14 réponses à ce sujet

[KingScar]

Hey guys,I just signed up to the site. I've got a question,do you need any sort of license to publish any work from the dragon age toolkit as your own? The reason I'm asking this is because,me and a buddy of mine are currently in the process of making a MMORPG and we decided we liked this toolkit the best but,I want to start from the ground up and make a original,new,intense MMORPG. We started working on it about a month ago but,we intend to spend anywhere from 2-3 years on it to make the best game we can make. So can someone answer my original question? Do you need a license to publish any of your work done in Dragon age origins toolkit?

I appreciate all answers

Thanks,Ryan

Modifié par KingScar, 24 novembre 2009 - 05:21 .

[Fernando Melo]

Make sure you read the EULA that comes with the toolset as this is specific to it, and separate from the game.



It covers a lot of what you can and cannot do with the toolset. I do not believe that you are able to release anything for commercial purposes with the current agreement.

[Adaram]

If you can work on the "M" part of your MMO first, and get something working, you'll probably have a lot of people clamoring to get their hands on how you made the Multi part work with the DA Toolset ...

[giskard44]

The licience is only seen when you install the toolkit, here it is, a straight copy and paste. The found on the dragon age folder is for the game it self. Speaking as a modder that has read many of these over the years.  I consider this one to be extremely good for us modders/fans.

Starts here (but always check the original if you need to know the details since it will be garrenteed "unmodified").

#########################

EA TOOLS & MATERIALS END USER LICENSE Electronic Arts Inc, and its subsidiaries, affiliates and licensors (collectively, "EA") grants you a non- transferable non-exclusive license to download and/or install and use one copy of the software tool (“Tool”) and/or materials (“Materials”) (collectively the “Tools & Materials”) solely for your personal noncommercial use in connection with EA’s products, in accordance with the terms below.

EA owns all of the rights, title and interest in the Tools & Materials. You may not alter any of EA’s trademarks or logos, or alter or remove any of EA’s trademark or copyright notices included in or with the Tools & Materials or EA’s products. Your right to use Tools & Materials is limited to the license grant above, and you may not otherwise copy, display, distribute, perform, publish, modify, create works from, or use any of the Tools & Materials. Without limiting the preceding sentence, you may not modify, reverse engineer, disassemble, license, transfer, distribute, create works from, or sell the Tool, or use the Tools & Materials to further any commercial purpose. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use the Tools & Materials to promote another product or business, or on any site that operates or promotes a server emulator.

You may include materials created with the Tools & Materials on your personal noncommercial website for the noncommercial benefit of the fan community for EA’s products and provided that if you do so, you must also post the following notice on your site on the same web page(s) where those materials are located: “This site is not endorsed by or affiliated with Electronic Arts, or its licensors. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Game content and materials copyright Electronic Arts Inc. and its licensors. All Rights Reserved.” You will not represent that your site is endorsed or approved by or affiliated with EA or our licensors or that any other content on your site is endorsed or approved by or affiliated with EA or our licensors.

THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. EA SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

ANY USE YOU CHOOSE TO MAKE OF THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS IS UNDERTAKEN BY YOU ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. EA DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS WILL NOT CAUSE DAMAGE TO YOUR COMPUTER SYSTEM, NETWORK, SOFTWARE OR OTHER TECHNOLOGY.

EA WILL NOT PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS. PLEASE DO NOT CALL OR SEND EMAIL TO EA CUSTOMER SUPPORT REGARDING THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS, AS EA WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ANSWER THESE INQUIRIES.

IN NO EVENT SHALL EA BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE OR OTHER DAMAGES WHATSOEVER, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THIS LICENSE EVEN IF EA HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

EA RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DISCONTINUE THE AVAILABILITY OF THESE TOOLS & MATERIALS, OR MODIFY THEM, AT ANY TIME, WITHOUT OBLIGATION TO ANYONE.

At EA’s request, you agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless EA from all liabilities, claims and expenses, including attorneys’ fees, arising from any breach of this License by you and/or your use or misuse of the Tools & Materials.

EA may make the Tools & Materials available at its site(s) located in the United States and/or Canada and/or the European Union. You are solely responsible for knowing and complying with all federal, state, and local laws that may apply to your use of Tools & Materials in your own locale. By downloading any Tools & Materials, you warrant that you are not located in any country, or exporting the Tools & Materials to any person or place, to which the United States and/or Canada and/or European Union or its member countries has embargoed goods.

EA may revoke or terminate this license at any time, for any reason or no reason, in its sole discretion. Upon termination, you must destroy or return to EA all Tools & Materials. This License is governed by United States Copyright and California law (without regard to conflicts of law), and is the entire agreement between EA and you regarding the Tools & Materials.

##################################

[Sevenar]

For those too busy to wade through that, the pertinent passage is this:

...you may not [...] create works from, or sell the Tool, or use the Tools & Materials to further any commercial purpose. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use the Tools & Materials to promote another product or business, [...]



In short, you can't make a penny off of anything you make with the toolset, nor can you use it to advertise/promote another product or business.

[Proleric]

So, while the engine is single-player, and the EULA prohibits commercial use, otherwise we're remarkably free to use this tool as we please. It's also worth reading the Terms of Service for this social site, which offer unrivalled protection to builders who choose to publish work here.

[Machinima]

Is there any place where one can find and read the toolset EULA?

I only found the game EULA which is a bit scary because it says:

"Your Contributions. In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means whether now known or unknown and distribute your contributions without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind for the whole duration of protection granted to intellectual property rights by applicable laws and international conventions. "





Since we use the game and game assets as well that might have an influence to the work we are creating.

[Proleric]

Machinima wrote...

Is there any place where one can find and read the toolset EULA?
I only found the game EULA which is a bit scary...

