What happens if you get a pirated asset and you sell the game with it?

So I am using some 3D models from various websites like TF3DM etc they have both paid and free models

However suppose I used models here and I created either a game or I created assets to sell on Unity store.

How do I know that these people didn't create these models with student license or pirated software?

should we be worried about things like this? I mean we have no control over these things but I read on this very same forum that lots of assets on the Unity Asset Store is made from student version of Maya etc apparently experts can detect it.

 

Read the licenses for the assets. Most don't allow redistribution, so the selling on the asset store is out.

You have complete control over it what you sell. If you don't have or don't know the proper legal status of something simply don't use it. The simplest answer is always only sell and use what you create. (Or commissioned from a trustworthy source).

 

Additionally be wary of assets that are made to closely resemble their real life counterparts. Among the easiest examples of this to find are cars. Just check out this Lamborghini Aventador on TF3DM. You won't be able to use it in any way without a special license from Lamborghini themselves.

http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/lamborghini-aventador-42591.html

 

Just to add it is also very dangerous to use stuff from non-gaming sites because they will probably not be optimized for games. I used to check a lot of sites for ´free stuff´.. but after awhile it became obvious that most of what you get from general modeling sites are unusable.

Finally, most of the stuff from that site is personal use only because it has been ripped from major games, so if you tried to use it in a commercial game they would come after you.

 

Take a look at this.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/copyright.402004/

 

I see many assets pirated and I'm sure unity is aware of this. But if somebody just uses a pirated asset on his game and sells it will he get fined or copyrighted? If possible give me a example. Also how can unity tell it is being pirated?

 

[/QUOTE]
It means that person is an idiot.

Imagine trying to participate in Formula I race in a stolen car. Same thing. Using pirated assets in a game you want to publish requires an extra degree of stupid.

Here's a story about producing music with pirated software:

And here's epic games dealing with copyright infringement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Knights#Silicon_Knights_vs._Epic_Games

Basically, just don't. It is asking for trouble and for no good reason.

 

One of the more recent examples of a pirated asset being used in a game can be found below. An artist stole assets from Call of Duty for a game. Activision responded by issuing a DMCA takedown notice to Steam and the game was taken down.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/95...team-game-that-stole-assets-from-call-of-duty

By the way the artist lost his job and I wouldn't be surprised if this negatively affects his ability to get future jobs too.

http://www.pcgamesn.com/orion-prelu...eam-over-allegedly-stolen-call-of-duty-assets

 

If your game enjoys any level of success, you will be found out. Once you've been outed, you'll be subject to a variety of fines and legal challenges.

Best case scenario it becomes more expensive then simply buying lisence a up front. Worst case scenario your game gets taken down and you get banned from all of the relevant markets.

For a publisher, piracy is not worth the cost.

 

You go to jail.

 

Woah Thats very intresting

 

It means that person is an idiot.

Imagine trying to participate in Formula I race in a stolen car. Same thing. Using pirated assets in a game you want to publish requires an extra degree of stupid.

Here's a story about producing music with pirated software:


And here's epic games dealing with copyright infringement:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Knights#Silicon_Knights_vs._Epic_Games

Basically, just don't. It is asking for trouble and for no good reason.[/QUOTE]

How could they know he used a pirated Cubase? not sure I understand that post.

What about all the assets and games made using pirated Maya, Cinema 4D and Modo? how do they catch those folks?

I am guessing if your game attracts attention its possible they could know? but do you really think Autodesk could find out if a game was created with a pirated Maya?

 

It makes you wonder, how many stuff on the Unity Asset store was made using pirated Maya etc? How many games on Steam and Play Store was made using pirated Maya?

Piracy is rampant in the 3rd world this is a fact. I don't see how it could ever be feasible for Autodesk to travel to a 3rd world country to sue a small indie studio operating out of a shack, even worse if this makes news. But what I suspect is they could have that game taken down from steam which would be equally as bad for the developer but would they really do this?

 

There are two basic tactics for discovering pirates. First, commercial software regularly phones home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoning_home

Second, companies keep records of legitimately purchased licenses.

https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-cracked.233298/#post-1919168

 

Very interesting also the Unity guy Graham knows his S***. Check out the post he made,

I doubt they care enough about people who have Unity accounts and CGPersia accounts.

Oh, wait a minute...

HAHA he knows his stuff,

 

I imagine most people who pirate really never make anything worthwhile. If they do, it is not difficult for the companies to connect names. They will know if you become famous for your game if you do not have a license. If you never release or if your game bombs, they may think you worth their time.

But still...is that a chance you really want to take?

