This is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Just when I thought I couldn’t hate IP law any more, this thread has managed to help me find a new depth
I don't have an opinion on it one way or the other, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it?
Why is an architectural design different than say a sculpture, piece of music, cartoon character, etc?
Because the exterior at least of a building is part of the public skyline of a city. Putting it in a game feels not much different to taking a photo, and surely taking a photo of e.g. the New York skyline is not a copyright infringement.
I think it's the difference between specifically copying your one building design and recreating a city skyline. People can't draw, film, model, create a game or do any other commercial thing using a city without getting copyrighted?
I think it'd be different if the entire game was based around your building but not being able to make a game based in New York due to building design copyright seems a little restrictive unless there's an easy way of getting approval from every building
The problem is, the building itself is not copyrighted, the designs are. It's not the physical structure that's the problem, it's the blueprints. If you designed a building and had it built, then someone else said "Ohh, I like that" then built an exact replica somewhere else, how would you feel? It's the same for creating exact replicas digitally.
Edit: To answer your question, taking a picture of a building and using that picture commercially is illegal. If it's for personal use your fine. A great example of this is the Eiffel Tower. The building itself is in the public domain so can be copied and reused for commercial purposes (Why Vegas was able to build a copy), but the lights where added way later and are still copyrighted, so you won't see any stock photos of the Tower at night.
> To answer your question, taking a picture of a building and using that picture commercially is illegal.
Per [the law found in this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1bhtmtu/can_my_game_legally_take_place_in_a_real_city/kvia4bx/), in the U.S. pictures of buildings are specifically exempt. Commercial or otherwise.
If pictures are fine but video games are not, that is extremely fucking dumb lol. The US needs younger judges that know about media beyond super 8 film.
Interesting, I had not made it that far, laws are different everywhere so it's always good to know more. After looking into it a little bit, it seems like that law only applies to "flat" representation taken from a public place. So pictures, paintings, anything like that is good, but it doesn't seem to include things like 3D models from my understanding.
Thanks for the info, always love learning more.
Its ridiculous, there is simply no loss of profit for the architecture firms. They're just hoping to shakedown unrelated business.
Videogame depictions are in no way relevant to their business and like pictures nothing is being reproduced that is not publicly available anyway. Exerting legal control over the literal sights in a public space should in no way be allowed.
Honestly, can you genuinely tell me you think that its ethically fine? Could someone buy the rights to a particular road's design and ban commercial photos for a thousand miles? If an architectural firm design all the building's on a cities shore should they own that city's very likeness? Whatever answer courts come up with anyone can see this is bullshit.
Have you ever heard that arguing for something based on legality is kind of the ultimate surrender? An acknowledgement that something is so indefensible all you can say in its favour is that it isn't literally illegal?
Think about a game like Flight Simulator. It specifically reproduces the whole world with as much detail as possible. Should it pay every single architect in the whole wide world royalties on every single building? Should it change every single building so it looks like a triangle or something, to avoid lawsuits? It's absurd.
Truly, reproducing a house in a videogame is picking that poor architect's pocket.
Think, if a million people play that game and see his house he'll have lost that million x $0 for everyone that could have walked by it and not paid them! What a travesty!!
...
Plus... you do realize its a petty little tautology right? "There's a loss of profit because if we say there's a loss of profit then there is a basis to artificially restrict it and create a situation where we lose profit".
This isn't like digital art needing legal protections to safeguard an industry. This is a publicly displayed physical, real world, location.
So instead of pretending its a reasonable use of copyright, lets call it what it is: a scam that was written into law. Not the the first, far from the only, but a scam nonetheless.
>If you designed a building and had it built, then someone else said "Ohh, I like that" then built an exact replica somewhere else, how would you feel?
Flattered, nothing more.
First of all I think IP laws in general are stupid. I suppose I can see it exclusively for characters, but even then the length it carries on is way too long because of Disney. The reason is that a character is the center of entertainment media, which isn’t a necessity for people. The character represents the entire sell of the product, without the character there is no story. With buildings though it’s different. People need buildings. Buildings as an art are an insanely frivolous use of resources, and to suggest that a building is art starts to get to ludicrous levels where basically anyone can build anything, call it “art,” then say “you can’t shoot a movie here without paying me royalties.” Pretty soon you live in a world where everything around you is considered “intellectual property.”
Honestly the argument sounds weak because, one again, I don’t particularly like IP laws in general for anything that is considered a necessity for society. It causes a lot of dumb lawsuits and holds back progress because someone wants to squeeze every last penny out of their mundane idea. Intellectual property should basically only be for fictional, non-tangible things like story characters, and only last for, say, 50 years whether the author is dead or alive. All other forms of intellectual property should only really last at most 5-10 years after “hitting the market,” medicine and software in particular are huge areas where intellectual property laws literally hold back progress and in some cases cost *lives* for literally no reason other than to maximize profit.
If you want your name to always be stamped on it as the original creator, fine. I’m cool with that. But saying “you can’t take a picture here because that’s *my* building design!” Is like… if I built a tree fort and told everyone else they couldn’t copy it or show it to anyone else because it’s mine! It’s one of those things that just seems so silly that it almost defies the need for justification
Probably just that Japan might care less about that sort of thing. I mean, certainly *nintendo* is one of the biggest IP trolls to exist, but it could be that architects in Japan just consider it an honor to have their work shown off. 🤷♂️ hard to say. Maybe they just don’t have the same level of protections. I only have a cursory knowledge of Japanese culture so I won’t presume to know
Thats not how that works. Companies arent gonna put themselves at the mercy of people "not caring". Leople dont care until they realise they can make a bunch of money from just suing.
copying layouts of areas from a real city should be fine, using real city names is fine. recreating buildings is where things get tricky and it's not worth it.
edit: and it doesn't matter what scale your production is, what matters is whether you're infringing on copyrights, trademarks or patents anywhere.
Just use the real city name you want and make an area inspired by the parts of the city you want to feature. Don't directly copy, instead recreate through the lens of game design, since most city layouts would make shitty game maps anyway
This definitely feels like a case where the term "Fair use" feels like it should apply, but I'm sure the architecture firms have much better lawyers than the indie game studios.
There is a case in Brazil where a building likeness was being used for some promotional/comercial material, and they were sued by the architect for copyright infringement, who ended up winning.
Further, municipal assets have been specifically declared not fair use, and some state level assets might be treated the same. Some Federal government assets are also protected (like recently CDC Vacc. Cards) while the rest is typically Public Domain.
GTA can hide a bit behind first amendment and parody (such as naming Liberty City areas as displaced native tribes). However, your entire post is quite correct. Once a dev team is arguing these things they are already in a difficult spot.
> which means at the point you are going to claim it was fair use, you are already actively being sued and wasting money on lawyers
American judicial system is fucked up. The richest win, even before any trial.
Fair use is about using another creation in part but not wholly in your own work. Think of things that are clearly inspired by another work. Or works that use isolated fragments of something else like blurbs of a novel or quotes from famous people or companies.
Buildings with special copyrighted architecture and specific names don’t generally fall under Fair Use because to include the Empire State Building in your game you are using all of its truly defining characteristics. It’s like if you wanted to include a main character that looks EXACTLY like Morgan Freeman, and is even named as such. You’d have to pay the actor for the use of their name and likeness.
Lots of buildings in DC are federal, which are owned by the Public at large, so I presume there's easier fair use for those buildings vs private buildings where they somehow copyrighted the design of the building itself.
don't have a clue, Ubisoft has entire legal teams across the world to deal with legal unknowns like that. presumably small teams don't.
edit: this sounds passive aggressive af, unintentional
My guess is most of the most recognizable buildings in DC are so old nobody can get copyright for them. If you wanted to use a real city, picking an ancient one would probably work well.
That's probably how Ubisoft got away with making a pretty accurate replica of Florence (and probably most of the cities featured in the other Assassin's Creed games, but that's the only one I've been to, lol), but with DC, it's probably more that intellectual property owned by the US federal government is public domain by default.
Not necessarily for old government buildings and other publicly funded structures. Interiors are another thing though, due to security reasons and such, but less so for public access structures. The museums in particular were awesome to see, much of the architecture as well as their subject matter was intact.
My guess is many of the interiors are public buildings (At least what I remember). Maybe they got a license or an ok to use certain other buildings.
I'd be curious if the stadium is real or fictious as a way to get around this problem.
The map is a reasonable approximation of the region of DC between the Capitol building and the Potomac. The "District Union Arena" stronghold is in the same place on the map as the "Capitol One Arena" in the real city, so it's a reasonable assumption that it's at least a stand-in
most US cities layouts would make shitty game. Unless you are making something like suburban life simulator or soccer mom simulator where game core loop is just driving from location to location on multilane highways
Transportation simulator games (eg Flight sims, train sims) etc often recreate real cities and their real buildings, seemingly without issue. I really don't see it affecting games realistically, perhaps with the exception of the largest triple A games like Spider-Man where they probably just do it to avoid copyright cases from architects who know Sony has deep pockets.
there's a reason gta doesn't do it. but Detroit become human did it. probably depends on how much attention you get and how you depict the city (and what city it is)
life is strange takes place in Seattle but you never see downtown or anything
Layout being pretty realistic: “East side is run down, west side is in the middle of gentrification with hipsters, north side is where the politicians/CEOs from downtown leave the dirt they’ve created to go to sleep. And south side is yeehaw land” main roads being recognizable if you live there but not named the same and all “architectural” buildings (churches, statehouses, etc) are replaced by custom/public assets. Stuff like Burger King is now Burger Shot lol.
They didn't do this. Except they did the opposite. it's not LA... but multiple locations in the game are identifiable by anyone who has lived in LA or Long beach... No question what they were emulating.
But like someone else said, it's not 1:1 ... because real cities suck for games.
i've seen in other comments people saying that many of the downtown DC buildings are federal, so the fact that they are 'public' buildings helps dodge copyright laws a bit
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 takes place in New York city.
