This game is almost a 1:1 copy of Minecraft but with bugs and missing features, which would be fine if copyright didn't exist.
The code is original and legal, but creative content of Minecraft like biomes, dimentions (Nether, End), items, mobs, their names, models, the game's looks and feels were all copied. Even Steve's face was traced/copied.
This goes beyond copying an idea for a game which is legal by itself.
IMO the game is a legal hazard for Minetest community and contributing to it makes you prone to legal problems.
The contributors of this game have often vague understanding of copyright and they think that Minecraft's EULA protects them somehow because it is liberal - this isn't true, actually read what an EULA is and read Minecraft's EULA.
For EULA to work you need to buy the game and use it so it only applies for people who actually bought Minecraft in the first place.
If you didn't buy the game then standard copyright applies and this game is not much more legal than widespread pirated launchers.
Here some contributors are even aware of the threat, yet the issue keeps being ignored:
https://git.minetest.land/MineClone2/MineClone2/issues/2617
Not giving you an upvote until legal problems get resolved.
The issue has been there for 2 months and as I wrote in my original post it remains mostly unaddressed. Or should I maybe make an account on their issue tracker to repeat myself?
I think that players should know that this game has not one but many copyright issues as the sole purpose of the game is to create a clone - not a game inspired by Minecraft like other games, but a clone.
All this game gets are upvotes while these copyright violations render it technically nonfree software - modifying, sharing and playing can get people into legal trouble. I think thats a serious problem.
Promoting this game when it's essentially violating Microsoft's "intellectual property" is not the right thing to do.
If that's not a valid opinion then what should I do? Play the game even more, make a list of all copyright violations? It's not my responsibility to keep MineClone2 compliant with the law or to give the game's contributors lectures on copyright.
Not giving you an upvote until legal problems get resolved.
Essentially meaning until the project doesn't exist anymore - the potential copyright problems are a fundamental thing, aren't they it's not like that can be "resolved" by changing a couple of names here and there.
Furthermore right now there aren't any legal problems (i am aware of). It's not like we're talking about criminal law. It only becomes a legal problem at the point where the holder of the alleged copyrights decides to do something about it. There is really no clear right and wrong with this stuff (or anything in civil law tbh)
Now i'm not saying you're wrong, indeed i've made similar points before, but it's not like you're definitely right either. Many clones of games exist and there are court rulings to both sides.
Pretending this is a clear cut issue is neither doing the issue itsself justice nor the people who have put hard work into this. And diffuse fearmongering ("the game is a legal hazard for Minetest community" - how ?) is probably not helpful either.
To make it very clear: you are not a judge assigned to a copyright case regarding mineclone2 (afaik?!) in turn you are not who decides what is a violation of copyrights - a maybe similar real world case:
@lord_of_the_dumpster: We care about copyright, and as we're not copyright lawyers, it's impossible to tell how our project would stand against copyright claims. But from your comments it's obvious that you're not a lawyer either, which makes me wonder why are you so sure about your claims.
About names, if you look in a dictionary, you'll find nether as the "world below" or underground. So it's not invented by Mojang and neither is the End. Dimensions are also not a Minecraft invention. Mob names, sure, they exist as such because this is a game focused on a Minecraft-like experience. And as I mentioned in the issue that you pointed to, there are plenty of differences between MineClone2 and Minecraft, and there will be more.
About Steve, it looks nothing like our male character - ours has a different look and colors, and even facial hair. Maybe you looked at someone's game that has Minecraft textures. The maintainers have always cared about copyright and removed the proprietary images when found.
Sure you can create a user in our issue tracker, but if you really care about the right thing, you first need to understand that its contributors already care about not breaking copyright, and this is a work of love for gaming, for the sake of learning programming, for the community around it, etc. If you want to actually help, be very specific on the issues you bring up, so we can address them. Vague concerns don't help.
Microsoft's intellectual property? How? Mojang made the game. Also, when complaining about textures, please look at the actual game by yourself first before jumping to conclusions that we copied "Steve"s texture.
Essentially meaning until the project doesn't exist anymore
Not necessarily. The easy way would be to go wild and creative - making a minecraft-like game that's not minecraft - any other minetest game does that - see NodeCore, Exile, hell even XAEnvironment.
It only becomes a legal problem at the point where the holder of the alleged copyrights decides to do something about it.
So imagine that one day MCL2 becomes a complete clone of Minecraft and starts gaining popularity, hurting Microsoft's revenue. You could receive a mail from their lawyers giving you an ultimatum: "delete this game or we're meeting in court". Isn't this a problem? Would be sad to trash all the good work.