 

^ Good point especially when there are free alternatives like Blender

 

This is very useful for companies or indie developers with mobile game development.

 

It doesn't matter how they catch folks or how many or who they choose to go after. The reality is that they can and do. And the results are much more costly than it would be to have just purchased/licensed them properly in the first place.

As @Teila pointed out, it is a risk. And those who are putting in the effort to get around paying for things, aren't the ones who are the ones putting in the effort to make a game that will be successful. And given that nearly everything you need to make a game is free, (like as mentioned, blender), piracy isn't worth the risk.

 

Extremely good point!! While some companies, like Autodesk mark items made with educational licenses (Steam has caught a few), others like Adobe offer a low cost educational license that can be used on commercial products. Blender is great and all free as is Unity 5 Personal Edition. Both can be used free. Unity's free version is exactly like the pro version other than a few services that you won't need for a while.

Sculptris is free too if you want to try your hand at sculpting. Gimp, similar to Photoshop is free.

Lots of free game art too if you look around. Try Turbosquid as they have some free models. The asset store has pages of free assets. Also, opengameart is a good place for free music, art and other stuff. Lots of other free or very low cost music out there, some of it amazing. Almost forgot, Unity gives away tons of free stuff, models, image effects, lighting, characters, an entire viking village, etc. Make a game out of those.

Best of all, all the free tutorials out there on YouTube, many made by users.

Do it right, use free assets, concentrate on your mechanics, and then make a game that is truly your own. If it is fun, you can later update the assets.

Another idea, save up your allowance, beer or pizza money, or that Xmas check from grandma and buy one of the completed game projects on the asset store. You can use that as a template. Some even come with assets.

 

And funny enough you can get more youtube tutorials now for Blender than you would get for say Modo which is a massively expensive software.

When I was looking through for tutorials I automatically decided on Blender based on the sheer number of modeling tuts for blender lol

 

I am unable to read these kind of posts and interpret them as anything other than:

So I'll continue as if that's your actual question.

If you're looking to pirate Unity assets, it's likely not the first thing you've ever illegally downloaded. You've probably dabbled in games, movies, music... All the same risks that come with those forms of digital piracy exist here, too. Does everyone who pirates movies get caught? No. But some do. Enough that it's worth pursuing them. Do all people who are caught and identified pay a fine or go to jail? Nope. But some do. It could be you.

If you're thinking of pirating something, you should be aware of what the maximum allowable penalty is, whether it's a fine, imprisonment, or losing your job. If you can't afford that penalty, you need to weigh whether the risk of getting caught is worth it for what you're getting in return. If getting a $5 movie rental for free is worth the risk of a $1000 fine to you, then by all means... proceed to pirate that movie.

However, in regards to Unity assets, there are a few additional considerations to take into account.

Assets are rarely static
Most worthwhile assets are updated regularly. Maybe it's to allow them to use a new lighting mode in the engine, or to fix bugs introduced by a previous version. When you buy the asset through the Asset Store, updating to the latest version is a simple click away.

Pirated assets are a rip of a specific version of an asset. Using a pirated package in your project will not add it to your list of owned packages, and you won't receive updates. If you update your installation of Unity, you may actually break that outdated asset and be unable to use it. You might be able to find the updated version on a torrent site, but now your productivity is dependent on yet another source outside your control.

Support
Smart developers hide their support systems behind logins that require tie-in to your purchase information. So if you pirate something and can't get it to work right, you're on your own.

Shame
Downloading a movie you would otherwise never watch because you're bored some Saturday is one thing... I can even understand the argument that it doesn't translate to a lost sale because you never had a real intent of purchasing. But that argument doesn't stand up with game assets. You are specifically seeking to avoid purchasing something you want and "need".

Let's say you do complete your game and release it for sale. What in the world makes you think you deserve to be paid for making something, but the person who made the asset you stole doesn't? But if you can live with that personally, you still have to get past the effect it would have if you're caught.

Much like child abusers don't fare well in prison with other inmates, pirates are despised in the game development community. We know how much hard work goes into creating this content, and for someone to blatantly disregard that and disrespect our whole process is a pretty unforgivable act. We're also a pretty tight-knit group, and a technically savvy one, so if you happen to burn anyone that does catch you, be prepared to abandon the community altogether.

 

Absolutely. I use Maya, but mostly because when I started Blender was confusing. Maya LT is $30 a month, which is a bargain compared to most other 3d Modeling programs and it works great with Unity. We no longer have to put down $1000 for software.

