This is the Open Game Art (OGA) Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). If you have a question that you think should be here, contact us via the Contact form and let us know.
Please read our content submission guidelines before posting art.
Yes, you can use any of the art submitted to this site. Even in commercial projects. Just be sure to adhere to the license terms. Artists often indicate how they would like to be credited in the "Copyright/Attribution Notice:" section of the submission. You can find this between the submission's description and the list of downloadable files. If no Copyright/Attribution Notice instructions are given, a good way to credit an author for any asset is to put the following text in your game's credits file and on your game's credits screen:
"[asset name]" by [author name] licensed [license(s)]: [asset url]
For example:
"Whispers of Avalon: Grassland Tileset" by Leonard Pabin licensed CC-BY 3.0, GPL 2.0, or GPL 3.0: https://opengameart.org/node/3009
Yes, but only under specific circumstances. To upload content created by someone other than yourself, you must first make absolutely certain that the content has been released under one of the allowed licenses. Furthermore, you must attribute their work to them in the Author field. Failing to do so is plagiarism, and will result in the work being removed along with a possible suspension of your account. Finally, regardless of the license the art is released under, if the artist has specifically requested that their work not be distributed from other websites, Open Game Art honors those requests and will not accept submissions of their art.
In the case of Public Domain (or CC0) art that you didn't create yourself, we appreciate if you include a link back to the source of the content. We make an effort to verify that PD content is actually in the public domain before we approve it for the archive, and it speeds things up a lot if we know where you got it. If you're the author of the work and you want to remain anonymous, just mention that in the description.
Finally, some licensed works may have specific attribution requirements that go above and beyond just listing the author of the work. If so, please list those requirements in the description.
Finally, as a courtesy to the artist, we appreciate if you include a link back to their portfolio (or the page you obtained it from) even if it's not required by the license. If this information isn't readily available and it's not required, don't worry about it.
Yes, but please keep in mind that if you released your content under any Creative Commons license that allows derivative works, and the work displays shows the correct license and is attributed to you, then it is legal for that content to be here. If the attribution or license are incorrect, we would prefer to correct them rather than take the content down. However, we will remove all art at the author's request regardless of license, provided we can reasonably verify that you're the real author.
If your art is on this site and you would like it taken down, please use the Removal Request form. Be sure to include the links to any art in question.
Note that there is one case in which take-down requests will not be honored: If your art is derived from a work that was a paid commission by OpenGameArt.org, we reserve the right to archive it here. Please understand that this right is a condition of the licenses (GPL 2&3, CC-BY-SA 3) that we release the exclusive commissions under.
Short answer: Yes, you can use this art. Even in commercial projects.
Be sure to follow the terms of the license, though. The terms depend on the license(s) the art is released under. Below are summary descriptions of the licenses supported by OGA. These are provided to help artists and developers familiarize themselves with the broad outlines of each license. Nothing written here is guaranteed to be correct or intended to be used as legal advice. Please read the complete text of each license before using it for a submission or using a work submitted under that license. The full license text can be found at the link in the respective license abbreviations below:
Just to reiterate, these notes are based on our understanding of these licenses, and should be taken with a grain of salt. If you notice anything incorrect here, please contact us.
You can submit any art that could be used as game art, provided that it's your original work. The following kinds of art do not qualify:
If you wish to submit modifications of freely-licensed artwork created by someone else, you may do so, provided that you submit it with the original license and credit the original artist(s) in whatever way the license requires. If the artwork you're altering doesn't use one of the licenses that Open Game Art accepts, then it is not okay to submit it.
A couple of things:
Yes.
More specifically, the licenses that can be selected on this site are meant to be GPL-compatible. Thus, if you're releasing your project under the GPL, it is safe to use any and all of the art on this site. Note that there is a common misconception with using CC-licensed media with GPLed code, which I address here.
