Gaslamp Games Inc. hereby gives permission to ANY third party to use images and sounds from Gaslamp Games Inc.’s video game Dungeons of Dredmor in “Let’s Play” videos, reviews, or any equivalent content on YouTube (www.youtube.com).
If you do choose to use images or sounds from Dungeons of Dredmor on a video, we hereby request that you include the following copyright notice:
“Copyright © 2013 Gaslamp Games Inc., www.gaslampgames.com”
This authorization is given if the video is monetized or contains advertisements or other commercial goals. You don’t have to, but if you do, hey that’s cool.
If you make a whole lot of money playing Dungeons of Dredmor, and buy yourself a tasty beverage, we hereby request that you say “Skol” before drinking it one time.
Furthermore, if you are affected by administrator removal of content which you have made due to the inclusion of Dungeons of Dredmor content in a video, please contact us at contact@gaslampgames.com so we can work with YouTube on your behalf.
(Also, we’ll include Clockwork Empires in this statement when it’s ready for the world, and when the world is ready for it.)
You guys are Badass! Thanks for being an awesome, user friendly indie studio.
I read “uber friendly”. Sometimes it can be fun when you’re not paying enough attention 🙂
Skol!
This is actually preety nice and makes me wonder: What happened that you decided to take this step? Just a mood or is there a special reason why doing this now?
I think that’s because of the new Youtube policies about videos.
It’s a very sad thing that there is even the need for posting things like that. 🙁
The image begs the question:
Will Shai-Hulud be making an appearance in Clockwork Empires? Shai-Diglud?
Please, dear Shaitan; make it so.
Will that apply to Clockwork Empires as well when it comes out?
Read the last sentence of the post lol.
You guys are the best! <3 <3 <3
Kudos 🙂
Does this equally apply to other social media sites, and to non-video things like reviews on review websites, Steam Guides, mod downloads hosted outside of the relevant forums (for example, downloads hosted in Steam Workshop or through websites), and fanfic and other UGC?
With the way that copyright law is taking over the world, I fear that this question will probably come up again and again as more sites re-do their copyrighted materials policies; in which case can you take this opportunity to kill every possible bird with a single stone and grant blanket approval for monetisation of any UGC related to Dungeons of Dreadmor (and Clockwork Empires when that’s appropriate)?
I don’t know if you could phrase it to apply only to UGC and not to include derivative works; at least not without listing every possible site and form of UGC; but of course if you need to limit the terms to protect your copyright that’s not going to brook any complaint. I’m just wondering if you can save future hassle, and keep being the awesome people who set positive trends for community involvement 😀
So, for now at least, I think we’re relatively protected for things like reviews through Fair Use (USA) or Fair Dealing (Canada), depending on where you live. We tend to consider things within the scopes of both the American and Canadian legal systems as they seem to have the most sway over our company, and both of them seem to very fervently protect the right of consumers to review purchases. I can’t think of any jurisdictions for which this isn’t the case, but since we don’t have the right to tell you what you can and cannot review, I can’t bestow that upon anyone. For posterity, yes, anyone has the right to review our work. Also, if you’re using this clause, please know that you live in the dystopian future that we all fear.
Within the scope of other user generated content, there are some reasons for restricting this to YouTube. Some of them are to protect our (small) company, and some of them are to protect people who want to enjoy the content.
I specified youtube here because if there was another entity that was large enough that such a blanket statement was warranted that I didn’t know about, I’d want to vet it personally before giving the same assurances. Youtube, for all it’s current and systemic issues, has a tendency to be used to allow anyone with an internet connection to enjoy the content it hosts, and that’s awesome. The other thing that YouTube specifically addresses fairly well is that it polices offensive content fairly well.
If someone put our game behind a paywall, or filled it with hate speech, I would not be okay with that.
Various other things are obviously fine as well. We have previously given modders the go-ahead to repurpose our art for the purposes of mods for the game so long as they’re reasonable (creative, not pay-walled, not hateful, et cetera). I don’t know the exact terms under how that was discussed, but we’re not going to go after anyone for being creative with our assets while doing so respectfully. If someone created something that we weren’t okay with, we would contact them and try to resolve the issues rather than just automatically taking down the content. If there’s some wacky future in which we have tens of millions of users per employee, obviously we might reconsider this, because that would start to get logistically unfeasible.
Finally, it’s also worth noting that “Let’s Play”s occupy a fairly unique space in our industry right now. We wouldn’t be comfortable with a user creating a mod and then selling a package that includes both our assets and theirs, but we are okay with YouTube videos that essentially profit from some combination of the youtube video owner’s content and ours. There are a number of reasons for this, but the most compelling reasons for the extra leniency with YouTube are these.
First, advertising-supported content is currently much more reasonable than pay-walled content, because we’re not excluding anyone based on their economic situation (beyond requiring a computer, and it would be great if that weren’t necessary).
Second, perhaps most importantly, the YouTube “Lets Play” community has proven itself to be very respectful of games. I don’t mean whether they like them or not, but rather in terms of generally attributing properly, creating meaningful experiences themselves which are the primary motivation for viewers, and generally being responsive to our requests. Of course we have a lot to gain from a YouTube channel exposure, it’s free advertising, but it benefits everyone.