Archive: 12 posts

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Here's the scenario: You slave away for several months, perfecting the gameplay and honing the presentation to perfection, from the opening cinematic and menu to the amazing climax and customised score board. This App looks nothing like LBP and is born out of your unique imagination. To top this work of genius off, you give it the perfect title. The community love it and lavish you with praise and Tarsier reward you by picking you for their special pick list. Someone who plays your game can also program iOS and Android. They take your idea and make an App out of it, publishing it under their name on the App store. It is received with great plaudit and goes on to become a best seller, making the clone a huge hit and earning the creator a great deal of money. This is not a fantasy, this is a very real possibility. How would you feel about that? Would you: a/ Be more than happy for someone to make money from your idea and see it as a compliment? b/ Be more than happy as long as they at least credited you for the idea? c/ Would expect them to contact you and offer you a percentage of their earnings? d/ Would expect there to be some method by which you could prevent them from selling more? e/ Expect to be able to take them to court for stealing your idea? Think very carefully about this, because like I said, this is a real possibility. Should we be given a way of copyrighting an idea so that the game could never be copied and used outside of the LBPVita community? It wouldn't be enough to allow it only if it was a none profiting copy because the reputation of the copier would be enhanced, which in my mind is as valuable to an App creator as money. He/She would still be riding on your creation.

2012-09-18 02:06:00 Author: GribbleGrunger Posts: 3910

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I would probably not care. Neighter being "more than happy", neighter angry. It is just something you must anticipate when creating in tools like LBP. BTW - Im pretty sure that somewhere in the LBP EULA will be paragraph telling, that you dont own any work done in the LBP and it belongs to the MM or Tasier or whoever. So technically maybe they would be able to make lawsuit and request some percentage of the earning. But I doubt you can. That is something you must be ok with, before publishing a level. Actually it works both ways. Many many levels in LBP are copies of other paid game mechanics.

2012-09-18 07:45:00 Author: Agarwel Posts: 207

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hmm where is the " f/ Hate on them cause they have no creativity " option? LOL

2012-09-18 08:12:00 Author: Sunbunny23 Posts: 995

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That's why I don't stray far from the core LBP formula. Since you are accepting LBP EULA, and MM/T wont sue on your behalf, while unlikely it's still very possible. If angry birds can sell millions, any non terrible game can.

2012-09-18 08:24:00 Author: midnight_heist Posts: 2513

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Sony and or Tarsier has been infringed upon then. Your level is their property legally. It will say this in the eula

2012-09-18 08:31:00 Author: poorjack Posts: 1806

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For better and worse, you can't really legally protect gameplay. Basically the situation described in the op is already happening all the time in the ios/android space, where ****ty developers just takes someone else's good game and makes their own sliightly different version of it. Angry birds itself is a good example as it started out by taking the gameplay of crush the castle (a flash game) tweaked the launch mechanic a little and wrapped it in a much better setting. And now in turn you've got a lot of "angry birds clones" on the mobile marketplaces. So this wouldn't be any situation unique to LBP, and sadly as you say it can lead to people being screwed over. I think if you've made a level that would really make a great stand-alone game, possibly your best bet might be to approach some local indie mobile-game developer that's got good reputation and see if they'd be interested in working with you. Now that's a whole different potential legal mess where ripoffs can happen etc, but ideas being stolen from a pitch is not very common, and if they're actually interested it should make a better game and is cheaper to have the original designer on board rather than trying to copy & better it alone.

2012-09-18 13:14:00 Author: sportbil Posts: 23

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Maybe try to team up with a big publisher to get a version of my game made outside of the LBP environment. Angry birds itself is a good example as it started out by taking the gameplay of castle crashers (a flash game) tweaked the launch mechanic a little and wrapped it in a much better setting. And now in turn you've got a lot of "angry birds clones" on the mobile marketplaces. They took a 1-4 player sidescrolling beat-em-up and tweeked it to be firing things from a catapult?

