I think you're confusing what I said about "going public" and "posting in a public space". I'm stating a difference, if you care to see it. Yes, I agree, there is risk. A potential for harm is possible, but extremely minimal.

@Frob

I find that while my intentions could be non-scummy, using someone elses art to gain attention for your project starts crossing that line. It's hard, as a programmer and a designer on a team, to display what we have beyond text summations without art. I'm on a facebook group called Indie Game Developers and it's hard to even get feedback or attention without a product that has good art. As a hobbyist, these can be tough issues.

I know free use was made with things in mind like parody, news reporting and commentary, and the closest mine comes to is commentary, but it's not quite the same.

I know this isn't answering your question but here is a link to a ton of free icons you can use.

http://game-icons.net/

These use a creative commons license so you can use them in your game all the way to publishing if you want to.

I use a few placeholders in my game, but I remove them before posting screenshots.

One risk of using temporary artwork that you don't own, is that you and your fans get used to it like that, and it becomes mentally harder to come up with something different without feeling disapointed. Basically, Question #11 on this page.

On the other hand, some people (especially with desktop applications) add buttons for unimplemented features, but have the buttons greyed out and given them scribbled icons instead of nice icons, to indicate features that are coming down the road. One school of thought is that placeholder art should be so horrendous your artists chomp at the bits, eager to replace them, and feel encouraged to do so because it is so bad that anything they make would be better, and it makes the entire team feel good when "proper UI" gets implemented. It's a visual landmark in development.

Another benefit of horrendous art is that your team doesn't miss placeholder art that accidentally gets publicly released with the game causing you real legal issues - yes, this has happened before even in AAA games.

I think you're confusing what I said about "going public" and "posting in a public space". I'm stating a difference, if you care to see it. Yes, I agree, there is risk. A potential for harm is possible, but extremely minimal.

You're drawing a distinction between releasing your game publicly and releasing screenshots to other developers/early-fans publicly.

TSloper is pointed out that both of those have something in common: 'publicly'.

Showing art you create (screenshots of the game) that contain art other people create (your placeholders) without their permission is still a problem. While defacto it's less of a problem that releasing your entire game with stolen artwork, it's still a problem. You already know/suspect it's a problem to some extent, hence this thread.

The question everyone wants to know is: How risky is it? How much can I get away with? Will it actually cost me anything, or only in theory? And it's hard to answer that. It's less of a problem then releasing your full game, but it still could be a problem, and should be avoided if possible.

The chance of you getting in trouble for it may be less than 0.1%. That's still higher than the chance of getting struck by lightning - of which 450 people get struck by lightning in the USA every year. Tom Sloper used the example of speeding tickets. Even if you only have a 0.1% chance of getting ticketed, why volunteer yourself to be added to that pool more than you have to?

@SOTL

Thing is with speeding, a ticket shouldn't be your primary issue. It's the fact that you, or others can be killed. Laws/tickets are in place to prevent such behavior. I think that's what makes this discussion interesting, is the question: How scummy, if any, of a thing is making a mock up with others art for feedback? On the moral spectrum I'd have to say it falls well below endangering lives, but I don't know if I'd consider it squeaky clean either.

I thought you were asking about copyright law, not morality. :)

If you are speaking about morality (in the Business and Law subforum), I personally feel that, while copyrights are a good thing in general, the current laws are unbalanced in corporate favor. Morally (and subjectively) speaking, I don't wouldn't find using placeholders for mockups 'bad' as long as it's communicated clearly that it's not your artwork - the main intent being not to accidentally trick gamers into thinking that's what your game will look like, and for the original artists to know you aren't trying to capitalize off their work.

But my opinions of morality aside, the ethics codified by current USA law says you shouldn't use the art without permission unless {exceptions that you don't fall under}.

I think business-wise, however, it's not a smart thing to do. :wink: