Hello all, I’m doing a remake of the total eclipse remake of Commodore 64 and atari made by the incentive softwer and years later redone by Ovine By Desing, I would like to know if I could publish in google playstore because in my view the incentive Softwer is dead and as another company remade the game for free I do not think there is copyright.
This is a general legal question rather than one for Epic so I’ll leave it to others to respond.
I’m sure you can publish on play store, because they not care game is unique or not, this is your business. Total Eclipse is Domark Software Ltd. game, now known better as Eidos Interactive SQUARE ENIX | The Official SQUARE ENIX Website. You should ask them, I’m sure they have good lawyers and can give you clear answer.
Many games looks abandoned, and nobody care how long you not making money on it. But everything on this world have owner, so be ready. On steam from year as I remember is Darklands from 1992, my friend thinks about remade it, now it’s published.
You can try, should be no problem, but this will be always good will of the title owners only. But I’m not lawyer.
Thanks man I did not know that Interactive was the eidos, the original game in question is this: Total Eclipse gameplay (PC Game, 1988) - YouTube and the remake is this: https://www.youtube .com / watch? V = L_6T1eG3iLo & t = 119s that even the author of the remake died, here in Brazil you can find the total eclipse being distributed free of charge in stores, my goal is just to revive the game by adding a new mechanic thank you guy. :]
Gotta do your due diligence on this one dude. Only the owner of the copyright can answer that.
These are some ancient games that still have living Copyright Holder, but noone actually cares about this.
There are cases of Developer-embraced Fan Fiction (Megaman being an example) that is approved,
AND even strong copyright violation approved by the copyright holder anyways (Prospekt, Valve-Half Life)
AND there are the Foreign Game References that everyone does, which usually fall into the “Fair Use” category, e.g. huge indie game contains copyrighted Minecraft or Portal asset just for sake of reference (The Stanley Parable).
If you cannot negotiate with the current copyright holder it’s up to you to decide what to do. Just do not attempt to clone and sell Tetris and Super Mario - these are living things that constantly get updated.
About Lode Runner, I tried to contact Broderbund and everyone after, nobody responded, but in the end I “released” the game as fanmade remake for free on my blog, because I didn’t had the intention to make money out of it.