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[Question] Making money for/from a Pok?mon game

markedgrave1144

    • 3
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    • Seen Feb 7, 2016
    Making money for/from a Pokémon game

    Whats up everyone?
    I am planning on making a pokemon based game, but would like to know if
    anyone knows what the basic license consists of.

    As far as I can gather as long as I do not sell the game for money I am good.
    Would this include running a kickstarter?

    I have tried to contact the company personally but trying to get to them is a chore.
    So thought I would post here and see if any of you have had luck
     
    markedgrave1144 said:
    Whats up everyone?
    I am planning on making a pokemon based game, but would like to know if
    anyone knows what the basic license consists of.
    Click to expand...
    The basic license? There is no license, because it's not an intellectual property for fan to work with legally.

    markedgrave1144 said:
    As far as I can gather as long as I do not sell the game for money I am good.
    Would this include running a kickstarter?
    Click to expand...
    Yup, that includes running a kickstarter, since supporters would be giving you money for your game. It's against Kickstarter's Terms of Service as well as relevant IP laws.

    markedgrave1144 said:
    I have tried to contact the company personally but trying to get to them is a chore.
    So thought I would post here and see if any of you have had luck
    Click to expand...
    Their response is to say "don't do it." Simply put. If you're here to make money off your fangame, make an original game instead.
     
    Well that is what I am trying to figure out.
    Is there any way that one would be able to be able to use it for a game.
     
    There is absolutely no way to legally profit from a fangame. If you want to make money, make an original game.
     
    As I said in my original post, the game is going to be free.
    I was only asking about the kickstart in case I needed money to
    hire people to help.

    I am not looking to make money off of the game I am planning to make.
    Thus comes back to my original question of the basic license.

    If pokemon sprites are ok to be used in a fangame, what is the difference
    between that and just a free to play game?
     
    If Nintendo does respond to you, they're going to tell you that they can't approve of the game in any way because of legal concerns on their part. If they don't respond to you, and they find out about a Kickstarter, they can send a cease and desist letter which can not only get you in trouble- but everyone who donated to you, too. It's not worth risking innocent bystanders.
     
    markedgrave1144 said:
    As I said in my original post, the game is going to be free.
    I was only asking about the kickstart in case I needed money to
    hire people to help.

    I am not looking to make money off of the game I am planning to make.
    Thus comes back to my original question of the basic license.

    If pokemon sprites are ok to be used in a fangame, what is the difference
    between that and just a free to play game?
    Click to expand...
    If you need money to produce your Pokemon fangame, I really recommend you tone down the scope of your project. Most of the time if your project is worth its salt, you'll be able to find people who are willing to contribute without a monetary investment either because they're your friends or because they like the game.

    The difference being that most "free to play" games use a model which generates revenue for the creators of the game such as placing ads where you'll have to see them in order to engage with the game. So instead of paying money, people are paying even a split second of attention, and advertisers then in turn would pay the creator for that moment of attention. Admittedly this is a dying model these days with adblock and developers simply selling users' contact information behind the scenes, (No, I will not take off my tin foil hat right now) but the point is that not only can you not legally profit from the creation of a fangame, but any time or monetary investment you put into the game cannot be returned to you in any legal way. (There are ways to circumvent these IP laws, but not only is this not the place, but as a semi-professional game developer, I don't believe that people should be making money off others' IPs without a mutually agreed-upon license.)
     
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