Any mods that have received permission to use copyrighted assets?

[kevansevans]

I've been thinking about how modding in general has a long standing history of copyright infringement that most people assume a blind eye is turned upon. Are there any examples out there of mods that have clearly given permission from the respective rights holders to be used in something like a Doom mod? I Totally don't have a personal reason asking for examples.

[Gothic]

I believe Darch got permission from Those Poor Bastards to use their songs in Preacher

[CherubCorps]

It's a real catch-22 with Nintendo stuff. If Nintendo found out about the many doom mods that use their IPs without permission, they would shut them down. If someone were to ask Nintendo for permission to use their IP, they would flat out say no and tell them to stop using their IP immediately.

 

The Doom modding community is so under-the-radar that I don't think Nintendo would care enough to spend money pressing legal action. 

 

In short, Nintendo's not gonna shut down GHaG. 

[kevansevans]

I kinda meant just in general, but I can see how me saying “personal reason” could be interpreted that way, lol.

 

It’s just really fascinating to me how a double standard like this exist, some “honor among thieves” sort of stuff, where it’s heavily frowned upon to “steal” other people’s assets without credit, but big corporations are fair game. It’s more about the principle of it than it is the legality, of course, but still an interesting dynamic.

[Kinsie]

I wanna say that New Blood were openly Pretty Cool with QC:DE and Doosk having Dusk Stuff in them, but they're a slightly oddball situation.

[Gez]

Project Osiris got permission from composer Bjørn Lynne to include the original music from Alien Breed 3D's CD32 version.

[MrFlibble]

A bit of a far-fetched example, I guess, but SPWW2 and SPMBT, which are Steel Panthers II fangames, totally received permission from SSI to use assets and the source code to make stand-alone games, with the only caveat that they should remain free and non-commercial.

 

I don't remember if there was an official permission, but IIRC, Return of the Triad had some form of tacit approval from Apogee/3D Realms. I'm not sure on this though and if anyone has some more exact info on this, please tell!

 

Another example very far off, Mateusz Viste received permission from the original copyright holders of Atomix to use the data in his recreation of the game, Atomiks. The same goes for T2002, a Turrican II fangame, which is probably somewhat closer to what you're looking for, as this one was more of a new game with Turrican II art than just a remake, unlike Atomiks. There was also a Giana Sisters remake that also obtained permission from the game's original author.

 

IIRC, AGD Interactive had permission from Sierra to produce their King's Quest remakes, although these games actually don't use any of Sierra's assets, as all art is redrawn in VGA.

 

Also this Broken Sword fangame also got permission from the original devs, IIRC.

 

Almost forgot, the Transfusion project very certainly has official permission from Monolith to use Blood assets, in the form of a license, no less (IIRC).

[Kinsie]

5 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

I don't remember if there was an official permission, but IIRC, Return of the Triad had some form of tacit approval from Apogee/3D Realms. I'm not sure on this though and if anyone has some more exact info on this, please tell!

My understanding is that it was just as unlicensed and unapproved as anything else this community puts out, but the developers have since worked on both the ROTT 2013 remake and the ROTT Remaster, and indeed the Return TC is packaged with the latter on PC as a little somethin' extra. So presumably all is forgiven.

[kevansevans]

1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

My understanding is that it was just as unlicensed and unapproved as anything else this community puts out, but the developers have since worked on both the ROTT 2013 remake and the ROTT Remaster, and indeed the Return TC is packaged with the latter on PC as a little somethin' extra. So presumably all is forgiven.

 

I imagine for projects like this, the developers are cut from the same cloth and understand that modders become game developers, and if they shut that stuff down, it wouldn't look good on them and potentially squash some dreams.

A lot of these cases are pretty interesting, feels like very minor stuff in my opinion.

[kwc]

Kick Attack! counts, doesn’t it?

[Gothic]

29 minutes ago, kwc said:

Kick Attack! counts, doesn’t it?

Not if it was by request.