Final Fantasy Sprites - Off Limits

[TheWhiteRose000]

Well I've been working on my commercial game now for a few months and recently.
I began to wonder why no one has ever done a game with Final Fantasy themed sprites?
So since I am also in game press, reviewing titles ect I wrote to Square Enix.

To see if I can use sprites that look visually similair to Final Fantasy VI the game where we
drew a lot of inspiration from and to summarize.

They strait out told me no and gave no reason currently as to why I cannot use my own sprite
creations. Even if they do have a similar style to theirs.

 

[Psyker]

While I am not a lawyer basically they are saying if it looks like their sprite it must be their sprite regardless of whether it is or not.

I can easily see both Rosa / Terra and Locke out of two of those sprites.  Now that I'm really looking at them they are heavily inspried by FFVI.

My recommendation use the sprites as a learning experience and create better non Final Fantasy themed sprites.  Better to go that route then getting a cease and desist or law suit.

 

[Andar]

The problem is the difference between copyright and trademark.


Copyright is content that belongs to the creator and your work can be used wherever you want. That includes you making your own sprites that "accidentally" look similiar to the Final Fantasy ones - you can use them whereever you want as long as you don't violate trademarks.


Trademarks are registered names and logos, and they can't be used in any form without licence of the owner of that trademark.


Which means as soon as you connect your work to the trademark by saying "this is a Final-Fantasy-Sprite" instead of "my sprites are inspired by other games but my own", then your work becomes illegal.


Yes, that means that all fangames are automatically illegal - the fact that some companies tolerate them does not make them legal, and in some countries the law requires the copyright owner to sue all fanproduct or risc loosing the copyright.


So you can use your sprites, you just can't use them for anything named like or from "Final Fantasy", it has to be with different names and different context (for example your own world)

 

[BJÖRN]

Not to be that guy, but that brown haired girl looks almost exactly like Terra, as if the sprite was just edited. The hair look identical save for the colour.


Also, everything Andar said.

 

[Sharm]

Even if you draw something pixel by pixel by yourself if you're looking at something that exists and putting things in the exact same spot as the existing pixel art, then it's still copying.  There's no real difference between the computer doing it and you doing it by hand, the results are the same.  A sprite created this way would still legally be an edited sprite, not an original from scratch sprite.  That may have come into play here with Square Enix's decision.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

Not to be that guy, but that brown haired girl looks almost exactly like Terra, as if the sprite was just edited. The hair look identical save for the colour.

Also, everything Andar said.

Yea, noticed that myself and will probably go back and revise her.

 

[Ruby]

I hate sounding like the bad guy here, but why go back and "revise" her? Your game is commercial. You are trying to make money off of editing someone else's work. 

If you have talent to edit, you should have some sort of talent to make your own template. If you need help, ASK. Don't steal. I mean, if you want a lawsuit, be my guest. But they told you no, it would be wise to listen to them. 

The thing is they aren't your own sprite creations. 

Take my advice. Ask for help, have someone make you a new template. Don't make a commercial game stealing someone else's work. Most companies don't turn the other cheek from someone making money off of their stuff.

Best of luck to you.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

I hate sounding like the bad guy here, but why go back and "revise" her? Your game is commercial. You are trying to make money off of editing someone else's work. 

If you have talent to edit, you should have some sort of talent to make your own template. If you need help, ASK. Don't steal. I mean, if you want a lawsuit, be my guest. But they told you no, it would be wise to listen to them. 

The thing is they aren't your own sprite creations. 

Take my advice. Ask for help, have someone make you a new template. Don't make a commercial game stealing someone else's work. Most companies don't turn the other cheek from someone making money off of their stuff.

Best of luck to you.

They are our own creation though, if you want do a overlay with the original terra sprite to mine and you can actually see a difference.

Its just some things look similar because of the style we were going for.

 

[SLEEP]

games have been made with final fantasy style sprites before. games have been made with sprite rips, complete romhacks total conversion mods (if you prefer) have been made. Questionably legal so no links, but there's a community around it. There's the question if any of them are good? But we don't have to look at things on the questionable side of legal, the mobile games like All the Bravest and the other one use FFVI style sprites, so the question of if any are good remains. Um Final Fantasy IV the After Years uses retro Final Fantasy sprites but FFIV obviously not FFVI. None of these are good geeze. but you should at least know what's out there.

and yeah what everyone else said. This is like tracing, you want to try for more "influenced by". i wouldn't want to repeat it so heres a f-f-f-fresh take.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

Squares official statement to me was due to copyright and trademark issues its not possible to use sprites that look visually similar to theirs.

 

[JosephSeraph]

Bruh just no. Like, really no. The brown haired Terra is very obviously a sprite edit, as well as the rest of the sprites. They also do not have professional spriting at all, the colors are quite, uh... Not up there.

Compare Penny Arcade which is an obvious ode to Final Fantasy VI yet is not comprised of sprite edits. It, instead, shows effort in creating its own sprites from scratch whilst embracing the ffvi look.

From Zeboyd Games again, compare Cosmic Star Heroine, which is an ode to Chrono Trigger:

Everyone can see the references there, but it's impossible to argue that it's not their art. Because it is. It isn't made of sprite edits, it's their own work made from scratch, with its own visual identity.

If you want to go commercial, you need to have the skills to go commercial. Or you need to hire people to go commercial. Most commercial RPG maker games out there came from authors that went a long way making games, that have withstood and learnt from years of criticism and developed respectable skills to allow them to go commercial.

They deliver quality. I sincerely wouldn't want to pay a penny for a game made up of sprite edits. That's the reality bro. What's going on is quite the horrible thing, I'd feel horrible if I were your character artist, for instance, to have my character art disserviced by bad quality sprite editing. If you want to be professional, do the RM community a favor and be professional. Don't put up a bad piece of stitched together edited graphics and put it on steam, you're making a disservice to your name and to the rpg maker community as a whole.

I could have said this much more harshily, but I decided to hold back. I believe I share views with the majority of the community here. Please rethink your posture and review your idea of professionalism.

edit: a bubbly friend did this: