EULA Dealbreaker
Scoo
Member Posts: 4
From the Gamesalad EULA:
"You agree that Gendai Games is free to use a Submission on an unrestricted basis for any purpose, and you hereby grant to Gendai Games a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, fully paid up, royalty-free, sublicensable (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers of licensees) license (in any media, whether known or not currently known and invented) to link to, use, reproduce, create derivative works from, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, publicly display and publicly perform the Submissions, or any portion thereof, without notice, payment or attribution (unless expressly specified by you during the submission process as further described below) of any kind to you or any third party. You represent, warrant and covenant that you have obtained all necessary licenses, consents and clearances to enable Gendai Games to exercise the rights granted herein and exploit the Submissions for the foregoing purposes. You hereby waive, and agree not to assert any moral or similar rights you may have in such Content."
Odious. Not going to happen. You people should know better.
"You agree that Gendai Games is free to use a Submission on an unrestricted basis for any purpose, and you hereby grant to Gendai Games a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable, fully paid up, royalty-free, sublicensable (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers of licensees) license (in any media, whether known or not currently known and invented) to link to, use, reproduce, create derivative works from, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, publicly display and publicly perform the Submissions, or any portion thereof, without notice, payment or attribution (unless expressly specified by you during the submission process as further described below) of any kind to you or any third party. You represent, warrant and covenant that you have obtained all necessary licenses, consents and clearances to enable Gendai Games to exercise the rights granted herein and exploit the Submissions for the foregoing purposes. You hereby waive, and agree not to assert any moral or similar rights you may have in such Content."
Odious. Not going to happen. You people should know better.
Comments
http://gamesalad.com/forums/topic.php?id=270
adent42's original response:
LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This is not the official legal answer for the company, mostly because I'm not a lawyer... but... there are some straightforward interpretations:
Now that I read the terms again, it's not very clear, but the intention is for you to retain copyright ownership to all works you upload to our site. We'll work on clarifying that.
So next:
...you expressly grant to GENDAI GAMES a non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide, complete and irrevocable right to use, reproduce, create derivative works from, syndicate, license, print, sublicense, distribute, transmit, broadcast, and otherwise communicate, and publicly display and perform the Content, or any portion thereof, without notice, payment or attribution of any kind to you or any third party.
Some examples that we currently foresee, include:
We may want to use a game of yours in an ad to promote GameSalad (and consequently, your game).
We may have to take characters, screenshots, etc.
We may want to display the ad through multiple channels (TV, print, web).
We don't want to have to contact you and license each usage of your game's IP.
As a general rule, we'd like to comply with the request of game authors, within reason. But without these clauses, we open ourselves up to lawsuits.
- no royalties
Games on our site are intended to be free. We want people to be able to distribute and share these games (including ourselves) without worry about royalties. We also make a minimal amount of money through ads at the moment, and we're no where NEAR the kind of volume that would allow us to share that money with you. Though this is a labor of love, we need to eat as much as the next guy.
Which brings us to:
If the GENDAI GAMES Service on which you contribute Content permits other users to access and use that contributed Content as part of the GENDAI GAMES Service, than you also grant all other users of the relevant GENDAI GAMES Service the right to use, copy, display, perform, create derivative works from, and otherwise communicate and distribute your contributed Content on or through the relevant GENDAI GAMES Service without further notice, attribution or compensation to you.
While this feature hasn't been implemented yet, we intend have an option where you check a box to share your game in "project" form under a Creative Commons license. That way you can learn from each other and re-mix each other's games.
These clauses are fairly standard for user-generated content websites. We want to encourage users to share their games as widely as possible. We'd also like free reign to use games to promote GameSalad. In the future, we may want to make GameSalad games available through channels other than the web... and as such, these terms allow us to do so.
That being said, none of these terms are meant to deprive you of your copyright ownership of your game. We intend to have separate terms of service for creators who join our future publishing system, whatever form that may take.
Hopefully, that helps to clear things up.
We plan on revising these terms of service to make them more clear and to provide similar but better stated rights.
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None fo that means anything anyways.