If you are releasing your project under some other Free and/or Open Source license (or not releasing your source code at all), it's likely that there could be licensing conflicts depending on what license the art is released under. It is your responsibilityto verify the compatibility of the art license with the license you are using.
That depends on what you mean by "compatible". They are incompatible in the sense that you can't take someone else's CC-BY or CC-BY-SA content and slap the GPL on them, and you can't write code licensed under one of those licenses and mingle it with GPLed code. However, for the intent of creating and distributing games, the Free Software Foundation has clarified that the game code and game media are separate entities and do not need to be released under the same license, provided those licenses allow you to copy and redistribute the work for both commercial and non-commercial purposes. Here's what the FSF has to say about this:
Non-functional Data
Data that has an aesthetic purpose, rather than a functional one, may be included in a free system distribution as long as its license gives you permission to copy and redistribute, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. For example, there are some game engines that have been released under the GNU GPL, and have accompanying game information -- a world map, game graphics, and so on -- released under such a verbatim distribution license. This kind of data can be part of a free system distribution.
Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
What this means for you as a developer is that the game data should be clearly marked as such, along with the licensing information for that data.
It is also worth noting that CC-BY-SA 3.0 is Debian approved.
Yes!
The WTFPL (warning: strong language) is a highly permissive license, in that it allows you to do whatever you want with content, including re-licensing it. Simply remove the WTFPL text file from the distribution and upload it as CC0. You may do the same thing with content released as "Public Domain", provided you are doing so in a jurisdiction that recognizes a public domain.
Short answer: no.
A submission's preview images or preview audio clips may not fall under the same license as the submission's assets available for download. Previews are for demonstration purposes and may contain works or logos not intended as freely licensed content. Unless otherwise noted, assume the previews are 'All rights reserved'.
Not necessarily.
Apple's App Store in particular has been found to have usage terms that conflict with the terms of the GNU GPL, the GNU LGPL, CC-BY-SA, and CC-BY. However, many artists releasing works under these licences are fine with their works being used in the app store if you get their permission.
Note that OpenGameArt.org cannot grant you this permission, you must ask the artist directly. If the art you want to use is a derivative work of another piece of art, or is by multiple authors, you must get permission from all of the authors.
Short answer: yes.
The long answer is that, even if OGA explicitly paid you money to create art, we do not (nor will we ever) take possession of the copyright to that art. This means that you can still license your artwork however you want, to whomever you want.
Let's say, for example, that you create a set of game graphics and release them here on OGA under the CC-BY-SA license. If someone would like to use and alter your art without sharing it, they are free to contact you and obtain a license to do so. You are free to charge them for this license.
Now, there are a couple of catches. While we will take down any artwork of yours that you request we take down (provided you can provide reasonable proof that you're the author of that work, and that we didn't conpensate you for it), that work is already perpetually licensed CC-BY-SA, and anyone who has already downloaded it has the right to continue using and distributing it under that same license. They do not, however, have the right to license your work to third parties under different terms.
Furthermore, if you have plans to sell your contributed art to third parties, it is highly recommended that you select either CC-BY-SA, the GPL, or some combination of the two, as there is little motivation for a commercial interest to pay you for the privilege of using your art if you've already granted that privilege without requiring them to share.
Absolutely, in fact several artists are already doing precisely that. All you need to do is pick a work of yours that you think people would be interested in, and submit it to OGA under any of the license choices that we offer. When you submit your art, be sure to include a link back to your web page or portfolio in the submission. You may also want to mention in the description that you work on commission. If you release your art under CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, you can mention in the description that people should link back to your website when they attribute you for your work.
Attribution is an optional part of the GPL, however you should assume that all work contained on OpenGameArt requires it unless otherwise specified by the author of the work. Attribution requirements are specifically allowed under section 7, part B of the GPL.
b) Requiring preservation of specified reasonable legal notices or author attributions in that material or in the Appropriate Legal Notices displayed by works containing it
The full text of the GPL can be found here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
Please note that this doesn't allow the author to place additional restrictions on a GPLed work, unless they are specifically listed in section 7.
You must follow only one of the licenses. However, when you re-distribute/edit, you are encouraged to include/use all of the licenses, so the license spectrum (and thus sum of people/projects who can use the art) doesn't shrink.
These questions go together but are best answered separately:
Can an artist edit and change their license requirements?
Yes, an artist may change their license requirements, at any time, however...
If so, what impact would that have on me and my project that already uses that asset?
We encourage you to respect the wishes of the artist if they decide to change the license on their work, however you are under absolutely no obligation to do so, because the license you obtained it under is irrevocable. In practice, very few (if any) artists on OGA ever remove licensing options, although occasionally some add more.
Short answer: no.
Unfortunately, a lot of texture and sample websites have "not for commercial use" or other odd restrctions that made their content completely incompatible with the licenses we have here.
Please note that we would still love for you to submit your 3D model or song. Please remove the textures or samples that you can't track down, and, if possible, replace them with something that you can verify is under a free license. If you know where to find the person who made the textures or samples, try contacting them first, as many people are open to changing the license on their work.
Worst case scenario, if you can't find any replacement textures, just submit the model with no texture. In the case of music, replace the sample with a placeholder and upload a midi file along with it so that people can fill it in later.
There are some popular sites that we cannot accept material from:
You should consider instead looking at these archives:
Yes and no.
There are plenty of other sites out there, but they aren't necessarily conducive to finding good game art that can be used legally in open source games. To be a good source for this kind of content, a site should be:
Some art sites serve as places where artists can post their work and get critiques. While some of these artists are willing to license their work out in a way that's compatible with free/open source software, it can be very difficult to find art that's appropriately licensed.
Other sites provide sprites for use, but they allow people to contribute sprites that have been "ripped" from games, and are therefore in violation of copyright.
Finally, it should be noted that Free Art Search provides a massive index of a lot of art that already exists in Free/Open Source projects and is a great place to go if you're searching for open art.
If you've ever browsed Free/Open Source game sites (such as The Linux Game Tome, you'll notice that a fairly significant number of the games available suffer from what's lovingly referred to as 'programmer art'. There are, of course, some notable exceptions to this, but it's clear that, for an open source game to produce good art, it has to become large and popular enough to attract artists.
Unfortunately, many fun and well-designed games never reach this point and are thus stuck with placeholder art, which ultimately detracts from their appeal and popularity. Furthermore, it's not unheard of for open source projects to rip their placeholder art from commercial games, which is illegal and could conceivably result in a lawsuit.
The purpose of this site is to provide a solid (and hopefully ever-expanding) variety of high quality, freely licensed art, so that free/open source game developers can use it in their games.
Just a quick summary of rules for IRC and Web Chat:
If you're looking for Bart (the site founder), he can often be found as BartK. Sometimes he goes by Legend or Lendrick, depending on what computer he's on.
If there's a problem with the site, generally it's sufficient just to mention it in the channel. However, you can also message Bart (using the above nicks), or any of these other people:
Admins
Editors
Edit your account by clicking on "My Account" above and then selecting the "Edit" tab. Scroll down and enter your Flattr UserID.
That's all there is to it!
The basics:
Conduct:
On some forums, it is okay to be snide. That isn't acceptable here. As a FOSS gaming community, we are ambassadors of FOSS in general, and as such it is not acceptable to be rude to people who are interested enough in what we do to take the time to ask questions. Specifically, it is not okay to do the following:
On the other hand, it's quite possible that we'll get certain questions over and over, which is the reason FAQs exist in the first place. It is acceptable to reply with a link to a relevant FAQ question provided you read their post carefully and make sure that it actually applies. Just try to understand that when someone asks a question in a forum, they're looking for a personalized answer, and it's better to provide one and encourage discussion than just send them off to a FAQ link.