iPhone/Pre Lemmings coded in 36h, gets legal drubbing

[covox]

This hit the front page of Slashdot yesterday:

http://www.mobile1up.com/lemmings/blog/index-old.php

Impressive effort, but seriously what was he thinking? That by slapping the words "this is a tribute" next to a whole pile of copyrighted and trademarked artwork he gained diplolmatic immunity? And submitting it to the App Store no less, he's either koo-koo crazy or a manic optimist.

[Simon]

Well, appstore isn't the smartest way to go if you want to use copyrighted material/trademark names, and keep the game up for some time to come. :>

If you look at lawyers' common practice when it comes to indie games, you can obviously do and publish whatever you want. When you get a notice from the copyright holder, remove everything from your site. You won't face any consequences at all. You might get blasted if you continue after a notice. Everybody should decide for himself if it's worth to risk one's hobby activity this way, i.e. risk having to stop development after the first notice.

We need the guy here as a member, I too like what he's built and how much he's thought about the games. Note that he was not going to charge for the game on the appstore.

The slashdot discussion about the case is good. Some of the points they make are

• Copyright law is garbage, at least in its current installment. (Won't rant about it personally here. ;-)
  
• Good indie/fan games have a special appeal which today's commercial games lack.
• The work needed to make a C&D'd game conform with current laws is usually worth it.

-- Simon

[LemSteven]

I have to admit that this guy had it coming to him by copying the artwork and music from the original game, which is a clear violation of copyright laws (and rightfully so in my opinion).  If he had used music from the public domain, designed his own graphics, and changed the name, I'm pretty sure the legal trouble would have been avoided.

[Simon]

I feel like writing today, so I'll recap on all the important Lemmings clones/variants I know that actually use lems and not some other character.

Custlemm and Lemmix editor require graphics from the original game. They don't come with copyright-restricted files themselves. No legal problems, makes the applications just harder to setup.

Lemmix player comes with everything included. This is not 100 percent legally clean, but fares very fine so far. As fine as any abandonware site that hosts L1. Lemmix (both the player and the editor) is not that well known outside of level editing communities, I think. Note that there is no trademark infringement here, unlike with Lemmings for Iphone.

Lemmings DS by Matt continues to live. Forum activity is pretty low and there is little development these days. Matt works for Sony and they probably know that he made the game and hosts it on his site.

Palm Lemmings by Ardiri in 2001 didn't get blasted, and is still up for sale. This has amazed me for years. In an email to me, Matt from Lemmings DS thought the same. I believe the long life of Palm Lemmings was a major incline for Ardiri to port it to Iphone and Palm Pre, and to assume it had a fair chance of not getting axed either.

Cheapo from 2002 got axed and hasn't been developed further since. Its author said he lost the Cheapo source, but wanted to make Dimwits instead, which didn't reach a releasable state.

DHTML Lemmings was taken down by its author's webhoster after a C&D to both the author and the hoster. The C&D didn't even get to the substance of the case: It claimed he used code from L1, but said nothing about graphics, whereas DHTMLL uses the L1 graphics, but no code. Its author wrote an inquiry to Sony if they were okay with him hosting the game before. If he hadn't done that, I believe the game would've lived on for quite some time on its authors webspace.

Lemmings SDL for PC and Pandora by miner49er isn't released yet. He's taking a real-life break from programming right now, according to an email exchange in May. Don't know when he gets back into development. It's hard to tell what will happen to LSDL after its broad release.

L++ is down until the lix is drawn. Gonna be alright.

-- Simon

[arne]

Hi,
I am working on a Lemming-Clone for Android based on Lemmini. What do you think, which way to go not come in trouble with Sony. I guess I cannot include the original graphics. Do you think it would be OK to put a link to http://camanis.net/lemmings/lemmingswelt/ or would this be a problem for "The Lemmings File Portal"?

[Mindless]

Won't bother me

Do you think it would be OK to put a link to http://camanis.net/lemmings/lemmingswelt/ or would this be a problem for "The Lemmings File Portal"?

Won't bother me.  If Sony actually cares about lost profits from old Lemmings games, they should still be selling them.

[Adam]

I'd also be willing to host the game on this server, if a mirror is required at any point. PM me for details. =)

[miner49er]

This topic has scared me a little bit - prehaps I should not host the data files but stick them on a file-sharing service? That would surely get around any issues?