Copyright in video games I noticed in Assassin's Creed : Odyssey that they implemented a feature very similar to Shadow of Mordor's nemesis with mercenaries . By that I mean automatically and randomly generated ennemies with weakness and complex features. This IGN article seems to confirm this hypothesis : Game Director at Ubisoft Quebec, Scott Phillips, says the team “Wanted to have a system where the world was constantly living and constantly challenging” players, so they created a dynamic system of mercenaries within the world of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, somewhat similar to that of Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system.Each mercenary has strengths and weaknesses and unique attributes ranging from animal companions and gear to high skill with a specific weapon, and while there are many hand-crafted mercenaries that can be found around Greece,they’re also randomly generated from a pool of modular fight moves and stories as a way to offer a more elite enemy for players to fight. I was surprised to hear someone from Ubisoft admitting that the feature was similar to what someone else did in a previous game. I found this American Bar Association article which explains that game rules are not copyrightable : Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act states: “In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.”1 In using the word “or,” the statute lists these exclusions—ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries—disjunctively. Thus, each has independent force and effect. This means that neither ideas nor functional elements—such as procedures, processes, systems, or methods of operation—are copyrightable. I won't lie, it is not clear to me even after reading the whole article what is copyrightable and what is not. I decided to look up one of the very best rip-off in history with Instagram's story system and I learnt that since IG's and Snapchat's story system were visually different, it was legally OK for IG to use it. Could someone shed some light on the differences between software and video game copyrights, or globally anything that could help me understand how copyright works in the video game industry? Specifically whether it is &quot;features&quot; or &quot;code&quot; or something else that is usually copyrighted?
Video game copyrights are really not significantly different from book or movie copyrights. One of the most basic principles of copyright is that one cannot copyright an idea only the words and images used to express an idea. The question quotes 17 USC 102(b) which is the US law establishing this distinction. A Similar plot point or device is not a copyright infringement. Such common tropes as &quot;budding romance obstructed by differing values&quot; is not protected by copyright. Neither, I would think is this device of auto-generated characters in a video game. One cannot lawfully copy or closely imitate the actual words or images or sounds in someone else's protected work (without permission). That is the essence of copyright. (There are limited exceptions such as fair use / fair dealing.) What complicates this and confuses many is the concept of a derivative work. When a character or setting is described in significant detail, a detailed, point-by-point imitation of that setting may be enough to make the newer work &quot;based on&quot; the older work, and thus a derivative work. Unauthorized sequels are often held to be derivative works, for example, or unauthorized &quot;guest appearances&quot; in which a well-know or clearly established character from one work is used in another. If a modern detective goes into partnership with Sam Spade, say, or if Spiderman should be an important supporting character in a newly written novel. Similarly a new fantasy set in Tolkien's Middle-Earth or a new comic in Gotham City would probably be derivative. One of the things protected by copyright is the right to create or authorize derivative works, and courts have held that use of a distinctive character an make a work derivative. But for this to apply the character must be distinctive and recognizable. A general type, such as a detective or superhero (or a large city) is not enough; there must be sufficient imitation to make it clearly the use of a character or setting from a copyrighted work, with a detailed, point-by-point similarity would be needed. A game feature such as this &quot;mercenaries&quot; concept would not make another work using it a derivative work, or at least I don't think it would. But ultimately such decisions are made by a court when and if a copyright holder sues an alleged infringer. Whether a work is derivative or not is a very fact-based decision, and so the exact specifics of the case may well matter. If one is considering imitating some general feature of a previous work, it may be wise to consult a lawyer with IP expertise. I am confident that a major game developer or book publisher would have a staff lawyer to review such questions.
Expression is tied up with fixation. Copyright subsists in a work that is fixed in a tangible medium of expression from which they can be reproduced, perceived, or communicated. 17 USC 102 This expression is protected, not the idea. However, copyright infringement can occur even when there is not an exact copy. First, courts use a substantial similarity standard to determine if infringement has occurred. Second, when a character or plot is sufficiently developed, taking that character or that plot can be infringement, even if not expressed in the exact same manner. "We do not doubt that two plays may correspond in plot closely enough for infringement [...] the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly." Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corporation, 45 F.2d 119 (2d Cir. 1930) Some characters or plot elements are so common to a genre that they are either not considered "original" enough to get copyright protection, or can be taken by others without being considered infringement. This is the scènes à faire doctrine. "Stock scenes and hackneyed character types that "naturally flow from a common theme"—are considered "ideas," and therefore are not copyrightable. But as plots become more intricately detailed and characters become more idiosyncratic, they at some point cross the line into "expression" and are protected by copyright." Suntrust Bank v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 268 F. 3d 1257 - Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit 2001 See Amanda Schreyer's An Overview of Legal Protection for Fictional Characters: Balancing Public and Private Interests for many more cases and examples of the idea-expression dichotomy in action with respect to fictional characters.
