The Creator's Legal Clinic: Advices and Explanations

Then what part of the RPG Maker license is it potentially violating?

Like, we can keep asking clarifying questions all day until you simply post the language of whatever (whether it's a law or an EULA) that made you concerned about this.

The EULA for RPG Maker explicitly allows you to use the assets you get with it in other game-making software. I don't recall any language that speaks to the actual game being embedded in something else - but it would have to be awfully specific language, because people play RPG Maker games within the context of their operating systems as well as their Web browsers.

Well, originally that wasn't the case in relation to the RTP which is where I drew my concern, but at least the problem has been solved on the other end. Thanks for checking on that, however - it is very much appreciated.

EDIT: To be fair on the subject (and for the benefit of the doubt) there was some mention of this a while back, although for reasons of the time I heard about it the whole thing came off as if they were using the existence of Unite as an excuse for an April Fool's stunt (which is why I questioned the matter in the first place). Good to know that it's legit, though!

Contact GGG and see if they're okay with it. I'm pretty sure they changed the MV/MZ license because of Unite but I am not sure.

I don't know about MZ, but you would be okay to translate MV's javascripts to another engine regardless of MV EULA. MV's core engine is MIT licensed.

This is not necessarily specific to RPG Maker, but would there be anything from a legal standpoint with regard to visual elements of the level design? For instance, having the villain plaster his emblem within the visual elements of the stage as an indication that you're approaching the boss (kind of like what Dr. Wily does in a Megaman game).

I’m not certain I understand the question @ZeroBreak If you own the image, you can do whatever you want with it. If you’ve licensed the image, you’d need to review if there are specific limitations to where and how many times it can be used.

With the new lawsuit against Palworld being about game elements instead of necessarily assets, I'm curious how to best find out if an game element is trademarked.
For example, learning abilities from items ex. Final Fantasy 9 or learning beast skills when they are used on you, also like in FF9.

They're not. Game mechanics can only potentially be patented (which is what the Palworld lawsuit is).

Patents, trademarks, and copyrights all have online databases you can Google and browse. You can look by keywords, type of filing, or by company owning the registered item.

While not entirely legal advice, from what I have heard on the situation is this is pretty rare. It seems Nintendo has many patents that they don't typically enforce.
The speculation is that the patent that has been infringed either has to do with throwing "balls" to "catch monsters" in the "game world". Or it could possibly be related to mounting the monsters.

Many of the patents people have theorized Nintendo is suing Pocket Pair over are all patents that we have seen in many other games. However, the difference is that Nintendo is basically establishing the pecking order here. Palworld effectively dared them to take action, and so they put their lawyers to work and said "okay, bet."

Basically, the only reason Palworld is being sued is:
1) They poked the bear. Never poke the bear.
2) and more importantly, they made a lot of money and even entered into a partnership with Sony, which threatened The Pokemon Company's market dominance.
And as a result, they are using their many patents to sue Pocket Pair.

So, tl;dr
If you are doing anything that is inspired by Nintendo or a AAA franchise, you likely are infringing on a patent already, but it's not something you should worry about.

Gotcha, so honestly I'm too small a fry for any big company to care about anyway when it comes to game mechanics.

So this came up regarding the Steam monopoly matter. Apparently the whole mess has evolved into outright class action.

The antitrust lawsuit against Steam is now a class action, and that could have big repercussions for Valve

So, a few things have happened since my last post in regard to legal issues with game design. For starters, I have creatively hit a point where I almost canceled my game project over its design matters because:

1. Nintendo has forced Pocketpair to change how Palworld is played;
2. There are UI issues for which I had to change my approach in order to accommodate them; and
3. The design aspects in question would change either way because I realized that they were plot spoilers.

More specifically, the portions of the game presentation that caused this are the use of boss previews for the missions, the emote cutscenes introducing each boss, the "plan of attack" sequences for the final mission, the planned functionality of the mana meter and the "selfie shot" mission select (as the elements are all integral to the presentation with heavy inspiration from Megaman, which means that I was getting half-paranoid that the dangerous precedent that the Palworld changes are causing to game development would bring Capcom's legal weight on me in the same way that Nintendo did in this instance). I'm also liable to completely dismantle and destroy the maps and assets for my RPG Maker implementation of the yellow devil as a further consequence of this matter.

