@docfo4r: to answer your earlier question, I believe using the triangle-circle-cross-square buttons in a playstation game should be perfectly fine. What OGA shares and what you're allowed to use are not quite the same thing. Nominative Fair Use, and all that. I can't give you any sort of guarantee or endorsement, obviously. Ultimately you'll have to make your own determination.
As for other non-Sony buttons and symbols: The XBox, Steam, and Nintendo logos and branding could be problematic for you in the same way the Sony symbols may be, but those don't appear in this pack, so they were not addressed. Sony appears to be the only one with trademarked button symbols. All other controllers use fairly generic letter or number designations (not trademarked), so they were not the focus of the discussion above.
It appears the community has arrived at a consensus on a few things:
Sony's trademark is stupid.
Although there is a difference between copyright and trademark, this community considers both concerns worthy of scrutiny.
Despite #1, we should let people know of the potential pitfalls of using trademarks in their projects so they can make an informed assessment of how Fair Use affects them.
If there are no objections, I'll add a notice per #3 and omit the potentially troublesome symbols, while also making them available elsewhere for users to decide their own circumstances.
P.S. it's pretty minimal as I have little discord moderating experience. Let me know if you'd like to be a moderator on the discord or brush it up a bit. I'll promote you. :)
If anyone knows of official usage guidelines, they would still be very helpful here. Since OGA has firmly established disallowing trademarks in submissions, I also agree adding a notice regarding the specific trademark is a good idea, but we'll wait a bit for xelu's input first.
@withthelove: I think that is a valid viewpoint. As far as I can tell, the complete trademark does not appear in this set. Unless new information comes to light that contradicts this, I beleive there is no issue with this submission. Thank you for correcting me in a civil and logical discussion. :)
^I mostly agree, though whether playstation legal team notices a violation here or not is irrelevant. Whether it is a violation or not is.
"it's not part of your marketing. (e.g not using it inside promotion material)."
There's the rub. CC0 tells people they can use it in promotion material and marketing campaigns. Unless we can get some official guidence clarifying this, we must assume the trademark holder does not allow that... which makes it incompatible with CC0. However, the reason I suggested removing just the ∆○×□ buttons is so each downloader can make that fair-use determination on their own, and add their own in (or not) to the set.
Yeah, I missed it at first too (see attached screenshot).
Yes, unfortunately shapes can be trademarked. Actually, all logos are basically just trademarked shapes. Some more complex than others. The main requirement is that the shape be distinct. A circle or triangle or "cross" by itself would not be distinct enough but the combination of triangle circle cross square is... and more specifically the purpse they are applied to: controller buttons.
P.S. Unfortunately, we must draw a distinction between fair use and CC0. (or any other license on OGA, for that matter). Fair use has restrictions on it that CC-* licenses do not have (and often do not even allow). Many of the fair-use restrictions are situation-specific, which is impossible for us to govern when sharing assets that game dev's want to be certain are free and clear.
I encourage all devs to take advantage of fair-use resources, but the decision about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable (regarding fair-use) must lie with the developer and their individual circumstances, not OGA.
wow! I've seen 8x8 pixel platformer tilesets, but 1x1?! ambitious! :)
@docfo4r: to answer your earlier question, I believe using the triangle-circle-cross-square buttons in a playstation game should be perfectly fine. What OGA shares and what you're allowed to use are not quite the same thing. Nominative Fair Use, and all that. I can't give you any sort of guarantee or endorsement, obviously. Ultimately you'll have to make your own determination.
As for other non-Sony buttons and symbols: The XBox, Steam, and Nintendo logos and branding could be problematic for you in the same way the Sony symbols may be, but those don't appear in this pack, so they were not addressed. Sony appears to be the only one with trademarked button symbols. All other controllers use fairly generic letter or number designations (not trademarked), so they were not the focus of the discussion above.
It appears the community has arrived at a consensus on a few things:
If there are no objections, I'll add a notice per #3 and omit the potentially troublesome symbols, while also making them available elsewhere for users to decide their own circumstances.
Why not! https://discord.gg/d9Hr8Ns :D
P.S. it's pretty minimal as I have little discord moderating experience. Let me know if you'd like to be a moderator on the discord or brush it up a bit. I'll promote you. :)
If anyone knows of official usage guidelines, they would still be very helpful here. Since OGA has firmly established disallowing trademarks in submissions, I also agree adding a notice regarding the specific trademark is a good idea, but we'll wait a bit for xelu's input first.
@withthelove: I think that is a valid viewpoint. As far as I can tell, the complete trademark does not appear in this set. Unless new information comes to light that contradicts this, I beleive there is no issue with this submission. Thank you for correcting me in a civil and logical discussion. :)
Thanks. I honestly think this is the stupidest licensing flag I've ever issued, but Sony has a legit trademark. :(
^I mostly agree, though whether playstation legal team notices a violation here or not is irrelevant. Whether it is a violation or not is.
There's the rub. CC0 tells people they can use it in promotion material and marketing campaigns. Unless we can get some official guidence clarifying this, we must assume the trademark holder does not allow that... which makes it incompatible with CC0. However, the reason I suggested removing just the ∆○×□ buttons is so each downloader can make that fair-use determination on their own, and add their own in (or not) to the set.
Yeah, I missed it at first too (see attached screenshot).
Yes, unfortunately shapes can be trademarked. Actually, all logos are basically just trademarked shapes. Some more complex than others. The main requirement is that the shape be distinct. A circle or triangle or "cross" by itself would not be distinct enough but the combination of triangle circle cross square is... and more specifically the purpse they are applied to: controller buttons.
P.S. Unfortunately, we must draw a distinction between fair use and CC0. (or any other license on OGA, for that matter). Fair use has restrictions on it that CC-* licenses do not have (and often do not even allow). Many of the fair-use restrictions are situation-specific, which is impossible for us to govern when sharing assets that game dev's want to be certain are free and clear.
I encourage all devs to take advantage of fair-use resources, but the decision about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable (regarding fair-use) must lie with the developer and their individual circumstances, not OGA.
I know this topic was basically settled a while ago, but here is some recent relevant content from Extra Credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5zXDDMqhcw
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