Legal issues for remakes
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Legal issues for remakes
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| I am working my way through learning Blitz3D, and decided to write a remake of an old C64 game. However, I am not sure about the legality of producing an exact remake of the game. Admittedly I will be using new graphics and producing it in full 3D with a couple of extra twists to it, but I am not sure whether this is overly legal. I'm mainly wondering whether because the platform no longer exists as a readily obtainable machine, that the copyrights do not hold any more (people can download the original game for free and run it on an emulator). Does anyone have any info with regards to remakes / homages to games (especially if they were originally produced on other platforms that are no longer readily available). Cheers for any response. |
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| I would suggest at least attempting to track down the creator of the game to ask their permission. Copyright law will still apply, but generally most people don't mind a retro remake as long as you make no profit from it. |
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| Copyright law will still apply, but generally most people don't mind a retro remake as long as you make no profit from it. Stuart Campbell certainly minds. In fact, he goes out of his way to 'mind' even when there's only a silght resemblence. |
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| like I said, generally most people don't mind. We all know he isn't most people. :) |
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| most people don't mind a retro remake as long as you make no profit from it. Stuart Campbell certainly minds. In fact, he goes out of his way to 'mind' even when there's only a silght resemblence. I don't agree with Stuart's exact position on so-called "ripoff's", but what you posted isn't it. He's said several times that non-profit remakes that give credit to the original author are fine by him. KiwiSteve, if you want to be able to share the finished article then check with the original author/current copyright holder first. |
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| Unfortunatly a lot of the old c64 companies were bought up and are now parts of the big games co's, i wanted to update a Gremlin Graphics game but not much chance now. |
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| If you dont use any media from the game and give it a different name there is absolutely nothing they can do anyway. I generally ask when I can, and my questions generally get ignored, so be sure to phrase questions in the context of "if you dont object I would like too..." Good luck, also, check out http://www.remakes.org. |
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| This thread is rather interesting as I'm about to release RetroSphere a game based upon te awesome C64 Trailblazer. I have tried to track down the author (Stuart Southern) but have run out of options. I know he authorized the original ROMS to be distributed as long as no charge was made but as for a remake I don't know. There is no media used in my game from the original its just the basic concept thats been borrowed. I have also credited him for the original idea in my game. So am I in dnager of being sued? Who knows... Any help would be greatly appreciated... Thanks. |
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| Personally I don't think companies can do a great deal about remakes. If you used their media and title then they do have a leg to stand on. But you can have the same conversation about Doom/ Duke Nukem / Unreal / Halflife etc etc all basically the same game. Or indeed any sideways shooter where you're a little spaceship. Many could argue that game x is a remake of game y because it about a space ship shooting lots of bad guys. Really I think you've got 3 kinds of remake. Retro Remake : Use the same media, maps and title no-profit Retro Remake + : Use the title and maps but update the sound and graphics, no-profit. Remake : Take the general gist of the game and throw your own spin on it not using anything from the original except the idea. I think the first 2 you could potentially run into legal problems if the original authors so wished. I think with the 3rd your perfectly in your rights to claim the original game as inspiration, much like doom was for unreal. |
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| This is interesting. I am currently working on a game which is essentially 'Ballblazer' (remember the LucasArts classic?) However, I am creating my own media, adding extra features such as different player craft types and differnt 'ball' types, unlockable levels, power-ups and 'moving goals' so the 'remake' is far detached from the simplicity of the original. From the above, sounds like legality wont be a problem (only I have up till now used the same terms i.e. 'Plasmorb' and 'Rotofoil' which are probably TradeMarked and WILL need to change. |
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| Boiled: take a look at the bottom of this page for a possible contact for Mr Southern ( http://plus4.emucamp.com/about.htm ) It looks like he works for Magnetic Fields, or at least someone there knows him. *EDIT* In fact, it looks like Shaun is a co-founder of magnetic fields. |
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| Boiled, This 'type' of game in idea (ball travels across level, faced with holes in floor, ramps and other obstacles) has been done many times, with many different ideas thrown in. Youve not used the media (hope not level design either) and not called it Trailblazer so I would think you're okay. |
