Register, Others Call Plagiarism in "Limbo of the Lost" Game 400
Fallen Andy writes "'The Register' has an article describing 'Limbo of the Lost' (developed by Majestic and sold in the U.S by Tri Synergy) which seems to have 'borrowed' copiously graphics assets from other games. Over at the GamesRadar forum there is a thread with some screenshots. Finally, this game has its own Wikipedia entry. Warning to all — move the soft drink away from the keyboard and monitor before you look at
those screenshots. Blatant this is, very blatant indeed."
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:4, Interesting)
We can also take comfort in knowing that the companies from whom the graphics were lifted probably keep the lion's share of the profit from game sales and the graphic artists make almost nothing, by comparison.
Also, if the guy at 'Limbo of the Lost' bought the game it is his to do with what he wishes because he didn't agree to any stupid 'don't lift graphics' clause and shrinkwrap licenses have never been proven in court anyway so no one has any legal standing to complain about anything. This includes if he wants to make a mashup of the game's graphics and his own cool gaming idea and call it 'Limbo of the Lost'.
And furthermore copyright law has been subverted by corporate interests and is just a shadow of what the found fathers wanted it to be. Copyright is OUR rights not theirs it makes sure WE get the copyrightable content but it has been changed around to give CORPORATIONS all the control. Do I want DRM on my hard drive so I can play a game but keep me from taking screenshots? No! I'll never install Vista. If this was available in WINE I would play it but it isn't. I don't even run NDISWRAPPER!
So, in conclusion, no. I don't think anyone has stolen anything. Information wants to be free.
As in I don't pay anything for it.
It isn't "borrowing"... (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, listen to the opening sequence of Queen's Under Pressure featuring David Bowie. Then, after having your stomach pumped as a precaution, the opening bits of Vanilla Ice's Ice, Ice Baby.
For the Google impaired, here is a YouTube link [youtube.com] doing a comparison.
Just equate Limbo of the Lost with Ice, Ice Baby and you will understand. Of course, that would mean Majestic Studios is really Vanilla Ice...
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess what? The CORPORATIONS that own this stuff are composed of people and owned by people. You can become one of those people for about $50 a share. A corporation is the modern expression of the Right of Free Assembly, and is used to administer cooperative division-of-labor and ownership of property.
Would you prefer that property can only be owned whole, by single individuals? Do you realize that it would be impossible to undertake any large, capital-intensive project in that environment?
Re:It isn't "borrowing"... (Score:2, Interesting)
Heck, I use the background images from Bejeweled as wallpaper. Does that make me an IP infringer? If I give the wallpaper to the guy in the next office am I then a pirate?
This is simple Fair use IMHO, although they should give credit to the sources.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
What about the engine? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:GTYHJgCqVCYJ:www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl%3Faction%3Dviewthread%26threadid%3D88482+%22Limbo+of+the+Lost%22+engine&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us [209.85.141.104]
That must have been a tremendous job just to write the different converters but then again I don't understand why Steve Bovis, was not able to code a simple CD check into the main menu???
"Wintermute Engine Development Kit is a set of tools for creating and running graphical âoepoint&clickâ adventure games, both traditional 2D ones and modern 2.5D games (3D characters on 2D backgrounds). The kit includes the runtime interpreter (Wintermute Engine, or WME) and GUI editors for managing and creating the game content (WME tools) as well as the documentation, demonstrational data and prefabricated templates." - http://dead-code.org/home/ [dead-code.org]
All the backgrounds they stole are screenshots from other games. They made a 3D character to move (with scaling) on 2D backgrounds.
Re:Missing the Point of Myst (Score:3, Interesting)
Realmyst [realmyst.com]
The Article rocks! (Score:3, Interesting)
All to often, articles simply list the name of the company in question, and the people actually behind the theft(I consider it theft) hide behind that, thus circumventing any real lasting public derision.
The article destroyed any credibility these idiots may have had in the gaming marketplace, and rightfully so. A simple Google search by potential employers/investors will be all it takes to bring up that article.
