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Yacht Club Games has released all of their art assets for their indie hit Shovel Knight today under the Creative Commons License, including animations, backgrounds, menus, and more. All the files are "in the state [Yacht Club Games] are used to working with" and can be opened with the illustration and animation software they use, Pro Motion NG. The Creative Commons license allows you to redistribute the content or, more importantly, "remix, transform, and build upon the material" in any way for your own work, as long as you give proper credit, note any changes, and don't release it for commercial purposes. (A more detailed breakdown of the Creative Commons License can be found here.)

The move was reportedly inspired by a photo the team saw way back in 2013, during the Shovel Knight Kickstarter, of a developer using their sprites as a reference for their own work. Wishing to be able to inspire and enable future developers, the team has decided to release their art assets for all to play with.

Source
Shovel Knight art asset repository

 

[AkiraKurusu]

Wait, what? This is surprising. So does this mean someone can create their own Shovel Knight using these art assets, as long as the underlying code is their own and they don't put a price tag on it?

 

[eyeliner]

That's cool. A lot of aspiring gameware developers will sure put them to good use.

 

[Norris]

honestly yatch club games is the only company i dont pirate from their work is amazing

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Time to dig though these files. (NOT SORRY)

 

[SodaSoba]

This is actually a great thing, fair play to Yacht club

 

[relauby]

Wait, what? This is surprising. So does this mean someone can create their own Shovel Knight using these art assets, as long as the underlying code is their own and they don't put a price tag on it?

Yup! You'd need to give proper credit to Yacht Club Games also, but yeah, fangames are totally covered under this and would be fair play.

 

[FAST6191]

That's a new one.

Normally we get source code release but assets still straight up copyrighted.

 

[TheTrueDream42]

Oh wow, that's really cool. I'm looking forward to see what comes out from this. If we're lucky other similarly-minded studios might do the same.

 

[eyeliner]

That's a new one.

Normally we get source code release but assets still straight up copyrighted.

And they still are.

 

[FAST6191]

And they still are.

OK. Copyrighted and in no way released under any kind of permissive licensing arrangement.

 

[eyeliner]

OK. Copyrighted and in no way released under any kind of permissive licensing arrangement.

Copyright doesn't prevent copying. Copyright grants the owner of the original the rights over said copies.
Copyright serves as a means of impeding sale and profit of unauthorized copies by third parties.

Really? I thought I didn't have to write this to you. I was under the assumption that you knew these intricacies.

 

[KiiWii]

Waits for ShovelNFTs…

 

[XDel]

Keep the creativity going! Very cool!

 

[FAST6191]

Copyright doesn't prevent copying. Copyright grants the owner of the original the rights over said copies.
Copyright serves as a means of impeding sale and profit of unauthorized copies by third parties.

Really? I thought I didn't have to write this to you. I was under the assumption that you knew these intricacies.

I am not sure where you are going with this or indeed now your concern with my original post.

90% of the stuff we see on https://osgameclones.com/ (for those playing along at home it is a site gathering all the "legal" takes on commercial games with source code released, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code is wikipedia I know but a reasonable covering for some of the leaks, accidental disclosures and retracted versions that osgameclones intentionally does not deal with) is usually "game has been out for 5 years, has not become an esports phenomenon/multiplayer game of choice, sales are barely enough to pay the accountant to care about it/have support options, let's release the source code so the kids can port it to everything for us (maybe also fix some bugs) and we maybe get a boost in whatever download options we have available and some good PR for the sequel that just so happens to be coming out, however all the art will still be owned by us so we can funnel people to the download shop and we also dodge bad PR because someone put the art in a porn game and we technically have to allow it". The other 10% being serious reverse engineering efforts, engine ports (unreal engine game can probably run in similar vintage unreal engine game with some work, doom - doom, quake/iD - quakeID...) and those vanishingly small number of things that release code and assets as a permissive effort.
As a shorthand I then noted assets as being straight up copyrighted as a shorthand for no rights over baseline fair use ( https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ ) or whatever is available under machinima/let's play/content usage/footage usage agreements (most of which say no hacked/modified versions, though that tends to draw more from trademark aspects for the things I saw). While creative commons still utilises copyright (save for CC0 which is effectively making it public domain) is it never the less under the banner of copyleft or permissive licensing, something most tend to meet in open source code ( https://itsfoss.com/open-source-licenses-explained/ ) but as things intended for code don't work for artwork most instead look to creative commons or its competitors (surprisingly few in number and notability compared to source code stuff).

As a technical feat I could happily make a game that even mugen types (again for others playing along at home it is a fighting game engine notorious for having any number of characters ripped and remade from other games -- if it is big enough to have ever had fan art it is probably there, multiple times, with some original stuff on top of that. Saltybet is probably the most notable take on this but that is getting off topic) would look on for and nod head in appreciation at the scope achieved. I would however expect to have copyright and possibly trademark concerns to appear in fairly short order. It would also have a knock on effect, usually a very chilling one, for getting people in on a team to help make it, distribution of the eventual game/mod and more besides which this should serve to dodge (give or take those that want payment**/profit sharing as commercial uses are not allowed by the looks of this one).