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| Perturbatio, I have in the past emailed the address on the magneticfields site but never got a a responce. I have tried again today. Thanks for your help. |
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| Nintendo shut me down (look at my sig) But I live on...just "in secret" lol cb |
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| Yeah but CB I have that game for the Game Boy and it is still being sold today. If a game is currently on the market (re: still being retailed somewhere as not USED) then a company or designer would have a leg to stand on. Otherwise they just sue... If you are in different countries it would depend on the country... heck in the USofA it depends on which state you get sued in. Texas has a newfound active dislike for nuisance suits... California has a different position where you can sue your hairdresser for a bad haircut. That said. Even if you "make no profit" and "credit the designer" in the game you can still be sued and shutdown. If you change the title and differ the maps and music and sounds etc... Then you MIGHT get away with "inspired by" but I would not count on it. I was doing an old ATARI 800 game... ATARI has no sense of humor. -Rook Zimbabwe |
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| Hi Folks, What about "Trailblazer 2004"? Do you think you could get away with that? Later, Jes |
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| Well that's pretty much what my game RetroSphere is... ...demo to be released this very weekend... |
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| Thanks for all your responses. I didn't expect this many so quickly. I have pinged an email off to Activision with regards to the copyright and the possibility of doing a remake. I did make it clear to them that it would be as a non-profit making enterprise just to get used to Blitz3D. I think the main point that seems to be coming out of this dicussion is the fact that they could get uptight if the remake damages their sales of the game. But with C64 titles this wouldn't be the case, after all you can download pretty much all of the games released for free from the internet and then run them through an emulator: they don't seem concerned about that, otherwise I'm sure they would have shut down the site doing it. Thanks again for everyone who posted, good to know I'm not the only one doing a retro game. |
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| Remake : Take the general gist of the game and throw your own spin on it not using anything from the original except the idea. I think with the 3rd your perfectly in your rights to claim the original game as inspiration, much like doom was for unreal. Hmm. That doesn't appear to be the case regarding the Tetris Company... |
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| The bottom line is, you can make any game you like, you can make it like any game you like. AS LONG AS, you do not use media from the original. For example. if you wanted to make a version of Mario. but with all new levels all new art all new bad guys. then you can. as long as the wee guys not called mario and there is no original mario items in the game. Do you think Valve track the authors of CW down to ask if they can make an FPS. The simple fact is that you would be hard pushed to make a game now without it looking like in some way a game thats been done already. be it in gameplay or visual style. So the way I see it, as long as your not taking any original material and your not doing a 100% rip copy ie level design music all is the same, then your fine and dont have to ask anyone for permission. If I ever chose to make a game like Sense Soccer I wont be asking him if its ok. I'll just create my own game based on what I liked of the original. but long winded but there you go. my 2p |
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| Just for fun, I think I'll go one further and say you can make any not-for-profit game you like, use whatever original media you like, release it as freeware and be fairly confident that the absolute worst you'll get in the first instance is an official-sounding Cease & Desist order. Try to make any money whatsoever off someone else's intellectual property though and they've every right to beat you with a large stick. |
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| The first thing you will get, more then likely, is a cease and desist order. If at that point you do not cease and desist then things can get fairly nasty after that. |
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| as a guide, if you must do a remake, make it in "the mould of" or in "the style of" the orignal genre rather than any copy whatsoever. |
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| I have seen many clones of popular games over the years. eg. How many Mario Bros. or Breakout clones are there. As long as you use your own graphics, sounds, and code. Also give it a different name. And I don't see how you are different from countless others. Almost any game you could write now adays will resemble some game already out there. Most game concepts have already been written for years. If we had to worry about our game resembling someone elses, there wouldn't be anything left to write. Copywrite laws apply to the code, and the name, not the concept. |