Any thoughts on these points? I'm this close to giving up on game development from all the legal conundrums that quite obviously have stacked themselves up against indies and solo content creators.

EDIT: I am also aware that this primarily affects the Japanese market, since that's where Pocketpair lost its case. However, it still sets a dangerous precedent, where the laws and litigation of one nation can affect games that are designed to be played across many other nations (and potentially ensnare developers without regard for their location at the rate things are going).

EDIT 2: Further discussions have indicated a possibility that I may still be able to proceed, so I've redacted the cancelation for now. That being said, the legal precedent that this has created (regardless of whether or not it stays isolated to a single country) is now an ongoing concern, so I do still feel the need to be cautious as a result owing to what the implications are in this matter.

Reposting this from my recent devlog, but I have a very big concern about what I'm referring to as the G-2000 battle suit. Reason being is that I had the artist that I commissioned go for something with a heavy Evangelion influence, but the very first comment that I got on the design flat out called it a carbon copy of the EVA-01. Here's what I mean, in case it helps:



Needless to say, but the character is now on hold (and for obvious reasons) while I figure out what I can do to sort things out and see for sure if my artist did in fact go too far with the design.

So. What people don’t have an all-encompassing right to is “mech suit” but in this case I do think it would be possible for the ordinary observer to confuse the two designs despite some differences.

The easiest solution would be to change the color palette completely. There are definitely some differences in the helmet and shoulder piece, but your artist should also really differentiate the rest of the armor design if you really want to put the concern to rest.

Not a legal expert, but a human with 2 working eyes:

That is literally the exact same design down to the exact colors minus some spikey parts and the violet things on the forearms rotated to the other side. I mean, it has the exact same mark on the shoulder blade, the same "lines"... if I had to guess I'd say someone edited an Eva base and called it a day.
It even has the same markings on the back of the boots, that doesn't happen when you just use the eva as reference...

Okay, so I think that I have an agreement that the colors could be a little confusing between the two from basically everyone that I asked. In any case, what seems to work best out of the hue shifts that I did is this orange base:


However, I also have the following additional options, one in green:

And a third in yellow:

As for any further color edits or part additions to help make the differences even more clear, I'm open to ideas on additional provisions (besides the beam cannons on the arms, which were my own personal idea). In any case, I at least have a starting point for any needed refinements (which is a shame, because with the fact that I had an artist from halfway around the world it's unlikely that I would be able to sue for damages - even under condition of fraud - so I'm probably out like $600 plus tax if I can't come up with anything else to make it stand out from the pack).

That doesn't change that literally the shape of nearly every body part is the exact same, down to any of the decorative holes and where highlights sit. To me, your artist ripped you off by just editing an existing Eva 3D model or tracing one (would not put money on that, but that is how it looks like) and it is so close that the recolor is not making a difference.

Just for comparison, noone would buy that this is my total unique pocket monster concept that is just loosely pikachu inspired:


Edit: Okay, now I'd put money on it, you have been ripped off:

Evangelion Unit-01 - 3D model by allanromanreyes on Thangs

I'm going to give a hard suggestion here that you probably don't want to hear. DO MORE PROPER RESEARCH ON COSTS GOING FORWARD.

$600 got me ALL the art for Book of Shadows. ALL. Not just one asset. And even if it is 3d you can get prebuilt 3d models in the Unity store for a lot less than $600, and most of those you can edit.

You may need to take this on the chin as a learning lesson too, but check all options next time and even ask around. We would have told you $600 is too much, easily.

One would certainly hope an extra 0 snuck into that figure. But, unless it has been several months since you made this purchase, most banks are fantastic at reversing at least partial amounts (and frequently the full amount) when a service/product is not delivered to your expectation.

That provides a lot of contexts. Unfortunately, it was paid over installments, and the last payment was just a bit before Christmas. I doubt that even PayPal would be of much help after that amount of time.

In any case, I'm going to take the safe route and remove all mention of the design from my social channels rather than attempt to shoehorn additions to compensate and have also reported and blocked the person on Discord for engaging in fraudulent behaviors (as that was our communication channel).