Yes That is very simple - copyright is an exclusive right that starts automatically with the creation of a copyrightable work. The default situation is that the author has an exclusive rights to make copies of the work and derivative works. If the code is published somewhere by the author but the author has not said anything about its licence or copyrights, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. They have the right to just publish it somewhere, others don't. If you try to contact the author and they don't say anything and ignore you, then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. If it's impossible to find the author (e.g. I have certain cases with literary works where it's not clear who inherited the rights after the author died), then the default situation applies - you need permission and you don't have it, so it's not legal for you to distribute their copyrighted works. That being said, certain forms of reuse (recreating ideas, learning from them, etc) would not be a copyright violation. But in general the situation with the author not saying anything is almost the same as the author explicitly stating "all rights reserved, you're not allowed to do anything, violators will be shot" - some specific uses are allowed even against author's wishes (e.g. 'fair use' clauses) but everything that needs their permission really does need their explicit permission.
What you are missing is that the original copyright holder can give permission to make derivative works with strings attached. There is no automatic right to derive something from a copyrighted work. Those strings could include constraints on what you create in the process of making the derivative work. Yes it is a string limiting what you can do with something you own, but you would have been warned in the license and had the choice to start from scratch. People do create work-alike software with no copyright strings using two teams and a &quot;clean room&quot; design process. It is a lot harder than modifying something another person has developed. Also, law and someone's understanding of morals need not be aligned at all. And, in patent law, just creating something all by yourself from scratch does not give you ownership. If someone else did it first and got a patent you can't make the item you might think you own. IP law is complex and looking for &quot;fundamentals&quot; may not get you anywhere.
IF part of your code and data is non-open-source, you can't release this software under the MIT license. However, from what I know, CS:GO uses real-life weapons, and their names aren't protected by copyright. Weapon stats aren't copyrightable either. With skin names, you should be safe as well, since there isn't enough (or any) lore around them to establish them as literary works. However, if you are using any in-game descriptions or images, they are copyrighted content and can't be legally copied without permission from Valve. Which might be easy to obtain by writing them.
That is going to depend on the details of exactly who does what, and how much is written down. It will also depend on the agreements between the people involved, which may well be verbal or implied. I don't know of any actual cases where such a dispute came to a copyright lawsuit. As copyright suits largely deal with financial harms and damages, and in most individual game there is little or no financial impact, a suit might be unlikely in most cases. But lets look at some possibilities. In the typical case, the game organizer or DM creates a setting and outline for a series of sessions. This is likely to include maps, descriptions of rooms or locations, descriptions of artifacts, descriptions of non-player characters, locations and types of monsters and other hazards, and other such background. This is probably mostly or fully written down (which includes being recorded on some sort of computer file.) It is therefore protected by copyright, and the initial owner of that copyright is its creator, probably the DM. (In some cases the DM uses a published &quot;module&quot; and makes only limited changes, in which case the DM would only hold copyright on those changes, if anything.) Then the players create characters, in a process that may be supervised by the DM, and possibly participated in by other players. Each player would probably hold copyright to the description of his or her own character, but the DM or other players might be considered to be co-authors of that, depending on their degree of participation. Then the players start having playing sessions, each player controlling the actions of a character (or perhaps more than one), and the DM more-or-less controlling the rest of the world, guided by the pre-created maps and descriptions. Some of those will be shared with the players, or modified (partial) versions of them will be. Events of the sessions may or may not be written down (or otherwise preserved in a tangible form). If they are not, there is no copyright on them. If they are, there is a copyright, and all the players and the DM are probably co-authors. Now lets look and agreements and ownership. The DM probably owns his or her notes, S/he has at least permitted players to use any that have been revealed to the players. The group has probably agreed (implicitly) to co-create the adventure as it happens. There probably are no written agreements about any of this. If a dispute arises, the DM is legally free to withhold the campaign notes, maps, etc that have not been shared with the players. Whether s/he can legally demand that the players not further use the parts of the setting that had been previously revealed is not so clear. It would depend on what the agreement between the DM and the players said; on, in effect, what license the DM had granted to the players. And since there was probably no written agreement, and quite likely not even an explicit verbal agreement, it would depend on what a court found they had agreed on by implication, based on their actions, and the usual customs of such groups. Sorting that out would be loads of fun. It might involve significant legal fees. The DM is unlikely to hold any exclusive copyright on the previous events of the campaign. Most likely everyone who participates would be a co-author of those. Unless there is a specific agreement to the contrary, any co-author of any shared work has the right to use, and license the use of, the shared work, although s/he must account to the others for any profits. The DM certainly has no legal right to forbid the same group from playing together with a different DM (absent a very improbable contract giving such a right). The DM can only control the maps and notes s/he created independently. If a professional DM is involved, as a comment mentions is possible, it might be more likely that an explicit wri9tten contract between the players and the DM will have been agreed to, If so, its terms will control, whatever they are, unless they are somehow contrary to law. Such a pro DM might be more defensive of copyrights, but would not have any more rights than any DM, except as a specific contract might have provided them. I doubt that the courts will see many actual lawsuits over such issues.
