Serious communication issues with Unity's Asset Store Team.

How is pixel-for-pixel replication of someone else's IP important for an educational blueprint? "Nostalgia" != "education". Having an exact level from Mario (directly derived from materials actually taken from a Mario game, no less) is not important in learning how to build a platformer.

If you copied stuff that closely I think that "copyright concerns" are more than just "valid". By your own admission there you copied directly from Mario.

 

There are a bunch of other clones in the store but I guess them's the breaks.

 

When did Dustin try to make this thread about Mario or bring up copyright? They didn't decline Mario, it hasn't even been submitted.

If Unity told him there was a problem with it and what it was when he submits it, I'm sure he'd change it. Stay on topic please..

 

Sorry, my reaction was all gut, I hope that your issue can be resolved in the best way possible.

 

From the looks of you can just keep resubmitting till the person who submits other "clones" comes along and submits your template too.

 

The titles of his other projects, including the one that was rejected, hint that he is outright copying the work of others and trying to submit it under the pretense of it being "educational". As far as I'm concerned it does fit this discussion about why Unity is rejecting his submissions.

 

For anyone interested that doesn't actually understand the real legalities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

"Fair use is a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test."

I highly suggest you guys at least read some of it. It is the same reason Seth MacFarlane can do just about anything under the parody sections.

"While many other countries recognize similar exceptions to copyright, only the United States and Israel fully recognize the concept of fair use."

 

You gave us the definition of fair use, but I think you need to read the definition of parody. It means to imitate the style of something with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect. Your product is clearly not fulfilling the definition.

If you want a very close example of your situation, I suggest you read into the history of "The Great Giana Sisters" in its original form. It was only in stores for a short period of time before Nintendo took notice and directly caused sales to stop.

Like your product, the game was a direct copy of everything sans the artwork.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Giana_Sisters

 

Parody is protected under fair use, just as much as an educational template. You can argue all you want, the law is the law.

 

Where have I stated that parodying is not protected? My statement has been that you are simply not fulfilling the definition of a parody.

 

Well since you want to keep editing your post I will also tell you that what you posted is not fair use. Nothing about it was for educational or research purposes.

 

No your example does not fulfill the definition, my templates do.

 

I've forwarded this thread to Nintendo's legal department for clarification. As I am not a lawyer I felt it better to contact the ones who would know for certain to verify my statements.

 

Thats funny, you think a Japanese company believes in laws outside of their own country. You are right about one thing, you aren't a lawyer.

 

Nintendo has a legal department for North America. I've only mentioned that it is a potential infringement and that they will need to check themselves for confirmation. If you feel you are within legal bounds you have nothing to worry about.

 

If I didn't know for certain I was protected by the fair use law then I wouldn't have wasted my time making these templates. Go do something useful with your time kid. Quit wasting mine.

 

Time to close this flame war.

 

No need. I am done responding to his statements. It is in the hands of Nintendo and Unity themselves now. At this point my interest lies solely in how the situation will be resolved.

 

Good job Ryiah.

 

I was thinking about this as I know about fair use but frankly, I do not believe that merely stating that the purpose of your material is educational is enough to avoid infringement when providing a template that replicates mechanics, graphics and (maybe even) level design. The law is the law but judges are needed to rule cases. If the creator of flappy bird personally asked you to put your template down, would you take this to court?
( not really asking for an answer to this... )
Are you explicitly restricting the use of your templates to "educational purposes" in your ToS(???).

In my humble opinion (literally!) the issue of being able to submit templates that solely replicate game mechanics (without the graphics or level design) is much more pressant. Copyright doesn't apply easily to "game mechanics" (I believe that it takes a design patent to cover this). Personally I'd be interested to see how different people implement the same mechanics, which of course brings the point home: the copyright lies in the source, not in the mechanics!

Even so... Don't get bogged down (anymore) into a debate about whether or not your stuff may infringe copyright. I believe this is largely off topic in that, you have clearly stated that what you are worried about is effective communication with Asset Store support.

 

... is that you really make it sound like there ought to be a separate forum just for the Asset Store, or at least an appointed Asset Store representative who would be able to respond to this kind of issues.

But there isn't.

