Hello! First I want to just say I’m not the one claiming DMCA. I’m apart of a group that is banning members for using “leaked assets” even though the game was officially open sourced at one point in it’s life time it’s no longer uncopylocked though.
Even though its copylocked are the people that got access to the uncopylocked version allowed to continue using assets from that game as well as the game itself?
A lot of people simply use it to grab scenery items from it or to overhaul the map to improve it.
So long story short can you claim DMCA on a game that is now copylocked but used to be uncopylocked?
Appreciate any answers.
[also I have placed this post in this category since a lot of people recommended that’s where I put it]
According to this page in the official Roblox help site:
“[by uncopylocking] you are granting every other user of Roblox the right to use (in various ways) the content you are now sharing”
While this is indeed better than nothing, it is also pretty vague and leaves a lot of things out. Here are the things you don’t know:
Does the original publisher retain the rights to the brand of the game? Such as if they have other games under the same brand which weren’t uncopylocked.
Does the original publisher have the right to share all of the assets in the game? For example many contractors / asset packs come with the stipulation that only the paying dev can use them.
Is the person who uncopylocked it the sole owner of the Intellectual Property (IP)? Group projects can be especially messy when determining this.
Were all owners consenting to it being uncopylocked? Also, as this isn’t a signature you couldn’t really prove that they consented, so if they change their mind later - which it appears they did, other than screenshots of the original page in some internet archive (which they could explain are from the place being hacked) you can’t really prove they ever formally relinquished rights.
Was this a permanent relinquishing of rights? Can you republish and reshare versions of the game after they close it?
The thing is, the Roblox TOS doesn’t explicitly answer these questions, nor does it whitelist free UGC / games as instances where the publisher relinquishes their IP rights.
So, there aren’t any real answers - both parties have viable arguments as nobody explicitly defined the agreement. It can be hard to predict how this kind of case would fare in court, especially since traditional copyright transfer is usually done through signing of contracts. It would likely depend a good deal on your judge, as well as how well your lawyer can make the case.
But this is a Roblox game, this probably isn’t worth going to court, so just take down the asset when you get a DMCA - especially for something as generic as digital props to spice up a map.
In the future, if you can’t afford to have a purchased / free asset removed from a project, get the rights in writing. You may also consider only getting assets from more professional sources - I use RoDev Market, Game Dev Market, Sound FX+, CGTrader, and Synty Store all the time for meshes, audio, textures, etc. As a bonus, the assets you buy from these places almost always have attached licenses so you know the exact terms in which you’re making the purchase.