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| I suppose we could take this as a kind of example (it suddenly came to me as I was reading what everyone else had written): Have any Blitz coders ever been had up about their remake of Pong? It's just that almost everyone who is new to the language is told to create Pong. Just a thought. |
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| I dont think anyone has ever tried to sell a pong remake. |
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| Yavin (Posted 2004-05-28 17:32:53) The bottom line is, you can make any game you like, you can make it like any game you like. AS LONG AS, you do not use media from the original. For example. if you wanted to make a version of Mario. but with all new levels all new art all new bad guys. then you can. as long as the wee guys not called mario and there is no original mario items in the game. So the way I see it, as long as your not taking any original material and your not doing a 100% rip copy ie level design music all is the same, then your fine and dont have to ask anyone for permission. Yes, that'll be why Nintendo not only got The Great Giana Sisters banned, but Hard 'N' Heavy too. Changing the graphics, level layout and a few gameplay elements really works. (Well done on selecting the one game least likely to support your wild theories though.) http://homepage.ntlworld.com/frank.gasking/Pages/Review_Hardnheavy.htm |
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| (big bump here) What about if an old 8-bit game has recently (okay probably about 7 years ago) been re-made for the console market? Although my game is essentially the same (gampeplay-wise), I am using completely different terminology and not using any words or background from the original story idea. I have added certain features of my own to help make my version different too. |
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| You should be fine. There is no copyright on ideas. Names\Graphics\Music etc. are protected, but not the game idea. |
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| Hmmm....scary thoughts popping into my head now. I'm almost done with my tetris remake. I guess I really shouldn't assume anything - but after seeing the countless numbers of tetris clones available I just assumed that it was legit. I'm planning on putting it on my website as a freebie... sort of a goodwill product + added incentive for future customers to visit my site. After looking at this thread and a quick search on google, I'm a bit fuzzy on whether this is legal, or even a good idea. I just saw a website about the tetris company attacking freeware and shareware versions of tetris( http://www.abednarz.net/tetris.html -- site doesnt seem to have been updated since 2000 though), and another search for tetris yielded what I had originally assumed; a large amount of clones out there that as far as I can tell, are not officially licensed by the tetris co. ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=tetris+remakes&btnG=Search -- a number of them are being sold for money as well). What do you all think? |
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| Tetris is illegal in any way. Even Tris is copyrighted by them and any use of it or its princip without a license will bring you in bad problems. There are other companies that hold a tetris license than tetris co. |
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| I'm also trying to create a game on my own and I plan to sell it when it's finished. It's a space-sim like Freelancer. BUT: I'm currently designing my own editor in VB, to create the datafiles, which will be used by my game. The dataformat is entirely mine (I created the structure of the file-layout). The 3D-objects (asteroids, space-stations, planets, jumpgates (including wormholes) will be mine too. As for all other stuff in the game (like sounds, code, textures, interfaces, ...). I only look at Freelancer to get some ideas to implement in my own game (but the code and stuff will be entirely mine). I don't think they can really shut me down, can they? Even the title will not be "Freelancer". I wanted to call it "Spacegame 3D" or something like that, but I searched the Internet for "Spacegame" and it already exists (a very simple 2D shooter of some kind). I know, I'm not really creative with the name of the game yet, but that can change, as I've not thougth about the perfect name yet. |
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| You should be fine. There is no copyright on ideas. Names\Graphics\Music etc. are protected, but not the game idea. --- Tetris is illegal in any way. Even Tris is copyrighted by them and any use of it or its princip without a license will bring you in bad problems. Sounds a bit contradictory --- what if a Tetris remake wasn't called anything remotely like Tetris and obviously comprising different graphics and music? (Surely the arrangement of 4 squares cant count as copyright graphics???) __________________________________________________ PowerPC603 - I think you'll be fine! Only you may need to be careful with names for things like Jumpgates (Netdevil may not like it), plus don't call your spaceships the same names as those from Freelancer (never played it so I wouldnt know) etc. and you'll be okay. I dunno if anything from 'Galactic'open-source is any help? |
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| I'm planning to enter my Virus / Zarch remake into the Retro comp. The graphics are pretty much the same as the original, as is the gameplay with quite a few additions and improvements. Last thing I want is to get my ass sued!! Anyone know how on earth I get hold of Mr Braben to ask his permission. Obviously I will make nothing from this. |