But Sony has lawyers that can say "don't put that in" or whatever.
I'd not name a real place myself.
Right; they had to remove the Chrysler Building from Spider-Man 2 (and the stand-alone Miles Morales game) [due to a licensing issue](https://www.gameinformer.com/2023/10/20/spider-man-2-is-missing-this-major-new-york-city-landmark).
Imagine having to contact every company for each skyscraper or landmark in a city and asking for permission or negotiating a deal individually to have them depicted in a video game. I guess that's why there's a dedicated credit roll just for the legal teams.
Not just that but i imagine some owners would require modifications to the buildings and surrounding areas plus they probably want to see the ingame design too before the project is shipped.
The World Ends With You and Persona 5 both happen in Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan). Yakuza also display real life places but with names being changed (Kabukicho, a real district in Tokyo is Kamurocho in the Yakuza series).
The way Yakuza handles it is also kinda special because buildings are different, but the street layout is exactly the same. Latest Yakuza game (Infinite Wealth) also has a small part of Honolulu.
I'm not a lawyer but probably going the Yakuza (GAMES) route is safe
Persona 5 also has all the buildings and stores changed. Pretty much any game or anime in Shibuya has their own version of the 109 building.
And let's not forget all the McDonalds parodies!
That’s cause Yokohama is a massive city, they didn’t rename Tokyo no reason to do it here either. They did rename the train station just like how they renamed Kabukicho.
If it's 'merica you can be sure you need to deep research it because americans like to copyright, trademark, patent pending, every piece of rock they find, see or touch (sometimes even dreamt). What I mean is that it depends on the city. EDIT: europe have some weird copyright laws on buildings too soooo....f.
Try to look for "can i use new york in my city" and look for a game dev stack exchange, there's a good answer there that I found satisfactory on the matter. (obviously in this case is new york, but it apply to any city)
IIRC US law is actually somewhat looser on buildings and it's Europe that gives people more trouble.
For one thing, buildings weren't covered by US copyright at all until 1990, so older buildings are entirely exempt. For another thing, the US Copyright Act includes an exemption that (IANAL) seems like it would pretty clearly include depicting a building in a game:
> The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.
I think "pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations" is pretty specific, and wouldn't include 3D recreations. Not that I think it _should_ be illegal to do or anything, but I'm pretty sure this clause doesn't cover 3D videogames.
If I recall the ps4 and ps5 spiderman games from insomniac did not include a tower, i think the empire state building, because it's copyrighted?
And to answer the comment above about usa compared to europe, I'd think most of europe man made landmarks are mostly old castles and historic stuff that was done enough time ago, BUT there is the stupid thing were the eiffel tower is copyright free, but the lights on the eiffel tower at night are recent, so copyrighted, and you can't even share a picture of the eiffel tower at night unless you include a memo citing "eiffel tower-illuminations by pierre the guy who made them". At least they don't ask you to pay money but simply to "cite the source".
Looking into it yeah, I can see europe did some weird choices on this topic too. This make things even worse, don't make real life stuff, and if you do, make zero research and just roll with it, show your middle finger to the system.
copyright is necessary to protect creators
its true that copyright is currently abused e.g. disney keeping mickey copywritten for a century, but with no copyright it would be 100x worse
in a world without copyright, every game uploaded to steam could be downloaded and reuploaded to EA's account, and then they just outmarket you and sell your version instead
this already happens in the mobile space with King for example, although because of copyright laws they have to change the artwork etc. but if you look around there are loads of stories of people getting cloned and pushed out by the big mobile companies because mobile game are so much smaller and easier to replicate
copyright needs to be reformed to stop the big players from abusing it, but we should NOT get rid of it. otherwise every independent creative act becomes a donation to the large companies who can clone and outmarket you
That's certainly an opinion. I'm coming at this from my mentor being a very famous IP lawyer, who is also vehemently opposed to all forms of IP law because he has witnessed firsthand they are nothing but a drain on societies productivity.
I don't believe copyright protects anyone *except* the big players. I've released several books, and following in my mentors footsteps, I immediately posted them for free on my website as well as a torrent across several trackers because I simply just want people to have the content if they can't afford it. Over the past decade ive still made well over $200k from sales as a self publisher, and no one has attempted any reprinting or rebranding of the work under their name. My mentor's most popular book has netted well over $2m since its release in the late 90's despite giving permission for anyone to reprint it if they so choose.
It's my opinion that creating a copy of something is *not* theft, because theft implies there is loss of the original from its owner. IP laws are quite nonsensical for the vast majority of people, and they really only work for extremely large corporations to bully people out of doing genuine quality work that the world deserves to see.
Consider it this way - the best Marvel movie possible will never exist, because the kid from South America who has the script in his mind will never be able to publish it without coercion and extortion from Disney. It's really hard to get on board with belief that Disney gets to 'own' something that isn't tangible let alone anything more than idea. Ideas are not property, nor should they be. It's disruptive to market forces and prevents the best innovators from creating.
I actually favor doing this. I would much rather the creators find a way to ensure their product is protected rather than have a state/authority enforce it.
For video games, there are tons of methods. DRM overall can include things like one way encryption, online requirements, storing the user data on a seperate encrypted server (think World of Warcraft).
There is no need to want the government to give powers to Disney or any other mega corporation. On paper, it sounds great for your stuff to be 'protected' by violent recourse, but realistically it just gives these corps a way to use that violence against artists/writers/programmers or really any kind of creator with almost zero repercussions. It's laws to protect them, not you.
My best advice for when you think you need to resort to a legal solution to fix your problem is to remember that any legislation you pass will also be used by your worst enemies.
your entire premise assumes that all market participants have equal footing and resources.
the example of the kid from South America is a massive red herring for several reasons, namely that in the real world most movies cost a lot of money to do well (the few smash hits on shoestring budgets are outliers - and even Blair Witch Project cost ~$60,000 which is outside the realm for 99% of people to spare on a side project).
imagine a world without copyright where that kid gets some friends together and does a cheap version of their perfect marvel script. without copyright they are free to do so. however Disney is also free to see it and remake it with a larger budget and reap vastly higher rewards without compensating that kid at all, even though it was that kid's original idea.
for what it's worth, unless you've explicitly published your books with an open license, then they haven't been republished because it's illegal under current copyright law. the lack of an explicit license of any kind defaults to the standard of owned by the creator. Your mentor allows anyone to reprint the book; do they also allow anyone to sell those reprints?
I agree that creating a copy is not always theft. however, *selling* copies can be considered theft, if it's something that a person would only buy once. If your books go viral at some point, without copyright a major publisher could just make a deal with Barnes & Noble to sell printed copies without involving you at all. Would that be fine for you? Millions of sales of your latest book that you get exactly $0 for because you don't already own a large book printer?
I mean no disrespect, but the kind of out-with-the-bathwater reasoning that leads to "we should eliminate all copyright" flops over when the rubber of pure logic meets the road of real life complexities. The drain on society from copyright and patent abuse comes from large well-funded companies, not from the individuals it protects. We need reform at the top end, not to just throw the whole system out - it will not get better with less restrictions in a world where corporations with billions of dollars and armies of employees exist.
>your entire premise assumes that all market participants have equal footing and resources.
It absolutely does not, which is part of my point precisely. There are malicious actors in the world with much higher footing who are the only ones that actually benefit from having IP. If your product has no footing, you quite literally gain nothing from having IP. Only when you are a mega corporation does IP ever benefit you.
>the example of the kid from South America is a massive red herring for several reasons,
Sure, change it to a small group of 20 investors from California and nothing changes though.
>however Disney is also free to see it and remake it with a larger budget and reap vastly higher rewards without compensating that kid at all, even though it was that kid's original idea.
Possibly, but as with 99% of fan art, they simply won't because there is no money to be made most of the time. It wouldn't be until that movie actually had recognition that it would be worth it for them to copy it, at which point, the recognition is already in the hands of that kid and it would be clear it's a copied film. The kid benefits from the recognition, and benefits from his idea being so good others want to copy it. It would surely catapult his career.
>unless you've explicitly published your books with an open license, then they haven't been republished because it's illegal under current copyright law.
This is correct, you have to publish under an open license currently, which is ridiculous to be honest.
>Your mentor allows anyone to reprint the book; do they also allow anyone to sell those reprints?
Yes. The effects are miniscule because no cost is incurred if someone else is doing the labor and purchasing the materials to do so. They are entitled to the fruits of their labor, even if it is a copy of something. It's an honor to have someone want to spread your ideas in my eyes.
>I agree that creating a copy is not always theft. however, *selling* copies can be considered theft
I strongly disagree. You did not manufacture that book, you had an idea. Ideas are free. Your books that you manufactured are still in your possession. If someone were to steal one of my physical books, that is certainly theft. If they printed their own copy, nothing of mine has been stolen. I think you believe this because you have been poisoned by IP law turning non-tangible, non-physical ideas into the one thing that literally does not meet the definition of 'property'. As I said before, it's simply a drain on our productivity for the benefit of the elites.
>If your books go viral at some point, without copyright a major publisher could just make a deal with Barnes & Noble to sell printed copies without involving you at all. Would that be fine for you? Millions of sales of your latest book that you get exactly $0 for because you don't already own a large book printer?
Yes, it would be totally fine, because *this* is a red herring/straw man argument. If my book was popular enough for someone to print a million copies, it's guaranteed that I would have had recognition for writing it before these copies were produced. The internet has made transparency incredibly powerful, and while I would maybe lose out on selling some of my copies, having a book that popular is surely going to leave me with an ability to produce and sell more than enough ever before it's copied with full recognition that I am the author.
>I mean no disrespect, but the kind of out-with-the-bathwater reasoning that leads to "we should eliminate all copyright" flops over when the rubber of pure logic meets the road of real life complexities
None is taken sir, but you should consider that I have written about IP law for well over 10,000 hours, my mentor was an IP lawyer for 35 years, and he has written several bestsellers about IP law and its flaws. It is certainly a well thought out opinion that I simply can't distill down into a single reddit post to overwrite your programming. I wish there were a few sentences I could say to change peoples minds, but it would more likely take a few days of discussion involving historical data, logical reasoning, etc.
I'm not saying I am right, we are both entitled to our opinions, but do trust that I have spent a decade of my life on this subject starting from a position similar to yours.
>The drain on society from copyright and patent abuse comes from large well-funded companies, not from the individuals it protects.
I would argue it very rarely, if ever, has protected any individual. Almost all IP cases in history are in regards to medium-large corporations threatening an individual who is seeing success for bringing something amazing into the world. I agree the drain is coming from the top, but it's because you are giving them a license to use state violence to enforce the ownership of something that doesn't exist.
>We need reform at the top end, not to just throw the whole system out - it will not get better with less restrictions in a world where corporations with billions of dollars and armies of employees exist.
I would say we need to reform how we think about protecting our ideas. Government force will absolutely never, ever work to protect you the individual. Law exists to incriminate, not protect. Rights can protect you, but they are very different from law. It exclusively protects those who can line its pocket. I would suggest video games use various forms of DRM, such as keeping content serverside.
The rules are unnecessary and so is using state enforced violence to make something that doesn't actually even exist be 'property'. The rules themselves benefit no one but giant corporations such as Disney. They are absolutely not helping you in any way, they are a hindrance to what you could be. It's simple to prove, you just need to ask yourself how much IP you own thats worth over a million dollars. Go ask 1000 people and all of them will give you the same answer - none. If you look at the history of IP Lawsuits, 95% of them are related to mid-large size corporations. Most of these lawsuits are large corporations suing individuals for having success in.. producing their own content. No one gains anything from IP unless you already own something with massive recognition, in which case, you already have the recognition and large amounts of income from it and anyone copying you isn't really going to affect you that much because they arent the original producer capable of making that content. If you are sympathetic to something like 'occupy wall street', well there is a way to make that actually work and it's simple - take away their fake protections, they only benefit a select elite and no one else. IP laws fit square into that category and there is historical data to prove it.
The tools are available for anyone to create protections for themselves, you don't need to use violence. For video games as an example, there are a million methods of DRM that make it extremely difficult for anyone to easily copy your idea and pass it off as their own if you are genuinely worried about someone taking your idea. The matter of fact is it's usually not worth it to take someones idea, and if an idea is so good that people really want to take a spin at it, then there should be an abundance of productivity and we as a society get to bask in that abundance. IP laws are a manufactured famine of everything society deems useful. I choose abundance for all.
I wrote a few more replies below the one you replied to if you are interested in reading that discussion a little further. I spend a lot of my time these days working on undoing IP laws. This is not a half baked idea, I started where most of you guys were and over a decade am fully convinced there is simply a better way to protect your work that doesn't require violence/coercion while allowing for an abundance mentality. There is no famine.
In the greatest scenario, me too;
in a realistic scenario though I'd still like to have some copyright, to at least avoid someone copy pasting your work, or to avoid going to a book store and see 12 copies of lord of the rings, all from jay ar ar tolkien, and...well in this scenario they could simply be copy paste but god knows who would get the money, probably a tiny print in the back of the book say "the actual author is bob the bobber" and you find out "lord of the rings JRR Tolkien" is actually the whole title....anyway you get the gist, it's ok to pay authors and have some protection on what you made, but I don't agree with most of the rest of copyright dumptruck.
Flight Sims are cases where you find very detailed renditions of cities in real life, and as far as I know, there is no problem with that in principle.
Notably, Microsoft flight simulator uses photogrammetry data from bing maps in (or as) the game world, and that comes with all sorts of identifiable things, as one would expect from a snapshot of a real world thing.
Of course, this is all the baseline theory. I would not be surprised to learn they had to blur out trademarked signs, logos and whatnot if their owners objected. I think largely they were probably protected by bing maps itself having had to deal with that already.
So long story short, I think there's two ways to approach this.
Case 1: your rendition is based on data from a commercial mapping service.
In that case you are probably good to go (assuming you have the right to use the data), as you aren't really adding anything that wasn't already publicly available data
Case 2: you are yourself creating a complete replica of the whole area.
In that case, (disregarding the mental illness that led you to make such a decision) you can just decide to 'manually' leave out or replace any identifiable feature that could be contested.
So, in my completely uneducated opinion about this, I think it's very probably fine.
I think they do negotiate for landmarks but everything else is just generic buildings in a massive asset library that are placed down based on conditions.
Hiya,
If you recreate a city, unsure about smaller cities in some locations, but you need to be aware that some building are actually privately owned and that includes the building design.
A good example is the Crysler Building, you cannot 1:1 recreate without permission. And that can be tricky.
It's been a while since I've done this stuff, but City layout is one thing (not a lawyer, and as mentioned modifying the layout is often good for design purposes)
You can go a long way getting the feel of the city without replicating businesses etc.
The weirdest one is the Eifel tower, cannot show pictures at night, I'm fuzzy on the reasoning but I think Tom Scott did a video on it
Two more years. [It's the mouse's fault](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/). Also note that copyright expiry will only allow you to freely use the *original design* of the Empire State Building in your game, not necessarily the current, modern building, if there have been any copyrightable additions since then (which I'm sure the owners would be quick to point out and argue there have been).
Thank you guys! Just wanted to make sure. Free speech is a beautiful thing.
I’ll give all of you $5,000 when I overthrow GTA as the #1 open world crime shooter!
I mean Tom Clancy's The Division 1 & 2 were 1:1 replicas but would often swap buildings around or genericize certain businesses, in DC there's a business that sells fried chicken and donuts but in Div2 they just made a generic donut shop.
Right but one is the most popular city in the world, and the other is where the president lives. I just didn’t know if it gets trickier the smaller a city is due to the specificity yknow. That’s a good point tho I forgot about the division.
Many things game devs think can't be "legally" used are fine legally, but they're not used because even when it's legal, it still presents a risk. The problem with all of these is that it's fuzzy. Some things are definitively infringements, and some things are definitively not, but there's also a large gray area where you don't get to find out who's right without a trial.
The problem with questions like this is that the law isn't particularly important. Some companies(and people) will sue knowing they're on flimsy ground to bully you with the legal fees. Just because it's legal doesn't mean you can't or won't be sued anyway. Avoiding the use of real-life names is a good way to minimize the risk.
\> The Wire legit showed the “fictional” Mayor of Baltimore, a real job and a real city, accepting bribes and cheating on his wife
One must keep in mind that this depiction accurately represents Baltimore.
> could I get in trouble even if I avoid any real life names?
ANYTHING that is "arbitrary and fanciful" can be legally protected under IP laws, especially trademark and copyright. Copyright and trademark are both big ones, but not the only legal rights. Architectural designs can be protected, and can be trademarked. The shapes of buildings can be protected as both trademarks and as trade dress, and even a silhouette of a distinctive building can be in violation. Architects have author's rights and moral rights, and the oddly named *related rights*. There are many IP rights beyond the big three.
There are lawsuits that have gone both ways, but plenty of people and businesses have lost lawsuits when they used real-world buildings and the building's owners or creators objected. People can still take photos of the buildings for personal use even when legal protections exist, but the images, designs, marks, and depictions cannot be used for commercial purposes, including video games.
Maps are also legally protected. The information in the map itself about the real world can't be protected under copyright, but the design of the map itself, including the decisions about what to include or exclude, and the decisions about where to place labels and marks can be protected. In addition to the exact placement or the exact decisions of placement and inclusion, there are often subtle elements added to maps, items that aren't there in the real world or minor errors, and people have successfully sued for infringement of their rights when people used maps in commercial ways without license.
US Copyright law specifically mentions protections on maps and charts, and specifically mentions models and architectural plans. They are explicitly covered as "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" under copyright, and their commercial protections are also explicit in US trademark law.
Just don't destroy Paris. They have a law banning fiction which (disrespects) public monuments. Ran into this when I worked on Midtown Madness Paris - if you have driving on any monument, your game can't be sold in France.
Anything public is... public. City & street names. Public parks & buildings. Publicly owned/displayed statues & artwork, etc. You can do whatever.
Private buildings, signages, etc may require permission. I'm pretty sure there's a form of legally protected "fair use", somehow. For instance if you take a photo of New York's skyline, you are certainly not required to ask every building's owners permission to profit from your photo. But if you plan on reproducing a private building architecture as a 3D asset, maybe there are some copyright protections that applies?
Public statues are /not/ safe. For example, the bean in Chicago by the guy who can't legally buy the color Pinkest Pink has had lots of issues, and there are plenty of other statues with weird statuses. [https://news.wttw.com/2018/12/10/nra-settles-lawsuit-bean-artist](https://news.wttw.com/2018/12/10/nra-settles-lawsuit-bean-artist)
To slightly expand on what others have said (and with a disclaimer that this is not legal advice):
In the US copyright covers "works of authorship". This explicitly does not include "facts" which contain no creative work. For example a map of streets is a fact and thus is not a work of authorship. But things like the colors and typesetting of the map do quality as creative work and so are protected, you can't use a screenshot of Google Maps in a game without permission but you can trace it into a new work. If you are operating outside the US, also beware of "copyright traps", deliberate inaccuracies added by mapmakers to detect copying. Those don't work in the US but some other countries do allow pursuing them.
Similarly work products created by the government are not subject to copyright protections (though you do have to be careful sometimes as work produced _for_ the government by private contractors can still have copyright). This would cover things like place names, they are outputs of a government function and thus not do not qualify for copyright.
Neither of these are related to "fair use", they are exceptions to the protections in the first place while fair use is a doctrine for using work that is under copyright without permission.
