Are legal claims possible if use accurately recreated real cities in a violence game like GTA?

I use real map data to create cities with their real names, street names, roads, buildings etc. The real-time generator must create streets and buildings in accordance with the real cities data. You can enter in each house, but the interiors will be completely fictitious and randomly generated, so this does not violate the privacy of residents. The facades of buildings and details are also fictitious. Only the form along the perimeter of the walls, the number of floors, the shape of the roofs and the material of the walls are real. These are the data that can be extracted from vector maps data.
The problem is that in the game, like GTA, you can kill people, steal cars and commit other crimes. Player can destroy buildings. Or go inside and kill owners. If someone finds out his own house in the game, he may not like it. City administrations may not like it if the imporant or government buildings can be destroyed in the game. What is the risk of running into trouble? After all, I do not break any laws of intellectual property and do not use real interiours of houses, is it worth worrying about?

 

Yes there are legal issues to displaying private property and a lot of historical and large buildings require a license to use in film or games.

I would stick to the obvious landmarks like the statue of liberty or big ben and give the feel of city rather than copying anything specific beyond the landmarks. If you cannot see the image clearly it's OK - but that really does mean you can't see it clearly, or its only partially in the shot.

You should talk to legal people - I am no lawyer just telling you that it does come with issues.

 

Probably, licensing is required if an exact copy of the building is used, repeating its design. Since the design is intellectual property and belongs to the architect or the owner of the building.
In my case, the buildings roughly repeat the shape of the original, and the details of the facade are fictitious. With real prototypes they are related: the general form along the perimeter of the walls, number of floors, the material of the walls, the shape of the roofs. In general, all data that can be extracted from vector maps is used. Minor details are generated randomly: design, ornament, number and size of windows, canopies, etc. The listed small details, which may be the intellectual property of the owner of the building, is not used.
I'm more concerned if a person finds out in the game his house and makes a claim because the house can be burned, destroyed or the residents of the house may be killed. Naturally, the characters and interiors are fictional, but is this a reliable defense? Since the real name of the city is used, and roads and houses are in the same places as in reality.

 

Yeah that's totally a danger so don't pick that problem to solve.

 

You may infringe copyright by displaying buildings built after certain date without permission of building's author.

Your data source must also permit use of data in video games.

For example, Google Maps do not allow data exraction. OpenstreetMaps probably does but it is available under of CC-SA-BY, which will makes things complicated.

 

I'm curious how Google is allowed to photograph the entire planet (including private properties) for commercial use, and if we want to put something from that real world data into our game it's like walking into a legal minefield.

 

It seems that the main problem is that you can go into each house. In this I see a threat. "Watch Dogs" and "True Crime: The streets of LA" uses real cities, but reduced in size. I think they have reduced them solely from gameplay considerations. If there were full-size copies of cities in these games, I think this would not be a problem. But if you could kill people not only on the streets, but inside each house, developers could have problems there. No one has ever done so and it is impossible to predict how the public will react.

Possible solutions:
-do not create interiors inside buildings
-do not allow the player to commit violence inside buildings

But I do not like all this. I love the concept of complete freedom and forcefully restricting the player is a bad idea. Moreover, it does not fit into the concept of complete freedom and realism in my game. There is a compromise:

-to rename the names of cities and streets to fictitious

This option is good because it allows you to continue to use real geodata and not limit the player. These points are for me principled. The downside is that this is not a reliable option and the cities still remain identical to real copies. So, there is still a chance for someone to offended.
Probably, all the same it is necessary to consult a lawyer.

I have never heard of this. Can you detail? In which countries does this rule apply? How then applications for viewing maps do show these building?

You can use OSM data if they are distributed under the same CC-SA-BY license. This means that it is enough to divide the game and geodata, the latter should be distributed freely and independently of the game, which does not prevent to use these data in a commercial game. For example, downloading from a remote server.

 

I would strongly suggest you avoid using any map data. If your house overlaps their house and the streets are similar, they have potential legal grounds regardless if it looks like their house or not.

Trying to side step this / use real data ? get legal advice.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_architecture_in_the_United_States
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-architectural-photos.html
It is a can of worms, and applies to buildings made in USA past 1990s. It is very unclear what your rights regarding those are.

Apparently iyou can make pictures of buildings if they're visible from public places, but when you make a 3d game, you technically aren't making a picture.

Have you consulted a lawyer?

