8 ms·

What caught my eye immediately is their licence agreement that prohibits using the engine to develop, quoting "Serious games". That's a rather vague and broad s

What caught my eye immediately is their licence agreement that prohibits using the engine to develop, quoting "Serious games". That's a rather vague and broad statement, what's a serious game?

vertex-four 10y ago
1.10. “Serious Games”, i.e. ‘games’ which are not developed for the sole purpose of entertainment but for purposes training, simulation, science, architecture etc.
- ominous 10y ago
  How is 'purpose' a legal term? What is the purpose of a game? To milk money from fans? To obey to some company's internal schedule? To entertain..... review sites? To entertain me? To showcase technology? To insert subliminal messages and DRM? All of the above? None? What was the purpose of tamagotchis? We may never know.
  - Sir_Substance 10y ago
    >What was the purpose of tamagotchis? We may never know. But we can breath a sigh of relief that whatever it was, we beat them in the end.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    From what I've seen, courts are frequently asked to answer questions just like this one. They do not seem to be as troubled by slippery slopes because it's their job to decide where the line is. If you're a student using CryEngine you're probably not worth suing for copyright infringement (at worst a C&D maybe). If you're a corporate entity who is distributing a game which licenses CryEngine, you certainly may be worth suing for infringement.
    - sillysaurus3 10y ago
      Which subsection restricts a corporate entity from distributing a game built on CryEngine? There are restrictions on Serious Games, but amusingly a Serious Game isn't a game.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - DigitalJack 10y ago
        I disagree, re: serious game. It's why we have the term gamification. Taking something mundane and making it, for my lack of a better term, gamey. I'm thinking of things like Starfighters.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - mijoharas 10y ago
      There is a section[0] of the licence[1] which allows students to develop a Serious Game, but not for profit. [0] 2.2. If you are a student or a member of an academic institution you are in addition entitled to develop Serious Games using CryEngine and to render such Serious Games in object code form (including the CryEngine Assets and the CryEngine Redistributables) pursuant to the CryEngine documentation. However, you are in no case entitled to commercially exploit such Serious Games without Crytek’s explicit prior written approval. [1] https://www.cryengine.com/ce-terms https://www.cryengine.com/ce-terms
  - dspillett 10y ago
    It is probably an arse covering measure. If someone uses the engine for serious work and it somehow fails, there isn't a route to ask them to cover financial/other damages because they told you not to use it that way (and you agreed not to use it that way via this license).
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      Game engine companies actually tend to have separate licenses for Serious Games, with different terms and costs. This is because a Serious Game is often unlikely to be mass-market - at the extreme end of the scale, it might be developed for only one client to ever use.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  Games without physics, not Turing complete and no building. Bye Minecraft, for one. Garry's Mod too.
- dvdcxn 10y ago
  At that point are they even games anymore?
  - nightcracker 10y ago
    Kerbal Space Program?
SXX 10y ago
I think it's mainly related to Mass Virtual (ex. RealTime Immersive Inc) business that mainly worked on military simulators. At least in past it's was Crytek's company. http://massvirtual.com/portfolio/video/ http://massvirtual.com/portfolio/video/
cm3 10y ago
If you read the Visual Studio EULA, which I did when the first Visual Studio .Net version came out, it described in a long and complicated text a certain type of software which you aren't allowed to compile with it. I don't know if this changed in the meantime because I have only read one EULA and that was it, but the software described neatly formulated the conditions of copyleft licensing. So in essence Visual Studio .Net forbade one from building things like GPL software. I'm sure the Visual Studio .Net EULA is available somewhere to dig this up. What I'm getting at is that this isn't the worst license from a commercial-first software distributor.
- AlexeyBrin 10y ago
  I never heard of such a thing as VS prohibiting the compilation of GPL code.
  - cm3 10y ago
    It didn't say GPL. There was a long section describing code of certain kind, which was a long-winded description for the rules of copyleft, and then a reference to that type (call it X) which may not be fed into MSVC. Like I said this was the EULA for Visual Studio .Net (the first version) and probably more than a decade ago. And as I said also, I don't have the newer EULAs so cannot look for the same section in those. I wish I had saved a copy back then but I wasn't as professional, sorry.
    - AlexeyBrin 10y ago
      > So in essence Visual Studio .Net forbade one from building things like GPL software. I'm sure the Visual Studio .Net EULA is available somewhere to dig this up. Maybe I miss something, but you literally said that they didn't allow one to build GPL software.
      - cm3 10y ago
        I wrote "things like GPL" and said it described the copyleft licensing without naming the prominent license. But I cannot find a version of the first (2001 or 2002) EULA, so it's possible my memory isn't exact. Edit: All I could find https://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/04/132221/more-ms-eula-fun https://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/04/132221/more-ms-eula-...
akerro 10y ago
Uh, First thing I saw was .exe on git. You can still use the src to investigate bugs in source code and walk-around them in your product.
edem 10y ago
> 1.10. “Serious Games”, i.e. ‘games’ which are not developed for the sole purpose of entertainment but for purposes training, simulation, science, architecture etc.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
clarry 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Sam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Sam
dcuthbertson 10y ago
How about anything by TruSim [0] :-) http://seriousgames.com/ http://seriousgames.com/
silveira 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game

