Lemma Soft Forums

Hello there! First off, I was wondering, if I should make a new thread or post my thoughts in the game thread but I was afraid my problem wouldn't be really noticed then. I also posted this thread in the PokeCommunity since there are a lot of fan games, but I thought you guys could probably help as well.

So up until now, that is, to version 1.0.4, the credits told which person was responsible for which part of the game, and at the end of it we had

© 2002-2013 Pokémon. © 1995-2013 Nintendo/Creatures Inc./GAME FREAK inc. TM, ® and Pokémon character names are trademarks of Nintendo. / © 1997-2013 TV Tokyo, ShoPro, JR Kikaku / © 1997-2013 Pikachu Records

I'm not sure where I got this line, but I thought everything would have been taken care of with it.
With version 2.0 (yes it's such a jump) I want to make it better, also because I want to change the project to open source. There will be a thin version of it too, stripped of all Pokemon content to serve as a Ren'Py Dating Sim Engine (DSE) as opposed to the Pokemon Dating Sim itself (PDS), so I'm interested in it too.

For PDS, I'll probably leave the line as it is (except for updating it to 2014) and make a different page explaining the copyright of the game. I already got some input from this thread regarding the images:
The act of tracing them as well as the little changes and added emotions is CC-BY-NC-SA, while the original images and characters are still Nintendo property (of course).
The music melodies are still Nintendo property.
The backgrounds don't have copyrights tied to them, so they are safe and will be published as public domain.
As I understood it, every game I created with Ren'Py has to be at least MIT licensed because of the libraries Ren'Py uses.
The dialog lines are some kind of fanfiction, so the fandom is of course Nintendo property, but the written stuff is also copyrighted nevertheless. Putting the Nintendo stuff aside, I would publish it under the MIT license too, since it's a little bit incorparated into the code.

So much for the parts, the game all together should go well with a MIT license, as I declare the Pokemon Parts as parody, right?

The DSE should go under a MIT license I think. I borrowed some characters and backgrounds from free ressources here and will credit them accordingly.

So what do you think?

I think using copyright characters in your games is okay as long as you don't make any money from it. And yeah, you can declare usage of Nintendo resources under fair use (parody) law.

Lemme know if you need me to look into this.

What's reasonable and popular is not always what's legal, and you can't just declare that you're using things as parody and expect that to actually mean you're fine. *Especially* if you are making a pokemon dating game, which is NOT a parody.

Tracing art does not make it yours.

The backgrounds don't have copyrights tied to them

.... really? Where did you get them from, exactly?

You cannot declare any of these things to be under a license unless you have been given actual permission by the rights holders.

Yomuchan wrote:I think using copyright characters in your games is okay as long as you don't make any money from it.

Um, no. Using copyrighted characters is okay as long as

1. the copyright holder allows it
2. Fair Use applies - for example, your game can't be taken down because your characters are drinking Coca Cola(TM).

Aside from that, copyright holders have taken down free game projects in the past. Hasbro, for example, has stopped both My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic and a VN originating here that used the names of the original Mane Six characters.