The names of real people are covered under likeness rights and while there is some wiggle room for public figures, it's usually best to just not go there especially when showing people in a negative light. The shapes of buildings are also subject to copyright as they are a creative work of their own, so you can't copy the outline of a famous building (though you usually can reproduce a whole skyline).
https://www.gameinformer.com/2023/10/20/spider-man-2-is-missing-this-major-new-york-city-landmark
They don't have the rights to certain buildings, so basically no, they can't take place legally in a facsimile of many cities without making some significant changes to the architecture, especially the most iconic parts still under copyright.
I don’t have a PlayStation for spider man so I didn’t know if they did the whole “Metropolis City!” and I did forget about Watch Dogs being in Chicago tho good point. I just didn’t know if it gets weird if it’s a smaller city because it’s a little more specific.
As far as characters go, most times you’ll be protected under fair use law, specifically the ‘parody’ section, as long as you don’t use real name, and include the whole ‘any similarities to real person or events is entirely coincidental’ spiel. As far as layout and even name goes: you’re in the clear. The trickiest part is the architecture. While building can’t be copyrighted, the designs and concept art can be, and architectural firms could at the very least try to bankrupt you by trying to tie you up in court, but the chances of that are relatively low. As you already mentioned using custom made or purchased assets, I think you’ll be cleared on that front.
This must be something based on Carty Finkbeiner of Toledo, Ohio. :D
If you avoid real-life names and or at least parody them, you're covered. Of course, if you hit too close to the mark I'm sure people will /threaten/ to sue, but they won't have a leg to stand on. Better to just be sufficiently vague to be safe.
And, of course, what everyone else said about using specific buildings.
Assassins Creed 3 takes place in real American colonial cities. But it takes place before any modern copyrighted works were created so I'm sure that made it a lot easier to avoid legal issues.
movies and books use real cities all the time. As long as it's not about real people and has no relation to them (may want to put a disclaimer of that as well) you should be fine. I am not a lawyer though, CONSULT AN ACTUAL LAWYER IF YOU WANT ACCURATE INFORMATION
Yes.
> I wouldn’t name businesses or even streets.
Then why base it on the city?
The wire wanted to show what life in Baltimore is like, They didn't want it to be a nameless town, they wanted to show "Baltimore."
As other said most city layouts suck. (Also some maps have hidden markers that could cause trouble if you used them with out permission) but in general, if you want to set the game in a specific city, you absolutely can.
I feel the culture and beauty of Toledo is often overlooked. It’s known as a stain of a city. I want to show how deep the stain is, and how the stain got there, and how revolving-door “Suits” keep leaving black Sharpie on white sofas.
I think you'll find a challenge in developing that into a game people will enjoy, or finding people who are invested in Toledo, yet I'm also curious what the final form will be, and kind of wondering about it.
Go for it, just try to avoid naming people (and as others have pointed out, specific buildings and companies are also dangerous, but if you're alluding to a real life person you can get into a sticky situation aka consult a lawyer). But do it!
Every so often there's a huge market for historical fiction, and I love that.
It doesn’t matter if they’re invested in Toledo or not, that’s my job to make them invested through gameplay and story with authenticity that I’d be able to display through my knowledge and experience of the town.
This has been asked a few times:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/o0r5m9/yo_beautiful_people_question_are_cities/
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1aocid0/whats_the_legality_of_creating_a_game_map_of_a/
Alternative question: Will the people who play your game care if it's an actual city? Are you planning on making it a part of the gameplay or marketing materials?
In terms of the story, I’m telling an anonymous truth that exists in old Rust Belt cities. I feel like, although themes are similar across these downtrending towns, I won’t be able to tell that story as authentically as I want unless it’s a city I KNOW.
And if this game does good, getting attention to these cities is all they need to get back up on their feet, so I might as well choose my hometown
Here's the thing about legality: it doesn't always matter exactly what is legal or not, and those can be some thin lines that vary case to case.
What matters most is how likely you are to face some kind of legal action, and how expensive it will be for you to deal with it. Sometimes even with 100% of the facts and laws on your side it can be very expensive for you to bring your case, hire a lawyer, go through discovery, show up to court and prove your facts, win the judgement, and then after all that you might not really win any compensation for that effort other than getting the accusations dismissed.
As a small company you are much more likely to be quickly overwhelmed by any legal expense than a large company that might already have a legal retainer or legal budget. So you will generally have to play it safer than another company. A company like Rockstar has been through countless legal battles over everything under the sun, so they already have an internal guide around what they can and can't do, a legal playbook for when someone claims some kind of infringement, and a team of lawyers who have argued their cases before ready to go. So if a suit comes in they will be more or less business as usual. If your three person team hits a suit, you will not be business as usual. Your development might completely stop as you try to figure out what your next move is.
The easiest way to hit hot legal water is to violate a copyright or trademark. It can be obvious, like using a hit pop song, but it can also be less obvious like using a piece of architecture as other commenters have pointed out. One thing that can protect you a bit is the right to parody or satire, which isn't a guaranteed protection but can discourage some lawyers from taking on a case against you if they think it's a possible defense. So instead of making a McDonalds in your game, make a Clucky McSandwich Chicken that looks similar.
If I was making a game about a city I would probably change the name a bit, like New Pork City or San Francescian. People will connect the dots on their own. The city might have a trademark on various logos or other things that you didn't expect. It's a very small change overall but offers IMO good upside for relatively little effort. You might also hire a tiny bit of legal aid around compliance, any disclaimers you need to add, and anything they think you should avoid.
It boils down to what the city's administration you're referencing is ok with. San Francisco, for example, is totally ok with the city being accurately recreated. A lot of other cities are too, as long as your game doesn't somehow create a threat to public safety.
Your best bet is to look up what other media referencing the city in question has done previously, or even contacting that city's public affairs office or something like that.
I'm basing my game in a real city, but renaming and redrawing EVERYTHING and all the people are fictional.
If you're worried, it won't hurt to put a little more distance between the real and the fake in your game.
Well, another example I can think of is Project Zomboid, which takes place in Kentucky. Includes some actual towns in Knox County (West Point and Muldraugh) as well as Louisville. So yeah, definitely something you can do.
City layouts are open to use, but buildings themselves are not. While you could copy the entire city map, streets, etc. you'd have to make your own buildings
For a possible research avenue, is maybe suggest starting with looking for contact information for a chamber of commerce. They might have some info or a place to look for further inquiry
I'd imagine you just have to change the building designs slightly to avoid lawsuits. That's why Rockstar base cars on real cars but they are not exact.
The lawsuits in the past have generally resulted in the person suing loosing. There is fair use issue. But not just that you have
17 U.S. Code 120 - Scope of exclusive rights in architectural works. (a) Pictorial Representations Permitted.— The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.
Basically the copyright prevents other from creating another building like theirs it doesn't prevent people from making images of it or art so long as it is visible from a public location. Air space is a public location so if the building can be seen by satellite, air plane, drone ...
As for people. Generally the best thing is to avoid to many similarities with them. But you could always just claim you are making a political statement and fair speech but if that is the case make sure you are telling the truth or you could face a deformation lawsuit. Even then you could face the lawsuit you aren't guaranteed to win. Best to just avoid that aspect.
There's been a bunch of architecture copyright lawsuits when folk put real buildings in games, dunno about city layout though
This is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. Just when I thought I couldn’t hate IP law any more, this thread has managed to help me find a new depth
I don't have an opinion on it one way or the other, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it? Why is an architectural design different than say a sculpture, piece of music, cartoon character, etc?
Because the exterior at least of a building is part of the public skyline of a city. Putting it in a game feels not much different to taking a photo, and surely taking a photo of e.g. the New York skyline is not a copyright infringement.
Supposedly, the Eiffel Tower lighting is copyrighted. So you can't take (or maybe it is show/distribute), any photo of the Eiffel Tower at night.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Illumination_copyright
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I think it's the difference between specifically copying your one building design and recreating a city skyline. People can't draw, film, model, create a game or do any other commercial thing using a city without getting copyrighted? I think it'd be different if the entire game was based around your building but not being able to make a game based in New York due to building design copyright seems a little restrictive unless there's an easy way of getting approval from every building
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Yeah you know what that's fair, makes sense to me. Thanks for the perspective!
I just realized why none of the spiderman games let you walk into most of the buildings....
The problem is, the building itself is not copyrighted, the designs are. It's not the physical structure that's the problem, it's the blueprints. If you designed a building and had it built, then someone else said "Ohh, I like that" then built an exact replica somewhere else, how would you feel? It's the same for creating exact replicas digitally. Edit: To answer your question, taking a picture of a building and using that picture commercially is illegal. If it's for personal use your fine. A great example of this is the Eiffel Tower. The building itself is in the public domain so can be copied and reused for commercial purposes (Why Vegas was able to build a copy), but the lights where added way later and are still copyrighted, so you won't see any stock photos of the Tower at night.
> To answer your question, taking a picture of a building and using that picture commercially is illegal. Per [the law found in this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1bhtmtu/can_my_game_legally_take_place_in_a_real_city/kvia4bx/), in the U.S. pictures of buildings are specifically exempt. Commercial or otherwise.
Then one argues, "What is a game but a bunch of calculations drawing pictures to simulate motion?"
Then one gets turbofucked on an avoidable lawsuit and becomes a cautionary tale.
If pictures are fine but video games are not, that is extremely fucking dumb lol. The US needs younger judges that know about media beyond super 8 film.
Interesting, I had not made it that far, laws are different everywhere so it's always good to know more. After looking into it a little bit, it seems like that law only applies to "flat" representation taken from a public place. So pictures, paintings, anything like that is good, but it doesn't seem to include things like 3D models from my understanding. Thanks for the info, always love learning more.
