pay what you want and donations, commercial licence?

[Impulse]

Hello. I have a questions about donations and pay-what-you want games. Is it okay to accept donations or have a pay-what-you-want game if you use assets in your game that do not allow commercial use? Like if I have a website where you can download my game, is it ok to have a donation tab on that website so people who like my game can donate? Or is it even okay to have a pay-what-you-want game (including free), even though some of the assets used (ex. backgrounds, music) do not allow commercial?

Since I want to make more games in the future with better assets and hire sprite artists etc. I would need a budget. This is why I'm wondering if I can use donations to raise my budget.

[Sleepy]

If you have a pay-what-you want system, it's still commercial use. So you wouldn't be able to use noncommercial assets.

Donations I'm unsure of but I'd imagine it's a sticky area best avoided. Even if you say, 'please donate to help me with my work', it's still technically going towards the game.

[Impulse]

@Sleepy. I see. That's what I thought as well, but thank you for clearing it anyway. I'll just stay on the safe side and avoid donations then

[fleet]

I am not a lawyer. For legal advice consult an attorney.

It should be okay to accept donations IF the donations go toward NEW projects AND commercial use of assets for those new projects is permitted.
If you do decide to accept donations under the above scenario, I'd recommend including a statement that donations will go toward new projects.

[firecat]

I am not a lawyer. For legal advice consult an attorney.

It should be okay to accept donations IF the donations go toward NEW projects AND commercial use of assets for those new projects is permitted.
If you do decide to accept donations under the above scenario, I'd recommend including a statement that donations will go toward new projects.

no it doesn't work like that, anything that gives you money and the art is being used, it's never allowed. Under copyright law you didn't make the creation so you have no rights on what happens to it. the only work you allowed to used is the one that the creator allowed it, not something that you say.

[fleet]

I am not a lawyer. For legal advice consult an attorney.

It should be okay to accept donations IF the donations go toward NEW projects AND commercial use of assets for those new projects is permitted.
If you do decide to accept donations under the above scenario, I'd recommend including a statement that donations will go toward new projects.

no it doesn't work like that, anything that gives you money and the art is being used, it's never allowed. Under copyright law you didn't make the creation so you have no rights on what happens to it. the only work you allowed to used is the one that the creator allowed it, not something that you say.

Your statement "the only work you allowed to used is the one that the creator allowed it, not something that you say" is true, but irrelevant to my post.

Donations for FUTURE undeveloped games (what I called new projects in my previous post) are perfectly legal as no copyright is involved. The original poster can use donations to hire artists, writers, or to pay licensing fees for artwork or music. Also there is no copyright violation if the assets are licensed for free commercial use (for example, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 License). I've seen several instances where an indie game developer will release a free game, and ask for donations to support development of future games.

[SundownKid]

PWYW is different than donations. Since you arent trying to directly make money off the game when asking for donations its fine to use non commercial use assets. The donations are going to you personally and it's your decision whether to use them on future games. With PWYW it can more be considered a commercial endeavor so it wouldn't be right to use them.

[firecat]

I am not a lawyer. For legal advice consult an attorney.

It should be okay to accept donations IF the donations go toward NEW projects AND commercial use of assets for those new projects is permitted.
If you do decide to accept donations under the above scenario, I'd recommend including a statement that donations will go toward new projects.

no it doesn't work like that, anything that gives you money and the art is being used, it's never allowed. Under copyright law you didn't make the creation so you have no rights on what happens to it. the only work you allowed to used is the one that the creator allowed it, not something that you say.

Your statement "the only work you allowed to used is the one that the creator allowed it, not something that you say" is true, but irrelevant to my post.

Donations for FUTURE undeveloped games (what I called new projects in my previous post) are perfectly legal as no copyright is involved. The original poster can use donations to hire artists, writers, or to pay licensing fees for artwork or music. Also there is no copyright violation if the assets are licensed for free commercial use (for example, licensed under Creative Commons by Attribution 3.0 License). I've seen several instances where an indie game developer will release a free game, and ask for donations to support development of future games.

not even that is allowed, kickstarter has this rule in place where if you use non-commercial or commercial asses to make money you could get banned you from kickstarter. again you the person are not the creator, you do not and will never have rights to sell non-commercial asses. the creator was kind to give you something to help with your project, not something to abuse it.

also it states this under CC 3.0:
"No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material."

Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com made it clear on his FAQ on what you can't do with his music:

What if I cannot credit you?
If you are interested in using a piece in a television broadcast or radio commercial, or some other format where credits are impossible, obtain a Standard License.

the law is tricky don't confuse the OP with your theories.

[Impulse]

So it is okay to ask for donations as long as the money goes into future projects, but not to use pay-what-you-want? That makes sense, but if someone has a link to a place where this is stated I would very much appreciate it, since I don't want to get any legal problems if I decide to have a donations tab.

I could of course contact all of the creators and ask, but since some of them are japanese and I don't know if they know english it's not an easy task.

[firecat]

So it is okay to ask for donations as long as the money goes into future projects.

no its not o.k, you are getting money with the art present showing, many creators would think that you using it to get money. it's like using Disney characters to help make a donation to hospitals but you don't own rights. i keep telling people over and over again that since you are not the creator you have no rights to use it to gain money. this is the most simplest way to know what copyright is:

What does a copyright authorize the copyright owner to do, or to restrict others from doing?

