Questions About the Site's General "Guidelines"

RPG Maker Chat
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I have read the Guidelines, Privacy and Terms of Service sections. The latter concerns me the most and I would like to clarify a few questions in this topic with someone from the site’s staff.

In the Guidelines, I could not find any references regarding language usage. I noticed that automatic translation is used here, so are there any restrictions on using languages other than Japanese, Chinese, and English?

If there are no restrictions, is there any plan to implement multilingual support throughout the entire site? For example, the user interface is displayed in my native language, but all posts and topic titles are automatically translated into Japanese.
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“Post Only Your Own Stuff
You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission.”
Would recommending resources/websites using only external links (excluding uploaders URLs), particularly resources whose creators are no longer active in the RPG Maker community or resources archived on the Internet Archive, violate this rule?
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Regarding Item 3 of the Terms of Service:
“3. User Content
You are solely responsible for content you post (“User Content”). You must hold the necessary copyrights or rights to such content. By posting, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, adapt, sublicense, and commercially exploit your content. You retain copyright. We may remove or edit content or suspend accounts at our discretion if Terms or laws are violated.”
I understand that some social media platforms use this type of clause to protect themselves against malicious users. However, since we are dealing with game-related content here, I would like to clarify the following:

For example, suppose I create a topic containing 20 different materials or graphic assets for people to use in their games and projects, whether commercial or non-commercial, with proper credits and usage terms, etc… Based on the clause quoted above, would these assets, which were already intended for free distribution and are licensed on a “non-exclusive” basis, ever be sold or modified by the site and bundled with other materials of similar style in the digital store, even though they are also available here and on other websites/forums?
Or is this clause simply the kind of legal protection I mentioned earlier, allowing the site to use images from my posted materials in advertisements, videos, promotional posts, or other marketing related to the forum, products, or engine?
Regarding “edit content”, will you at some point use AI on materials that have already been created?

Continuing with the same example, would I be allowed to include external links in the topic for users who may be interested in commissions/requests or complete asset packs hosted on other websites such as itchio or booth.pm, instead of creating multiple promotional topics for each individual asset pack or commission service?
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“You must hold the necessary copyrights or rights to such content.”
Let’s say I purchase a product from GGG, but its style does not fit my art, for example, an old RPG Maker 2000/2003 extra asset pack. If I decide to create a completely new asset from scratch, using only the original asset’s appearance/design as a reference, while making it in a larger format, with a different style, poses, and other changes, would I have any issues posting that material here or attempting to profit from it, even though I own a license for the original extra asset?

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Number 3 is definitely concerning. For anyone confused by the legal jargon, it means they can take whatever you post on the website (be it photos, text, or videos, including original content) and redistribute it for marketing purposes.

I’ve actually had this happen to me before. My family and extended family went bowling one day and we posted our pictures to Facebook. Those pictures were discovered to be used as marketing material on the bowling alley’s website. While I find it hilarious that we took such good promotional-quality photos, we were never contacted or endorsed for them to use those photos, even though they were never posted on that website itself.

It’s even more concerning when this Guild site uses AI systems. Assuming I understand this right, the wording is broad enough to mean anything we type or post here could go through an AI learning machine regardless of whether we want it to or not. We “retain copyright”, but most of these user-created games have no copyright protection to them.

The removing or editing of content says it’s only in case where it ends up violating the rules, but I’m not feeling very comfortable posting my content here. The same kind of securities and cares from the forum do not seem to be carrying over to here. Unless I’m being very paranoid right now.

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That’s actually a bit dangerous for this site from a legal standpoint. If somebody posts someone else’s tileset, for example, without their consent, then GGG decides to publish that tileset, I’m pretty sure they’d be doing so illegally. The person who posted it didn’t have the right to post it, so by proxy, GGG doesn’t have the right to publish it.

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I understand that, but my main question is whether, if I provide the “20 different materials” (as we used to do on any forum or website before the existence of this site and RMW), they will be packaged and sold as a bundle in the digital store or if they will only be used for marketing purposes related to the website/product.

