How far can you emulate a Game Before Copyright
polycounter lvl 13
My nostalgia has been really irking me recently to make me ask this question for the less than 1% chance that it would ever come up in the future.
How far can you take (or more so expand on / be inspired by) another games ideas before it's considered copyrighted? Personally I never really payed attention to this but there always seems to be universal concepts such as "Chain Lightning". I'm particularly curious of spell type stuff like World of Warcraft-esque things.
Not sure really how I can go about expanding on this. To me it just seems like names of things are the main concern and maybe similar art styles? But design wise I can't pin point it, if at all.
The only example I can really find is the WarZ vrs. DayZ game which had multiple obvious name violations to begin with.
How far can you take (or more so expand on / be inspired by) another games ideas before it's considered copyrighted? Personally I never really payed attention to this but there always seems to be universal concepts such as "Chain Lightning". I'm particularly curious of spell type stuff like World of Warcraft-esque things.
Not sure really how I can go about expanding on this. To me it just seems like names of things are the main concern and maybe similar art styles? But design wise I can't pin point it, if at all.
The only example I can really find is the WarZ vrs. DayZ game which had multiple obvious name violations to begin with.
Replies
If you aren't rich, try to differentiate your game from what's influencing it as much as possible.
Game-play: Same here, unless you're specifically ripping code through reverse engineers, most you will get stern gamers complaining about lack of originality.
Names: This is a BIG, no-no if the term isn't generic, don't try and be a hero, but at the same time, use your judgment. If you want to follow examples, look at DOTA2 and how they're changing the name of characters in the final product vs. the DOTA1 MOD, which doesn't even belong to Blizzard to avoid any kind of infringement.
Even though names like "Outworld Destroyer/Ravager/etc" are pretty generic, they still belong to a foundation of another company, so making a product that talks and walks like the first one, and even takes the name might land you in hot water.
However, there are also crazy twats out there, like Game Workshop, that tried and copyright the word Space-Marine before everyone and their mother laughed at them, so honestly, there is no safe ground, especially from copyright trolls (this is becoming a more common problem), so I suggest simply adapting your product.
An interesting example would be dota and dota2.
Dota originally being a warcraft3 mod and using the warcraft 3 heroes/names/some spells.
Hero models: all of the hero models are basicly copied from the original designs, wich are all warcraft3 models.
I probably wouldn't advice this, since I'm guessing that blizzard and valve have some sort of understanding in doing this, if you go and make a game and make a hero/model that exactly looks like thrall for example, probably not a good idea.
All of the lore has been done from scratch.
Hero/spell names: These were kept the same except for copyrighted names, some examples:
-Abaddon, first spell: Death Coil got renamed to Mist coil
Third spell: Frostmourne, got renamed to "Curse of Avernus"
-Obsidian destroyer: because of "obsidian" being renamed to "outworld destroyer", and later to "outworld devourer"
-Dota heroes also had 2 names (first name + descriptive name, for example krobelus the death prophet, sven the rogue knight).
And since a lot of those first names were copyrighted, those got changed.
dota: anub'seran, nerubian weaver
dota2: Skittskurr, weaver
So just use some common sense I'd say, terms like "chaing lightning/health potion/mana" are so generic that no one could claim copyright on that, stay away from names that are very specific to that game.
edit: got beaten to it by ace-angel on the dota part
To at least add something new, this has also happened with Heroes of newerth.
They had gotten permission in the beta of HoN to use dota heroes, and even then you can see how heavily those got changed to avoid any problems with blizzard.
The "concepts" got taken over, but all the names got heavily changed.
Take a look at shadow fiend versus Soulstealer for example.
Blizzard took Valve to court over it as well, they settled in the end and Valve was allowed to call their game DOTA2. I'm sure the money involved was way beyond what us mortals and plenty of smaller studios could have afforded.
Everyone can tell when you are influenced by a game and when you are cloning it. There are companies that legally clone games but they have also garnered a reputation of being rip-off artists.
Oh wow. So in the end Blizzard could have called anyone else to court and if they didn't have any amount of money to expend they would of won by no show. Treading much more carefully it is.
So in the lawsuit, it was actually the other way around, valve wanted to copyright dota, and blizzard wanted to keep dota as a public/usable name so they could name their version "blizzard dota" (wich did got changed to blizzard all-stars in the settlement).
But yes, if blizzard had actually been involved with dota/had made up that name, dota2 would have never existed (since money in that case wouldn't have even mattered, it would have been like valve making "starcraft 3", that is never happening in relation to copyright), or if it did, it would be completely different from the dota2 we know today (like league of legends is completely different from dota, but still the same genre/concept).
The truth is though that as with any civil suit, a large company can basically bully you into submission with protracted legal battles even if their case has basically no merit because it will be cheaper for you to settle... Their case might eventually get thrown out, but they'll rack up a huge legal bill for you in the process.
Edit: Useful resource
http://www.patentarcade.com/p/patents.html
Guinsoo by the way later went on to join Riot to help make League of Legends, Riot also filing a counter-trademark suit against Valve to stop them from using the term DOTA before Blizzard did.
Valve all of a sudden sounds evil now ^^.
What's even more fun is that companies like Microsoft started building massive patent thickets, to the point where mobile phone makers are all paying each other licensing fees because it's impossible to enter the market without violating dozens of patents in the process.
A general rule of thumb is: Could what I'm making be confused for something else easily by the intended audience?
Its how warcraft and starcraft can exist beside warhammer and warhammer: 40k without being copyright violations, while say, some of the old "land air mechs" from mechwarrior/battletech were violations of robotech.
I think you'd be surprised how hard it really is to tell infringing from fair use and/or those that have permission. The MPAA and RIAA both have frequently issued DMCA claims against sites that were expressly given permission from the copyright holders. Hell, they even issue DMCA's against their own websites and websites of the corporations they represent. They also jump on the DMCA warhorse before even making even the slightest consideration of fair use. Judging by their behavior, no use is fair use.
Not only that, but if such issues come to court, it's entirely up to the judge to consider the evidence and testimony to make a judgement on fair use. A judge can find a ruling of fair use on even just one of the criteria used for testing for fair use. The judge has to weigh the impact it would have on the rights holder compared to the benefit to the public, the public good being the prevailing priority when it comes to a draw because, ultimately, the public is supposed to be the primary beneficiary of copyright through the encouragement of creating new works.
TL;DR
Infringing and fair use are more ambiguous than you might think. Even the big guys can't tell them apart and often issue invalid DMCA claims.
@OP
If you want to use ideas from an existing game, avoid anything trademarked and draw from as many different sources as you can. The more diverse your inspiration, the less likely it will be seen as infringing and it will be more innovative. What's "original" is just a matter of how much you put in to it. 99% of what you create was done by hundreds of generations that came before you and you are adding your little piece to it. A drop in the well, if you will.
"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for." - Socrates