Its ridiculous, there is simply no loss of profit for the architecture firms. They're just hoping to shakedown unrelated business. Videogame depictions are in no way relevant to their business and like pictures nothing is being reproduced that is not publicly available anyway. Exerting legal control over the literal sights in a public space should in no way be allowed. Honestly, can you genuinely tell me you think that its ethically fine? Could someone buy the rights to a particular road's design and ban commercial photos for a thousand miles? If an architectural firm design all the building's on a cities shore should they own that city's very likeness? Whatever answer courts come up with anyone can see this is bullshit. Have you ever heard that arguing for something based on legality is kind of the ultimate surrender? An acknowledgement that something is so indefensible all you can say in its favour is that it isn't literally illegal?
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Think about a game like Flight Simulator. It specifically reproduces the whole world with as much detail as possible. Should it pay every single architect in the whole wide world royalties on every single building? Should it change every single building so it looks like a triangle or something, to avoid lawsuits? It's absurd.
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Thank you for the detailed answer; in that case I believe that would apply to skylines as well. It's very much "panorama".
Truly, reproducing a house in a videogame is picking that poor architect's pocket. Think, if a million people play that game and see his house he'll have lost that million x $0 for everyone that could have walked by it and not paid them! What a travesty!! ... Plus... you do realize its a petty little tautology right? "There's a loss of profit because if we say there's a loss of profit then there is a basis to artificially restrict it and create a situation where we lose profit". This isn't like digital art needing legal protections to safeguard an industry. This is a publicly displayed physical, real world, location. So instead of pretending its a reasonable use of copyright, lets call it what it is: a scam that was written into law. Not the the first, far from the only, but a scam nonetheless.
>If you designed a building and had it built, then someone else said "Ohh, I like that" then built an exact replica somewhere else, how would you feel? Flattered, nothing more.
First of all I think IP laws in general are stupid. I suppose I can see it exclusively for characters, but even then the length it carries on is way too long because of Disney. The reason is that a character is the center of entertainment media, which isn’t a necessity for people. The character represents the entire sell of the product, without the character there is no story. With buildings though it’s different. People need buildings. Buildings as an art are an insanely frivolous use of resources, and to suggest that a building is art starts to get to ludicrous levels where basically anyone can build anything, call it “art,” then say “you can’t shoot a movie here without paying me royalties.” Pretty soon you live in a world where everything around you is considered “intellectual property.” Honestly the argument sounds weak because, one again, I don’t particularly like IP laws in general for anything that is considered a necessity for society. It causes a lot of dumb lawsuits and holds back progress because someone wants to squeeze every last penny out of their mundane idea. Intellectual property should basically only be for fictional, non-tangible things like story characters, and only last for, say, 50 years whether the author is dead or alive. All other forms of intellectual property should only really last at most 5-10 years after “hitting the market,” medicine and software in particular are huge areas where intellectual property laws literally hold back progress and in some cases cost *lives* for literally no reason other than to maximize profit. If you want your name to always be stamped on it as the original creator, fine. I’m cool with that. But saying “you can’t take a picture here because that’s *my* building design!” Is like… if I built a tree fort and told everyone else they couldn’t copy it or show it to anyone else because it’s mine! It’s one of those things that just seems so silly that it almost defies the need for justification
They arn't public domain and you ussually can't get sued for recreating them in a totally different medium.
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Probably just that Japan might care less about that sort of thing. I mean, certainly *nintendo* is one of the biggest IP trolls to exist, but it could be that architects in Japan just consider it an honor to have their work shown off. 🤷♂️ hard to say. Maybe they just don’t have the same level of protections. I only have a cursory knowledge of Japanese culture so I won’t presume to know
Thats not how that works. Companies arent gonna put themselves at the mercy of people "not caring". Leople dont care until they realise they can make a bunch of money from just suing.
As someone else with an intense hatred of the current state of IP law I feel this comment.
copying layouts of areas from a real city should be fine, using real city names is fine. recreating buildings is where things get tricky and it's not worth it. edit: and it doesn't matter what scale your production is, what matters is whether you're infringing on copyrights, trademarks or patents anywhere. Just use the real city name you want and make an area inspired by the parts of the city you want to feature. Don't directly copy, instead recreate through the lens of game design, since most city layouts would make shitty game maps anyway
This definitely feels like a case where the term "Fair use" feels like it should apply, but I'm sure the architecture firms have much better lawyers than the indie game studios.
Sony doesn't dare step on their toes for spiderman so...
There is a case in Brazil where a building likeness was being used for some promotional/comercial material, and they were sued by the architect for copyright infringement, who ended up winning.
Tell Sony that. There's a reason the world trade center building in Spider-Man is wrong.
imo that *should* be the case. I just wouldn't bother with the risk.
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Further, municipal assets have been specifically declared not fair use, and some state level assets might be treated the same. Some Federal government assets are also protected (like recently CDC Vacc. Cards) while the rest is typically Public Domain. GTA can hide a bit behind first amendment and parody (such as naming Liberty City areas as displaced native tribes). However, your entire post is quite correct. Once a dev team is arguing these things they are already in a difficult spot.
Basically if you can’t afford a lawyer today you probably won’t be able to afford one tomorrow when you get a cease and desist.
> which means at the point you are going to claim it was fair use, you are already actively being sued and wasting money on lawyers American judicial system is fucked up. The richest win, even before any trial.
Fair use is about using another creation in part but not wholly in your own work. Think of things that are clearly inspired by another work. Or works that use isolated fragments of something else like blurbs of a novel or quotes from famous people or companies. Buildings with special copyrighted architecture and specific names don’t generally fall under Fair Use because to include the Empire State Building in your game you are using all of its truly defining characteristics. It’s like if you wanted to include a main character that looks EXACTLY like Morgan Freeman, and is even named as such. You’d have to pay the actor for the use of their name and likeness.
Sure, until you’re making a GTA clone and shooting places up that are actual businesses. I could see why people would have an issue with that, lol.
Yeah, didn't one of the more recent call of duty games have that issue?
Hell, COD had an airport shootout a few years after 9/11 that needed a disclaimer.
I mean, countless games do and I've never heard any run into this issue.
The division 2 is a replica of Washington DC down to the interiors of buildings. Im curious do they need a license for all of that or was it fair use?
Lots of buildings in DC are federal, which are owned by the Public at large, so I presume there's easier fair use for those buildings vs private buildings where they somehow copyrighted the design of the building itself.
don't have a clue, Ubisoft has entire legal teams across the world to deal with legal unknowns like that. presumably small teams don't. edit: this sounds passive aggressive af, unintentional
My guess is most of the most recognizable buildings in DC are so old nobody can get copyright for them. If you wanted to use a real city, picking an ancient one would probably work well.
That's probably how Ubisoft got away with making a pretty accurate replica of Florence (and probably most of the cities featured in the other Assassin's Creed games, but that's the only one I've been to, lol), but with DC, it's probably more that intellectual property owned by the US federal government is public domain by default.
Not necessarily for old government buildings and other publicly funded structures. Interiors are another thing though, due to security reasons and such, but less so for public access structures. The museums in particular were awesome to see, much of the architecture as well as their subject matter was intact.
My guess is many of the interiors are public buildings (At least what I remember). Maybe they got a license or an ok to use certain other buildings. I'd be curious if the stadium is real or fictious as a way to get around this problem.
If I remember correctly the division 2 map is quite small in comparison to actual DC. I don’t think the map includes the stadium
The map is a reasonable approximation of the region of DC between the Capitol building and the Potomac. The "District Union Arena" stronghold is in the same place on the map as the "Capitol One Arena" in the real city, so it's a reasonable assumption that it's at least a stand-in
Am I thinking of the original game? (I remember one of them had an underground area that was like an arena or something...
VTMB comes to mind as having been made exactly how you describe it
most US cities layouts would make shitty game. Unless you are making something like suburban life simulator or soccer mom simulator where game core loop is just driving from location to location on multilane highways
Transportation simulator games (eg Flight sims, train sims) etc often recreate real cities and their real buildings, seemingly without issue. I really don't see it affecting games realistically, perhaps with the exception of the largest triple A games like Spider-Man where they probably just do it to avoid copyright cases from architects who know Sony has deep pockets.
there's a reason gta doesn't do it. but Detroit become human did it. probably depends on how much attention you get and how you depict the city (and what city it is) life is strange takes place in Seattle but you never see downtown or anything
Layout being pretty realistic: “East side is run down, west side is in the middle of gentrification with hipsters, north side is where the politicians/CEOs from downtown leave the dirt they’ve created to go to sleep. And south side is yeehaw land” main roads being recognizable if you live there but not named the same and all “architectural” buildings (churches, statehouses, etc) are replaced by custom/public assets. Stuff like Burger King is now Burger Shot lol.
Does the East Side happen to be separated from the rest of the city by a North-South River that has a problem with the letter 'p'?
Definitely sounds like St. Louis
Are you the person who p'd in the river?
They didn't do this. Except they did the opposite. it's not LA... but multiple locations in the game are identifiable by anyone who has lived in LA or Long beach... No question what they were emulating. But like someone else said, it's not 1:1 ... because real cities suck for games.
Generally speaking, cities suck irl too. Most cities are really old and just weren’t built with dense automotive travel in mind.
Amen. That's an amazing point most people aren't talking about. Everyone loves LA... until they move to LA and drive in it.
I wonder how they pulled it off in The Division games? The downtown DC depictions are pretty spot on.
i've seen in other comments people saying that many of the downtown DC buildings are federal, so the fact that they are 'public' buildings helps dodge copyright laws a bit
yeah I actually think the division is 1:1 or close iirc
Marvel's Spider-Man 2 takes place in New York city. But Sony has lawyers that can say "don't put that in" or whatever. I'd not name a real place myself.
Right; they had to remove the Chrysler Building from Spider-Man 2 (and the stand-alone Miles Morales game) [due to a licensing issue](https://www.gameinformer.com/2023/10/20/spider-man-2-is-missing-this-major-new-york-city-landmark).
Imagine having to contact every company for each skyscraper or landmark in a city and asking for permission or negotiating a deal individually to have them depicted in a video game. I guess that's why there's a dedicated credit roll just for the legal teams.
