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Is it illegal?

zweiterversuch

zweiterversuch

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Ms. Fortune Double Squigly
Hello everybody!

I just joined this forum because I wanted to ask a simple question.

Let's say that a friend of mine has made a tabletop version of Skullgirls.
It's a weird mixture of a strategic game and Yugioh.
Let's say he has made figurines, cards and a kickass tableboard to play the game.
Let's imagine that said friend has naturally used images and lore currently belonging to the game's creator in his tabletop game.

If all that were real, would it be considered illegal, even if said game had never left his appartment and only one other person in the world knew of its existence?

Would my friend be sued even if he never intended to make any profit with said game, and only did it in order to satisfy his weeeeeird need to play skull girls even if didn't have a computer or internet connection?
 
Only illegal if you get caught.

That said I've just called the cops on you your friend so have fun in copyright jail.
 
Law student here!

From what I can gather, your friend claims no ownership of the franchise or the IP, They don't intend to make any sort of commercial profit or exposition and are not demeaning the franchise or IP.

Under all these terms, technically speaking Lab Zero can take this to court. It's their IP and they can throw accusations. But if your friend had any lawyer worth their salt Lab Zero would most likely lose the case as this falls under fair use. With your logic any Skullgirls material made based on the IP, that includes fanfictions, the unofficial dating sim (Skulldate!), Any music remixes and Fanart are all illegal.

Illegal would be if your friend tried to commercialize the game and start selling his figurines and cards online without L0's consent.

Your friend is 100% on the safe side here. In fact you should totally show it off! I'm sure Lab Zero (They're full of awesome dudes and girls) Would love to see it, and so would we!
 
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uh... one little problem... SkullGirls isn't exactly Lab Zero's IP.... Autumn Games kinda owns that... that's kind of the reason why there is a SG mobile happening...
 
Then in any case, Autumn Games can take the case to court, but the judge would laugh them out and they'd lose pretty easy.

Nothing really changes, just that Autumn Games is a little more uptight than the cool peeps at Lab Zero.
 
As long as it never leaves your apartment, you're probably fine. Likely, the worst thing Autumn can do is send you a cease and desist letter, which you'll have to comply to. And that's it. It's a lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer to bring the case to court.

A couple of years ago, someone made a Legend of Korra-themed beer pong game, made instructions on how to build a Pro-bending themed beer pong table, and posted those things onto Facebook. As far as I know Nickelodeon didn't do anything about it.
 
Wow...so it is technically illegal.
Ok. I'll tell him that.

About showing the game...I'm not so sure we should do that, if any physical proof could be used against us in a court of law.
Still, maybe I'll post an image of my favorite card. It's an event card, not an combat card, so I don't think people will be able to figure out the game mechanics enough to reverse engineer the game.
 
As long as your not selling it for profit and just making it for a fun fan project it should be ok.
 
oh if the card is using offical art. that would be a problem

LZ would like it if any fan project didn't used anything from Alex's drawing or from the game itself.
 
I mean they're fine with me using art asdits for my fan project. But the difference is it's just free fan game, if I charged money then yeah there's a problem.

This whole thread is kinda silly honestly.
 
Ninja said:
oh if the card is using offical art. that would be a problem

LZ would like it if any fan project didn't used anything from Alex's drawing or from the game itself.

Nah. The image on the card isn't from the game. The event described doesn't happen in the game.
To be honest, the skullgirls videogame left my friend with an almost obsessive need to "walk around" the skull girls universe, so he came up with a ton of events that could have happened in the canopy kingdom during periods of "peace", "war" and "the advent of the skullgirl".

My favorite card: "La pobre hija del rey" (The king's poor daughter. The game is spanish only.)
Is a card he created thinking about Minette, my favorite character of the game, and the reasons for her kidnapping at the end of Miss Fortunes' story.

We made the art, so it's actually quite crappy, but the card has a devastating effect in the long run.



Magma442 said:
I mean they're fine with me using art asdits for my fan project. But the difference is it's just free fan game, if I charged money then yeah there's a problem.

This whole thread is kinda silly honestly.

WAIT!! You're doing a fan project of Skullgirls? ...
Can I see it?
 
I have a thread on this forum.

Here

Granted I'm not claiming the IP as my own (then again you aren't either.) and I'm not charging money to play.

Though since I don't own it if I was told to cease making it I would have to.
 
present that shit to AG and they'd honestly be like "yo this is good we should make this an official thing, let's get on that"
 
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