Back when we shared free resources (before digital stores and commissions became common on the internet), our main concern was simply proper credit. Nowadays, since it’s possible to exchange our time for money by creating custom work/resources tailored to a client’s needs and preferences, would there be any issue with attaching or linking to external URLs for those services, either in the same thread.
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This is a somewhat uncomfortable situation for me, as I would not like to have my real face displayed publicly.
On the other hand, having free work shared for as part of marketing efforts, for example, can help promote the artist’s/creator’s name and potentially attract people who become interested in their work.
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The general rules regarding Maker products have changed over the years. As far as I remember, I had never seen anything mentioning AI use before, which is why I was asking whether AI will be involved in item 3. I am neither pro AI nor anti AI, it seems like a gray area to me. I appreciate that AI used for translations of Japanese and other Eastern languages are available online is helpful, as they have helped me understand and interpret terms of use and resource websites, for example.

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Indeed, the term I should have used was “adapt”.

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Perhaps I should have illustrated my point better or provided an “examples”. That part of my text may have sounded strange. What I meant was something like the examples below. Purely illustrative references, using only blurred or smaller preview images, not reposting another artist’s raw or complete work, but simply making recommendations.
“examples”:

image
image1125×455 164 KB

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Should I edit the topic to the “質問” category?

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Hey, I just noticed no one else had responded here, so let me explain a few things:

  1. Posting other people’s content that has been PUBLICLY made available and is clearly labeled as shareable (allowed by license), including external links, is generally acceptable. But preferably only to reputable websites, please.
  2. Posting another person’s content that is not public without that person’s explicit permission is not allowed.
  3. Posting another person’s content, public or not, as your own content is not allowed in any circumstance and is a ban offense.
  4. GGG will not actively be using anyone’s content for for-sale purposes. The point of the license, as you expected, is so that we can use content that is posted to the Guild in other channels, like a post to a social media platform to help promote the RPG Maker series. Without said license, we would need to ask you for explicit permission even if we just wanted to post a link to the Guild thread where you share content, and that’s a hassle for everyone.
  5. All content is assumed to be protected by modern copyright standards. Modifications of pre-existing content is generally considered a copyright violation without the permission of the original creator. So if it is a modification of someone’s asset, that asset must have a use license that gives explicit permission for you to make such modifications, and this must be clearly stated.
  6. Any and all posting of improperly licensed content will result in the removal of that content, be it external links or direct posting. This will also result in a warning as long as it was done with good intentions, but repeated offenses will escalate to eventual bans.

If you are not familiar with modern copyright standards, and how modern copyright laws now also directly apply to forum and social media posts in many jurisdictions, I highly recommend reading up on this topic.

I cannot comment on the additional languages stuff at this time, but I don’t see why you couldn’t make a post in any language you want (as long as you understand that it will potentially limit who can read your post).

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Thank you for replying the topic.

Regarding item 1, I assume it would not be acceptable to include websites that are currently offline due to the shutdown of their hosting services, even if they have been preserved through a service such as the Internet Archive.

As for items 2 and 3, as I mentioned earlier, I expressed myself poorly in the original thread. I do not intend that, but I appreciate the reinforcing. :+1:

Item 4, perfect. :+1:

Regarding items 5 and 6, my intention would not be to modify the original material, but rather to create entirely new material from scratch based on the design of that source material. For example, recreating larger versions of the characters in a different art style based on the resource pack below or on other old Maker resources released before RPG Maker 2000.

So, would creating such resources from scratch still violate this term, even if they are not modifications of the original assets?

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Thanks. I will review this topic, as I have seen materials of this kind (created from scratch but inspired by an existing design) on other websites.

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Ok, thanks.

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The key issue in your question is “what does based on mean?”

The more distinct your work is, the more in the clear you are, but the more it is based on something, the riskier it is.

Like, if you draw a sprite version of Batman in your own art style but it’s still clearly based on Batman? Under copyright law that’s still Batman and you’d be at legal risk.

So it depends on the extent of your changes, how recognizable it is to the original work, the type of license you have to the original work, and some other factors like that.

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Understood. Thank you again for your attention and for taking the time to respond. My questions have been answered, so this topic can be closed. :locked:

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Closed at OP’s request!

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