Engine legalities?

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Yacker

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Like, what would be the legalities of making a (free) game with SRB2's engine? I've been curious about this for a while.
 
This is mostly a matter for Sonic Team Jr. to answer, as it's their engine, but I don't think they can really say much as they developed the engine with Sonic in mind and based it off of id Tech 1. I'm going to guess that you could even sell a game running off of it as long as it had no resources relating to Sonic.
 
Technically, Sonic Team Jr. releases SRB2 as open source, thus you are allowed to edit their engine to your discretion, as long as you provide the original license. You are also prevented from selling whatever you derive from it, and it's polite to nod to their work somewhere in your game.

You both gain and lose a lot of freedom when you make something open source. On one hand, srb2's open source status allows developers to innovate and expand. On the other, they've relinquished some legal control over it.

The question I've always had, is if the assets in srb2.srb are covered by the open source policy? More from a legal standpoint, not from what people think stjr does or doesn't have the rights to, because there's a specific boundary in the license, it just takes 50 pages of legal lingo to find it.
 
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You are also prevented from selling whatever you derive from it
False. The source code for DOOM, and thus Doom Legacy, and thus SRB2, is released under the GNU General Public License v2, as listed at the top of every source code file. This grants users the right to modify, distribute, and sell the source code (and compiled executables) only. The condition is that the derived source code must be released similarly, under the same license or a later version thereof, and with public access to said source code available. (Now, original source files that were made specifically for SRB2 may not be licensed under this same license. You'd have to check for all of that. Also note that some dependencies required to build SRB2 may also not be released similarly. Check these things thoroughly if you intend to create a new project off of the codebase, especially if you intend to sell your results.)

This license does not apply to any asset files, since they were created independently of DOOM's original IWAD (which in itself can't be redistributed legally outside of purchasing the game itself anyway). The asset files themselves are the sole property of the people who made it, and since they've been released under no such license, they may not be used in other projects. Now, it's been basically accepted that repackaging the assets or modified versions thereof in addon WADs for SRB2 is allowed, and there's generally not much that the team does unless original content is blatantly stolen and used in other games, but don't mistake this for being able to use a modified srb2.srb in a commercial project.

Basically, if you use the source code as the base for another project, whether commercial or not, it must be with a completely original IWAD. (But why would you want to use the engine for anything else? There are many much more modern engines out there to use already.)

Disclaimer: I am obviously not a lawyer and may be wrong about things.
 
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False. The source code for DOOM, and thus Doom Legacy, and thus SRB2, is released under the GNU General Public License v2, as listed at the top of every source code file. This grants users the right to modify, distribute, and sell the source code (and compiled executables) only. The condition is that the derived source code must be released similarly, under the same license or a later version thereof, and with public access to said source code available. (Now, original source files that were made specifically for SRB2 may not be licensed under this same license. You'd have to check for all of that. Also note that some dependencies required to build SRB2 may also not be released similarly. Check these things thoroughly if you intend to create a new project off of the codebase, especially if you intend to sell your results.)

This license does not apply to any asset files, since they were created independently of DOOM's original IWAD (which in itself can't be redistributed legally outside of purchasing the game itself anyway). The asset files themselves are the sole property of the people who made it, and since they've been released under no such license, they may not be used in other projects. Now, it's been basically accepted that repackaging the assets or modified versions thereof in addon WADs for SRB2 is allowed, and there's generally not much that the team does unless original content is blatantly stolen and used in other games, but don't mistake this for being able to use a modified srb2.srb in a commercial project.

Basically, if you use the source code as the base for another project, whether commercial or not, it must be with a completely original IWAD. (But why would you want to use the engine for anything else? There are many much more modern engines out there to use already.)

Disclaimer: I am obviously not a lawyer and may be wrong about things.

So I'm assuming the 'don't sell this game' disclaimer on the quit screen is referencing the inability to sell it due to there being copyrighted assets in the IWAD?
 
Pretty much. If you sell just the executable, I'm not sure if anyone could legally stop you. (Again, source files added later as well as dependencies might still make it impossible to sell.) But selling a file that spits out an error when you try to run it would be pretty stupid, and you obviously can't sell asset files that contain Sega's IP, especially when said assets aren't under any license that would allow you to do that in the first place.
 
The source code is mostly under the GPL, an open source license which summarized means you can do whatever you want to it as long as you release the source along with your changes. There are specific parts of the engine which are not GPL and under other licenses. If you really wanted to do something complicated involving our game engine, you would also have to handle that, as I don't know the details of the licenses involved. If you removed the parts of the engine that aren't licensed under the GPL, you could make your own game using the engine and sell it legally.

The game's resource files, however, are NOT open source, and retain copyrights. All of the art, music, and levels we built ourselves are still copyright to us as the creators of that work. Note that some of the resources in the game were not created by us, and are still under copyright by their original owners and used without permission. An easy example is the game's HUD, as the assets were ripped directly out of the classic Sonic games and therefore we don't own the rights to them, so our use of them is technically a copyright violation. However, because our copyrighted work is in the resource files, we can say things like "this game should not be sold" and it's enforceable, because we're the copyright holder for the work we did. Obviously, we don't care about people copying our game and spreading it around unmodified because we made it for fun as hobbyists for as many people as possible to enjoy it, but if you try to make money off of our resource files and we can (and have a few times in the past) shut you down as a copyright violation.

Finally, Sonic the Hedgehog is a trademark of SEGA. In short, trademarks are what prevent someone from taking someone else's name and concept and stealing it. If you opened your own restaurant and called it "McDonalds", McDonalds can sue you to force you to change your name because they own the trademark. Note that trademarks care about what product or service it is, and it doesn't protect your name universally; it only protects it from your competition. The Sonic chain of fast food restaurants can't sue SEGA over the Sonic the Hedgehog name because their trademarks cover different products. It's also possible to license your trademark to another company. For instance, this is how toy deals are done; the company that owns the trademark signs a license deal with the toymaker so the toymaker can make toys and the trademark owner can make money off of the toy sales, benefiting both sides.

Because of the trademark, SEGA owns the exclusive right to make Sonic the Hedgehog video games. Since we didn't obtain permission via a license, SRB2 (and all fangames) are trademark violations. This is why we're so adamant about not making money off of SRB2, because SEGA has motivation to shut down people making money off of their trademark. You'll notice we've never even had ads on our web pages to pay for server bills, never mind make a profit. If they wanted to, though, they could shut down SRB2 regardless and we would be legally forced to comply. The only way we could fix the trademark issue is if we removed all assets related to the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, which would of course kinda defeat the purpose of a fangame to begin with.

Of course, this is all kinda moot because this is a 20 year old engine and who the hell would try to sell a game based on it nowadays anyways? If you're starting a game project nowadays there are hundreds of infinitely better engine options than we had available in 1999. Starting a new game based on SRB2's engine is a fool's errand.
 
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Well currently SEGA doesn't really care of shutting down fangames, I mean they let'em be regardless of copyright as long as the publisher doesn't make profit out of it.
 
This is half my point. It's not copyright that makes SRB2 a violation. It would not be very hard to remove every non-original asset in SRB2 except for sound effects. We made almost all of SRB2's resources ourselves.

Sonic's trademark, on the other hand, is pretty unavoidable =P
 
And that is the thing that amaze me in SRB2, most things were made by you, the devs.
Sound effects were ripped for nostalgy, I suppose.

As for Sonic trademark, it's a Sonic game, so yeah, it's unavoidable.
 
Copyright law is funky, because under certain tenants, srb2 is technically illegal. However, the Fair Use Policy can override copyright infringement, if the use is non-commercial and doesn't cause any loss of money to the IP holder. It's notable to add that the strictness of copyright law is to prevent a large corporation from finding a loophole and cashing in on another person's work, with Fair Use being a catch-all for people who aren't out to make money. However, case to case, it's never clear exactly how much power the Fair Use Policy has.

In theory, yes SEGA could sue stjr, and a burglar could sue you for injuries from falling down your steps during a robbery.
 
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