Clones and Spiritual Successors

How close can you get to the original game without getting lawyers up your ass?
I've been meaning to make a thread like this for awhile but it seems especially appropriate given what's been going on for the past several days.

For example let's say I wanted to make a Castlevania clone — What would be lawyer safe and what wouldn't? Obviously you couldn't use any specific brand identity and scenarios, but you should still be able to use Dracula as a character, provided it's based on either Stoker's original Dracula or the historical Vlad Tepes rather than Konami's Mathias Cronqvist, right? Could you get away with the PC wielding a whip?

Where is the line between "yes it's a ripoff but nothing can be done legally about it" and "Spread your buttcheeks for my DMCA poz load"?

Other urls found in this thread:

archive.is/3MQRo
google.com/patents/US8075403
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

I think it tends to boil down to names and images. As long as you dodge those the gameplay can get pretty damn close so long as it's superficially different

I can believe that. Rusty is pretty blatant.
I guess it matters a whole lot what company you're dealing with too. Some of them seem to be pretty fucking anal about it.

If it's similar enough, it can be taken to court or at least in front of a judge.
Copywrite laws are gay, I'd hate to be a game developer.

That's the $1000 question. What counts similar enough?

Art assets are the biggest problem, if you're using stolen or modified shit you WILL get sued.
However if you make say, a game that's mechanically the same as pokemon, but with the names swapped around and OC graphix then they can't do shit.
Got it?
Whenver someone makes an "X fangame" they're just looking for the easy attention that a big name franchise brings.

Has there ever been a lawsuit over gameplay?

Some mechanics are patented, but so few that odds are you'll never make a game with one of them.
There's just one patented mechanic that you should look out for: minigames in loading screens.
Apparently tecmo or whoever has the rights to the dbz games owns that.

That one has expired already and was never valid in the first place. I think the Eternal Darkness sanity system has also expired.

Courts have been pretty clear you can't own rules. You can own names for rules and you can own wordings for rules, you can own code rules are derived from, but you can't own rules.

Oh, that was never a thing? Damn, that's great.
So yeah, as this user said, you can't copyright gameplay.

archive.is/3MQRo
This one was pretty blatant.
It's like saying that Giana Sisters wasn't based on Mario Bros, or WarCraft wasn't based on Dune 2.

Did they win, though?

there's another patent on panning inbetween changing views while racing but it's complete garbage as you don't really change views that often while playing videogames

I thought Namco owned the minigames in loading screens thing.

Read the other replies, apparently it isn't even a thing.

Simple, make the clone in China and that's it

As close as you fucking want. Make your fucking game, don't fucking smear you ass all over the internet trying to get your dick sucked for making it, upload it on something like mega and post links on image boards or something.

Unless you're trying to sell it, then it's an entirely different can of worms.

That patent was never valid even when it was still a thing. A lot of older computer games, specifically those that used cassette tape to hold the data, generally had little games on them you could play while it loaded the data into memory.

The only time you should be worried about having to deal with legal issues is if you are making fangames of an existing franchise. Companies absolutely do NOT want to have an inferior product to tarnish the face of what they are selling. You could make a game and copy the mechanics 1:1 and nothing could be done.

ArenaNet filed this patent for part of Guild Wars

google.com/patents/US8075403

The amusing thing about that is that many of the fangames that have gotten C&D over the years have been as good or better than what the copyright holders have been producing. Usually they're more respectful of the franchises too.

Go to China and never worry about copyright

As long as you don't use the same names, art assets, and I'd go as far and avoid copying level design too, you should be fine.

The funny part about Castlevania is that a lot of things in it are free to use. Dracula, Frankenstein and such. As long as you didn't call your game Castlevania you should be able to get away with it.

What about the whip issue?

I think as long as you didn't call your character Belmont you wouldn't have any problems.

...

And thus Bimon Selmont was born

With a soundtrack by Jon Bovi.

It's only based on artwork and certain names. US Courts have ruled that game mechanics/rules cannot be protected by a copyright. This is why you see games like OpenTTD, where it's literally the same game as Transport Tycoon Deluxe, except it distributes it's own free graphics set (or loads the original art from an install). Things like OpenXcom/OpenRCT2 cannot be legally shut down because of this. The fact that there are companies that would try to shut down recreations like these doesn't mean it's legal.

But the most important point is that a game's rules or mechanics cannot be protected by copyright, regardless of what companies have said or have slapped a copyright on. They aren't sufficient properties to protect. But that doesn't mean that companies wouldn't cave and settle out of court, preventing a longer legal battle.

I believe your only limitations outside of direct use of modified art assets or lines of code would be specific patented ideas (like loading screen minigames but I think that one didn't hold up in court for being too vague).

I dunno but a FLOSS engine reimplementation is vital for a videogame's playability in the long-term

Ever wonder why most games use that "compass bar" indicator, instead of an arrow?

I'd prefer it over the original if it was just as polished