Back to McDonald's with you, fryboy!
I retract the above. (Score:2, Interesting)
These are static screenshots? Pathetic. I say lobotomize 'em all and hand them over to the creators of the original images as body slaves.
Re:What about the engine? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2904.msg18305#msg18305 [dead-code.org]
http://forum.dead-code.org/index.php?topic=2746.msg17668#msg17668 [dead-code.org]
better analogy (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of this more like someone took a picture of the screen when you were playing Space Invaders, then used that image as a background for their RTS space domination game.
I think this case could really present itself to be a very interesting legal president. It sure looks like it could fall under fair use and derivative work. The game is vastly different than all of the games that the artwork was taken from. Which would move it into the derivative work direction. Then the question would seem to be, does Bethesda's copyrights extend beyond the actual content of the game and into images taken of the game? If it does, it would imply that distributing screen shots and FRAPS videos with out the game copyright holder's permission would be a violation as well.
And even if that is the finding, they could still argue fair use. If 2 Live Crew can sell a single of Pretty Woman, if Vanila Ice can go platinum while taking a note for note copy of Queen, well, why can't this company use modified screen shots of existing work to develop an entirely new game?
Not sure I entirely like the thought, but I'm not entirely sure I like the alternative either.
-Rick
Re:Shakespeare was a Plagarist (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/images/paper/PD1403578_l.jpg [kentonline.co.uk]
Re:I don't see what the big deal is (Score:4, Interesting)
What would happen to the stock market if the government started to go after corporate criminals with the same zeal it goes after minority street criminals?
Devil's Advocate - everyone here is wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's say you love FPS games (Quake,Unreal,etc) and you build a website (with revenue generating ads) around awesome screenshots and movie recordings of insane frag sessions (see YouTube). Are you guilty of copyright infringement? No. So, why would these guys be guilty? They used screenshots of rendered scenes and therefore did not use exact digital copies of the textures on disk.
If I use a raycasting engine and I set it up to raycast a scene, then I own the copyright to that rendered image, not the owner of the raycaster. It is the same here, however rather than specifying "sphere at x1,y1 and retangle at x2,y2", I am creating the scene by positioning the viewport.
Let's take another angle on this. I write a movie script and I want to set it to animation, so I use an FPS game to act it out. I merge the audio and video and put it up on my for profit website. Am I guilty of copyright infringement? No. It's an original work using rendered images from a raycasting engine. (This has been done quite a number of times.)
Before you use the "for profit" defense, know that for USA copyright law a violation without profit or without profit motive is still actionable by the copyright holder (see RIAA). Likewise, the inverse of profiting from copyright infringement is no guarantee of conviction. Profit is irrelevant in regard to guilt, but can be relevant with assessing damages awarded.
Also, some will likely respond to this post saying conviction of infringement is not based on making exact duplicates, but rather is in the fact you made a low grade copy or used small snippets of the copyrighted data. That really doesn't apply here because a rendered scene is data generated on the fly driven by user inputs and configuration settings of the machine. It is not a duplication of the textures and models on the disk. It's not valid to draw a parallel between an exact or low grade copy of a song to that of a data model rendered to an image, because a rendered image is not a version of the model, but a low grade copy of a song is a version of the original.
Last point. Is this game a derivative and thus potentially a violation of the copyright holder's exclusive rights to derivatives? No, because this guy's game uses no shared code. No shared model data. No shared textures. He used rendered scenes. If it were a derivative, then we could also apply this argument to compilers and say all compiler owners own the code you compiled, given that we're associating the raycasting engine to compiler and source code to scene setup. That happens to be an ancient debate: a compiler compiles source code to a binary, so who owns the binary? The compiler manufacturer or you? This ties back into the point of the previous paragraph. A work cannot be a derivative if it is not a version of the original--in part or in whole.
Considering all of this, I'm going out on a limb here and saying he did nothing wrong and is completely innocent. And additionally, just about everyone here is off their rocker on this topic.
Although, I still think he's a lame ass but that's irrelevent.