copyright and trademarks. I got the go ahead, with the caveat that another company owned the trademark to this particular game.
I also searched the web to look at other projects based on remakes. It seems that the best way to handle remakes of abandownare games is to not to bother the company that made it (especially if they're big like EA or Activision). The unwritten rule seems to be if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. Otherwise, they'll just say no and might put the kibosh on the project.
This should also be obvious, but don't sell the game. Just don't.
I never finished the game I was remaking since writing the tools to make it got laboriously time consuming.
If you're worried about getting sued, start a for profit business and create your first piece of intellectual property. If you do everything correctly, the worst that could happen would be the assets of the company being seized. So, you lose your investment in the form of whatever time and money you put into the venture, but you don't get your personal bank account frozen, in the event of a judgment.
You could always go the non-profit route, but ironically, non-profits typically cost more to start up and for tax preperation because they are a specialty, so lawyers and accountants specializing in that area charge more for services rendered.
Consult your attorney
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
... It would never come out and I'm out of gum..
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Gosh, you are trying to code Duke Nukem Forewer on your own ????
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
How does one find the copyright owner?
For example, who owns copyright in the video game Zero Wing?
Rather than sending this to "Ask Slashdot", you ought to send it to "Ask a Lawyer" (prepare to pay).
Stop pissing around, slap a "z" on the end of the name, flip a few pixels around and ship the mofo.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If he can publish anything, even a Tetris clone would be better than what we have at the moment...
"Duke Nukem Forever: Attack of the Tetrominoes"
At least try to contact people you think might own the copyright and the original authors. Save a copy of anything you send and any response. If you're sued, then you can prove you don't have any malicious intent and you actually tried to do right.
Take the Kings Quest "The Silver Lining" as an example. They got permission from Vivendi Universal, only to have permission revoked years later.
As long as it isn't covered by a dreaded software patent, you should be fine. Software patents need to die in a fire.
The gamer-geek will be pursuing other game assets which may be independently licensed and legally protected: character designs and props, background art, music and audio effects, story, script, dialog, vocal performance, and so on.
I've heard music composed and performed for the LucasArts adventures used in Disney television animation.
To create an "open source game", you're giving your customers a license but you would be given them a license for something you KNOW you don't own. You're setting yourself up for a world of hurt. Not only can the original copyright and/or patent holders come after you, but every single one of YOUR licensees could come after you for damages as well. Whether or not you charge a fee has absolutely no bearing on the matter. The real question you need to ask is not whether you'd be in the right or wrong but whether or not you can afford the legal bills if somebody does go after you. You, and you alone, need to decide if you are willing to take that risk. Is the game THAT important that you'd be willing to risk thousands or tens of thousands of your own money on legal fees?
How do you know if it's "really not worth it", when you never even finished the game you said you were making?
Video game design is an art. So look for a nonprofit lawyers for the arts organization in your state.
They will almost certainly be able to give you more informed legal advice than you will find on /., and some of them might be able to set you up with a pro bono attorney. Here's a list (from NY's Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts) of state arts law organizations:
http://www.vlany.org/resources/vladirectory.php
(Btw, based on the handful of such organizations I've contacted, it seems that calling is often necessary to get through. I think their email tends to gets buried.)
The registration on all those works is out of date because Toaplan broke up in 1994. Who owns the copyright in a work whose copyright is registered to a company that no longer exists?
The truth is, beyond ALL other speculation; if there is a rights holder out there, it doesn't matter if you tried to contact them or not, it doesn't matter if your intentions are honorable or not, IT DOESNT MATTER if you don't make a time, or you take all the money you make and spread it on the impoverished of the world . . .
IF THERE IS A RIGHTS HOLDER; and they come out of the woodwork; they can begin action against your project.
Depending on the popularity of the project, this could be a simple Cease and Desist (C&D) or be escalated all the way up the chain for damages to their property and dilution / damages to their brand.
So, if you can't contact the right's holder, either change is massively so it's "inspired" by the original (we did this for the Legend of the Green Dragon MMORPG --- A PHP opensource port of the old BBS Legend of the Red Dragon )
But just pretending the Right's holder isn't around anymore could lead to real problems down the road.
"I'll rip your L shape off and shit down your T shape"?
If your purpose is preservation, and you are certain that this game is so rare that your efforts are necessary to preserve it, then what you should consider is doing this project in conjunction with a library. The Librarian of Congress has exempted libraries from the DMCA - but for preservation purposes only. If I recall correctly, the rule is that the item in question must be scarce enough that it cannot be replaced by practical means (i.e. purchasing another on the open market, getting a copy from another library). If this applies to you, this might work - and might shield you from legal liability. If you need a library to work with, you might contact Stanford University or the library at the University of Texas at Austin. Good luck!
Spekkio Master of War
That should go very well for you. I can see your empty wallet from here when the supposed owner hears that you want to give him unexpected cash
If you're rewriting the code: change the name, some of the characters while still keeping the game with the same "feel" as the original and license it under creative commons. Let the Devil take the hindmost
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
Why copy the original and have the hassle of dealing with copyright in the first place?
Instead: Create Your Own IP.
Radical idea I know..but bear with me.
Create your own IP that is similar to the original, and then even make some improvements based on current technology trends. Have similar though not identical storylines, change the names of places and persons up etc.
People that care and played the game 18 years ago will remember and recognise it for what it is. People that never did can still enjoy it regardless.You lose nothing.
There is much less risk to you and your team of no one ever seeing your hard work.
-Gel214th
I've heard it said that a given still-life painting is influenced more by other still-life paintings than by the actual bowl of fruit.
I believe that this is a general truth about creativity. We start with something we saw before, add something else we saw somewhere else that makes it work a little better, and end up with something new, that's still clearly derived from other things. Fire predates humans, and the person who invented the wheel must have been familiar with using logs as rollers, or at least with round rocks rolling down hill.
Getting back to FLOSS, the classic example is the GNU system, which was an effort to re-implement Unix -- and as long as they were at it, to improve on it a little. We end up with an operating system that follows Unix conventions, but is improved in innumerable details.
Microsoft Word was derived from the first word processor, developed for the Alto. And so on.
FLOSS has the advantage that we don't have to lie, and claim we've invented something utterly new.
Wouldn't it be I'll rip your square shape off and shit down your T shape? Or do you have an L shaped head?!?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck