I wonder, what possibly may happen to a subject that creates a game while incorporating an asset that it did not create (like mocap data for example), meaning that asset was produced by someone else, and the competent author did not acredit its usage in any way. Lets say the game gets commercial, earns money, what would happen?

Lets say the game gets commercial, earns money

Largely irrelevant.

I wonder, what possibly may happen to a subject that creates a game while incorporating an asset that it did not create

The worst that could happen? Legal action. You lose lots of money. Probably money you don't have. Details depend on your jurisdiction, but generally this sort of thing is covered by copyright and/or intellectual property laws that you'll have violated.

Don't do it.

what possibly may happen

Success prior to the lawsuit, with the lawsuit going completely against you, is probably the worst thing that could happen.

Damages can include that you lose all the things that you created because they were not yours to begin with. All rights to your highly profitable clone are assigned to the person you ripped it off from. All the rights means the source code you wrote to clone it, the tools, the assets, even things you built yourself or bought. They all go away.

And all revenues can be assigned to the original owner. So let's say your successful clone earned $1.5M which you mostly invested back to the business, then the assignment means $1.5M also goes to the person who you stole it from. You don't have 1.5M in cash? You already invested it back into the business, or into salaries, or into a Ferrari? Too bad, you still need to fork over 1.5M.

And it was clearly intentional since you questioned the legality and did not do it in ignorance. That is triple damages. You lost the product, and lost the business, and lost $4.5M that you don't have.

Can the company cite a clear drop due to your product? Maybe they were making $20M and it dropped to $6M as a direct consequence of your act, or at least direct enough to convince the court. Those are damages as well, again tripled because it was intentional. So $14M tripled to $42M.

Plus going through the courts to defend yourself wasn't free, so add in your legal costs. Since you're looking at a fight for nearly $50M in damages, you'll probably put up a significant fight, which will cost even more money.

Since we're talking worst case, you can also be required to pay the accuser's legal costs, since it was clearly your fault and you intentionally broke the law. So throw in a few extra million in legal fees for your accuser, plus the costs to the court for the judge and officers and recorders and such.

And maybe even some punitive damages, but since this is your first time you probably wouldn't get too much of those.

Going further, your name is prominently in the news for a long time. Everybody in the industry now knows your name and associates it with negative things. All the investors recognize your name and associate it with fraud. Getting your next gig is going to be mighty difficult.

In the worst case you briefly end up as a high profile superstar and then explode, completely destroying your life for years to come.

If you want an example, look at the guy who changed his name to Kim Dotcom and his story. The "legal action" against him is still pending, but he's gone from a collection of luxury cars and and mansions to having is life in shambles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_and_Light#Lawsuit

"the servers have been offline since 2008, ostensibly due to a lawsuit by VWORLD, LLC."

A game that made no money was completely killed off by the lawsuit, on top of that, they were fined $50,000 on a game that made no money and died off. If the game had made money, it could have easilly netted the plaintiffs $750,000. If the defendants didn't have that much money, they'd still be liable and their wages would be garnished by the state any time they earned money at any job.

Just don't steal content/tools, unless you're making a project purely for personal use. You know how if you pirate a movie/TV series you get emails from your ISP telling you to stop, and you can ignore them? When you pirate content for public/commercial use the letters you get forwarded by your ISP are much more harsh, and if you don't resolve the complaint there's a very good chance you'll be dragged to court.

It depends on the Asset.

Is the Asset ripped / stolen ?
Did it have some kind of licence agreement?

In the worst case there is some kind of legal action.


In the best case nothing will happen.


there is also the middle ground:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/28/creator-of-angry-birds-physics-engine-calls-out-rovio-for-not-giving-him-credit/

It is possible that you'll get away with it.

That being said, the worst I can envision is having to cease operations and pay for damage. Damage which would be determined in a court of law, based on precedents, and very much up to the judge's mood and how he/she thinks your case actually is (intentions, actual damages, possible damages, likelihood you try again, etc.)

I've also been curious about things like this and how far it all goes...

How careful does someone have to be when releasing a game commercially?

Let's say you use something relatively simple and forgettable like a font without permission. In fact, what ARE the legalities of even using a font like Arial (which I see is proprietary) in a game?

Is even that potentially very very bad? Or does it depend on how much of the game is dependent on the asset in some way?

Does it depend on how you do it? i.e. Package a font file with the game and use that to draw font as opposed to having the font baked into images?

What are the main things to look out for legally if you're selling a game?