Sadly, I have known many who make models pirated with 3dMax because they equate cost with quality. If you cannot afford it, you need to use the alternatives. They work just as well.

 

Not only the game development community, but the gamer community as well. I have seen developers taken down in the popular gamer online communities for far less than pirating assets. Once you get a reputation, you will have a very difficult time getting back in their good graces. If your game is taken off Steam after people pay for it or even if rumors arise that it will be taken down, you will lose badly.

I have seen modders who steal other people's work treated very badly by the game community. It is not worth the risk.

 

Yeah the great thing is if someone in this day and age is going to pick a software might aswell use blender, years ago you couldn't find tutorials for blender and its interface was horrible.

But today its the complete opposite. The more and more people use Blender the better, it will force these companies to sell their software at a more affordable price.

 

I like the implication that game development is in itself an immoral act, but that pirating is a despicable one

 

Whoops. Not the best analogy, then, I suppose. But hilarious nonetheless.

 

Well, for some reason it seems to fit quite well ...

 

"Sure, I may be making an open-world voxel game that's like Minecraft meets Final Fantasy, but you made an uninspired Clash of Clans clone with a blatant Asset Store flip!"

*shank shank shank shank shank*

 

I feel this is what the OP is asking about.

What happens if you use assets in your game you got from the unity store, or any store, that was actually made with pirated software or what not.
I get the feeling people are going to tell you to do your homework and make extra sure the asset provider isnt doing anything funny, such as checking their history, reputation, maybe even asking companies if the assets trigger any pirate detection, but at that point Id want to not even bother...
The sea of assets now became a puddle.

 

This has been discussed plenty before (and, as it turns out, previously by this thread's OP) and I can't imagine it's as big a problem as the hypotheticals make it out to be.

Let's say Playmaker included some 3D models (which, to my knowledge, it doesn't) that just so happened to be created with an unlicensed copy of 3DSMax. Everyone and their mother uses or at least owns Playmaker ("Like who?" "Game developers." "Who else?" "Game developers' mums."), so this is a large number of affected users we're talking about.

Is Autodesk going to track down every game that used Playmaker and have them pulled from their stores? No. Is Playmaker going to be removed entirely from the Asset Store. Probably not.

Instead, the Playmaker devs would get slapped with an enormous fine, and their current version of the app would be invalidated. They'd likely be able to resubmit the asset after removing the violating content, and sales would continue. Maybe they'd be required to notify their users that a Playmaker update is "mandatory" and state the reason why as part of a court-ordered shaming or something, I dunno.

You as a developer using legitimate software have nothing to worry about. Unity, having cleared themselves of wrongdoing by making you attest, as the asset publisher, that you have the right to publish that content, has nothing to worry about. This is one of those rare scenarios where the only people who will be negatively affected are the people doing wrong.

 

I see, so is it since unity requires the publisher to attest to being clean, that all that use unity asset stores asset are 100% safe, or is it that once a publisher gets big enough, that all their customers are 100% safe since the wrong doer can be easily traced back to the source, the publisher?
(or both)

What if the publisher removes the asset and everything before they get too big, lol. Now its harder to trace back.

Even if the chances are small, are you basically unfortunately screwed?

Guess I should really look for that thread instead of repeating it here =)

 

I'm glad you made that topic/post.
That topic was interesting to read. I'll check out the rest of it, in a while.

 

Are people legitimately that worried that they'll buy assets made with pirated software? Do these same people have concerns that their free-range chicken eggs they're eating may have actually come from chickens that prefer to live indoors? Or that their iPhone may have been manufactured in a factory in violation of labor laws, and that someone may come take their phone away?

I don't think so. As I've said, it's impossible for me to believe that anyone wants this much fine-grain info on the situation as a way of trying to ask "How do I pirate assets and not get caught" without using those words.

On the list of things you should be concerned about with making your game, legitimately purchasing illegitimate assets should be on the very bottom or missing entirely.

 

An FBX file exported from Max/Maya/whatever does not contain licensing information about the product used to export it. There is no way anybody would be able to tell if the FBX file was created in a paid or pirated product.

The same goes for most audio files, textures, etc.

It is unreasonable and unfeasible for purchasers of content from content stores (like Unity Asset Store, Turbosquid, Unreal Marketplace, CGTrader, etc.) to be concerned if the content was made with correctly licensed tools.


When you purchase a part for your car, do you worry about if the tools to make the part were stolen? No.

 

By default, and stated by IP laws, the author of a given work retains exclusively all rights UNLESS he/she explicitly put that work under some license, which is the only way to allow other people to use it commercially or in some way (for instance, redistribution terms).

