Just to throw my hat in here and state that I'm a 3rd party contractor that was brought in to do integrations and what not. This stuff is news to me and I'm not directly a Royal Reptile Studios employee.
I will look into the use cases of the assets in question here and if they are in violation of the licensing, and if so, remove them from any projects I've been working on on Royal Reptiles behalf, replacing them with imagery not under license or creative commons.
Interesting post none the less. Asset flipping is pretty standard in game development is my understanding, but because I've not actually looked too closely at what assets have been flipped and what licensing they were purchased under, that is something I'll look at here shortly.
Why wasn't this brought up to the group that made the game?
Maybe one contractor got lazy. Might be a simple explanation...
I didn't even think to inquire about where the models and shit was sourced. I assumed all the items had been done by an illustrator or been made with AI. So to some extent I didn't do due diligence to check, at this point I'm still trying to determine if anything on the site I've been contracted to build is in conflict with the license or whatever.
If this asset shit turns out to be a potential legal issue, I'll replace with creative commons or license free stock images. Very little want to get sued over something that I didn't even directly cause or have knowledge of.
You are the solution man! Love the positivity! You rock!
End of the day it is what it is. Regardless of how things go with the main Royal Reptile Studio stuff I'm contracted to build this thing out and it is what I will do until a stable and properly tested v1.0.0 of Decks is operating, it's all I can do really at this point.
It's quite close to being complete with Decks but I still have an assload of testing to do after a few more key integrations are completed.
It's been a long ass build, I'm excited to get it done and move on to working on my own way past due projects.
Cheers GanjaFarmer.
Bag holders making is sound like not a big deal.
Not that simple.
Psyberx bag holders are making this sound like it's not a big deal, but unfortunately, you can't change the images on the NFTs.
Pros and cons of decentralization.
The trading fees come from those, and that's where the license violation is — not in the game or the website.
You can't stop anyone from ever trading those digital assets.
If they are on hive-engine, you can change the images. The issuer can pretty much change all the properties if I remember correctly.
Depends on the "read only" boolean on HE.
The IPFS data point on the PSYCARD items are infact set to "read only" or can only be set once.. meaning the existing cards will have IPFS links to the original images.. But a developer could blacklist these images and replace them dynamically if needed.
After reading the post I looked into this. I need to do further investigation to the licensing type purchased and what the clause of use looks like.
As a 3rd party contractor this type of stuff spooks me a bit, but regardless on if they have rights to image usage or not, I've got some functions that could be used in the code to make the stuff compliant (atleast on any project I've access to / am working on as as contractor for RR)
My suggestion would be for you guys to hire an IP lawyer and for them to go through the licenses. That is the only really sound way for this, or to just cut those entirely and commission your own assets.
Just a code mercenary here, contracted to build stuff. Royal Reptile would have to look into this IP lawyer stuff for themselves. The stuff being built for them will use replacement free-use or non-licensed images if it turns out to be a licensing infraction, is about all I can do on my end at this this time.
(I was told the images were commissioned art assets, only just today have I been shown that some of the images may be screenshots from pre-existing assets that may have licensing clauses)
Cheers!
Well, to be honest given the technical side of things that I generally focus on for a living.. I think it would actually be possible to change the images on the NFTS.. One sec!
( this image is from the psyberxmarket account looking at PSYCARD on tribaldex, I do not own this account and only have access to it due to needing access to issue cards and modify the NFT data points to make them ready for the Decks game, once I'm done that contract I'll relinquish all access to this stuff )
Ok.. so the IPFS image hashes are infact read only / write once into the chain. However it would be possible to effectively make a list of IPFS hashes that aren't kosher and have a function inject an image that isn't against a license or whatever..
I need to look into all this a bit more. As far as I know depending on what license was purchased on the assets, it may be legal to utilize pictures of said assets in other works. However I am no legal expert and will 100% be looking into if any assets were purchased on a weaker license that does not allow their likeness to be used in other products.
Worse comes to worse and the images are in conflict with their licensing stipulations, they'll be added to a list that in turn replaces them with images that aren't limited legally by their licensing (or lack thereof).
The post certainly raised my eyebrows and alerted me that I have to look a bit deeper into the source of the images I was provided to use in the app I've been contracted to make for Royal Reptile. Appreciate the heads up, I will certainly be digging deeper into making sure that what I've been developing for them isn't going to get me sued over copyright shit.
Cheers.
Good stuff, keep it up!
If those IPFS hashes can indeed be blacklisted, then every current and future app consuming this metadata will need to add some "customizations" to their logic to point to the new images, correct?
The function used to parse on chain data can be modified with the ability to replace or substitute data that is determined by some logic before the asset data is returned to both server side or client side data.
The possibility is there, any future applications utilizing either the on chain or API data would have to do a sanity check to see if substitution would be needed. Hopefully the licensing scare turns out to not be an issue and nothing needs replaced, but if it does, it can be done.
Kind of a pain in the ass, but completely possible to filter and replace offending data if that is what is required. I've yet to look into the assets licenses and inquire which license Royal Reptile bought the assets under to know for sure if the images are kosher to use. :/
Cheers.
I think this means yes.
.
Ok, good luck
changing the images on the NFT's.
Is that an HE issue??
Most games I have seen don't even record any image info on chain.
Most games I've seen do. And in many cases it's readonly.
Are you only looking at HE games.
I personally don't like HE for games.
No, I'm talking in general.
Yeah, right. And a studio that allegedly made close to 100 games doesn't notice how long it took them to create 12 3D models?
Some of these assets were also part of the initial trailer set up where they claimed to have spent $ 300 K.
The same assets that they mislead users to think were they own by putting them on their portfolio page and then removing them when called out about it.
Thanks for looking into this.
Using them in the games most likely is not an issue. The issue arises with the royalties that are automatically issued on every single trade of such NFTs.
Never really dove into the rabbit hole of licensing and royalties as I've always designed assets myself or had them commissioned. In this case they were provided to me as pre-existing assets.
The design of the Psyber-X static image assets currently used were made before I was brought in to do integrations, and I'd just assumed they were all commissioned art (as which was done for the battle animations of the Decks game being worked on, credit to @thisnewgirl for the awesome battle animations and death list icons)
I know the psyberxmarket.com site uses different market code (based on the inbuilt HE market functions I believe) but am unsure of if it's taking fees, this was set up before I was brought in to further build things out and do integrations.
The escrow/trade function on the Decks site does have an inbuilt variable controlling the commission float/number charged by the site, which can be adjusted if need be.
If it is unequivocally proven that any of the image assets used or provided to me by Royal Reptile/Psyber-X to distinguish between in-game items are breaking any licensing clauses then the image assets in question would be replaced with something free-use, or the escrow commission variable be adjusted to zero until licensing for all rendered assets was adhered to.
Appreciate the heads up on the potential licensing buggery, will do what I can on my end to ensure things are above the boards on anything I'm working on for Royal Reptile.
I am being told that it can only be set for the token symbol. You cannot turn off fees for just a few specific NFTs.
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Keep in mind that Creative Commons licenses allow for commercial use but still require attribution to the original creator. You would have to add an additional property to the NFT.
This change can't be done retroactively though.
Good thing to mention and keep in mind. Agree that proper credit where it's due is important.
That depends on the Creative Commons license. Some allow commercial use and derivatives. Others do not.