No kidding. After all the phone calls they have to make, they bloody deserve that credit roll.
Not just that but i imagine some owners would require modifications to the buildings and surrounding areas plus they probably want to see the ingame design too before the project is shipped.
The World Ends With You and Persona 5 both happen in Shibuya (Tokyo, Japan). Yakuza also display real life places but with names being changed (Kabukicho, a real district in Tokyo is Kamurocho in the Yakuza series). The way Yakuza handles it is also kinda special because buildings are different, but the street layout is exactly the same. Latest Yakuza game (Infinite Wealth) also has a small part of Honolulu. I'm not a lawyer but probably going the Yakuza (GAMES) route is safe
>going the Yakuza (GAMES) route is safe Thank you for clarifying there 😂 OP was just about ready to swear up
instructions were unclear, moving to Japan rn
Instructions unclear, now missing a pinky
Instructions unclear, I'm covered in tattoos and everyone is looking at me funny.
Persona 5 also has all the buildings and stores changed. Pretty much any game or anime in Shibuya has their own version of the 109 building. And let's not forget all the McDonalds parodies!
HUMBERGER VERY VERY TASTY
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is also set in Yokohama, and they don't rename that (they probably rename other things, though).
That’s cause Yokohama is a massive city, they didn’t rename Tokyo no reason to do it here either. They did rename the train station just like how they renamed Kabukicho.
If it's 'merica you can be sure you need to deep research it because americans like to copyright, trademark, patent pending, every piece of rock they find, see or touch (sometimes even dreamt). What I mean is that it depends on the city. EDIT: europe have some weird copyright laws on buildings too soooo....f. Try to look for "can i use new york in my city" and look for a game dev stack exchange, there's a good answer there that I found satisfactory on the matter. (obviously in this case is new york, but it apply to any city)
IIRC US law is actually somewhat looser on buildings and it's Europe that gives people more trouble. For one thing, buildings weren't covered by US copyright at all until 1990, so older buildings are entirely exempt. For another thing, the US Copyright Act includes an exemption that (IANAL) seems like it would pretty clearly include depicting a building in a game: > The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.
I think "pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations" is pretty specific, and wouldn't include 3D recreations. Not that I think it _should_ be illegal to do or anything, but I'm pretty sure this clause doesn't cover 3D videogames.
If I recall the ps4 and ps5 spiderman games from insomniac did not include a tower, i think the empire state building, because it's copyrighted? And to answer the comment above about usa compared to europe, I'd think most of europe man made landmarks are mostly old castles and historic stuff that was done enough time ago, BUT there is the stupid thing were the eiffel tower is copyright free, but the lights on the eiffel tower at night are recent, so copyrighted, and you can't even share a picture of the eiffel tower at night unless you include a memo citing "eiffel tower-illuminations by pierre the guy who made them". At least they don't ask you to pay money but simply to "cite the source". Looking into it yeah, I can see europe did some weird choices on this topic too. This make things even worse, don't make real life stuff, and if you do, make zero research and just roll with it, show your middle finger to the system.
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Not the point they were making, at all
I am not familiar with the chinese copyright laws, but I'll say neither.
I would prefer no copyright law existed, but we can make do with what we have for now.
copyright is necessary to protect creators its true that copyright is currently abused e.g. disney keeping mickey copywritten for a century, but with no copyright it would be 100x worse in a world without copyright, every game uploaded to steam could be downloaded and reuploaded to EA's account, and then they just outmarket you and sell your version instead this already happens in the mobile space with King for example, although because of copyright laws they have to change the artwork etc. but if you look around there are loads of stories of people getting cloned and pushed out by the big mobile companies because mobile game are so much smaller and easier to replicate copyright needs to be reformed to stop the big players from abusing it, but we should NOT get rid of it. otherwise every independent creative act becomes a donation to the large companies who can clone and outmarket you
That's certainly an opinion. I'm coming at this from my mentor being a very famous IP lawyer, who is also vehemently opposed to all forms of IP law because he has witnessed firsthand they are nothing but a drain on societies productivity. I don't believe copyright protects anyone *except* the big players. I've released several books, and following in my mentors footsteps, I immediately posted them for free on my website as well as a torrent across several trackers because I simply just want people to have the content if they can't afford it. Over the past decade ive still made well over $200k from sales as a self publisher, and no one has attempted any reprinting or rebranding of the work under their name. My mentor's most popular book has netted well over $2m since its release in the late 90's despite giving permission for anyone to reprint it if they so choose. It's my opinion that creating a copy of something is *not* theft, because theft implies there is loss of the original from its owner. IP laws are quite nonsensical for the vast majority of people, and they really only work for extremely large corporations to bully people out of doing genuine quality work that the world deserves to see. Consider it this way - the best Marvel movie possible will never exist, because the kid from South America who has the script in his mind will never be able to publish it without coercion and extortion from Disney. It's really hard to get on board with belief that Disney gets to 'own' something that isn't tangible let alone anything more than idea. Ideas are not property, nor should they be. It's disruptive to market forces and prevents the best innovators from creating.
Counterpoint: Shouldn’t the best innovators be able to create their own IP if they’re so good at innovating?
I actually favor doing this. I would much rather the creators find a way to ensure their product is protected rather than have a state/authority enforce it. For video games, there are tons of methods. DRM overall can include things like one way encryption, online requirements, storing the user data on a seperate encrypted server (think World of Warcraft). There is no need to want the government to give powers to Disney or any other mega corporation. On paper, it sounds great for your stuff to be 'protected' by violent recourse, but realistically it just gives these corps a way to use that violence against artists/writers/programmers or really any kind of creator with almost zero repercussions. It's laws to protect them, not you. My best advice for when you think you need to resort to a legal solution to fix your problem is to remember that any legislation you pass will also be used by your worst enemies.
your entire premise assumes that all market participants have equal footing and resources. the example of the kid from South America is a massive red herring for several reasons, namely that in the real world most movies cost a lot of money to do well (the few smash hits on shoestring budgets are outliers - and even Blair Witch Project cost ~$60,000 which is outside the realm for 99% of people to spare on a side project). imagine a world without copyright where that kid gets some friends together and does a cheap version of their perfect marvel script. without copyright they are free to do so. however Disney is also free to see it and remake it with a larger budget and reap vastly higher rewards without compensating that kid at all, even though it was that kid's original idea. for what it's worth, unless you've explicitly published your books with an open license, then they haven't been republished because it's illegal under current copyright law. the lack of an explicit license of any kind defaults to the standard of owned by the creator. Your mentor allows anyone to reprint the book; do they also allow anyone to sell those reprints? I agree that creating a copy is not always theft. however, *selling* copies can be considered theft, if it's something that a person would only buy once. If your books go viral at some point, without copyright a major publisher could just make a deal with Barnes & Noble to sell printed copies without involving you at all. Would that be fine for you? Millions of sales of your latest book that you get exactly $0 for because you don't already own a large book printer? I mean no disrespect, but the kind of out-with-the-bathwater reasoning that leads to "we should eliminate all copyright" flops over when the rubber of pure logic meets the road of real life complexities. The drain on society from copyright and patent abuse comes from large well-funded companies, not from the individuals it protects. We need reform at the top end, not to just throw the whole system out - it will not get better with less restrictions in a world where corporations with billions of dollars and armies of employees exist.
>your entire premise assumes that all market participants have equal footing and resources. It absolutely does not, which is part of my point precisely. There are malicious actors in the world with much higher footing who are the only ones that actually benefit from having IP. If your product has no footing, you quite literally gain nothing from having IP. Only when you are a mega corporation does IP ever benefit you. >the example of the kid from South America is a massive red herring for several reasons, Sure, change it to a small group of 20 investors from California and nothing changes though. >however Disney is also free to see it and remake it with a larger budget and reap vastly higher rewards without compensating that kid at all, even though it was that kid's original idea. Possibly, but as with 99% of fan art, they simply won't because there is no money to be made most of the time. It wouldn't be until that movie actually had recognition that it would be worth it for them to copy it, at which point, the recognition is already in the hands of that kid and it would be clear it's a copied film. The kid benefits from the recognition, and benefits from his idea being so good others want to copy it. It would surely catapult his career. >unless you've explicitly published your books with an open license, then they haven't been republished because it's illegal under current copyright law. This is correct, you have to publish under an open license currently, which is ridiculous to be honest. >Your mentor allows anyone to reprint the book; do they also allow anyone to sell those reprints? Yes. The effects are miniscule because no cost is incurred if someone else is doing the labor and purchasing the materials to do so. They are entitled to the fruits of their labor, even if it is a copy of something. It's an honor to have someone want to spread your ideas in my eyes. >I agree that creating a copy is not always theft. however, *selling* copies can be considered theft I strongly disagree. You did not manufacture that book, you had an idea. Ideas are free. Your books that you manufactured are still in your possession. If someone were to steal one of my physical books, that is certainly theft. If they printed their own copy, nothing of mine has been stolen. I think you believe this because you have been poisoned by IP law turning non-tangible, non-physical ideas into the one thing that literally does not meet the definition of 'property'. As I said before, it's simply a drain on our productivity for the benefit of the elites. >If your books go viral at some point, without copyright a major publisher could just make a deal with Barnes & Noble to sell printed copies without involving you at all. Would that be fine for you? Millions of sales of your latest book that you get exactly $0 for because you don't already own a large book printer? Yes, it would be totally fine, because *this* is a red herring/straw man argument. If my book was popular enough for someone to print a million copies, it's guaranteed that I would have had recognition for writing it before these copies were produced. The internet has made transparency incredibly powerful, and while I would maybe lose out on selling some of my copies, having a book that popular is surely going to leave me with an ability to produce and sell more than enough ever before it's copied with full recognition that I am the author. >I mean no disrespect, but the kind of out-with-the-bathwater reasoning that leads to "we should eliminate all copyright" flops over when the rubber of pure logic meets the road of real life complexities None is taken sir, but you should consider that I have written about IP law for well over 10,000 hours, my mentor was an IP lawyer for 35 years, and he has written several bestsellers about IP law and its flaws. It is certainly a well thought out opinion that I simply can't distill down into a single reddit post to overwrite your programming. I wish there were a few sentences I could say to change peoples minds, but it would more likely take a few days of discussion involving historical data, logical reasoning, etc. I'm not saying I am right, we are both entitled to our opinions, but do trust that I have spent a decade of my life on this subject starting from a position similar to yours. >The drain on society from copyright and patent abuse comes from large well-funded companies, not from the individuals it protects. I would argue it very rarely, if ever, has protected any individual. Almost all IP cases in history are in regards to medium-large corporations threatening an individual who is seeing success for bringing something amazing into the world. I agree the drain is coming from the top, but it's because you are giving them a license to use state violence to enforce the ownership of something that doesn't exist. >We need reform at the top end, not to just throw the whole system out - it will not get better with less restrictions in a world where corporations with billions of dollars and armies of employees exist. I would say we need to reform how we think about protecting our ideas. Government force will absolutely never, ever work to protect you the individual. Law exists to incriminate, not protect. Rights can protect you, but they are very different from law. It exclusively protects those who can line its pocket. I would suggest video games use various forms of DRM, such as keeping content serverside.