So we have a piece of functionality (Asset Store) integrated in the Unity software but support for this is not ordinarily represented on the Unity forum.

Aside...
I still absolutely don't see how (vague) future prospects for your team or your consultants are any help here. Put the word "pay" anywhere and it seems like a win to me; unless I'm paying, of course. And this is where you are. Telling us, in short, that support will be better (than phone lines which are provided for people to call, but actually not in use...) when we send money to your consultants. Sorry but: yuk.

I'm trying to imagine the ruckus if Apple offered paid support via consultants to explain their rejections.

Other than that, thanks for the clarifications.

 

If the creator of flappy birds asked me to take it down I would in a heart beat. If Nintendo had a problem with it which their lawyers most certainly will, I would just change the level layout. There is good quality code in these templates that can be reused and studied for many applications. I like to stay under the radar and believe anything can be negotiated.

 

Which is why it is advisable to contact a lawyer to inquire about the legal nature of your product. Ideally before you get too far along that changing it becomes costly. I truly don't expect Nintendo to do more than a simple cease and desist letter though.

I haven't read through all of it yet, but the University of Columbia has an easily understood page concerning Fair Use.

http://copyright.columbia.edu/copyright/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/

 

Oh man. I really believed you were done with this. Aren't you busy reporting cases of potential infringement?

Off-topic: Nintendo sent a warning to the creator of Flappy Birds. Not Mario. Not Luigi. Not an army of Ninjas.
Just a warning.

 

I stated I was done responding to him due to it escalating into little more than a flame war. I am simply posting the results of some basic research as I investigate the possibility that he may be correct. So far though I'm not seeing where he is.

Family Guy does enough parodying that I have managed to find at least one example of a lawsuit against them concerning fair use. It concluded in their favor for two basic reasons.

First, it actually followed the definition of a parody in that it was "a literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule".

Super Plumber Brothers does not appear to be made for comedic purposes.

Second, that it provided "just enough imagery and accompanying theme music to make the 'crude' depiction of the character 'recognizable' to viewers". Or to put it another way, it provided as little as possible.

Super Plumber Brothers is clearly fashioned after Super Mario Brothers. It provides artwork that is very similar to Super Mario Brothers and a level that is directly copied from the game. It appears to be more than simply as little as possible.

http://www.sedgwicklaw.com/burnett-...-charwoman-is-swept-out-of-court-09-03-20071/

 

(First: I am not a lawyer, but you should consult one for the reason(s) below.)

But, you can infringe a trademark/servicemark/copyright. It seems like the names would come uncomfortably close to infringing trademark or service mark. To avoid this, simply change the name to be nowhere close to the original work, and make sure there are notable differences in key elements.

This is what Unity emailed you back telling you to do. I fail to see the source of heartburn in this case.

 

A troll's work is never done.

 

What are you doing on a Saturday working eh?


This thread is being derailed out of control..sigh.

 

Thanks for these explanation, actually this is really helpful as I didn't know what Unity staff are meant to be helping with or not so I will scale my expectations from now on.

That's the thing. If I got it correctly posting here isn't anybody's work.

 

Which if the OP feels that his assets are as high quality and simplistic for learning purposes as he claims, they should be capable of standing on their own. Why would it even be necessary to use a very similar title and be a close recreation?

No, I think everyone who would normally post is simply at home for the weekend.

 

What would be awesome is if nintendo actually comes and checks out the thread and sees our work....then is so impressed they offer us a chance to build Mario for iOS. Oh my gosh Ryiah would be so mad.

 

Nintendo already owns a successful walled garden. What would they need with another more expensive one?

 

I think you are lacking reading comprehension. The creator of Super Plumber Brothers never stated that he is parodying Super Mario.

He falls under Fair Use law because of teaching: "Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, parody, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship."

You should certainly stop lulling yourself in your own built world.

By the way Super Plumber Brothers doesn't even feel like Super Mario from a gameplay view. Also there are so many games which resembles Super Mario. Maybe the exact level layout is a bit over the top.

 

Do his assets qualify though? We only have his word on the matter, a demo of the asset running, and a statement from Unity about them rejecting it on copyright concerns. Nothing more.

