I don't know what got me thinking about times when the law has intervened in the game making scene. It certaintly wasn't this 100% genuine newspaper article that I absolutely postively definately did not write. Nevertheless it's time for a public service annoucement to all our members!

I'm sure all of you remember the hilarious saga of Limbo of the Lost, and if not I strongly recommend that you check out this thread. For the lazy, Limbo of the Lost was a 'game' which had screenshots and artwork directly stolen from high profile commercial games, such as Oblivion and Diablo, and for some ungodly reason the publishers didn't even notice. Maybe they were too busy laughing at the ending (see below). Whilst some may argue that Bethesda wouldn't have cared if the game wasn't sold commercially, I think it was more to do with the fact that the game was fucking terrible and they didn't want to be associated with it. Don't believe me? Check out this video.


3 paragraphs in and even I'm starting to wonder what this has to do with Gaming World again. It's quite simple really - just about every single game made with RPG Maker is illegal, generally for using copyrighted materials or for being so bad it's crimiln (in most cases, both). Of course, it's not easy making unique resources for a game and although you can usually find someone here to do a soundtrack for free, most people will charge thousands for doing the artwork for even a short game *shakes fist at Frankie*. I know most of you think that a multimillion dollar company like Squeenix won't give two shits about Final Fantasy: Dragon Crystal Legend Sword Chronicles, or those ripped Chrono Trigger srites, but you'd be wrong. Lets take a brief look at the colourful legal past of GW...

Word has it that Charles Barkley was so furious when he found out about Barkley: Shut up and Jam: Gaiden that he demanded 100% of the profits from Tales of Game's. It is still unclear whether Tales of Game's have reached a settlement wit Sir Charles, and the next hearing for the case is current penned for August 16th.



Of course, with GW being over 8 years old, this isn't the only legal difficulty we've gotten into. hima's prize winning game Hello Panda got into a lot of trouble with the RIAA for the unlicensed use of music within it, and my trusted sources say that hima had to give away the entire $300 to the scum-sucking American leeches.



We can't forget one of the most embarressing incidents for GW either. During the 'death' of GW5, the mainpage was stuck with the game Coastercraft Gold on the mainpage for over a year. Chris Sawyer, author of the popular series that inspired CcG, issued a cease and desist letter to GW demanding that the game was removed from the site and all affiliation with both it and it's owner was disposed of. Naturally, GW agreed to these terms. However with the site in Limbo, it was not updated for over a year and even though we HAD removed the download from the site, it almost went to court.

Back in the OOOLLLD days of Gaming World we had an aged old hermit that used to visit us, by the name of DarkPriest. This 'Dark Priest' fellow began working on a game called RPGMaker Story, whose unique selling points included having just about every single member of GW cameo, and every single battle in the game used a CBS. This was back in the days when a CBS was extremely rare, and impressive, and the addition of having most members cameo in the game made it the talk of the day for months. However near the end of the project the game disappeared completely, and it was eventually blamed on a 'hard drive failure', but this isn't the real story. It turns out that the Dark Priest fellow had stolen some artwork from Chrono Trigger to use as a boss, and Square had yet to merge with Enix so they did not have a soft and cuddly side yet. Poor DP didn't see the train of lawyers coming, and to this day he has declined to ever speak about the traumatic experience they pu him through.

With the Gaming World homebrew scene starting to churn out new games again, and the threat of more people going through what DarkPriest once did, there's a lesson to be learned here. I spent 30 seconds glancing over the first page in IGD/G&DA and I THOUGHT I had found 2 Final Fantasy fangames without even looking for them. But on closer inspection I think we may have totally fooled Squeenix here - we'll never get sued again if everyone follows suit. Final Fantasy High by every definition (including the name) IS an FF fangame..but wait! There's a disclaimer in the topic saying THIS IS NOT A FANGAME. And FinalFatal Fantasy gets away with it by a subtle namechange. Hooray!

Gaming World is a financial institution. We exist purely to make a profit from stealing and reselling homebrew games created by our community, but we can't do this if you constantly get yourselves (and in turn the administration) sued. So as you put the finishing touches on Final Fantasy: Dragon Crystal Legend Sword Chronicles, remember the lesson of Jparker1984.

Either that or cough up $2500 to pay Frankie for 2 pieces of original art...