Does a free VN count as personal use?

[awesomeautumn]

I've been looking at font websites and a lot of the fonts I like are listed as personal use only. Does a free visual novel count as long as you specifically credit where you obtained the font? I know that ignoring something like that could end up very badly, and would like to be sure it's okay to use.

[AxemRed]

no

[Tetiel]

I do believe that the line is drawn between business/profit and free. From what I am aware, as long as you are not making any profit, and I do mean any (no free to play and then profit off of DLC), it should be legal to use as it is your personal work, not the work of a business or similar group. Take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm only going off of my minor experience in graphic design. I've googled the question and it appears that quite a few have asked the same thing and never given any definitive answer. We have a couple professional graphic design artists on this forum who can probably give better input.

Your best bet would be to attempt to contact the author of the font for either permission or to purchase it for what is usually a small fee. I personally avoid "for personal use only" fonts and try to search only for "free for all uses."

[awesomeautumn]

That does seem to be the best thing to do at this point. I'll stick to websites that give more definitive licenses, too. Thank you for your reply, Tetiel; it's very helpful!

[Auro-Cyanide]

To be on the safe side, check out Font Squirrel. It's geared towards graphic and web designers so the fonts are mostly free for use including commercial and they tend to be fairly high quality.

[yu1988]

I do believe if your game is not commercial then it's safe to use those fonts if they have "free for personal use". But i agree with Auro-Cyanide's idea so you can avoid problems in a long run.

[PyTom]

I do believe if your game is not commercial then it's safe to use those fonts if they have "free for personal use".

No, I don't think this is the case. If you're giving the game to someone else, it's not "personal use". Your best bet is to contact the creator of the font, and ask for permission to embed it in a free project.

[CaseyLoufek]

Py'Tom is right. 95% of the time you might be fine but the right to distribute is technically its own thing. So sometimes the terms of personal-use might allow for this non-commercially, but certainly not always. You should be able to read the legalesse on the site with the font. Look for any mention of distribute, distributing or derivative works. If that doesn't clear it up just ask since a lot of times distribution restriction is based on wanting to keep track of it/keep their name on it or drive traffic to a cetain site and if you credit and link them they may very well be fine with it.

[Ziassan]

Just trying to make the expression clear.
Around here "personal use" is a term used everything you take only for private use, like buying a movie or a music CD and listening it alone/with friends - for instance here you couldn't make a public diffusion of the movie in some kind of festival.
Also making a party, if it's at your home you can use all the music you have bought the usual way, but if it's that kind of student party handled by some student group, in a special place leased for the occasion, you have to buy additional rights 'cause it's no longer personal use.
So if you and your close family/friends are the only ones you want to share this VN with, it's ok, but otherwise it doesn't work (not like you'd get any problem, but if you want to be fair that's how it is).

A bit like if you bought a movie and thought about using a part as the opening of your VN : it's ok if shared with people close to you, but not on the internet.

[yu1988]

I do believe if your game is not commercial then it's safe to use those fonts if they have "free for personal use".

No, I don't think this is the case. If you're giving the game to someone else, it's not "personal use". Your best bet is to contact the creator of the font, and ask for permission to embed it in a free project.

I see. Well, i guess that makes sense. I'm sorry for giving out wrong idea as when it comes to finding something for my work, i either:

1. Try at best to find "Free for commercial use".
2. Buy it or ask for permission from maker (The price might be less this way and i might make new friend lol).

[nyaatrap]

We should always doubt them unless they wrote detailed agreements or using one of common licenses (CC, MIT, e.t.c.). The possibility is high they don't know well about copyrights and wrote them their own way.
I never use assets which don't allow to be used in commercial or don't allow to be modified. Out of them possibly cause problems in the future without noticing. Basically, I only look up CC-BY or MIT like licenses other than PB, and just ignore other assets.

[EroBotan]

try http://www.fontsquirrel.com/

99% are free for commercial use, so you should be safe. There are few fonts that have additional requirement, but most of them are totally free.