"Indirect" Commercializing?

[Andar]

So if someone makes a non-commercial game and later on makes a commercial game, but uses the non-commercial game to grow success on the commercial one, would that be considered using the product commercially?


 I wouldn't think so...

Unfortunately, this completely depends on what terms-of-service are provided by someone whose parts you use in the game.
Commercial or non-commercial are simply facts choosen by most people to use and make a difference in their terms-of-service, but basically you have to abide by all regulations set into the terms-of-service of those pictures, scripts, sounds, whatever you want to use in your game.


If someone puts into the ToS that anyone using his sounds needs to have the game's title screen based on the color yellow and call the main actor YXCDERGF, then you would have to follow those conditions if you want to use the sounds.


That is an extreme example, but unless a specific licencing option is overrule by courts as violating basic rights, then anything might asked in the ToS - no game developer is required to use the resources offered in the package, but if he does he has to obey every rule in the ToS.


Most people are only interested in the difference between commercial and non-commercial use, but I know of one ToS that specifically states that putting up a donation button for the free game is concidered commercial use by that person.

 

[Jomarcenter]

Well if your game is for free using non-commercial resources, and sell merchandise that is based on the game but does contain any of those non-commercial resources but contain artwork made by yourself they you can found in the game, and they want to filed a lawsuit against you for making a profit for those merchandise even it does not contain any of those non-commercial resources. which can be consider as a copyright violation from your own artworks and you can counter-sue for it. (basically in legal situation they are saying/admitting themselves that they own the right to that artwork that you made even if it not them who really own that work)

and I don't know why some people say donating violates non-commercial use games, I mean they DONATE YOU for the support of the developer but it does not directly give profit from the game.

like if you put a donation button and also a word "You can Donate to support any future games and the developer" It suggest that you directly Give money to the developer but not pay for that particular games.

and also putting ads on your site and some of your pages contain non-commercial use game (game containing non-commercial resources) , you directly put ads for the site but not for that game.

I don't know why people are confused with this kind of problems.

 

[amerk]

but if he does he has to obey every rule in the ToS.

You can always choose to ignore this and let a court decide. Most likely a court would consider such things ridiculous, as long as you aren't profiting from their immediate use of resources. Of course, there's always that chance you'll end up in some kangaroo court with some oddball judge that decides in favor of such a dumb ToS, but that's life in general - a gamble. Then again, how often does somebody actually profit outside of a freeware game with merchandise associated with their free game?

 

[cosmickitty]

personally I think it'd boil down to how much someone else contributed to the game.  Like I said, if I posted community resources and you threw them in your game and thats all I had into it, then I would care less.  If I had a large bunch of custom made work into the game, then it could be argued that I'm a partial owner of the finished product and therefore any money made off the product.  But that would have to do with free resources.  Of course this only applies for free resources, if you bought resources then you are free to use them as you see fit