Legality Of Copyright Characters In Games

[JamesMacHavoy]

Hey, so i was just wondering if anyone had any ideas about the legality of copyrighted characters.I don't mean like stealing someone else's OC or character they have made and just completely ripping off that whole thing, i mean like using characters that weren't originally made to have porn of them and mainly from bigger corporations like using characters from Family Guy or Nintendo or DC etc.

I feel like some of the parent companies might care about this but can they really be bothered to do anything about it or can they actually. I think if they were to make a big deal out of it sites like Patreon etc would comply quite quickly but i don't know if they actively go seeking for people making games with their characters.

I was also wondering if anyone knew of any people who had run into trouble with this kind of thing

 

[NoseBleeds]

I don't think most would care seeing as how there are many parodies and porn games using copyrighted characters, but certain companies are more protective over their IP than others. I remember Harry Potter games being hit pretty hard by that in the past.

Legally, I wouldn't know. As with most legal things, everything's really complicated and situational.

 

[Rafster]

I wouldn't mess with nintendo though. They are extremely protective with their IPs.

 

[NoseBleeds]

You would also have to take into consideration your region and the region of the copyright holder. For example, here in Canada, parody is not protected by fair use while in the US it is.

 

[Meaning Less]

Always best to avoid it if you care about copyrights, anime always self-censors parodies or changes the characters enough to make the parody/joke without having to actually use the original character visuals or names.

But in general if you don't plan to sell your game it won't matter that much, there are many pokemon and mario adult games out there, never for sale on steam or anything like that but you can still find them around the web.

 

[FromOtherSpace]

You would also have to take into consideration your region and the region of the copyright holder.

This is the best answer you can get. Every country have its own copyrights laws and its "jurisprudence". As a rule, you should presume that every creation (drawning, name, etc) is protected, the question is : are some usage allowed? Nosebleeds has talk about parody for example, you can also cite somebody work for educationnal purposes or critique, those sort of things, depending of your juridiction.

That say, on one hand there is law and on the other there are facts. You are very unlikely to be sued for a dozen porn drawning of Mario.

 

[anne O'nymous]

This is the best answer you can get. Every country have its own copyrights laws and its "jurisprudence". As a rule, you should presume that every creation (drawning, name, etc) is protected, the question is : are some usage allowed? Nosebleeds has talk about parody for example, you can also cite somebody work for educationnal purposes or critique, those sort of things, depending of your juridiction.

Is also to be took in count the popularity of your own creations. Almost all rights owners are now aware of the Streisand Effect, therefore many will let pass something that got near to no attention, by fear that suing the author would increase this attention and so make it worse.
Then in top of that, most of the time it will be an international lawsuit. Therefore either they goes to your country, what will cost them a lot, or they sue you in their country, what mean that the sentence will never be applied (unless you're stupid enough to be present during the trial). This when generally they can just contact the hosting site and ask for your creation to be removed and/or your account to be banned. Technically they can't do this for parodies and thinks like that, but in practice when a site receive a legit e-mail from a big studio, they do as told ; it's easier to deal with one angry user, than with a dozen of Disney/Nintendo/whatever lawyers.

What lead to:

That say, on one hand there is law and on the other there are facts. You are very unlikely to be sued for a dozen porn drawning of Mario.

 

[JamesMacHavoy]

Is also to be took in count the popularity of your own creations. Almost all rights owners are now aware of the Streisand Effect, therefore many will let pass something that got near to no attention, by fear that suing the author would increase this attention and so make it worse.
Then in top of that, most of the time it will be an international lawsuit. Therefore either they goes to your country, what will cost them a lot, or they sue you in their country, what mean that the sentence will never be applied (unless you're stupid enough to be present during the trial). This when generally they can just contact the hosting site and ask for your creation to be removed and/or your account to be banned. Technically they can't do this for parodies and thinks like that, but in practice when a site receive a legit e-mail from a big studio, they do as told ; it's easier to deal with one angry user, than with a dozen of Disney/Nintendo/whatever lawyers.

What lead to:

What are we talking near to know attention? i think most stuff uploaded here gets a decent amount of attention in my eyes but to a bigger company they might not think so like they probs just leave all this be unless it goes on to steam or something

 

[WIRProductions]

You would also have to take into consideration your region and the region of the copyright holder. For example, here in Canada, parody is not protected by fair use while in the US it is.

Your comment about Canada being different than the US got me curious so I looked it up:

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Apparently Canada calls it something entirely different than the US, fair dealing instead of fair use, and 'recently' added parodies and satire to their list.


But for the OP, just to add on to what others have said, if a person is not making money off it, rarely is a company going to be coming for you. Even if you are making money off it, like Patreon, it is unlikely unless you're making a metric ton. A lot of it just comes down to brand confusion and dilution. In addition to the Streisand Effect, a lot of the work talked about here are pornos. No reasonable person is going to confuse a porno with the real thing, or something the copyright holder signed off on. This is undoubtedly why all the parody pornos always having XXX after the names. With rare exceptions such as Nintendo, unless the creator is actively selling their porno product in non-porno ways, like putting it on a T-Shirt for the mass market, I'd be more surprised if people at those companies have never Jacked or Jilled themselves to some smutty fanfiction or drawing of their company's work.

 

[NoseBleeds]

Your comment about Canada being different than the US got me curious so I looked it up:

You must be registered to see the links

Apparently Canada calls it something entirely different than the US, fair dealing instead of fair use, and 'recently' added parodies and satire to their list.

Thanks for clearing this up! Google quotes a different section of that article, so I was always under the impression it wasn't allowed whatsoever. Looking into it, it seems there are some vague conditions that need to be met and they don't have any concrete set of rules to follow to be in the clear. Still better than nothing I suppose.

 

[WIRProductions]

Thanks for clearing this up! Google quotes a different section of that article, so I was always under the impression it wasn't allowed whatsoever. Looking into it, it seems there are some vague conditions that need to be met and they don't have any concrete set of rules to follow to be in the clear. Still better than nothing I suppose.

I know the same happened to me. Google just showed me the 'no' part until I actually decided to read it since I was already down the wikipedia rabbit hole. Haha. Guess that is why Weird Al is so smart when he does his song parodies, always asking permission from the artist ahead of time so he never has to deal with the gray areas of the law.

 

[Crazy_Chameleon]

There is no legality protecting your work .. They probably won't come after you unless what you're making becomes a problem for them. Like with the overwatch/mass effect parodies. But they can potentially stop your game dead for every reason. To be clear what you are proposing is 100% copyright theft. You are using someone else's characters in your work without their permission and it's absolutely something they could justifiably bring you up on. Honestly I wouldn't do this if you plan on being serious about the game. As any degree of real success would 100% see you shot down. A Parody is NOT the same thing as using the characters in your game.

 

[JamesMacHavoy]

There is no legality protecting your work .. They probably won't come after you unless what you're making becomes a problem for them. Like with the overwatch/mass effect parodies. But they can potentially stop your game dead for every reason. To be clear what you are proposing is 100% copyright theft. You are using someone else's characters in your work without their permission and it's absolutely something they could justifiably bring you up on. Honestly I wouldn't do this if you plan on being serious about the game. As any degree of real success would 100% see you shot down. A Parody is NOT the same thing as using the characters in your game.

yeh thats what i was thinking too, i was looking at afrobull and they use alot of characters and seem to be getting away with it but i guess its all just luck on who sees it and what happens

 

[Crazy_Chameleon]

It's also because if a project is small and insignificant It either flies under the rader or is allowed to fly under the radar. As long as what you're making isn't well known enough to really threaten their IP then it isn't worth their time to go hunt you down. Especially since there is a slight possibility of a legal battle over it if the person stealing the characters is dumb. I know you'll probably laugh at the idea but I've seen people do stupider shit.

It's just not worth it to challenge some tiny little dev who infringes your copyright especially since porn is almost invisible compared to their shit anyway you'd almost be drawing more attention to it by trying to take it down. However the problem comes when you are no longer invisible. For that reason it's probably fine if all you want to do is make a lil hoppy game. But if you actually want to see your game succeed then using someone else's copyright characters is essentially giving the game cancer. Sooner or later it's going to kill it.