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[Deviator]

Hi guys!

I want to rise an issue about borrowing an art. Lets say, you are making some kind of game where you will need a tons of art (CCG, quests, logyck, etc), which actually could be googled and downloaded (sexy_elf.jpg). Sorry if such question existed, but I'm ignorant and blind...

Ok, so far we (usually programmers) have two options:

• Image is not signed by anyone - I asume it is good sign and we could utilize it (question mark).
• Image is signed by author (John McClane), there are about 10000 in internet and nobody is related to the art (even greater question mark).
• third option?

Yes, shame on me... 

Any thoughts? stories about lifetime sentence? 

[Oddball]

If you do not know if an image is in the public domain or not then always assume it isn't. Don't just take someones art and assume it's ok.

[braindigitalis]

When i first read the topic of this thread, i thought it was going to refer to something else, that i am interested in knowing the answer to myself...

Let's imagine you start writing a game, and being a programmer like myself and initially having no artist, you draw up programmer art. What you cant draw, you 'borrow' from the internet, with the full intention of replacing all the art before release.

What's the legality on that, bearing in mind alpha releases may find their way to people outside your development team and it is a temporary measure only. I am assuming this is just as illegal, but in practice nobody would ever take action about it?

[biomechanic]

Works of art are automatically copyrighted from the moment of their creation and you need a license to use them. If you make a game using someone's art without permission, they can ask you to stop distributing it. If you make any money with it they can demand royalties. In any case they can sue you for damages.
But as braindigitalis says - often the copyright holders won't take legal actions just because it's expensive, takes time and may not pay off. What they will do instead is make a big stink about how you're ripping them off.

The 'but it wasn't signed' defense is shit, there are plenty of reverse image searches that can help you find the image's source. If you still can't find the author, use a different image.

If the image is signed then not finding the author is just plain lazy, and if you use the image anyways you're being a dick.

So if you need art - make it, buy it, beg it off of someone, use public domain or CC stuff, but please don't steal it. Sure, some people do it, some of them get away with it, but they're still thieving bastards.


TL;DR
It's illegal and wrong.

[SundownKid]

Just use OpenGameArt, problem solved. It's better than stealing sprites because you will have no copyright problems, guaranteed - even if you use them as your final art.

If you are making a game that needs tons of art though, it's better to draw it or find someone who can, otherwise it will probably end up looking like a mishmash.

[braindigitalis]

Works of art are automatically copyrighted from the moment of their creation and you need a license to use them. If you make a game using someone's art without permission, they can ask you to stop distributing it. If you make any money with it they can demand royalties. In any case they can sue you for damages.
But as braindigitalis says - often the copyright holders won't take legal actions just because it's expensive, takes time and may not pay off. What they will do instead is make a big stink about how you're ripping them off.

The 'but it wasn't signed' defense is shit, there are plenty of reverse image searches that can help you find the image's source. If you still can't find the author, use a different image.

If the image is signed then not finding the author is just plain lazy, and if you use the image anyways you're being a dick.

So if you need art - make it, buy it, beg it off of someone, use public domain or CC stuff, but please don't steal it. Sure, some people do it, some of them get away with it, but they're still thieving bastards.


TL;DR
It's illegal and wrong.

Personally, i don't want to release my game with any art in it but professional art.
I can't draw good art, and any art i 'borrow' from google images won't fit in properly, as sundownkid says it would be a mishmash of mess. This is why i spent a lot of valuable time tracking down and recruiting a good artist to draw my game assets, i have no intention of ever releasing a game with stolen or crap assets, what is the achievement in that? :-)

[SaturnineGames]

Your stance should be simple. If you're not 100% sure that you can use something, don't take the chance.

Lawyers are expensive. Copyright law allows for both actual and punitive damages to be awarded. You don't want to risk being exposed to that any more than you have to.

[eiyukabe]

If you need art for placeholder purposes, I suggest just making _whatever_ you are capable of making. Even if it is just a white rectangle for the player character. It's going to look bad, but it's going to get replaced anyway so who cares as long as it helps visualize gameplay during early development.

And yeah, copyright is the assumed default, even if the art isn't "signed", even if it doesn't have the little copyright symbol on it anywhere.

[trq]

Personally, i don't want to release my game with any art in it but professional art.
I can't draw good art, and any art i 'borrow' from google images won't fit in properly, as sundownkid says it would be a mishmash of mess. This is why i spent a lot of valuable time tracking down and recruiting a good artist to draw my game assets, i have no intention of ever releasing a game with stolen or crap assets, what is the achievement in that? :-)

Yeah, I won't realy care about legal stuff since there's not so many chances to have problems with lawyers (if you only don't want to make a commercial game), but what you've said is more major reason do not use a random sprites from web; it will looks just ugly together even if each one individually is perfect

[Deviator]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

About "crap random assets" You see, Magick the gathering has one... It's just one random dwarfish/elvish mess (yes, they have 2 or 3 cards design that actuall made in one style)
Therefore that's the reason why this thread was started, I was thinking about possibility to create some sort of collectable card game. Where the obviouse problem is an art design.

