Question about the "legality" of a matter relating to purchased assets.

Hi guys.

So I'm looking at fiverr, and I see people stating they'll make a game for you, you just pay something small, boom you get a game you can sell.

My question is, if they use assets they bought for themselves in a game they made for someone else (let's say they did not include any project files, just the installable game files), is that considered a violation of the licenses of the purchased assets?

 

Yes. You'd just need to buy those same assets for yourself and problem solved.

Edit: No, actually it depends. If you hire them to deliver a finished executable to you than no, I don't believe that's a violation. If they deliver an open project that you intend to modify and maintain, then I believe you need your own license. That's how I understand it based on previous discussions that I've seen on this forum. Someone can correct me if they know better.

 

No. They're allowed to use them "as incorporated and embedded components of electronic games and digital media and distribute such electronic game and digital media," including to someone such as you or a publisher who will sell it.

If they give you the project source (which in this hypothetical you said they won't), then you'd also be required to buy the same assets.

 

Sharing a build of a game does not require the person receiving the build to obtain a license to any assets used. Sharing the assets in any manner other than in a completed build or in marketing materials for such build is not allowed unless the receiver obtains their own license to the assets. Sharing a project which includes the assets, exporting the assets for use in another project, would not be allowed without the person receiving getting a license to the assets.

But again, sharing a build is just fine. Otherwise there would be no point to the Asset Store, since who would make games with assets from there if everyone who picked up the game had to themselves get licenses to all the assets?

See the Asset Store EULA section 2.2.1
https://unity3d.com/legal/as_terms

 

Awesome guys, thanks for the responses.

 

Legally, you are fine.

However practically, you are likely to get a pure asset flip. A generic game which is just compiled assets, with no modification. Its unlikely you will get something you can actually make money from.

 

Oh I don't want it for myself, I was wondering about it in case I wanted to sell something like that. I really don't though, it's just a thing that I thought about when I saw so many people selling games on Fiverr.

 

If your looking to make money a dependable way is making your game into a template for the asset store and adding in various tools to customise it such as level editor or similar. People pay reasonably for those and in some senses at least for indies, asset store is more dependable source of income (as in less varied, the top end is lower but the bottom end is higher).

You can even make money off a tiny gamejam mobile game this way, and in some senses its easier to market as the unity community is all centered around some easy to access avenues such as forums, reddit, connect and discord Players can be anywhere, but the unity dev community tends to be in those 4 places most of the time so reaching people can be easier for an asset than a game when starting out.


Another nice business model is to actually generalise your internal systems for your larger game project, and sell that as an asset to fund the development further. Unity released a blog about this back in 2013 sometime:

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2013/07/19/funding-indie-games-asset-store/

Good luck!

 

That's awesome, I always have the asset store in the back of my head but never sure how big or small a piece of software/functionality to put up on it.

One thing though is that I would need to strip my game/asset of any external tools/scripts I might have been using that were from the asset store initially. Depending on how much the project relies on those assets, it could end up needing quite a bit of work. I'm definitely more inspired to try it out now though after having read your post and the article link, so mad props and greatly appreciated!