What caught my eye immediately is their licence agreement that prohibits using the engine to develop, quoting "Serious games". That's a rather vague and broad statement, what's a serious game?

vertex-four 10y ago

1.10. “Serious Games”, i.e. ‘games’ which are not developed for the sole purpose of entertainment but for purposes training, simulation, science, architecture etc.

ominous 10y ago
How is 'purpose' a legal term? What is the purpose of a game? To milk money from fans? To obey to some company's internal schedule? To entertain..... review sites? To entertain me? To showcase technology? To insert subliminal messages and DRM? All of the above? None? What was the purpose of tamagotchis? We may never know.
- Sir_Substance 10y ago
  >What was the purpose of tamagotchis? We may never know. But we can breath a sigh of relief that whatever it was, we beat them in the end.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  From what I've seen, courts are frequently asked to answer questions just like this one. They do not seem to be as troubled by slippery slopes because it's their job to decide where the line is. If you're a student using CryEngine you're probably not worth suing for copyright infringement (at worst a C&D maybe). If you're a corporate entity who is distributing a game which licenses CryEngine, you certainly may be worth suing for infringement.
  - sillysaurus3 10y ago
    Which subsection restricts a corporate entity from distributing a game built on CryEngine? There are restrictions on Serious Games, but amusingly a Serious Game isn't a game.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - DigitalJack 10y ago
      I disagree, re: serious game. It's why we have the term gamification. Taking something mundane and making it, for my lack of a better term, gamey. I'm thinking of things like Starfighters.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
  - mijoharas 10y ago
    There is a section[0] of the licence[1] which allows students to develop a Serious Game, but not for profit. [0] 2.2. If you are a student or a member of an academic institution you are in addition entitled to develop Serious Games using CryEngine and to render such Serious Games in object code form (including the CryEngine Assets and the CryEngine Redistributables) pursuant to the CryEngine documentation. However, you are in no case entitled to commercially exploit such Serious Games without Crytek’s explicit prior written approval. [1] https://www.cryengine.com/ce-terms https://www.cryengine.com/ce-terms
- dspillett 10y ago
  It is probably an arse covering measure. If someone uses the engine for serious work and it somehow fails, there isn't a route to ask them to cover financial/other damages because they told you not to use it that way (and you agreed not to use it that way via this license).
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    Game engine companies actually tend to have separate licenses for Serious Games, with different terms and costs. This is because a Serious Game is often unlikely to be mass-market - at the extreme end of the scale, it might be developed for only one client to ever use.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Natanael_L 10y ago
Games without physics, not Turing complete and no building. Bye Minecraft, for one. Garry's Mod too.
dvdcxn 10y ago
At that point are they even games anymore?
- nightcracker 10y ago
  Kerbal Space Program?

SXX 10y ago

I think it's mainly related to Mass Virtual (ex. RealTime Immersive Inc) business that mainly worked on military simulators. At least in past it's was Crytek's company. http://massvirtual.com/portfolio/video/ http://massvirtual.com/portfolio/video/

cm3 10y ago

If you read the Visual Studio EULA, which I did when the first Visual Studio .Net version came out, it described in a long and complicated text a certain type of software which you aren't allowed to compile with it. I don't know if this changed in the meantime because I have only read one EULA and that was it, but the software described neatly formulated the conditions of copyleft licensing. So in essence Visual Studio .Net forbade one from building things like GPL software. I'm sure the Visual Studio .Net EULA is available somewhere to dig this up. What I'm getting at is that this isn't the worst license from a commercial-first software distributor.

AlexeyBrin 10y ago
I never heard of such a thing as VS prohibiting the compilation of GPL code.
- cm3 10y ago
  It didn't say GPL. There was a long section describing code of certain kind, which was a long-winded description for the rules of copyleft, and then a reference to that type (call it X) which may not be fed into MSVC. Like I said this was the EULA for Visual Studio .Net (the first version) and probably more than a decade ago. And as I said also, I don't have the newer EULAs so cannot look for the same section in those. I wish I had saved a copy back then but I wasn't as professional, sorry.
  - AlexeyBrin 10y ago
    > So in essence Visual Studio .Net forbade one from building things like GPL software. I'm sure the Visual Studio .Net EULA is available somewhere to dig this up. Maybe I miss something, but you literally said that they didn't allow one to build GPL software.
    - cm3 10y ago
      I wrote "things like GPL" and said it described the copyleft licensing without naming the prominent license. But I cannot find a version of the first (2001 or 2002) EULA, so it's possible my memory isn't exact. Edit: All I could find https://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/04/132221/more-ms-eula-fun https://yro.slashdot.org/story/02/08/04/132221/more-ms-eula-...

akerro 10y ago

Uh, First thing I saw was .exe on git. You can still use the src to investigate bugs in source code and walk-around them in your product.

edem 10y ago

> 1.10. “Serious Games”, i.e. ‘games’ which are not developed for the sole purpose of entertainment but for purposes training, simulation, science, architecture etc.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

clarry 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Sam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_Sam

dcuthbertson 10y ago

How about anything by TruSim [0] :-) http://seriousgames.com/ http://seriousgames.com/

silveira 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game