**I suppose technically I could pay for services rendered out of my own pocket, advertising on the website and ebegging platforms that just so happen to support a group (the game being free regardless) are potentially also on the cards.

 

[eyeliner]

I am not sure where you are going with this or indeed now your concern with my original post.

90% of the stuff we see on https://osgameclones.com/ (for those playing along at home it is a site gathering all the "legal" takes on commercial games with source code released, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code is wikipedia I know but a reasonable covering for some of the leaks, accidental disclosures and retracted versions that osgameclones intentionally does not deal with) is usually "game has been out for 5 years, has not become an esports phenomenon/multiplayer game of choice, sales are barely enough to pay the accountant to care about it/have support options, let's release the source code so the kids can port it to everything for us (maybe also fix some bugs) and we maybe get a boost in whatever download options we have available and some good PR for the sequel that just so happens to be coming out, however all the art will still be owned by us so we can funnel people to the download shop and we also dodge bad PR because someone put the art in a porn game and we technically have to allow it". The other 10% being serious reverse engineering efforts, engine ports (unreal engine game can probably run in similar vintage unreal engine game with some work, doom - doom, quake/iD - quakeID...) and those vanishingly small number of things that release code and assets as a permissive effort.
As a shorthand I then noted assets as being straight up copyrighted as a shorthand for no rights over baseline fair use ( https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ ) or whatever is available under machinima/let's play/content usage/footage usage agreements (most of which say no hacked/modified versions, though that tends to draw more from trademark aspects for the things I saw). While creative commons still utilises copyright (save for CC0 which is effectively making it public domain) is it never the less under the banner of copyleft or permissive licensing, something most tend to meet in open source code ( https://itsfoss.com/open-source-licenses-explained/ ) but as things intended for code don't work for artwork most instead look to creative commons or its competitors (surprisingly few in number and notability compared to source code stuff).

As a technical feat I could happily make a game that even mugen types (again for others playing along at home it is a fighting game engine notorious for having any number of characters ripped and remade from other games -- if it is big enough to have ever had fan art it is probably there, multiple times, with some original stuff on top of that. Saltybet is probably the most notable take on this but that is getting off topic) would look on for and nod head in appreciation at the scope achieved. I would however expect to have copyright and possibly trademark concerns to appear in fairly short order. It would also have a knock on effect, usually a very chilling one, for getting people in on a team to help make it, distribution of the eventual game/mod and more besides which this should serve to dodge (give or take those that want payment**/profit sharing as commercial uses are not allowed by the looks of this one).

**I suppose technically I could pay for services rendered out of my own pocket, advertising on the website and ebegging platforms that just so happen to support a group (the game being free regardless) are potentially also on the cards.

I apologise. I did not understand the point of what you posted. You write way too much to make a point, and it fizzles after a while.

The assets are still subject to the laws of copyright. There's little to no discussion about this.

You can't snot-paste a clone of Shovel Knight with these assets and sell it as your own. Not even by crediting the authors. It's fairly common place.

 

[hippy dave]

This is a really nice thing to see, from any game dev, and it's particularly good when it's such a fine example of modern pixel art.

 

[FAST6191]

I apologise. I did not understand the point of what you posted. You write way too much to make a point, and it fizzles after a while.

The assets are still subject to the laws of copyright. There's little to no discussion about this.

You can't snot-paste a clone of Shovel Knight with these assets and sell it as your own. Not even by crediting the authors. It's fairly common place.

They are still copyrighted but compared to traditional takes on copyright for which you have fair use, and whatever applies from what the devs have for game content usage rules/let's play rules (which for the purposes of anything other than video is basically nothing for all the ones I have seen) this is way way way more open to uses by those not explicitly blessed by Yacht club or whoever buys it in the future. This is also very different to what we normally see when games get "open sourced" where the code might be some flavour of open source but the artwork remains very much locked down by copyright such that people that want the art side of things still have to pay for it/get a second hand copy.

The sale part in this case would be troubled by the NC part of the creative commons they used which does say non commercial.
You could however recreate the game by whatever means you are allowed to do (let's pretend you observed play and went from there) and release that to all and sundry, crediting the devs for any work and noting where you changed anything (maybe you added some more frames of animation somewhere). Or indeed you could use the same art to make a puzzle game, a boss rush, a RPG, a kart racing game... using the artwork from it if you preferred instead provided the credit thing is there.

"Straight up copyrighted" is not a term of law or anything, or indeed probably even an informal term among the legal set, but most when seeing a term like straight up would have interpreted it as conventional, by the book, unremarkable in its implementation or similar which is what I was going for. This release however is not that, even it is still nominally relying on the force of copyright, and is a notable deviation from the norm.

 

[BORTZ]

Yacht Club is pretty based

 

[LoggerMan]

So what you reuse or remix the art for can't be used for commercial purposes and must be released under the same license. But I wonder if Yacht Club themselves can take what you make with the art and release that commercially themselves?