Selling it is clearly out of the question; but would such a thing be okay to give away free? Is there even sufficient law and precedent to say one way or the other without a court decision? It’s not really a parody or a remix, but it’s also not straight up theft. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something similar actually coming out before; has anyone ever remastered or duplicated a thing in their own way and released it without any ties to the original content creators? 🤔
I’m fairly certain you could legally get away with a full duplication of the game’s layout and mechanics, so long as you didn’t use the name or the characters. This does have precedent and happens a lot.
AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) was a fan recreation of Metroid 2 that got Cease and Desist’ed as well as DMCA’d on release. Notably Japan’s copyright laws require you to aggressively protect your holdings or else have them forfeited.
No. Assuming they rebuilt the game in a publicly available game engine, they could release whatever they did to that, but the characters are trademarked, and the game level design and any audio they’d have used would be copyrighted. The fact that you didn’t ask for money isn’t a defense that would stand up in court.
There is a potential way around this that has often been used by other projects. You make the original game files a requirement for it to work and you don’t distribute any files that include trademarked material directly and instead it uses the original files and modifies/extends them as needed. This has been used for a large number of other projects including things like the Ocarina of Time decompilation project.
It would still qualify as a mod if it required the original game, I’m pretty sure it would be fine to release that way, but it’s probably not worth the risk of legal bullshit.
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Selling it is clearly out of the question; but would such a thing be okay to give away free? Is there even sufficient law and precedent to say one way or the other without a court decision? It’s not really a parody or a remix, but it’s also not straight up theft. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of something similar actually coming out before; has anyone ever remastered or duplicated a thing in their own way and released it without any ties to the original content creators? 🤔
I’m fairly certain you could legally get away with a full duplication of the game’s layout and mechanics, so long as you didn’t use the name or the characters. This does have precedent and happens a lot.
AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake) was a fan recreation of Metroid 2 that got Cease and Desist’ed as well as DMCA’d on release. Notably Japan’s copyright laws require you to aggressively protect your holdings or else have them forfeited.
No. Assuming they rebuilt the game in a publicly available game engine, they could release whatever they did to that, but the characters are trademarked, and the game level design and any audio they’d have used would be copyrighted. The fact that you didn’t ask for money isn’t a defense that would stand up in court.
There is a potential way around this that has often been used by other projects. You make the original game files a requirement for it to work and you don’t distribute any files that include trademarked material directly and instead it uses the original files and modifies/extends them as needed. This has been used for a large number of other projects including things like the Ocarina of Time decompilation project.
It’s a remake that uses new, higher quality assets though, so isn’t an option in this case.
It would still qualify as a mod if it required the original game, I’m pretty sure it would be fine to release that way, but it’s probably not worth the risk of legal bullshit.