Frontwire Studios Claims Galaxy In Turmoil Is Made Under Fair Use, Video Game Attorney Thinks Otherwise
In an intriguing bit of news, Ryan Morrison had some interesting insight on the fan project Galaxy In Turmoil. It seems the legality is murkier than initially thought, as Mr. Morrison noted that it didn’t appear to fall within the realm of fair use, something he is notably adamant about. Frontwire has told multiple users either via threads on their subreddit or interviews with other, less handsome websites than COG, and if this is actually not within Fair Use. Morrison suggests that Frontwire could be looking at legal trouble, if so.
Admittedly, we aren’t overly familiar with the specifics of Fair Use, but even at a glance, it can be seen that it’s usually reserved for something to be used in limited capacity. The bigger factor is that Fair Use is a legal defense, not something that one is automatically entitled to. Ryan Morrison is a noted advocate for stuff like this, having come out and offered a lot of unpaid insight, but he’s quite adamant that Frontwire is in the wrong here, despite their odd claims that the game is classed as a parody. A quick google search can show that Parody is not protected fully by fair use, and there are four major factors that the piece of media is compared against to determine whether it is actually infringing on property or not.
Morrison notes that “It doesn’t take more than a five second Google search to see this game has nothing to do with parody law. And if you further examine fair use, you will see it is a defense, not a right. Not charging for your product is a factor in fair use, but not the end all be all. You can’t just remake a game start to finish, utilizing every asset of the original, and pretend it’s okay because it’s free.“ If this is true, then Frontwire may very well be in some trouble, if that’s the case. Frontwire also claims that Galaxy In Turmoil has Valve’s seal of approval, but Morrison had more to say on that as well.
For the uninitiated, Valve does indeed self-publish, and under those cases they can be as lenient as they like when exercising what people do with assets to their games. They’re evidently very lax on it, as they tend to be a mod friendly developer who encourages people to try out their own variations of the source engine. In the case of third party developers though, it is quite a stark difference. Morrison says that ““Steam works the same as the Apple app store, where they basically let everything up, and only take things down when they get a report under the DMCA take-down procedure,” Morrison notes. “That leaves the developer and his team homeless after Disney or EA comes after them, and Valve without any risk at all. This developer said they spoke with an attorney, and if they did, shame on that attorney.“ It’s certainly interesting to get the other side of the story, as from what can be seen, this definitely seems like Frontwire has been a bit too faithful in this re-creation.
Source: Ryan Morrison’s Twitter/Frontwire’s announcement