 

Once again, Unity never declined Super Plumber Brothers. I don't know how many times I have to make this clear. I really don't understand why you keep coming back and bringing it up.

 

Flappy Birdies may be the one rejected, but consider how many of those are very obvious recreations of other works. Or are you going to tell me that Mega Awesome Man and Xelda are only coincidentally named?

 

I'm pretty sure that for the teaching aspect of fair use to come into play, that there would have to be some reasonable requirement to copy the work in order to do the teaching. I can't teach a course on modern American literature, for example, without reading a few passages from a modern American novel. That is the reason the fair use cause was invented. It is, however, entirely possible to teach people to make a 2d side scrolling platformer without using the exact level layout from Mario. I also question whether simply providing example code qualifies as teaching at all.

A few days ago I got the idea to make some Youtube videos on how to make a first person shooter with Blender and Unity. After making a couple I quickly decided that it was taking too much time from other projects that I'm behind on. But while I was making it, I thought it would be cool to use the level design from my favorite Goldeneye map. That thought lasted about two seconds as I realized that it would be completely unnecessary to do so in order to teach what I wanted and the legal risk wasn't worth it. Now, if I were teaching a course on the history of first person shooters, I most certainly could use materials from the game, within reasonable limitation.

People tend to have over broad interpretations of what fair use is. Just look at all the Youtube videos that post entire episodes of shows and say, "No copyright infringement intended" That's a bit like stabbing someone in the face and saying, "No maiming intended." Of course, Flappy Birdies and Super Plumber Brothers didn't go quite that far. But I think the same concept is applying here.

 

Seriously how amazing was goldeneye? It's still in my top 10 list.

 

Precisely. It was for allowing portions of the original to be put to use. Details for educational fair use can be found in Circulation 21. I've attempted to read over it but I'm not very good at reading legal documents.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ21.pdf

Which begs the question as to who these assets are aimed at. Beginners are unlikely to have the knowledge of Unity in order to understand why certain things are being done. Advanced users may understand the code but already have "a quality and simplistic approach to game development".

This leaves us with some vague intermediate user who has only barely passed from the beginner stages but does not have any experience beyond making simple games from tutorials. It leaves very few people.

This is another thought regarding the target audience. Anyone who is likely to push themselves far into learning game development is not going to want to learn from assets that may have legal risks.

Yes I am probably quite a bit off, but then I wouldn't rely on my own understanding. Better to contact a lawyer specialized in this field.

 

Seriously everything you say makes me face palm. Just go away with your troll self. You are obviously having a bad week. Shoo now. Go get a massage or something, don't come back to this thread.

 

Its not my project anyway so i wont bother consulting a lawyer just to prove or disprove a point on the forum.

 

I phrased that wrong. I'd originally intended to address the OP directly...but, I didn't. My bad. Thanks for catching that.

 

Even unitys example project - is pretty much a clone of super crate box.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11228

Theres a bomber man clone.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/12263

 

So you responded to me saying that Super Plumber Brothers was never rejected by bringing up even more games that weren't rejected?

It's not what they emailed him back telling him what to do; if it was this discussion would never have taken place.

 

It is reasonable to conclude, based on the names, they will be rejected by Unity.

Except that is precisely what they told him is necessary. They do not want assets that are "a direct recreation of existing popular games as template projects" or that "appear to deliberately modify existing themes and artistic styles as their own".

 

I think you're having difficulty understanding that the thread is about Dustin not wanting to take guesses at what Unity Asset Store likes and doesn't like and needs communication.

*sigh*

 

Is it really that vague though?

 

The thread is about Dustin wondering why Unity rejected the asset and wondering if he needs to bother with the rest of them. @Ryiah maybe be flogging a dead horse here, but I think he's repeatedly told you why the asset was rejected, why the remaining ones will likely be rejected, and what must be done so that they aren't rejected. I also think that Unity's responses were pretty clear enough, regardless of whether or not they should have responded to requests for clarification. That the two of you came here looking for sympathy and didn't get it doesn't change the relevance of the things that Ryiah said. Unity clearly agrees with him and not you, so arguing with him about fair use laws and what-not is counterproductive. That time could be better spent thinking up new names, and redesigning graphics and level layouts to not be direct ripoffs of popular titles.