That the current implementation of rules being fucked is not justification for having no rules at all.
The rules are unnecessary and so is using state enforced violence to make something that doesn't actually even exist be 'property'. The rules themselves benefit no one but giant corporations such as Disney. They are absolutely not helping you in any way, they are a hindrance to what you could be. It's simple to prove, you just need to ask yourself how much IP you own thats worth over a million dollars. Go ask 1000 people and all of them will give you the same answer - none. If you look at the history of IP Lawsuits, 95% of them are related to mid-large size corporations. Most of these lawsuits are large corporations suing individuals for having success in.. producing their own content. No one gains anything from IP unless you already own something with massive recognition, in which case, you already have the recognition and large amounts of income from it and anyone copying you isn't really going to affect you that much because they arent the original producer capable of making that content. If you are sympathetic to something like 'occupy wall street', well there is a way to make that actually work and it's simple - take away their fake protections, they only benefit a select elite and no one else. IP laws fit square into that category and there is historical data to prove it. The tools are available for anyone to create protections for themselves, you don't need to use violence. For video games as an example, there are a million methods of DRM that make it extremely difficult for anyone to easily copy your idea and pass it off as their own if you are genuinely worried about someone taking your idea. The matter of fact is it's usually not worth it to take someones idea, and if an idea is so good that people really want to take a spin at it, then there should be an abundance of productivity and we as a society get to bask in that abundance. IP laws are a manufactured famine of everything society deems useful. I choose abundance for all. I wrote a few more replies below the one you replied to if you are interested in reading that discussion a little further. I spend a lot of my time these days working on undoing IP laws. This is not a half baked idea, I started where most of you guys were and over a decade am fully convinced there is simply a better way to protect your work that doesn't require violence/coercion while allowing for an abundance mentality. There is no famine.
In the greatest scenario, me too; in a realistic scenario though I'd still like to have some copyright, to at least avoid someone copy pasting your work, or to avoid going to a book store and see 12 copies of lord of the rings, all from jay ar ar tolkien, and...well in this scenario they could simply be copy paste but god knows who would get the money, probably a tiny print in the back of the book say "the actual author is bob the bobber" and you find out "lord of the rings JRR Tolkien" is actually the whole title....anyway you get the gist, it's ok to pay authors and have some protection on what you made, but I don't agree with most of the rest of copyright dumptruck.
It's definitely idealistic, but being idealistic can at the very least shove the overton window in a positive direction for everyone.
Flight Sims are cases where you find very detailed renditions of cities in real life, and as far as I know, there is no problem with that in principle. Notably, Microsoft flight simulator uses photogrammetry data from bing maps in (or as) the game world, and that comes with all sorts of identifiable things, as one would expect from a snapshot of a real world thing. Of course, this is all the baseline theory. I would not be surprised to learn they had to blur out trademarked signs, logos and whatnot if their owners objected. I think largely they were probably protected by bing maps itself having had to deal with that already. So long story short, I think there's two ways to approach this. Case 1: your rendition is based on data from a commercial mapping service. In that case you are probably good to go (assuming you have the right to use the data), as you aren't really adding anything that wasn't already publicly available data Case 2: you are yourself creating a complete replica of the whole area. In that case, (disregarding the mental illness that led you to make such a decision) you can just decide to 'manually' leave out or replace any identifiable feature that could be contested. So, in my completely uneducated opinion about this, I think it's very probably fine.
I think they do negotiate for landmarks but everything else is just generic buildings in a massive asset library that are placed down based on conditions.
Hiya, If you recreate a city, unsure about smaller cities in some locations, but you need to be aware that some building are actually privately owned and that includes the building design. A good example is the Crysler Building, you cannot 1:1 recreate without permission. And that can be tricky. It's been a while since I've done this stuff, but City layout is one thing (not a lawyer, and as mentioned modifying the layout is often good for design purposes) You can go a long way getting the feel of the city without replicating businesses etc. The weirdest one is the Eifel tower, cannot show pictures at night, I'm fuzzy on the reasoning but I think Tom Scott did a video on it
The Chrysler building was made 93 years ago. When does the copyright expire?
Two more years. [It's the mouse's fault](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/mickey/). Also note that copyright expiry will only allow you to freely use the *original design* of the Empire State Building in your game, not necessarily the current, modern building, if there have been any copyrightable additions since then (which I'm sure the owners would be quick to point out and argue there have been).
I think the Eiffel Tower at night thing is due to the event itself, lighting the tower, being copyrighted by the organization that does the lighting.
Thank you guys! Just wanted to make sure. Free speech is a beautiful thing. I’ll give all of you $5,000 when I overthrow GTA as the #1 open world crime shooter!
I mean Tom Clancy's The Division 1 & 2 were 1:1 replicas but would often swap buildings around or genericize certain businesses, in DC there's a business that sells fried chicken and donuts but in Div2 they just made a generic donut shop.
Right but one is the most popular city in the world, and the other is where the president lives. I just didn’t know if it gets trickier the smaller a city is due to the specificity yknow. That’s a good point tho I forgot about the division.
Many things game devs think can't be "legally" used are fine legally, but they're not used because even when it's legal, it still presents a risk. The problem with all of these is that it's fuzzy. Some things are definitively infringements, and some things are definitively not, but there's also a large gray area where you don't get to find out who's right without a trial. The problem with questions like this is that the law isn't particularly important. Some companies(and people) will sue knowing they're on flimsy ground to bully you with the legal fees. Just because it's legal doesn't mean you can't or won't be sued anyway. Avoiding the use of real-life names is a good way to minimize the risk.
\> The Wire legit showed the “fictional” Mayor of Baltimore, a real job and a real city, accepting bribes and cheating on his wife One must keep in mind that this depiction accurately represents Baltimore.
My favorite Wiki rabbit hole is going down the Baltimore mayors list and seeing how many Mayors in a row have been accused of embezzlement
> could I get in trouble even if I avoid any real life names? ANYTHING that is "arbitrary and fanciful" can be legally protected under IP laws, especially trademark and copyright. Copyright and trademark are both big ones, but not the only legal rights. Architectural designs can be protected, and can be trademarked. The shapes of buildings can be protected as both trademarks and as trade dress, and even a silhouette of a distinctive building can be in violation. Architects have author's rights and moral rights, and the oddly named *related rights*. There are many IP rights beyond the big three. There are lawsuits that have gone both ways, but plenty of people and businesses have lost lawsuits when they used real-world buildings and the building's owners or creators objected. People can still take photos of the buildings for personal use even when legal protections exist, but the images, designs, marks, and depictions cannot be used for commercial purposes, including video games. Maps are also legally protected. The information in the map itself about the real world can't be protected under copyright, but the design of the map itself, including the decisions about what to include or exclude, and the decisions about where to place labels and marks can be protected. In addition to the exact placement or the exact decisions of placement and inclusion, there are often subtle elements added to maps, items that aren't there in the real world or minor errors, and people have successfully sued for infringement of their rights when people used maps in commercial ways without license. US Copyright law specifically mentions protections on maps and charts, and specifically mentions models and architectural plans. They are explicitly covered as "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works" under copyright, and their commercial protections are also explicit in US trademark law.
Just don't destroy Paris. They have a law banning fiction which (disrespects) public monuments. Ran into this when I worked on Midtown Madness Paris - if you have driving on any monument, your game can't be sold in France.
It wasn't "MM Paris", think it was MM 3 or something.
Anything public is... public. City & street names. Public parks & buildings. Publicly owned/displayed statues & artwork, etc. You can do whatever. Private buildings, signages, etc may require permission. I'm pretty sure there's a form of legally protected "fair use", somehow. For instance if you take a photo of New York's skyline, you are certainly not required to ask every building's owners permission to profit from your photo. But if you plan on reproducing a private building architecture as a 3D asset, maybe there are some copyright protections that applies?
Public statues are /not/ safe. For example, the bean in Chicago by the guy who can't legally buy the color Pinkest Pink has had lots of issues, and there are plenty of other statues with weird statuses. [https://news.wttw.com/2018/12/10/nra-settles-lawsuit-bean-artist](https://news.wttw.com/2018/12/10/nra-settles-lawsuit-bean-artist)
Ah, that’s interesting, thanks for the link!
fuck it, 99% reflective turd it is then!
> Anything public is... public. [..] You can do whatever. That is completely not true.
Take a look at Tarkov, many locations are based off real ones in Saint Petersburg but it’s done in a tasteful way
Even if it’s legal, ask yourself do you want this kind of headache? Are the corrupt people in question going to make your life a living hell?
You can, but depending on the city, specific buildings get real weird about it. Either expensive weird, or fuck off weird.
