My name was invoked, so feeling the need to jump in here.
One important distinction with my crossover comic is that I have released it completely for free, and am not making/collecting any monies from that comic. Whenever I do Parody work, I make sure to make clear that it's a parody, and that it's being released for free. Also, being mostly anonymous helps...
That being said, this is one huge grey area. When Game/Story Developers use 'premade' assets from the Daz3D.com store, Renderosity, etc., they aren't purchasing any 'exclusivity' rights for those assets. This also ties in to the comment above about cameos. In Tracy's case (Dreams of Desire), she's essentially Akasha for G3F, with some very minor curve tweaks. Now a couple of the other DoD characters have more extensive 'custom dialing' involved, but are still using 'default' textures and such.
I like to think of these situations where premade character assets are used as virtual actors and actresses playng various roles. Example: 'Akasha is a virtual actress, that appears in various roles, most notably as Tracy from Dreams of Desire'. Katie from Katie's Corruption is another example of this, she's essentially Summer for Victoria 7.
Also, in my crossover comic, the names are alterered slightly to make it a bit more clear that these are 'parodies' of the original characters, i.e. Trace instead of Tracy, Kate instead of Katie, etc. and I also make a big deal about 'alternate timelines' when discussing my parody work.
Also, as an example, the i13 On My Own Environment (apartment) appears in a number of games, including Dreams of Desire and Babysitter. It's mostly unmodified in many games, although I did spend some time unifying several products into a single floor plan when I was briefly helping with Babysitter, and also installed a closet in the master bedroom. Even so, where I was just modifying existing assets a bit, I seriously doubt that I could make a copyright case for such modification if I was otherwise so inclined, as it's still 95% plus the original assets as sold on Daz3D, Renderosity, etc.
Developers do often get a kick when their porn story characters are making cameos in other games, and it can result in more eyeballs being drawn to the 'original' game where the characters first appear, so as long as the character isn't presented in a bad light, they often do not mind.
I do link to the original games in the Enthralled release thread, to draw more traffic to the original games, which you should definitely check out. Even if Teacher's Pets was abandoned midstream...
Also, one should note that there are now several Big Brother parody works on this forum, that have been here for a while now. You could make a pretty good case against these 'aftermarket' games, but AFAIK Dark Silver hasn't made a serious effort to shut these down, which while this isn't explicit permission, well...
This may come down to how willing developers are to get lawyers involved to protect their porn work, and are they willing to show up in court to protect their 'essentially copyrighted work'. Most developers probably don't want their 'real life personas' associated with incest, etc.. as the neighbors WILL find out about such things if discussed in a public courtroom...
It's probably infringement on some level, but are you willing to stake your reputation, and pay the legal fees, to defend your porn work, particularly if it features incest?
That being said, Patreon does take Copyright strikes rather seriously, and that takes a lot less effort to do. Of course, that won't stop unauthorized works and shares entirely, note the sheer number of sites devoted to unauthorized sharing.
Luxee (Parental Love) even released his custom dialed models to the fanart community here, and hence his custom characters might end up making cameos in other games, which was very nice of him. But Luxee is kind of the exception here, a lot of developers hold their 'custom dial formulas' close to their chest if they spend time custom dialing the characters.
And yeah, my parody work is done 100% for free, but if you are doing a 'for sale' product, say seeking donations on Patreon, etc. for your game and NOT doing original work, yeah that's kinda different, and you probably should seek permission. If you choose NOT to, you roll your dice and take your chances r.e. cease and desist. But even free works aren't immune to cease and desist, it's just 'less worth it' to bother.
One other thing. This IS a Buccaneer forum, so keep that in mind. I exclusively release my parody works here for a reason, although Enthralled is now on a number of download sites (SVS Comics 8 Muses, etc.), and no one asked me if they could do this. I actually don't mind this as this means more people are reading my silly crossover, but if it was a paid game or something, I might be a little more annoyed. And let's face it, a LOT of games that are in the games section on this forum are listed here without explicit permission from the developers in question...
Disney, etc. have been fighting the porn community for years r.e. unauthorized porn parodies of their characters. Helen and Violet Parr get banged a lot in these parody works as an example, then there's Anna and Elsa from Frozen, the DoA gals, Skyrim gals, etc etc. etc.. They may technically be unauthorized works, but the porn community is an unstoppable force in these situations.
---
On another note, the fair use thing is currently still being debated in court, most notably atm in the Doctor Seuss Enterprises vs. Team Mashup case, which hinges pretty heavily on the definition of Fair Use:
You must be registered to see the links
Jonathan Lane at Fan Film Factor has done a few articles now following this specific ongoing case, which involves a parody work of a Doctor Suess book, set in a Star Trek setting instead in the parody work. The case isn't resolved yet, but this case will end up setting/clarifying a couple of precedents probably...
---
But if you are making your own game, it's best to just create your own characters and storylines, if you are worried about such things. Parody work is a messy quagmire atm...
So clear as mud then? My work is done here!
BTW, a lot of my edits are because my chiclet keyboard on this laptop is old and doesn't read all of my keystrokes, and I notice missing letters after the fact..
