My gfx artist thought it was a good idea to use big devs avatar’s in my gfx thumbnail for my game instead of generic players.
I thought it was bad because:
It might be some false advertising
Using player’s characters or maybe brand identities without permission
It’s just a bit dishonest too. Imo
I asked why he thought it’d be a good idea and he replied
“Well the devs will see this thumbnail and be like: Oh cool I’m in this thumbnail! Let’s play it”
I’m currently more likely to remove that thumbnail and remake one myself. I’m not feeling it.
Would you use other big devs in your game thumbnails?
Ask for the dev’s permission first and foremost. You never want to use someone else’s likeness without their permission. While not exactly against the rules, it’s very rude to do so.
It’s really up to you. Personally for GFX I use just randomly made characters if I need players, and I use custom made characters if I need people who need to be in the style of the game.
I’d have to agree with you on this. If I saw my avatar (even if it is not famous) I’d be annoyed that my permission wasn’t asked to support your game.
If asked, I’d have a look at the game first to see if it was something I’d support before giving my permission.
Unless your using it to be misleading, for example the ads where asimo is telling you how amazing a game is, I’m pretty sure developers don’t own creative licenses to their avatar designs so you should be fine.
You can use them without permissions, they are not “copyrighted”
Anyways, you can also use copyrighted material for your thumbnails and gamepass icons, i reported a lot games allrdy to roblox because of copyrighted material, they doing nothing against it.
All about permission I would generally ask developers permission before adding them to thumbnail but most of them don’t reply so you gotta find the right developer.
Asking them would be great, and I’d do that first, but nobody’s really stopping you from just doing it. Since this is Roblox, anyone could just buy their clothes and wear it. Unless you include the dev’s name, it’s not like they can claim you’re profiting off them.
Thats how life works, also using avatars from other people as thumbnails is mostly for marketing / clickbait.
If you check the popular games on roblox you will see that its allrdy happening.
Someone creates a simulator which gets to the front page, after 1 week people creating clones.
You seem to forget that these games die out just as quickly as they explode. If you want a game that lasts long, you need to keep the attention of your players, and you do that not by marketing- that only pulls them in, but by making a good game. There’s a reason why Game Designers are one of the best-paid developer roles in the industry, they’re the ones who design the game into being catchy and a big hit. Look up game theory and design.
As a developer at all, the absolute best thing you could have is a stable income, and you achieve this by having a long-lasting game. There’s also a greater chance your game might take off in a big way and keep pulling in more new players; I’ve seen a lot of games launch terribly but later absolutely take off and take the front page by storm. If you can manage to keep your game running long and take the front page, you’re going to not only going to make a lot more money for yourself but build a community for future projects. You might even make some solid money.
Of course, it’d be unrealistic to say it’s simple, but to say being immoral is the only way to work in this industry is outright wrong. It’s the easy, if not lazy method. Sure, you can absolutely make decent money by making quick cash cows to milk until they are dry, but I’d rather have a game that stays afloat for longer periods of time and garners me a positive community as opposed to a negative one.
Now if I’m not mistaken I don’t think voodoo copies the game(assets, patent) itself, just the idea of it. I don’t believe ideas can be really copywritten, which is why certain trends begin. Unless a specific idea or design was used in a game that is valid by whatever copyright and patent act your country follows, and it’s patented, you can’t really stop an idea from being copied.
Some countries are a lot less strict on copyright regulation, but given voodoo is from Paris, they do have some regulation they most certainly must follow.
Roblox receives an incomprehensible number of Reports a day, it’s entirely possible they missed them or it has gone unnoticed. They will do something about it if it garners enough attention or legal issue. Look at the case where TrustmeImRussian’s hotel got exploit grabbed by another user and used for a hotel group. That group was taken down, given it was a pretty big thing on twitter.
Roblox User Generated Content(of any matter, not just the accessories you see on the catalog) also fall under the protection of Intellectual property, given they are very much creative works, and unless specified otherwise via a Public Domain license, you should probably not risk it. There’s a lot of useful information on how Roblox handles intellectual property written in Roblox’s Terms of Service.