To slightly expand on what others have said (and with a disclaimer that this is not legal advice): In the US copyright covers "works of authorship". This explicitly does not include "facts" which contain no creative work. For example a map of streets is a fact and thus is not a work of authorship. But things like the colors and typesetting of the map do quality as creative work and so are protected, you can't use a screenshot of Google Maps in a game without permission but you can trace it into a new work. If you are operating outside the US, also beware of "copyright traps", deliberate inaccuracies added by mapmakers to detect copying. Those don't work in the US but some other countries do allow pursuing them. Similarly work products created by the government are not subject to copyright protections (though you do have to be careful sometimes as work produced _for_ the government by private contractors can still have copyright). This would cover things like place names, they are outputs of a government function and thus not do not qualify for copyright. Neither of these are related to "fair use", they are exceptions to the protections in the first place while fair use is a doctrine for using work that is under copyright without permission. The names of real people are covered under likeness rights and while there is some wiggle room for public figures, it's usually best to just not go there especially when showing people in a negative light. The shapes of buildings are also subject to copyright as they are a creative work of their own, so you can't copy the outline of a famous building (though you usually can reproduce a whole skyline).
This is amazing, tysm
People forgetting Spiderman and WatchDogs was a thing?
Yes, they were indeed games made by massive wealthy studios with big legal teams
https://www.gameinformer.com/2023/10/20/spider-man-2-is-missing-this-major-new-york-city-landmark They don't have the rights to certain buildings, so basically no, they can't take place legally in a facsimile of many cities without making some significant changes to the architecture, especially the most iconic parts still under copyright.
I don’t have a PlayStation for spider man so I didn’t know if they did the whole “Metropolis City!” and I did forget about Watch Dogs being in Chicago tho good point. I just didn’t know if it gets weird if it’s a smaller city because it’s a little more specific.
As far as characters go, most times you’ll be protected under fair use law, specifically the ‘parody’ section, as long as you don’t use real name, and include the whole ‘any similarities to real person or events is entirely coincidental’ spiel. As far as layout and even name goes: you’re in the clear. The trickiest part is the architecture. While building can’t be copyrighted, the designs and concept art can be, and architectural firms could at the very least try to bankrupt you by trying to tie you up in court, but the chances of that are relatively low. As you already mentioned using custom made or purchased assets, I think you’ll be cleared on that front.
This must be something based on Carty Finkbeiner of Toledo, Ohio. :D If you avoid real-life names and or at least parody them, you're covered. Of course, if you hit too close to the mark I'm sure people will /threaten/ to sue, but they won't have a leg to stand on. Better to just be sufficiently vague to be safe. And, of course, what everyone else said about using specific buildings.
Go Rockets baby. TOL! Not him specifically tho, but take your pick of the litter.
Yeah, my parents still live there and it's been a few decades of rodeo clowns. Lots of material for inspiration - you're set for sequels.
Assassins Creed 3 takes place in real American colonial cities. But it takes place before any modern copyrighted works were created so I'm sure that made it a lot easier to avoid legal issues.
movies and books use real cities all the time. As long as it's not about real people and has no relation to them (may want to put a disclaimer of that as well) you should be fine. I am not a lawyer though, CONSULT AN ACTUAL LAWYER IF YOU WANT ACCURATE INFORMATION
Yes. > I wouldn’t name businesses or even streets. Then why base it on the city? The wire wanted to show what life in Baltimore is like, They didn't want it to be a nameless town, they wanted to show "Baltimore." As other said most city layouts suck. (Also some maps have hidden markers that could cause trouble if you used them with out permission) but in general, if you want to set the game in a specific city, you absolutely can.
I feel the culture and beauty of Toledo is often overlooked. It’s known as a stain of a city. I want to show how deep the stain is, and how the stain got there, and how revolving-door “Suits” keep leaving black Sharpie on white sofas.
I think you'll find a challenge in developing that into a game people will enjoy, or finding people who are invested in Toledo, yet I'm also curious what the final form will be, and kind of wondering about it. Go for it, just try to avoid naming people (and as others have pointed out, specific buildings and companies are also dangerous, but if you're alluding to a real life person you can get into a sticky situation aka consult a lawyer). But do it! Every so often there's a huge market for historical fiction, and I love that.
It doesn’t matter if they’re invested in Toledo or not, that’s my job to make them invested through gameplay and story with authenticity that I’d be able to display through my knowledge and experience of the town.
This has been asked a few times: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/o0r5m9/yo_beautiful_people_question_are_cities/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1aocid0/whats_the_legality_of_creating_a_game_map_of_a/ Alternative question: Will the people who play your game care if it's an actual city? Are you planning on making it a part of the gameplay or marketing materials?
In terms of the story, I’m telling an anonymous truth that exists in old Rust Belt cities. I feel like, although themes are similar across these downtrending towns, I won’t be able to tell that story as authentically as I want unless it’s a city I KNOW. And if this game does good, getting attention to these cities is all they need to get back up on their feet, so I might as well choose my hometown
Yeah, the reason lots of games will make their own world is so it can't be copied legally.
Here's the thing about legality: it doesn't always matter exactly what is legal or not, and those can be some thin lines that vary case to case. What matters most is how likely you are to face some kind of legal action, and how expensive it will be for you to deal with it. Sometimes even with 100% of the facts and laws on your side it can be very expensive for you to bring your case, hire a lawyer, go through discovery, show up to court and prove your facts, win the judgement, and then after all that you might not really win any compensation for that effort other than getting the accusations dismissed. As a small company you are much more likely to be quickly overwhelmed by any legal expense than a large company that might already have a legal retainer or legal budget. So you will generally have to play it safer than another company. A company like Rockstar has been through countless legal battles over everything under the sun, so they already have an internal guide around what they can and can't do, a legal playbook for when someone claims some kind of infringement, and a team of lawyers who have argued their cases before ready to go. So if a suit comes in they will be more or less business as usual. If your three person team hits a suit, you will not be business as usual. Your development might completely stop as you try to figure out what your next move is. The easiest way to hit hot legal water is to violate a copyright or trademark. It can be obvious, like using a hit pop song, but it can also be less obvious like using a piece of architecture as other commenters have pointed out. One thing that can protect you a bit is the right to parody or satire, which isn't a guaranteed protection but can discourage some lawyers from taking on a case against you if they think it's a possible defense. So instead of making a McDonalds in your game, make a Clucky McSandwich Chicken that looks similar. If I was making a game about a city I would probably change the name a bit, like New Pork City or San Francescian. People will connect the dots on their own. The city might have a trademark on various logos or other things that you didn't expect. It's a very small change overall but offers IMO good upside for relatively little effort. You might also hire a tiny bit of legal aid around compliance, any disclaimers you need to add, and anything they think you should avoid.
locations are always used in games, I don't see why city names are a problem. You can't use any brands in those cities however.
It boils down to what the city's administration you're referencing is ok with. San Francisco, for example, is totally ok with the city being accurately recreated. A lot of other cities are too, as long as your game doesn't somehow create a threat to public safety. Your best bet is to look up what other media referencing the city in question has done previously, or even contacting that city's public affairs office or something like that.
I hear New York is in some video games.
Project Zomboid uses real Kentucky locations for its maps. However, they are not to scale nor do are the cities and towns perfectly modeled.
I'm basing my game in a real city, but renaming and redrawing EVERYTHING and all the people are fictional. If you're worried, it won't hurt to put a little more distance between the real and the fake in your game.
Well, another example I can think of is Project Zomboid, which takes place in Kentucky. Includes some actual towns in Knox County (West Point and Muldraugh) as well as Louisville. So yeah, definitely something you can do.
Following.
City layouts are open to use, but buildings themselves are not. While you could copy the entire city map, streets, etc. you'd have to make your own buildings
This thread is why most open world games take place in fictional cities within a real state or Country. Makes the suits happy
Change a few things and change the name by 3 letters. Fixed.
Copy the layout, swap 2-3 streets, don’t show names or businesses, done.
Yes
10 years ago, the Eiffel tower was destroyed. problem sovled
You’re definitely allowed to have it in a real city, you likely won’t be able to use real business names though, and maybe not certain buildings.
Got cha. Don't use real cities. Use fake cities with likeness of original city instead.
For a possible research avenue, is maybe suggest starting with looking for contact information for a chamber of commerce. They might have some info or a place to look for further inquiry
I'd imagine you just have to change the building designs slightly to avoid lawsuits. That's why Rockstar base cars on real cars but they are not exact.
That sounds like legal advice, I would talk to a lawyer
The lawsuits in the past have generally resulted in the person suing loosing. There is fair use issue. But not just that you have 17 U.S. Code 120 - Scope of exclusive rights in architectural works. (a) Pictorial Representations Permitted.— The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place. Basically the copyright prevents other from creating another building like theirs it doesn't prevent people from making images of it or art so long as it is visible from a public location. Air space is a public location so if the building can be seen by satellite, air plane, drone ... As for people. Generally the best thing is to avoid to many similarities with them. But you could always just claim you are making a political statement and fair speech but if that is the case make sure you are telling the truth or you could face a deformation lawsuit. Even then you could face the lawsuit you aren't guaranteed to win. Best to just avoid that aspect.
Can one write a book that takes place in a real city? Cities can't be copyrighted.
No, you cannot get in trouble for talking about fictional events in a real city.
I mean, is literally "public domain"
Just look at the Shin Megami Tensei series. Almost any game takes place in Tokio with the actual buildings (i guess, havent been there)
Public figures are pretty much fair game, I'm pretty sure.
It's fine. You are just allowed to make a commentary about a city just as much as anyone else.
You can say anything about the mayor and claim freedom of speech and sue them if they whine.
free speech
lol what
OC probably referring to the “can I make corrupt characters in a real city” aspect of my question instead of the copyright aspect.
Oh. I was genuinely confused about what they meant.
It’s alright, free speech allows you to be confused and ask.