Fangaming legal?, The dispute is ON!

I can't spell that word either

Fangaming in itself is legal as long as it is made clear it is fangaming, but the use of official sprites is a bite in the ass

I'm going to put this into as plain of terms as I can.

There is no law against "fangaming".

Fangaming itself is a very vague concept.

The entire point of law enforcement is to concentrate on well-defined, specific rules that will make offenses punishable within a given bounds. One does not simply write a great sweeping law such as "Dem guys don't do none of that nasty stuff", and then attempt to slap a penalty on it on a case by case basis. That's not how OUR justice system works in THIS country.

So...

#1: Fangaming will never be "illeagal". Because we never write laws that are that broad and keep them around

#2: The gray areas about the legality of creating games based on copyrighted characters have been well fleshed out by now by everyone but our government. It is up to individual companies to prosecute individuals in civil court as they see fit, as such you never even commit a criminal act by making a fangame. And if you were going to get in trouble for it, it'd be because they came after you. Not everyone is a Nintendo (expressing forbidding the use of their graphics and characters), not everyone is a Capcom (saying you have at it, ripping sprites even). It is at your discretion whether or not you choose to obey their rules, knowing you will have to face the consequences if for some reason they did decide to come after you.

#3: As an artist you are allowed certain creative freedoms that allow for things like parody and education. If it is not your intent to sell these products, then there is no harm done; especially when your errr "title" does not leave the bounds of a small website.

YEES! Now i can work on that Simpsons game!

Well, the problem is, is that big companies can shut down many huge fangame projects fairly easily.

Most companies don't bother with it.

Besides, prosecuting a fangamer would be terrible PR for a video game company.

The biggest issue with fan gaming is when people sell things under copyright, like Mario or MegaMan. There is nothing wrong with selling your own original games, but then they wouldn't be "fan games," would they?

Over here it's 12

But Yeah, I doubt fangaming is illegal unless you claim the ideas as your own and such. Same goes for fanart and such.

I hate these topics, people make fake facts, some say its legal some say its not.

My souces say, its Legal to an extent.

A fan-game is legal, it only becomes illegal if a profit is made from it, as it uses licensed characters, names etc.

... the company decides to press charges.

Which is entirely to the discretion of the company.

Which would require a reason to press charges, otherwise they do not have a case and thus would not be worth the court fees.

Technically its no different to drawing a picture of your favourite cartoon character.

This post has been edited by jasonorme666 on Apr 12 2006, 11:30 PM

Which can also cause a company to press charges!

But, as I said, and as you've agreed -- it is entirely at their discretion

I guess if they want to be a-holes, let them. Although the publicity loss wouldnt be worth the risk.

You'd think so, but for big companies, smear campaigns are easy as pie - all they have to do is say your game was piracy. Who is the media going to trust; you, or the company with all the money?

Nope. Like I said, companies own the rights to these characters. Doesn't matter if what you're doing is commercial or non-commercial, using their characters for anything without their permission is immediate copyright infringement. What it depends on is if the company is actually willing to prosecute you on it or not. Prosecution costs money. If the company feels that they stand to make enough money off of your prosecution, then they will do it. One way they could expect to make money off your prosecution is if they suspect you are somebody making a bootleg game for acts of piracy, in which they will try to demand money from you that they believe you robbed them of in sales.

Ever hear of a site called PlanetNamek? It was a Dragonball Z Fansite. One of the biggest, and one of the best. It vanished overnight. Nobody knows why; but a couple months before it vanished, they made a news post about how Funimation had sent out a legal letter to many fansites stating Funimation's legal power involving the Dragonball franchise in America. Just by owning the Dragonball License, Funimation could legally control any and all information posted on all Dragonball fansites, and if the sites would not comply with Funimations wishes, Funimation could legally get their website shut down. Most say Funimation pulled the site (when PlanetNamek reported this, they weren't too happy with what Funimation was implying).

Any unauthorized use of copyrighted materials, any use at all, be commercial or non-commercial is illegal. This means Fanfiction, Fanart, Fansites, Fangames, hell, probably even MIDIs of game music. What stops companies from taking everybody to court is a mixture of common sense, fan appreciation, the need to avoid negative PR, and the realization that taking people to court costs a LOT of money; if they lose a lawsuit or don't win enough money in the case to cover the legal fees that brought them there in the first place, they've officially wasted money on a fruitless lawsuit. This is why so many Cease & Desist letters are sent out; like I said, it's scare tactics so a company like Nintendo doesn't really have to waste money with real legal threats.

And Kitsune, if you wanted the MarioWeen disclaimer, you could've just gone to the site.

This post has been edited by BlazeHedgehog on Apr 13 2006, 01:46 AM

You're looking at this in binary.

Not all the time will it be worth it, and not all the time will it be a loss. They will judge for themselves whether they can profit from it, and whether they feel you are profiting off of them.

I'm just lazy, but thanks

If fangaming were to become illegal probably most fangaming sites will be forced to shut down obviously, that could put a lot of sites out of commission (like MFGG and GDA for example, but really I don't know if there are that many fangaming sites around there but these are the 2 I can think of off the top of my head, I'm sure there's plenty others though). I think it could deal a major blow to the whole online gaming fanbase, but I'm not sure, I could be wrong. But as far as I'm concerned fangaming doesn't look like it's gonna be illegal anytime soon.

Whoa, hold on there, Masakuni o.o

GDA's got a wealth of original characters and ideas so if the big companies WERE to put their foot down on fangaming, GDA would only be about half affected.

Aw yeah, forgot about that. I wasn't thinking all the way through when I typed that bit, sorry.

Nah it's cool

But remember next time, if we can't ever use Mario, Sonic, or Megaman ever again for anything, you always have Kitsune, Tyrone, Karashi, Jiro, and the others to fall back on