This means that most material you can "fetch" from the Internet without a license, chances are that you're infringing some copyright or other's rights.

It's much safer to use any "free" asset or resource that has a explicit license attached (either Creative Commons, MIT, Apache 2.0, Public Domain, or any other free license) than taking the risk of having downloaded/use/distribute it without the proper consent because you never know it was disallowed.

 

That is not the question he is asking.

 

Yes, I see. The thing is that IMO there're two questions here. The first one related to the created models, which I refer above regarding the necessary licenses to protect your own investment. The second is whether the author of those models has a properly licensed tool?The issue here is that if that author is stamping his name on a product that is clearly using a non-licensed tool, it's a matter of time that his reputation will be destroyed and will be sued by someone eventually. I guess pirates don't mind about this anyway which is a problem for everyone.

 

There was only 1 question being asked. "How do I know that these people didn't create these models with student license or pirated software?"

You (and others) are mucking up the thread by interjecting your opinions on other matters, which are irrelevant to the question being asked.

 

The OPs questions were broad as is the title thread. Discussion is on topic.

 

NOTE: Merged threads on the same topic.

 

Wow at this thread. People are stupid enough to even think about possible ways of being caught? seriously? Just no.

 

There is another way to sum up developer piracy.

If you are relying on pirated content to produce your game, what grounds you have to ask people to pay for your content? Follow that reasoning, and the whole industry falls apart pretty quickly. Pretty soon none of us* have a way to buy food.

*As in the generic us. Not me specifically. Pipes and tanks are much harder to pirate, so I'm not immediately out of work. Of course intellectual property theft is still a major problem in the manufacturing industry. It just takes longer because you have to build a factory after you steal it.

 

What my thread was about is the possibility of buying an asset and the possibility of it being made in pirated software I think its a genuine concern.

For example you go on a website and you pay yes you PAY money for the 3D model, not a single one of us here has any clue if that model was made in a pirated Maya. Offcourse some folks here have pointed out there is no information in the FBX and so its impossible for Autodesk to know if someone pirated Maya to make the 3D model in your game.

I think it is unreasonable for anyone of us to be held accountable or have our game pulled from steam because there is the possibility of us having models in it made with a pirated Maya etc don't you all think that is unreasonable?

Who knows how far Autodesk and The Foundry would go to gut you for as much money as they could? if your game becomes popular enough they probably would not the odds of our game becoming THAT popular might be 0.001%?

 

As long as you've done everything right, the worst case scenario is a headache.

If the content is outright stolen, or in violation of copyright terms, you'll have to remove it from your published games. Which is a pain, but doable.

If the content is produced by a third party without appropriate software lisence a, then the third party will be liable for any fines or damages. Not you.

Just don't be dumb, and you'll be fine. Some dumb things include

• Using content delivered via a torrent
• Using free content without a lisence
• Using content grabbed directly from the web
• Using content recognisable from a major game
• Using content recognisable as associated with a major brand

If you only get your content from reputable sources, and obtain the appropriate lisences for them, then you are good to go.

 

More than likely the producer would be liable for fines, it would be unlikely the asset would pulled. However the more common and probable situation is assets in those places are ripped. In which case you would be required to remove them from your game.

There are literally thousands of things you have to deal with when building a game. This is very a minor thing to be concerned about as it is easily avoidable. If you don't build a game or a successful one, the whole point is moot.

 

Are you certain you didn't mean ways to avoid being caught? Wouldn't knowing how to catch them be useful? Some people might use the information to try to avoid getting caught but it isn't like that information is hidden (and I can't imagine anyone actually capable of using the info wouldn't be able to find it themselves).

Then again the people capable of locking their software down would likely just find it too.

 

I'm not sure if anyone else mentioned this;

With regards to music plugins and software, many VSTs and modern (expensive) plugins have an inaudible sound watermark which plays throughout your usage of the plugin. They can easily run your music through their system and can tell if their software was used, as well as to whom the license belongs.

From that example, understand that we're in a digital age far beyond what you might even understand. A simple model used in a game can (theoretically) carry a watermark that you may never notice but authors can find and possibly use against you in court if you do not have proof of purchase or rights to use such.

Also, as useful as torrented software can be (for the student or person learning without the means), always remember that cracked and hacked software carry security risks to you and your devices (entire network as well).

 

So how do you legally get music and sound effects for your game if you have no money?

We know you can use blender for graphics but what of sound? What options do we have?

 

Many PCs have mics built in. If not, get a cheap one somewhere.

Then just do a search for free sound software.

There are also plenty of free audio libraries with permissive lisences.