Paid mobile game using Flare Graphics: Is it stealing?
Monday, June 12, 2017 - 19:59
I was scrolling through the Google Play Store, when I came across a game that looked familiar. It was called "Exiled Kindoms," and I thought it looked interesting. Upon inspecting the ingame screenshots, I recognized a few of the graphics, and the more and more I looks the more I realized that it had just taken all of the graphics from Flare and claimed them as their own. I thought it might be fine because the game was listed as free, but when I tried playing it I was required to pay $4 to play through most of the game. Is this something that they can do, and should I report the game?
Thanks!
is there a credits page or credits file for the game?
--Medicine StormI had looked at the credits earlier, and didn't notice a link to their credits website. Upon veiwing this it does in fact credit Flare.I was mostly wondering if it was alright for them to charge money for the game.
As long as they're following the license requirements, yes. Nearly all the FLARE assets are on OGA, which means they're licensed to be used commercially.
A lot of the FLARE assets are licensed GPL or CC BY-SA(requires any derivatives to also be licensed GPL as well as credit to be given to the creator). Other assets are licensed CC-BY (Credit is required, but derivatives need not be licensed the same) or even CC0 (no credit, no license virality) so it ultimately depends on which assets were used in the game and how those assets are credited and licensed in the game.
--Medicine StormSeems fine as far as I can tell. Open/Free licences (such as all those on OGA) explicitly allow commercial usage.
But thanks for asking - a ridiculous situation I've faced recently with my RPG game on Google Play (which also uses Flare graphics) is a battering of (often offensive) 1 star reviews from people excusing me of "stealing" graphics from Exiled Kingdoms(!) These people evidently aren't as careful as you are in checking things out - and my game isn't even commercial. (As it happens I've neglected my game for various reasons - but stuff like that hardly gives one the incentive to carry on.)
It'll be even weirder if Flare itself launches on Google Play and faces the same.