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

I wouldn't touch by-sa, because it seems to be very similar to GPL. Meaning viral. On other hand it is certainly less thorough than GPL is, meaning it may be possible to do what you described.

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I suggest to heed hippo's advice and consult a lawyer.

 

You can be sued for anything. Even if the lawsuit doesn't have merit, you still have to fund your defense in order to convince a judge or jury that is the case. You also have to consider what your players will do with a sandbox game like this, and the videos they will make. If a video of a shooting at a high school in your game went viral, with the name of the school attached to it, I'd expect a backlash from the school district. If a video of a shootout on the White House lawn went viral, I'd expect the Secret Service to look into it. etc, etc

Most violent games use fictitious locations for good reason.

Google has a team dedicated to just handling take down requests from their various services like Google Street View, has the cash to litigate and pay out settlements, and a large in house legal team to lawyer their way out of whatever situation they get themselves into.

 

Google is walking through a legal minefield. Here is how they do it:

- Have a team of lawyers to make sure they don't hit any obvious mines, and another team to defend themselves when they do
- Get on the public's good side by making their services free, convenient and essential
- Don't do bad things, like let their service be used to plan home invasions or high school masacares

Despite this all, google still ends up in court a lot. They are frequently trying to do things that there is no legal precedent for.

 

Here's the magic line, repeat after me:

Thank me later.

 

That only applies if they actually are coincidental. Since the op has already publicly stated that it's not a coincidence, that little notice won't mean anything.

 

The OP has already stated plainly that he intends to use real places, real names and real addresses. If he was going with "Los Santos" to make a fictionalized Los Angeles like they did in the GTA series, he'd avoid the crux of the problem.

 

its really frustrating being an artist in this day and age
basicly, you best try not to recreate anything that's built in the real world, sounds stupid, but that's the only way to be more or less safe for the most parts... now, that may sound very gloomy and end of the world like, but its the essence of the problem

 

Gubmint c*nts don't need to know that. Pure coincidence.

Step 1: make new account.
Step 2: make game.
It's not they like doxxed themselves.

 

I'm already redesigning the concept of the game for use with a fictional world.

Simulator Arma 3 almost completely copy the real island of Lemnos in everything except buildings. Buildings are located differently than in reality. They also used the fictitious name Altis instead of Lemnos. They did the same with Tanoa. They mirrored the real island of Lovoni, making an almost exact copy, but mirrored.
In general, I decided that all developers do so for a good reason. If you make a game about real places, then only with neutral content: an interactive 3D-map, flight or race simulator. In a game with violence, this is not worth doing

 

If one magic sentense can make all the danger go away, then why do things like this happen in the real world:

http://www.espn.com/nhl/news/story?id=1948920

 

Yeah, and the two devs who were caught photographing military bases over there seem to have eventually been released from prison:
https://kotaku.com/5976057/greek-pr...-iii-developers-finally-go-home-freed-on-bail

You really picked a terrible example there...

 

For the more relevant part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_in_architecture_in_the_United_States#Film_rights
The far more likely issue in the US is who's property are you standing on when you took the pictures/filmed. If shots of city skylines became effectively illegal, it wouldn't last very long once Hollywood was bankrupt.

Yeah, the military plays by their own rules. So if you don't want to risk all of your equipment being confiscated, your house burned to the ground, and for you to be black bagged and shipped to the other side of the globe, it's probably better to strive for less than 100% authenticity.

 

Because sometimes lawyers suck! - and attempt a sucky defense - and the judge has to rule against them for such a sucky defense. Only a team of bad lawyers would argue freedom of speech against a copyright infringement case.

Personally - I don't see how cities can claim copyright - since we all mostly have rules allowing public video/photo capturing - without infringement. And past games have either gotten away with it - or performed the proper permissions for it to be allowed.

Ive been able to drive all around the entire LA basin all the way back on the PS1 in Driver (2?)
I've walked/drove around NY, Chicago, Seattle, LA, SF, Atlanta, Miami, Vegas, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and other real life locations. Some of those - we could go into real located buildings.
But it seems - its probably best to attempt to get permissions and go through proper authority channels just to play safe.

 

Yeah a lot of films set in new york are filmed in canada etc... hardly a big deal

 

Was it The Getaway that had a rather accurate map of London?

 

I take it you've never had to actually try and get a filming permit before.

 

Seems mysterious this popped up shortly after reading through this thread.