Subject to certain limitations, a copyright owner has the exclusive right to:

reproduce the work by making copies of it;
distribute copies of the work to the public by sale, donation, rental, or lending;
prepare new works derived from the original (for example, a novel adapted into a play, or a translation, or a musical arrangement); and publicly perform or display the work.

Anyone who does any of these things without authorization infringes the copyright and can be liable to the copyright owner for damages. In some cases, in lieu of proving actual damages, the copyright owner can recover statutory damages of up to $30,000, or up to $150,000 if the infringement was willful, for the infringement of a work. Infringement can also be a crime, punishable by fine or imprisonment.

sorce: http://ogc.harvard.edu/pages/copyright-and-fair-use

what SundownKid suggested is fair use, understand that fair use is only for purposes such as criticism (videos), comments (videos), news reporting (every news report ever), and teaching. SundownKid theory is completely wrong, donations are not criticism, comments, the news, parody or teaching.

this counts as fair use, learn from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxLnT5TJjow

read more about what is allowed and what is not allowed:
http://info.legalzoom.com/profit-vs-non ... 20396.html

you can also use this picture to help you:
http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/wp ... cture4.jpg

[Impulse]

@firecat. Okay, thank you. I understand now. Even though this might not have been the answer I was hoping for, it was certainly the one I was looking for. It's clear as day and I won't ask for donations then

[Googaboga]

I don't want to be rude, but I have to disagree with firecat.

not even that is allowed, kickstarter has this rule in place where if you use non-commercial or commercial asses to make money you could get banned you from kickstarter. again you the person are not the creator, you do not and will never have rights to sell non-commercial asses. the creator was kind to give you something to help with your project, not something to abuse it.

That is entirely irrelevant to what fleet was talking about. You are talking about direct donations to a specific project (which is what Kickstarter does), fleet is talking about donations to something other than the project that used non commercial assets. It's not at all the same thing. fleet tried to explain that but you seem to have missed the point.

also it states this under CC 3.0:
"No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material."

How specifically does any of that apply to the situation?

Kevin MacLeod at incompetech.com made it clear on his FAQ on what you can't do with his music:

What if I cannot credit you?
If you are interested in using a piece in a television broadcast or radio commercial, or some other format where credits are impossible, obtain a Standard License.

People who make games can easily give credit. When did not giving proper credit even come up? I have to wonder if you quoted the wrong FAQ section by accident because of how little that applies to the topic.

no its not o.k, you are getting money with the art present showing, many creators would think that you using it to get money.

Who said the OP had to ask for donations with the non commercial assets being present? Yes, if all you do is use non commercial assets and ask for money that's not okay, but again, it doesn't have to be that way.

it's like using Disney characters to help make a donation to hospitals but you don't own rights.

No, it isn't like that. Those characters are not free to use assets, the circumstances around them are entirely different than with non commercial assets.

reproduce the work by making copies of it;
distribute copies of the work to the public by sale, donation, rental, or lending;
prepare new works derived from the original (for example, a novel adapted into a play, or a translation, or a musical arrangement); and publicly perform or display the work.

No one is talking about doing any of that. Please understand that directly taking money for a project and accepting donations to a company/other project are not the same thing.

what SundownKid suggested is fair use, understand that fair use is only for purposes such as criticism (videos), comments (videos), news reporting (every news report ever), and teaching. SundownKid theory is completely wrong, donations are not criticism, comments, the news, parody or teaching.

SundownKid did not mention fair use. So, basically, you decided on your own that SundownKid was talking about fair use but then went into an explanation about how it's not fair use and SundownKid is wrong? Again, SundownKid did not bring up fair use. You're the one who interpreted what they said as being about fair use even though, as you yourself explained, it doesn't apply to fair use at all.

SundownKid's point was that PWWYW is clearly accepting donations for projects that use non commercial assets, while accepting donations for others things is different. Which it is. It still might not be okay depending on the circumstances, but it is different.



Here's the thing, I made a free game with some non commercial assets a few years ago. Do you really think that if I decided to open donations today those assets holders would be able to come after me and have me punished because I dared to ever accept donations for anything after using non commercial assets at one point in my life?

That's silly. It all depends on the circumstances. What you're accepting the donations for, how long ago you used the non commercial assets, etc.

If you just released a project that used non commercial assets and that project is the only way people know you, yeah, that can pretty easily be considered getting donations because of non commercial assets so I wouldn't advise it. However, I cannot agree that accepting donations after using non commercial assets is never okay.

[firecat]

@Googaboga the only way to stop this nonsense is to look up the art ourselves and looked at the rules the original creator has placed. i'm 100% without a doubt that using non-commercial asses for donation is indeed illegal, it breaks the rules that is set for people who didn't want the creation to be used for money.

if donation = money then donation = Monetary gain

by legal terms its still commerical gain, something you didn't create and were never allowed to be used in such a way. you got money for doing nothing, you broke the agreement that was set by the creator:
http://www.businessdictionary.com/defin ... etary.html
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/financial%20gain

[Rinima]

On a somewhat completely unrelated topic

commercial asses

*giggle snort*

On the actual post:
So basically, if you got donated something, you can't use in in a commercial product? What about things like fanart ect ect and you've asked the donator?

[Googaboga]

@firecat
Alright. It seems no matter how often people point out the difference between direct donations and donations to other things, you aren't going to take it into consideration ^^;.


OP I hope you listen to the final point I made in my previous post. Of course you can accept donations to fund future projects eventually. An asset holder cannot demand that you never take donations for something that doesn't include/isn't connected to their assets. The tricky part is deciding when there isn't much of a connection anymore between their assets and why people are donating.