I like the opinion about "lawyers are pricey" and the idea that artists will just ask to remove their art from the game and the maximum damage that could be done is reputation
But still there is a risk get in trouble from using design from some other famous games.
Ok, here we go again:
From one side, paying for more that 200 cards for single indie game would be fiscally irresponsible
From the other, borrowing could cause critical hit from large game developers/designer/publishers

And IMHO it is the cause why there are no decent (famouse) indie CCG games, people don't play them if images are an artwork of a student

what to do?

P.S.
thievery is bad... it's just a matter of philosophy which is fueled by mentality, and I'm living in Antarctida, so sorry, I'm a bad person... 

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

And IMHO it is the cause why there are no decent (famouse) indie CCG games, people don't play them if images are an artwork of a student

magicka is indie

[Craig Stern]

Art, emm... borrowing... how legal is it?

Il.

[Chromanoid]

Imagine you make a HTML5 game. An artist who needs that nifty rope script you use in your game (which actually gives your game much personality) rips it from your sources and uses it in a similar game with professional art by himself and this copy-paste-sourcecode from your game. Wouldn't this upset you?

For test purposes borrowing art is ok as long as you don't make it public.

When I see somebody using somebody else's IP I report them to the IP creator (when it doesn't seem to be fair use and the ip creator is not a big company).

@Paul Has Magicka a CCG game in it 0_o? But anyway I agree that art quality usually does not depend on educational degrees.

[hanako]

From one side, paying for more that 200 cards for single indie game would be fiscally irresponsible
From the other, borrowing could cause critical hit from large game developers/designer/publishers

And IMHO it is the cause why there are no decent (famouse) indie CCG games, people don't play them if images are an artwork of a student

You have zero money and zero experience, right? Your game is not going to become an instant huge hit. Stop trying to plan to jump straight to the level of the entire MTG franchise. Even companies that HAD money and contacts and experience generally failed at that.

If you're making a computer card game, consider having the code to let players assign their OWN images to cards.

If you're making a physical card game, design a game that can work with a smaller number of cards first. Or release a free downloadable version with no art (or legally-free or cheap stock art, which does exist) and set up a kickstarter. Or all sorts of other plans based on the resources you actually have.

Planning around limitations can actually make your designs better and more creative.

[Xion]

Don't do it. Any art you find, unless explicitly stated (public domain, some license or whatever, given permission from the owner), will not belong to you. It will belong to either the person who commissioned it or the artist. Not yours = don't use it.

Try to scrounge up the money to hire an artist or make the project appealing enough to find someone who will do it for cheap/free or something. Work on other aspects of the game first, using placeholder graphics. The kind of 'borrowing' you're talking about is called theft.

[Dacke]

Copyright laws hold back cultural development. But the way to create a better world, with less copyright, is to use and create free culture. If you want to get art for free, make sure to use things that are made to be free and make sure to make your game free as well.

[Chromanoid]

Exactly. By respecting the way people publish/license their work there is no need for draconian laws. Intangible goods are often seen as of low value, because they are easy to copy. But people forget how hard it is to create them. Respect creations and their creators

[Dacke]

Those laws were originally created to encourage creativity. Today they prevent remixing, which otherwise would become huge boost to culture. Intellectual property is a construction created by society in the hopes of promoting certain things, like entrepreneurship and creativity. (Compare to physical ownership which is not just an arbitrary agreement, since theft results in the loosing of stuff.)

The laws currently allows creators to limit use in some ways (like reuse and non-private copying) but not in others (like private copying, sharing of existing copies, reuse after your death). The laws aren't about respect for the creators but a societal agreement. Personally I think the current agreement prevents creation more than it helps. But as it is an agreement it can hopefully change over time. Mostly through the creation of a huge sphere of free culture, much like the sphere of free software.

For now, the best thing you can do to make the world a more sharing place is to use shared stuff and share your own stuff. So basically: when creating your own things, respect the laws - especially if you don't agree with them.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

the 'nothing is lost' argument had never made any sense to me. counterfeiting money doesn't result in the loss of money either, but it's still illegal to just print your own money and spend it. you gain, nobody else loses directly, except that it slightly, just slightly, devalues the value of all real money, since if the sum total of the money supply is increased, all money on average is then worth slightly less

using someone's work without permission is like counterfeiting someone's currency without permission, it makes the value of, say, licensing the material to people for money valueless, since if you get something for free (the use of their work, even if it's a remix) that others had to pay for, it makes it worth less for the owner and for the people who paid the license fees, since the people who paid feel cheated that they had to pay a license fee and you didn't, and the person who sells the license feels cheated that someone is getting something for free that he's selling. so it's an indirect loss to everyone else involved (except that one person) when someone doesn't play by the rules, much like you get with counterfeiting money

@Chromanoid oh, i thought magicka was a magic the gathering clone, seems it's more of a straighter rpg than i thought. still, there are plenty of high-quality card games; i remember playing a pretty good facebook one (although i don't remember its name offhand, but it was posted on this forum in the feedback section like half a year ago or something)

[Dacke]

Something is lost and something is won. It is a matter of establishing the correct balance between the two. In the current balance we can already do things that could be seen as "losses" for the creator, like how you can resell copies you have bought of things. This is included in the societal agreement and is as such seen as natural, even though it is just as much of a "loss". While other things that are not part of the tradition are seen as inherently wrong, even though they are just agreed upon to be forbidden for (originally) utilitaristic reasons. Today the limitations set by such laws work to inhibit culture more than in encourages it, so if we want to honour the original intentions of the laws a change would be in order.