What's stopping people from doing this...?

[CRogers]

The main thing that prevents theft in the creative field is just logic (though there are associated legal protections and it does happen, just not that regularly). Right now there are many people trying to produce video games; many of which will be free, most which will never actually be completed. It's unlikely that someone will come along and see your idea and think A) this is definitely a winner I'm willing to take the risks that charges of plagiarism won't completely destroy me.

If you are worried about the individual components being taken, that kind of is inevitable. All of our ideas are influenced by things we have seen/read/played in addition to our own creative spark. As for someone wholesale lifting a piece of your story, again that doesn't work out so well. What makes your work unique is not the individual components, but the whole piece. Even if I took the basic outline for one of your characters, I wouldn't know where you were going, what the plot was, or how they were going to develop. I'd be much better off creating my own work from scratch.

Creative work isn't like say a drug patent, where if one company stole from another it could help their own research in the race to be first to the patent office. Sharing of ideas helps everyone create our own unique works. If you and I had the same exact idea for a character, we'd likely use/develop him in such different ways that by the end it wouldn't even be obvious they had come from the same genesis.

 

[Rayhaku808]

I'm guilty of trying to practically make another game into rpg maker but then I realized that by the time I'd be done with it, It'd be my own! If anything, people would at the least be inspired by your work rather than have the "I want to steal this" mentality.

 

[orochii]

If you remake a complete game in a different engine or whatever, you're not stealing anything. You're remaking it. Of course, intellectual property says you're stealing characters, story, and etcetera. Also most of the time you end up making adaptations to things here and there. And sometimes even reinterpret/rework the entire story and/or cast. In that case, that's a fangame. Still you play on other's grounds, so if the rights owner from the franchise feels like it, can throw you a cease and desist.

Of course, if you got to the point where the only recognizable thing in your work is the franchise name, then why not just rename your game?

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[Galenmereth]

If you and I had the same exact idea for a character, we'd likely use/develop him in such different ways that by the end it wouldn't even be obvious they had come from the same genesis.

Exactly this. If you take a look at http://tvtropes.org you'll quickly see that there are archetypes and clichés used in your story and characters you probably didn't know about, but that have definitely been inspired by countless other works. There's a reason one can talk about characters in archetypes and easily recognize a type of character in a book or a movie; at this point every character can be likened to a thousand before it.

What sets a character apart is actions over time. And that's the only thing that makes anyone unique – real people as well as fictional.

 

[Ellie Jane]

Someone's copied my whole game twice in the past but you don't have to worry much. All you need to do is point it out, and any credibility they might have had is destroyed. Nobody wants to play a game which is a ripoff of a small time developer's game. If it becomes a big problem then there's always copyright and such but for the majority of people it's not going to come down to that. Just ask them to stop, and point out to the rest of the world what the guy's doing with your stuff.

 

[Omnimental]

I just look at it in two ways.  One, if someone steals my stuff, sweet, it's good enough to be worth stealing.  Two, if they have to steal somebody else's ideas, odds are good they aren't going to do as good a job as the originator will.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I've yet to see a completely original idea nowadays... most of our ideas after all are already based on someone elses idea (like from a book that you read, a movie etc)...

and yeah, if somebody copies your idea as is, then chances are they aren't good enough to at least even think of something to modify, so I wouldn't really bother with them...

 

[deaddrift]

hi guys and gals!

another great thread here-

i wanted to say a quick way of easy copyright is to take your fleshed out product, copy it, mail it to yourself and never open it once you recieve it.

its like a timecapsule that holds up in copyright court

works for artwork, music, software etc etc

hope that helps someone

 

[Andar]

i wanted to say a quick way of easy copyright is to take your fleshed out product, copy it, mail it to yourself and never open it once you recieve it.

its like a timecapsule that holds up in copyright court

Sorry, but no - that doesn't work, as there are too many ways to trick with that process (like sending yourself an empty envelope, putting in the work and sealing it years later - that had been done and therefore this method has been invalidated for use in courts)

 

[West Mains]

Sorry, but no - that doesn't work, as there are too many ways to trick with that process (like sending yourself an empty envelope, putting in the work and sealing it years later - that had been done and therefore this method has been invalidated for use in courts)

Yeah if it's just a regular stamp, but other methods of mail can be tracked by companies, like the Royal Mail for example. So they'll have a record of it. 

There are other things you can do but these all depend on your respective country and how it handles Copyright law.

 

[Andar]

Yeah if it's just a regular stamp, but other methods of mail can be tracked by companies, like the Royal Mail for example. So they'll have a record of it. 

There are other things you can do but these all depend on your respective country and how it handles Copyright law.

No, it has nothing to do with stamping.

The first step is to send yourself an empty, unsealed envelope - by Royal Mail, UPS, whatever. More likely several such envelopes if you're planning to sue several people with wrong copyright claims. That empty envelope gets tracked by Royal Mail or whatever company you want to provide records of your false copyright.

Then you wait a year (or several, depending on what and who you want to sue).

Then you get a copy from the target person, place that copy into the (still open) envelope and seal it, claiming that you had that copy send to yourself years ago as proof of copyright - but in reality you only send yourself an empty envelope, never having seen the "copyrighted copy" until a week ago.

I don't have any link, but that already happened years ago and is the reason why that form of proof has been rejected by all copyright-courts after...

 

[West Mains]

Well, it's what I thought. I didn't really know much beyond that. After all I can't know more than I knew without knowing what I know now that I knew everything I knew was as much as I could know. 

Anyways I don't want to derail the thread.

@OP

Let imitators come and go. As long as they aren't as good as you everyone will know who the real work came from. Always a good idea to have some number of people familiar with the project before it's finished, at least then you can have someone back you up if you call shenanigans on someone else.

 

[Galenmereth]

Instead of worrying about whether someone will steal your ideas or not, spend that time and energy on making those ideas a reality, and execute them to the best of your ability. If you can do that, you'll realize ideas are cheap and execution is where the magic happens.