That's the only EULA I can find - I thought it covered both the game and the toolset - perhaps Fernando can clarify?
The EULA and the TOS probably seem a bit scary when read cold, but once you know how things work in practice, they're actually very reassuring. Sure, hypothetically, they empower EA to do many things which lawyers are paid to worry about, but, in reality, successful companies care about customers, and don't do unhelpful things just because they can.
What we are required to do, and are not allowed to do, looks fine to me.

[BFBHLC]

Machinima wrote...

"Your Contributions. In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means whether now known or unknown and distribute your contributions without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind for the whole duration of protection granted to intellectual property rights by applicable laws and international conventions. "

Which is precisely why if you have a story or idea, don't use this toolset to make it. The above paragraph says EA can literally take it anything you make with the toolset. Even if you have a pre-existing copyright to an intellectual property - you automatically forfeit it when you use the toolset to create an adaptation of the aforementioned intellectual property. There was a huge deal over NWVault about custom-made art, assets, etc. from community contributors about a year ago. It ended with many "lulz" let's just say....

Personally, this is why I don't intend to create anything really "original" with the toolset, only a remake of something already awesome.

Modifié par BFBHLC, 26 novembre 2009 - 02:46 .

[Proleric]

BFBHLC wrote...
There was a huge deal over NWVault about custom-made art, assets, etc. from community contributors about a year ago. It ended with many "lulz" let's just say....

I don't recall anything even remotely funny about that - perhaps you'd like to share?
What I remember is an campaign of bullying and sabotage which tried to force module authors to accept the authority of an organised elite, but succeeded in little more than damaging the community spirit. 
The Dragon Age TOS should stop that nonsense happening here, by agreeing in advance what EA and the community are allowed to do. I'd rather trust EA with my work any day than a howling mob.

[Sevenar]

It's primarily to cover their butts in case they have similar works in the pipeline and someone comes out with a player-designed mod first. Say, Bioware is working on a Beholder mod for the sequel, and someone outside the company comes up with one first, with very similar models and powers. Without that EULA right, the player could (with some merit) claim EA stole their idea because the player's mod proved to be popular. With the EULA, if it happens, the company is covered under the copyright assignment clause. Note that it does not say you grant the company an *exclusive* right to your material, which is VERY important. Suppose you have a fantasy campaign that you've put a lot of time and energy into. You make a DA mod with some of the main characters, and you mention your locations and whatnot. (think Tolkien, Frodo, Gondor and the Shire, etc.) It becomes hugely popular, and EA gets to use all your characters, locations, and movies as advertising material for the game--without paying you a red cent, or even notifying you that they're doing so. Wait, don't get mad--that's exactly what you want. You get a multibillion dollar company giving YOUR WORLD free advertising, too. Since the right isn't exclusive, you can go off now and write books, paper RPGs, etc. about those same characters and locations, and sell them on the back of that free advertising--as long as you don't use any of their game assets (pictures, models, etc.) to do so. Yes, they have the right to take your characters and write their own stuff around them, according to the EULA, but think about it. If your stuff becomes HUGE, then the fans will know who created it anyway, and your stuff will pretty much always trump what someone else writes about it. (Think if EA decided to come out with an eighth Harry Potter game/book/whatever. Even if they had the right to, J.K. Rowling could come along and write her own eighth book to contradict the whole thing, and who do you think would sell more copies? The controversy alone would generate so much publicity for the titles that it would almost be a win-win for both sides regardless of the outcome.)



Bottom line, don't worry so much about it. They won't steal crap, and if it isn't crap, they have more to gain by hiring you than by suing you. Chillax, and mod on!

[Inayity]

KingScar, unless you're really focused on using elements of the DA:O universe, and if you're really committed to working on a project for a few years, you might consider taking a serious look at two game creation systems which have just become available for free and which had previously cost a great deal of money in the past just to tinker with: Unity Engine and Unreal 3 SDK. Neither of these engines should be pigeonholed based on the games you have seen created with them- both offer quite a bit of flexibility and, in Unreal 3 SDK's case, it even comes with FaceFX, SpeedTree (also used in DA:O) and a number of other useful features including a particle editing system.

You can learn more about the Unreal 3 DevKit here: http://www.udk.com/features.html
And the Unity Engine, here: http://unity3d.com/

The only reason I bring these alternatives up is the length of your planned project: if you decide to go with the DA:O engine for such a lengthy project, realize that the sequel to DA:O will probably be out within two years if not sooner which could reasonably mean quite a bit of retooling of previous content to keep the project working with the "latest and greatest".

For shorter fantasy RPG projects, I think DA:O would probably work very well, based on what I've read. I don't own the game myself yet- going to wait a year or so and see how things have matured. But it already seems DA:O is a very promising platform for game creation.

Modifié par Inayity, 26 novembre 2009 - 07:26 .

[Machinima]

Sevenar wrote...

 Note that it does not say you grant the company an *exclusive* right to your material, which is VERY important. Suppose you have a fantasy campaign that you've put a lot of time and energy into.

but that is not what the EULA says:
you hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully
transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your
contributions.

[Proleric]

Machinima wrote...
... the EULA says:
you hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions.

Correct. If push ever came to shove, EA owns everything made with the toolset. The equivalent clause in the TOS (which covers material published on the social site, whether made with the toolset or not) grants non-exclusive rights.

What really matters is how this works in practice. Bear in mind that we're like circus performers on the high wire - the law is a safety net, but no one ever wants to fall into it.

It's an old chestnut. Bioware has had similar rights over other tools for many years, in principle, but none of us has ever had a problem with legitimate non-commercial use. With Dragon Age, all the signs are that EA is perfecty happy to allow community modules to be published on other fan sites.

Modifié par Proleric1, 27 novembre 2009 - 10:01 .