The details of this specific matter are not clear because it appears that Mane6 relented in response to a cease and desist letter, rather than be dragged through court. Since we are not privy to the letter from Hasbro, the best we can do is guess based on the degrees of freedom that exist under the law. The claim that this game was a "parody" is an affirmative defense that Mane6 would have to raise in response to a copyright infringement claim (we don't know if there were also trademark infringement claims in the letter). Then the jury would look at the arguments of the two sides to determine whether this was really "fair use", performing the "balancing act" to see how much of the original work was copied, how transformative the derived work is, what the effect on market would be. The lines drawn for making these judgments are not bright. A quick scan of a successor product Them's Fightin' Herds suggest that someone thought the artwork was too substantially similar to the Hasbro product, that is, the fighting pony version was judged to not be transformative enough. Since it didn't go to court, we'll never know.
What SE can do is controlled primarily by the Terms of Service. What most matters is the section on Subscriber Content, which says: You agree that any and all content, including without limitation any and all text, graphics, logos, tools, photographs, images, illustrations, software or source code, audio and video, animations, and product feedback (collectively, “Content”) that you provide to the public Network (collectively, “Subscriber Content”), is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Overflow on a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive basis pursuant to Creative Commons licensing terms (CC-BY-SA), and you grant Stack Overflow the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by you... This means that you cannot revoke permission for Stack Overflow to publish, distribute, store and use such content and to allow others to have derivative rights to publish, distribute, store and use such content. The CC-BY-SA Creative Commons license terms are explained in further detail by Creative Commons, but you should be aware that all Public Content you contribute is available for public copy and redistribution, and all such Public Content must have appropriate attribution. This part has not changed: the purported license is still "CC-BY-SA", and the TOS does not explicitly specify a version. What apparently has changed in the relevant section is one "helpful information" link, which now points to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. So the interesting question arises whether that would constitute an unpermitted post-hoc change in the terms by which SE has license to my older stuff. This matter came up in a reviled Meta question; as I pointed out, the TOS also included a merger clause that This Agreement (including the Privacy Policy), as modified from time to time, constitutes the entire agreement between You, the Network and Stack Exchange with respect to the subject matter hereof. This Agreement replaces all prior or contemporaneous understandings or agreements, written or oral, regarding the subject matter hereof. Because of that, the TOS is self-contained and stuff found on other web pages are not part of the agreement. This in itself is a bit of a problem because you can't both say "we're not bound by stuff outside of this page" and say "the specific terms of the license are outside this page". That particular clause is gone, but there is an analog in the current TOS: These Public Network Terms represent the entire agreement between you and Stack Overflow and supersede all prior or contemporaneous oral or written communications, proposals, and representations with respect to the public Network or Services or Products contemplated hereunder. Furthermore, the TOS contains the following "we can change it" clause: Stack Overflow reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to modify or replace these Public Network Terms, as our business evolves over time and to better provide Services and Products to the Stack Overflow community, or to change, suspend, or discontinue the public Network and/or any Services or Products at any time by posting a notice on the public Network or by sending you notice via e-mail or by another appropriate means of electronic communication. I assume but do not know for a fact that a similar clause existed in prior versions of the TOS. So I conclude that the change is legal.