If you know anything about the law it is that all the warnings and circles with a "C" dont have any meaning at all other than to make something official. Which offers you nothing at all.
People think there are some magical documents out there ....there arent. It is the same as any other law in the united states.. will you go to court over it?
You could spend $1,500USD to get something officially copy written and you still couldn't make someone stop ripping you off unless you wanted to spend thousands more to pursue them in court.
It comes down to intellectual property rights in court and that is it... period
Can you show that you created it? Sure, even a statement from one sale thorough apple proves that it is yours. ANy judge would agree.
thats why i do not and will not ever waste a dime copywriting anything.
My point?
THIS SUMS IT UP
As long as you created first it it is yours
If GENDAI was in the business of ripping people off they could try it without that statement.
THey have to much to lose at this point by doing such a thing.
Let's be wildly optimistic and say I really knock it out of the park with a new iPad game, it becomes a cultural obsession. If I correctly understand the EULA as it is written, they could license toys, board games, comic books trading cards, t-shirts, sell it themselves as shrinkwrapped software or any other sort of merchandise and not have to pay me a dime for it. And it would be perfectly legal.
If my IP is strictly for use in promoting Gamesalad, that's what the EULA should state.
I think GS needs to reword their EULA. I think the wording in that is to protect them when they promote their GS tool and use our games in their catalog as examples of what can be done.
It really should say, in no uncertain terms, that the game is yours but that you grant them the right to use it in marketing their tool. However all game IP remains with the original author.
I hate lawyers.
What if Gendai Games is acquired by Microsoft or Electronic Arts or Apple? They would be free to port your game, sell it for PS3 or Wii or what have you and not be legally required to pay you a red cent. Or they might throw you a few crumbs to deflect criticism. The point is, you are waiving your rights to negotiate how your IP is used, in perpetuity. Nothing to take lightly.
Gamesalad looks like a tool with much promise, I hope the EULA can be improved to make sure every participant having a chance to be duly compensated for their efforts.
I'd like to think Gendai might reword/amend the EULA to clarify such concerns.
My question is - If you had graphics / character / trademark you developed, are these also part of the things that will fall into the - perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, Non-exclusive etc etc..Am I correct to think that??
if the contract was more specific to promotion of the mobile game for instance, maybe a narrower clause with that explaination built into the clause, then it would be so much better.
In any case, this is something for a lawyer to explain.
Hey guys, wasn't a social media site that had some clause that was very broad regarding stuff people uploaded, including their photos, video, text etc, and then people started to talk about it, and after a while they changed the agreement?
I forgot the name of the site.
(edited to shrink the post)
Having been busy with a host of other things, I never got around to fixing the EULA (lawyers aren't cheap).
We take copyright concerns very seriously, and I'll look into updating the EULA as soon as possible. While I can't speak for how our lawyers will handle this, I imagine it will have something to do with: "unless expressly specified by you during the submission process as further described below"
Thank you for bringing these issues up again. Our EULA was long overdue for an overhaul (or at least a touch up) and this is a good kick in the butt to do so.
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
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Scoo - you can take comfort in the fact that if they can't even get around to updating their EULA, because 'Lawyers aren't cheap', then there's very little chance that they'll ever get around to making lunch boxes and cuddly toys out of your amazingly successful IP.
I'll be purchasing a license in the next few weeks then
Lawyers are not cheap, but there may be some affordable ones around ....
But the thing is....The problem is not copyright, because copyright IS protected...The problem is what you do with or what they will do with it it lol ahahah...EULAs with clauses that are too broad will not look so atractive to some designers or game developers that are really serious about building a brand etc.
Take for example some sites / companies that deal with intelectual property a lot, like social media sites, some Print on demand companies - they managed to come up with some fair agreements/eulas, and they attracted a lot of people with that, as you see all kinds of artists trusting / uploading their IP/ artwork on merchandising...I think they are a good example.
I would like to reiterate that the terms you mention are aimed at games submitted for the web (which require a broad license). Games submitted for the binary compilation and packaging are not covered under that license, and we do not claim any right except what is necessary to create your app and trouble shoot problems with it.
UPDATE: added the missing not.