I recently published and released v1.0.0, a major update to the FN.
The project is focused on open world driving.
Time trial race, drifting, or delivering food are available.
You know you can’t use actual car companies replicas and trademarked material without a licensing contract signed and dated?
Especially if you’re charging money, even for just the code.
I hope your models are not replicas, and you’re not using the actual car names.
That’s asking for some serious trouble. It’s why you often won’t find certain racing games for sale anymore, the car (and sometimes also music) licensing has expired.
You are right on this point! But my game isn’t showing car names directly, i told you that to just make you know about what’s the car models available in the game.And also there’s no musics in game .
Your cars have clear Audi, BMW, Mercedes logos on them - that’s exactly asking for issues, unless you have some specific license agreement with these companies.
theres some cars i cant remove for theme the ca logo.
But this game source code is entirely for making a new game based on the game physics, not for a direct commercial use, for example : if the user want to create a new game like gta, he will just use this open world environment and those cars, and he will add players, terrain , other cities, and he will also edit some of the game code, thats why i chose those models.
But you are selling those assets first of all, and you’re selling them for other’s to use, what else would you mean by “direct commercial use”?
To be clear this is all just advice, but especially seeing how you are selling this you need to make sure you don’t get others into trouble (and selling it at least makes people more likely to hold you responsible, even if it doesn’t make you liable, not a lawyer so don’t know either way)
Edit: For example, a number of games don’t feature AK47s and other related weapons because they didn’t license the likeness etc., and is one reason a lot of games don’t explicitly name many of their guns the actual names, instead making up names or using generic terms, I believe Golden Eye 64 had this issue for example
Edit 2: Seems Golden Eye 64 was primarily for internal policy at Nintendo, though they had to change the name a second time for one gun because it was legally protected elsewhere, but they didn’t use real names for the guns because Nintendo says not to
I’d suggest talking to a copyright/trademark lawyer and get advice, there are probably dedicated forums for that, or inboxes for some firms that might answer it
I’d make sure to get answers to what parts would be covered by trademark, it’s possible that not just the logo is but that names (company and models) as well as the designs themselves aren’t
There should absolutely be experts on this online, including even reference material for general guidelines or rules of thumb, but I also think if you ask in the right place and nicely they wouldn’t charge you for that level of general rules on what is and isn’t covered
Copyright is generally separate from trademark so even if the source files themselves are not taken incorrectly the output might still be covered by trademark law
I’d probably add to that, that you should always be careful when downloading something online that you also need to look at and include Licenses, if you are even allowed by it to use it for commercial use at all.
And yeah, you aren’t safe to just use stuff like real cars just because someone recreated it (or took it from some game and uploaded it) and just lets people download and use it for free
I assume you made all of the assets yourself? Otherwise you can’t just restrict the licenses. Additionally any past sales of it or versions where the files don’t have that license (assuming they had a different license) would have the old license apply so they aren’t restricted by the new license
Also I’d say most people looking at this and if they’ll want to buy the full project would be expecting to be able to use the assets in it (assuming the code is MIT or similar, it doesn’t say), if it’s not under a FOSS license then I see no reason why you’d sell the source, and I’d consider it pretty close to a scam at least without clear disclosure that they can’t use the assets themselves (especially seeing how you’ve tried to promote it here to people trying to make games)
To use car logos or exact models, it doesn’t matter what the artists or assets licensing is : you need explicit permission from each car maker to use their trademarks, 3d models and texture replicas of their car. This is very serious stuff. Changing the licensing to CC doesn’t give you license to distribute it if it includes IP used without licensing.
You need to either start to look into licensing by contacting each manufacturer and sign a licensing deal. And pay for the license.
Or strip your models of all logos, names, trademarks, and modify them enough, that everyone recognizes the car, but you can honestly point to differences between your model and the original.
Otherwise, you can get sued and will get DMCAed if not outright pulled from distribution platforms
Cheers ! Don’t give up, just make necessary changes, and keep on making your game !
Monoposto is an Android and now also iOS Formula 1 game that has no licenses, so no team names, no liveries in the base game. Doesn’t use Formula One in the name either, etc. One man show, pretty much.
The active community made liveries for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 versions of the game (if you don’t like the latest, you can play the previous years.)
You get all those extra assets through a Discord link in-game. Perfectly legal.
I’d suggest getting in touch with a lawyer about the concerns with your existing project and how to resolve that, including if you’ve sold content already or had downloads and what that might mean
Especially if the assets are not made by you (you still haven’t answered if they are or not), and I’d suggest taking your page down until you’ve figured this out
The risk of getting sued over this is probably small as you’re not making some big top selling game, but not worth chancing it
In this case I doubt you’ll get any worse issues than getting DMCAed because there just isn’t money in suing you, but you can still get in long term problems from this, unfortunately
