Spiral Knights - Question about the TOS

Question about the TOS

4 replies [Last post]

Tue, 09/24/2013 - 19:22

Battlegrinder

I've be thinking about making some Spiral Knights fanart as a companion piece to mt fanfic "For the Order".Unfortaunly, I'm a horrible artist, and likely will not improve any time soon. However, I'm very good with CAD system, so I could probably make some models in Blender or something and use that, like how some poeple have used Source Filmmaker to make TF2 posters. After a bit of Googling, I found This thread, were one of the participants mentions that doing something like that would be in violation of the ToS. After looking at the ToS, I found the section he was refering to:
"6. Restrictions. You agree not to do any of the following prohibited actions:
1. reproduce, distribute, publicly display or perform, translate, modify, adapt, create derivative works from, deconstruct, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble in any manner Spiral Knights or any portion thereof, including but not limited to any character, graphic, associated software or proprietary communications protocol used by the software or any utilities, applications, emulators or tools derived therefrom;"

As I understand the law, fanart/fanfics and such works are perfectly legal unless the owner of the original work bans them, or you try to commercialize it. I believe the latter situation is what the ToS is referring to when it talks about "derivative works", and since this very forum includes a fanart/fanfic section, OOO clearly haven't banned such things. So if I decided to start creating fanart or machinimas with Blender, would I be in the clear or not?

Tue, 09/24/2013 - 20:11

Usevnsevnsixfivfor

Make a post in Treasure Vault then if you don't get a responce then you should be good.

Wed, 09/25/2013 - 00:46

Hexzyle

I believe the reproduce, distribute, publicly display or perform, translate, modify, adapt, create derivative works from, deconstruct, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble is primarily referring to the source code and files themselves and the legal implications of duplicating the hard work of the paid developers.

Fan-art as always fallen on the grey edge of this kind of ruling in games, but fan-art and fan-games have never really been an issue in the past because (1) They're not taking any money away from the original creation, (2) They serve as free advertising for the game, fan-art and fan-fiction are a strong part of a game's community (3) Every developer loves seeing their work enjoyed by the players and turned into artwork

Wed, 09/25/2013 - 04:42

Battlegrinder

@Hexzyle

That's more or less what I was thinking, since the alternative explanation would indicate that OOO doesn't allow any fanart. The issue I'm having is that making a model of something from the game in Blender might be close enough to "duplicating the hard work of the paid developers", since you can do things with a CGI model that you can't do with a drawing.

@U77654: Are you suggesting that I ask about this in the treasure vault, or that I create something in the vault and see what happens? Because I'm not willing to do the latter and risk losing months of work and my account.

Wed, 09/25/2013 - 07:30

Hexzyle

As long as you're not charging money for it, It shouldn't be a problem. (People don't charge money for making Spiral Spy images)

People charge Energy for traditional art, but that's okay because it's encouraging intergame trade, and it's not taking any money from Three Rings (Three Rings aren't selling artwork, and even if they did, the cost would cover the materials and costs towards the time spent making it rather than covering the creative idea behind it)

Or something like that.

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Question about the TOS