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| dbraben_web@... Or maybe Edzup has some contact details since I believe he had cleared all legal issues for his Elite Multiplayer game. |
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| Cheers - I'll try him there - if anyone else has a contact e-mail address etc... please let me know. |
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| PowerPC603 - I think you'll be fine! Only you may need to be careful with names for things like Jumpgates (Netdevil may not like it), plus don't call your spaceships the same names as those from Freelancer (never played it so I wouldnt know) etc. and you'll be okay. That shouldn't be a problem, because all those "jumpgates" will be different types of jumpgates. Their name will not even carry the word "jumpgate". The names are made up by the name of the source sector and the target sector, that's it (like "Sol system -> Alpha Centauri"). They will not even look the same like Freelancer (or X-2). The jumpgates in Freelancer are some bulky "gates". Mine will look like a wormhole (like the one in Star Trek DS9), spacerifts, some other type of structure for a gate, ... And the names for the ships/planets/stations/... will be different. It could of course happen that there might be one or two planets/stations with the same name. Or do those companies make me to play all types of 3D space-sims, play them until the end and try to find not one similar name for my objects in all those games? I haven't completely explored Freelancer yet, but if there were a few sectors/stations/planets/ships/upgrades/... with the same name in my game, would this be safe? |
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| The jumpgates in Freelancer are some bulky "gates". not all of them some are wormholes (that still in a curious twist of fate can be locked ;) ) |
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| Just as a final follow-up on this subject: I emailed Activision who published the game back at the end of May, but never got a response from them. I had waited about a week, and then decided to try to track down the creator/developer of the game. I quite a long night and several dead-end internet searches I finally found that he had become the Director of Game Production at another developers. I sent him an email, and then sat back. I have finally had a response from him today - I had decided to go ahead with the remake anyway as I had put in the email that he should get in touch if there were going to be any problems with me doing the work. He said that he didn't hold the legal rights to the game anymore, and that Activision did, but he had no problems with me having a go at doing the remake, and wished me good luck with it. So now all I have to do is all the designing, logic, mapping, 3d modelling, interfaces, etc, etc ..... Hopefully I might start to do a bit of a worklog once I have actually got somewhere with it. :) |
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| From reading this, it seems a bad idea to mention or credit the author of the original idea, as this could be interpreted as an admision of guilt. If it resembles in any way the original, then someone in court can claim it's a copyright infrigement. If it doesn't well then it's not a remake. The only safe way would be to make a parody, that is legaly allowed. |
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| That's pretty much correct. Don't connect yourself to the original game (except to say "I got inspiration from game X") and don't say you're doing a remake. As long as you're only copying the concept of the game design (ie. not it's title or graphics) you should be okay. The entire game industry is based on developing new games that are incremental changes from previous games. And your statement "using new graphics and producing it in full 3D with a couple of extra twists to it" indicates considerably more changes from the original than a lot of games do. Just going from 2D to 3D is generally more than enough to be a different game. It's funny to think about really, that saying you're doing a remake is the tipping point. Just picking one example, if Stainless Steel had said Empire Earth is a remake of Age of Empires they would have gotten sued, but because they said their game is a competitor there was no problem. No difference in production of the game, just one word in their intent. "What about "Trailblazer 2004"? Do you think you could get away with that?" That would be connecting yourself to the original game; I recommend against doing that. From the sounds/looks of things, naming it "Trailblazer" would be the one thing that could create a problem for the game. Other than that, it's just another of the slew of games about racing balls through a maze and avoiding obstacles. Just look at "Marble Blast" on garagegames; they're fine and their title is actually kind of close to an older game of that type (Marble Madness.) ADDITION: I just remembered an interesting example of the similar name thing. There was an old Nintendo game called "Monster in My Pocket." It was originally called "Pocket Monsters" but had to change it because that was too similar to Pokemon (that name derives from "pocket monsters.") Apparently the small change to "Monster in My Pocket" was enough. Of course, in their case the gameplay wasn't even remotely similar to Pokemon. |
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