All of Nikita's submissions, except his comments in this thread, have been unpublished per his request.
The mods can still see the posts and art he's submitted. Someone is looking through those to see if we want to go back to those original art sources for permission. A lot of those submissions have issues for various reasons.
There are things easily overlooked when submitting art made by others. Some of us mods have experience in different areas of game art. E.g. us mods that work with 3D art know to watch out for textures from non-free archives like cgtextures. The mods that deal with 2D sprite sheets can regcognize popular trace-overs like those from Fire Emblem or Advance Warfare.
On a large set of art, sometimes we won't recognize issues right away. E.g. in an icon set eventually someone might recognize that a few of the icons basically identical to some obscure game. That puts us in a tough situation -- we can remove those specific icons and repost the art. But now every icon in that set is suspicious -- that artist has a workflow problem where creating unauthorized derivative works is not an issue for them. Derivative works are a big deal for us as a site. We can't prove the remaining icons are original or borrowed, and don't know if that artist is a valid source for art at all.
Maybe art submitted that isn't original art should always go to a moderation queue? There are so many things that can be missed.
Legality is good, but injured feelings lead to being sued.
Even if it's a lawsuit our users or our website might win, being sued is expensive. Being sued could crush an indie team/project even if it's a lawsuit they could definitely win.
What happens to our reputation as a website if someone starts suing games that use their art, uploaded to OpenGameArt without their permission? Even if they are wrong, that would probably mean no one ever uses OpenGameArt again.
We should have the high standard. Our entire site is based around passionately respecting licenses, which also means respecting the intentions and rights of the original artists. Few other sites are as strict. And people using art from our site can feel secure that they do have permission and consent to use our art.
We could instead only allow artists to upload their own art. Most other sites operate this way. It would remove any question about whether an artist is choosing the correct license or intending their art to be used in competing games. Then adding new art to OpenGameArt would be contacting an artist and inviting them to also share their art with us.
But we allow people to upload art made by others, because the sharing licenses are for this. Original members like qubodup helped build this collection by asking artists nicely, even if the license was clear.
This wikipedia case is an extreme example of a source for CC-BY-SA art that we would decline by default. We haven't even considered this before, because everyone assumed wikipedia promo screenshots are not meant for reuse in other games.
My stance on this is that "we don't care" is not at all the same as "we want our art to be reused in other games". All art here should be available with pride from the original artists.
Broforce is a closed commercial game. It would be confusing to share their art and plain illegal to use their Trademark without permission. Unless that team wants to publicly share usable game art instead of screenshots, we will not include it in our collection.
Hmmmmm..... welll.... that's complicated. Using a openly licensed screenshot for reuse in a games content...
is probably legal? but certainly not ethical. in our case particularly, we won't care.
Obviously our screenshots and such shouldn't be under CCBYSA 3 then, not sure which license to use then?
Here you can see one of the Broforce devs agree that scraping screenshots for reusable content is "certainly not ethical". And wondering if the license they chose is not the one they intended.
Situations like this is why it's always good to ask before uploading art that is not your own. We hold our collection to a higher standard than simply "trust what the license says".
I have been flexible in the past with art that is definitely marked as Public Domain or CC0. I think people who choose those licenses are more aware that their art can be used in any manner possible. But asking is nice, and may help invite another artist to join our community.
@Optimus Banana
Yes, that's the best way to do it. Thanks for asking!
undesired, thanks! I corrected the authorship.
I'll have to make him a special guest character in one of our Flare games.
Nice work! You weren't kidding when you said you can't stop making bricks.
Now if someone would make an infinite Megaman level generator...
All of Nikita's submissions, except his comments in this thread, have been unpublished per his request.
The mods can still see the posts and art he's submitted. Someone is looking through those to see if we want to go back to those original art sources for permission. A lot of those submissions have issues for various reasons.
There are things easily overlooked when submitting art made by others. Some of us mods have experience in different areas of game art. E.g. us mods that work with 3D art know to watch out for textures from non-free archives like cgtextures. The mods that deal with 2D sprite sheets can regcognize popular trace-overs like those from Fire Emblem or Advance Warfare.
On a large set of art, sometimes we won't recognize issues right away. E.g. in an icon set eventually someone might recognize that a few of the icons basically identical to some obscure game. That puts us in a tough situation -- we can remove those specific icons and repost the art. But now every icon in that set is suspicious -- that artist has a workflow problem where creating unauthorized derivative works is not an issue for them. Derivative works are a big deal for us as a site. We can't prove the remaining icons are original or borrowed, and don't know if that artist is a valid source for art at all.
Maybe art submitted that isn't original art should always go to a moderation queue? There are so many things that can be missed.
Legality is good, but injured feelings lead to being sued.
Even if it's a lawsuit our users or our website might win, being sued is expensive. Being sued could crush an indie team/project even if it's a lawsuit they could definitely win.
What happens to our reputation as a website if someone starts suing games that use their art, uploaded to OpenGameArt without their permission? Even if they are wrong, that would probably mean no one ever uses OpenGameArt again.
We should have the high standard. Our entire site is based around passionately respecting licenses, which also means respecting the intentions and rights of the original artists. Few other sites are as strict. And people using art from our site can feel secure that they do have permission and consent to use our art.
We could instead only allow artists to upload their own art. Most other sites operate this way. It would remove any question about whether an artist is choosing the correct license or intending their art to be used in competing games. Then adding new art to OpenGameArt would be contacting an artist and inviting them to also share their art with us.
But we allow people to upload art made by others, because the sharing licenses are for this. Original members like qubodup helped build this collection by asking artists nicely, even if the license was clear.
This wikipedia case is an extreme example of a source for CC-BY-SA art that we would decline by default. We haven't even considered this before, because everyone assumed wikipedia promo screenshots are not meant for reuse in other games.
My stance on this is that "we don't care" is not at all the same as "we want our art to be reused in other games". All art here should be available with pride from the original artists.
Broforce is a closed commercial game. It would be confusing to share their art and plain illegal to use their Trademark without permission. Unless that team wants to publicly share usable game art instead of screenshots, we will not include it in our collection.
From Ruan Rothmann on Twitter, one of the Broforce team.
Here you can see one of the Broforce devs agree that scraping screenshots for reusable content is "certainly not ethical". And wondering if the license they chose is not the one they intended.
Situations like this is why it's always good to ask before uploading art that is not your own. We hold our collection to a higher standard than simply "trust what the license says".
I have been flexible in the past with art that is definitely marked as Public Domain or CC0. I think people who choose those licenses are more aware that their art can be used in any manner possible. But asking is nice, and may help invite another artist to join our community.
Rainbow Design: I added links between the two comments so that my message and their response are easier to find.
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