Oh man, why couldn’t I have stumbled upon this thread a year and a half ago?
The legal action occurs when they’re still in development and being advertised about, not post-retail. You can’t put the Genie back in the bottle.
Back then 2K didn’t think of making an X-COM game or at least not a tactical one, so no one cared if they were using an old forgotten niche IP not theirs.
Now, on the other hand, it can become an issue.
If you create a game with Master Chief. You will get sued by Bungie.
Names and characters are intelectual “property” too. So you can’t make a xcom clone, and call it xcom, or use names or characters from the original game. It must be new creations.
And really, I don’t care much about what is legal or “ethic” here. Is the artistic ugliness that make me care about this. Talent and hard work is wasted here, that could be creating a New Thing.
Except, in XCom there IS no Master Chief. Also, whether or not you’ll get sued is far from certain - some IP holders can’t seem to let a day pass without sending a C&D letter, others have a much more relaxed approach.
Copying gameplay mechanics has been done often, UFO:Extraterrestrials is a (low quality) copy of XComs gameplay mechanics - and it’s COMMERCIAL. That’s a completely different ballpark, because suing about a commercial “competitor” makes a lot more sense, not in the least because there’s an actual chance to get some money out of it. Yet nobody sued the UFO:ET makers - there’s a sequel in the works these days.
Xenonauts is also a carbon copy of the XCom mechanics, so is UFO:AI, which - like ET - does a bad part about some things, but is CLEARLY based on XCom anyway.
If you want to be TOTALLY safe, just change names and art somewhat, and you’re basically in the green. Well, light yellow - there’s alway a chance of encountering some moronic judge.
rezaf
As said, with the UFO: whatever series the genie is already out of the bag. You can’t put it back in. This actually in itself has a chance even to be used as legal defense, I believe. But nevermind that. At best they could C&D further developments or, perhaps, sue them for royalties/force them onto some sort of legal agreement whereas they defacto ‘lease’ official limited use of the IP for a ‘symbolic’ sum.
With two worlds it’s far more carbon copy and they could be taken down easily. At the very least, if 2K had C&D’d them there’d be no question about what will happened. They simply decided to not waste further effort under shadow of sudden shutdown.
Xenonauts future may indeed be in peril, since you brought it…if 2K choose to file C&D and aggressively dog it, and we have seen cases way more far fetched before so it won’t be a new thing, it may very well be that they decide to buckle up and close shop (or be forced to develop an entirely different game) instead of go to court and it’s not like 2K can’t make a case since they OWN the IP and as said Xenonauts is quite the carbon copy.
Stock characters cannot be copyrighted:
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/characters.html
All the characters/aliens in x-com are randomly named stock characters. There are no “Master Chief” type unique individuals in xcom.
IANAL, so I have no way to know if this is true. If is true, then is great news.
I commented master chief, but I was thinking more in stock characters: mutons, crysalids, the gray, a underground base, ufopedia… etc… all the elements of the original Xcoms.
I am happy to be wrong :D
You should really consider taking up law, Teiman.
Every time this thread is bumped and it’s not because the files have been uploaded somewhere my heart breaks a little.
I’ve been playing recently, and noticed that my game seems to be only spawning Muton’s, medics and those bloby purple things.
So, is this a bug, or a UFOTTS specific issue?
Okay - files uploaded and links sent, via pm, to those that asked.
If anyone else wants them then please post here or send me a pm if you are impatient or think I missed you.
Hope you didn’t use megaupload! :)
Got a bug in my ear about xcom, so i’d love to try this.
Actually found http://ufotts.ninex.info/forum/index.php/topic,1116.0.html which seems to link to a few versions.