2012-09-18 15:45:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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They took a 1-4 player sidescrolling beat-em-up and tweeked it to be firing things from a catapult? Heh, my bad. Been a long time ago since I played it, I meant "Crush the castle". (Will sneakily edit my post above to pretend that's what it always said).

2012-09-18 16:13:00 Author: sportbil Posts: 23

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Should we be given a way of copyrighting an idea so that the game could never be copied and used outside of the LBPVita community? As poorjack said this is already the case, except it's Sony who hold the rights. The EULA' s a pretty disgusting read tbh. Imagine if Adobe turned round and said they wanted ownership of everything created with Photoshop...

2012-09-19 11:25:00 Author: Kiminski Posts: 545

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It depends how much the game has changed from your idea. If it was a blatent like-for-like copy, then I think you'd have a strong case, as long as you can support evidence that it is yours, by recording various drafts, and beta versions of your LBP app. The mostly likely scenario, is that if someone were to copy your idea, they would make enough changes, so that you don't have much of a leg to stand on, legally. The best thing for you to do, as Rabid said above, would be to present you idea to as many developers as you can, as that would give you some legal support if they were to tweak your idea, and release something without your involvement, as it would show that you were the person that presented this idea to them. They would then, have to show evidence that they were working on their idea before you. I'm not sure about Sony owning the rights to anything created in LBP, as I haven't read the EULA, but I'm sure I heard in a statement from someone at Mm, that the ideas you create, are ultimately yours, because like Kiminski said, Adobe don't own your artistic work created in Photoshop. Because if this were true, and you did create a best selling app through your ideas in LBP, it would mean that Sony would come knocking with their hand out. I'm sure that this could not happen, as LBP is merely a tool for you to express your own imagination, and I doubt they can own the rights to what comes out of your brain.

2012-09-20 14:30:00 Author: Scarface Posts: 31

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[If] you did create a best selling app through your ideas in LBP, it would mean that Sony would come knocking with their hand out. I'm sure that this could not happen, as LBP is merely a tool for you to express your own imagination, and I doubt they can own the rights to what comes out of your brain. Signing the EULA is an act which protects Sony from indemnification if Person A's ideas get ripped off by Person B. In fact if Person A sues Person B for a ripoff, Sony might cite Person A's EULA not just to recuse themselves from a lawsuit, but align themselves with Person B as an indirect defendant, since Person A's victory over Person B would represent an undoing of the EULA which is a much bigger threat to Sony. If a person can successfully sue over what gets published on LBP, then arguably so can everyone, and Sony is now the unfortunate service provider of a great big lawsuit machine. So it's true that Sony won't come knocking if you develop a great idea on LBP and then go sell it. They also won't go knocking on your behalf if you develop a great idea and someone ELSE sells it. But if an LBP idea becomes the next Angry Birds and the profits are obscenely high, I can see Sony stepping in and demanding a cut, which might make them seem like heroes if Person B ripped off Person A's idea in LBP, or like greedy %#$&tards if they go after Person A for first publishing the idea in LBP and then personally developing the game and selling it. @OP My response is also not a) - e), but a defeatist f) accept that the idea was stolen and be angry about it, but not expect any compensation. The world we have always lived in, good ideas are stolen all the time from everywhere. I advise any creative person, if you have a good idea, be selective about who you show it to, be selective about how you go about disseminating it to the market. We might someday live in a world where ideas will all be inherently protected the instant they are conceived, but that would also be a world where ideas are instantly recognized and rewarded at their source, and THAT would be a world where nobody had a lick of privacy (or else how can ideas be sourced?)... which means we're more likely to have massive wars over that LOSS of rights, on the way to gaining true copyrights. It's a bit of a paradox.

2012-09-21 07:51:00 Author: Unknown User

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I would do e/ cause he/she is too lazy to think of his/her own ideas!

2012-09-23 00:15:00 Author: amoney1999 Posts: 1202

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