Game copyright question, I guess.

Player_E

I was watching South Park the other day and started to think about how they get away with all the crap they do and had me thinking and I came up with this question

Say I make a "mario" game, but change the names and re-do the graphics, but still has the same "story"

how do you guys think that will fly?
maybe if I add a disclaimer saying any similarities are just pure coincidence. kinda like what south park does.

ORBZ

i'm not a lawyer, but i you change the art, and change the sound .. it's not mario, it's just a platformer.

mario has a story? i must have missed that.

scitunes

you can't copyright IDEAS only actual text and images or in the case of music, text and melody (not chord progressions which is why there are a gillion songs with GCD). So you should be fine.

Player_E

ahaha I guess the mario story is princess taken by giant dinosaur and mario tries to save her.

okay then look for a new game from me here hopefully within 2 weeks

rdcube

I would like to follow up on this as well.

I'm really running out of ideas and some of the ones I have are already out.

There's already a flash game for one specific game I want to remake on the iphone and would even look better on the ipad, and to be honest, if I remake this, all will be identical, all I would do is change title, images and sound...could I get get sued for doing this? what would you recommend I should do? what's the worst it could happened?

Any advise would be highly appreciated.

Thanks

JGary321

Half the games in the industry are just reskinned other games (not literally, but u get the point)

They can't do anything about the idea of the game. That's what genres are for. As long as all assets are different & yours they can't do anything. Look at TD games, most are all the same, just reskinned.

rdcube

Yeah, I agree u just 'reskinned', but it's the exact IDENTICAL game...just different 'skin'. instead of blue background, u change to black. instead of main character mario, u call it peter, etc, etc.

Do u think the company that made it might come after you?

Crazybreadman

Putting the games aside that shamelessly use mario and still get approved, there is also a game that has the exact same level design as mario but with a dif skin in the app store. I forget what its called but it has a black, red, and white color scheme. So I think you're ok.

chrstahl89

If you really want to know look up the scrabbles (facebook scrabble) and Tetris lawsuits. If your game makes enough $ to be worth sueing you cloneing 99.9% is not legal. Reskin, change music, text, and tweak some of the game aspects aka scoring, timing, etc then it becomes more your game than a exact clone. Wondering about south park though, think of how much $ they make...I wouldnt be suprised if they buy their way out of any troubles.

synthesis

Correct...
Copyrights are self-policed. You only will get sued if you become a big enough threat for the concerned party to sue you. Then its a matter of who has the most money to sue with or defend against.

Generally however...you will be "warned" formally before any litigation. They have to "notify" you of an infringement and give you the opportunity to remove the app. If you don't think you are in violation and you leave it up for sale...then they can sue you if they think they have a case against you.

Its all a big game...I don't lose much sleep over it. If I have a big enough target on my back to be sued...then I must be doing pretty well.

butterbean

If you look at that game "Ricky", one would think it's a ripoff of mario with the 1up like icon that has a different color, and the mario type feel to it

It's still in the App store and has yet to be pulled if that gives you any idea of what developers can get away with in the app store

Even the backgrounds and such look very mario. Take a look!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ricky/id321407593?mt=8

Mixel

It doesn't take changing much to make a game feel completely different.. There are a hell of a lot of games like Mario on almost every platform. If you add some of your own features and stray away from their trademark mushrooms, pipes etc it won't be a mario clone anymore.

Lots of old games have the "omg the princess was stolen!" plot too, so even that wouldn't seem a ripoff. Actually if you literally use a dinosaur it would be awesome. Bowser never struck me as a dinosaur..? More of a weird fire breathing tortoise-dragon-thing..