Many clones of games exist and there are court rulings to both sides.
What kind of clones are you referring to? Game ideas can't be copyrighted and a voxel sandbox game can't be copyrighted. These clones are sometimes backed by big companies as opposed to Minetest.
Pretending this is a clear cut issue is neither doing the issue itsself justice nor the people who have put hard work into this.
I'm aware of the fact that copyright law is vague enough, yet there are some good practices you can follow: naming things differently, making different GUI, changing the gameplay. Currently MCL2 is almost 1:1 Minecraft.
And diffuse fearmongering ("the game is a legal hazard for Minetest community" - how ?) is probably not helpful either.
It is a hazard though - getting random people sued, and their work removed is not that far from reality, especially given Microsoft's past.
I made that post because I had a course on basic copyright law at my university. If I'm not mistaken then non-trivial combinations of non-creative things are copyrightable. So for example the name "creeper" itself is not creative, but the combination of the name, texture, shape of the mob and features like exploding is copyrightable. Your creeper is too similar to that from Minecraft. Even the shape of the mob is copyrightable by itself - it's quite unique IMO, unless you can prove it's really common and was widely known before Minecraft was created.
Given that you're serious about copyright and I was wrong, then I can try looking for examples of MCL2 actually breaking copyright in an obvious way and also for some materials explaining how copyright works to back it up. (if I find some free time).
Initially when I found out that MCL2 exists I was impressed, but then I started reading about copyright and found out the issues.
But from your comments it's obvious that you're not a lawyer either, which makes me wonder why are you so sure about your claims.
I'm not a lawyer but as I wrote in the other reply I had a course on basics of copyright.
About names, if you look in a dictionary, you'll find nether as the "world below" or underground. So it's not invented by Mojang and neither is the End. Dimensions are also not a Minecraft invention. Mob names, sure, they exist as such because this is a game focused on a Minecraft-like experience.
As I wrote in the other reply creative combinations of non-creative things are copyrightable. So you can't copyright ideas like the hell, underworld, etc. but you can copyright the combination of the name Nether, the obsidian portal with that purple thing whatever it's called, mobs that inhabit it, especially the new biomes (their appearance, color, mushrooms) and the use of gold there - that's creative and therefore protected by copyright. Also novel names like "netherrack".
About Steve, it looks nothing like our male character - ours has a different look and colors, and even facial hair.
What am I looking at then? I downloaded MineClone 2 through the game. That's obviously a traced Steve texture.
The maintainers have always cared about copyright and removed the proprietary images when found.
If so then I'm sorry for my initial assumptions, though if I'm right then you will have to overhaul the game greatly.
If you want to actually help, be very specific on the issues you bring up, so we can address them. Vague concerns don't help.
I can do that, but that's a lot of work both for you and me. I hope that the examples I provided at least give you an idea of what should be addressed.
Microsoft's intellectual property? How? Mojang made the game.
I quoted the term "intellectual property" because I don't really like copyright myself. Though that's what lawyers call it.
Also yes - Microsoft bought Mojang some time ago so they own it and they hold the copyright.
Also, when complaining about textures, please look at the actual game by yourself first before jumping to conclusions that we copied "Steve"s texture.
See above. Did I download a wrong game/version somehow? I'm using the in-game downloader but I'll check the source code to make sure I'm right.
Yeah, so I took my time to set up Minetest on a clean OS and installed MineClone 2 directly from the source code to confirm that's not an error or my side (like some texturepack, mod, etc).
It turns out that the Steve-like texture is also there.
The face almost pixel-by pixel identical, and the colors of the clothes. Did some of your contributors push this without your knowledge or something?
So @Nicu, what were you referring to actually? Previously you had that man with red clothes and a beard, but what I see in the game is clearly not that texture.
Seeing that Steve texture was one of the reasons why I made my initial post.
there are many clones which are similarly close to the original - the most well known ones probably being openttd (transport tycoon) and freeciv (civilzation). But you might notice that list even has a number of minecraft clones - and yeah some of them are similarly "clones" - or "reimplementations" or whatever anyone likes to call it.
The fact of the matter is if microsofts sends a dmca takedown it doesn't seem likely anyone would go to court over it. In light of that there is basically 2 things we can do: change everything that migh piss of microsoft in the slightest and live in constant fear or just accept that this risk exists.
You might not realize this but the codebase of mcl2 is huge. Going that first route would be considerable effort. And its not like we can't still do that if something like it were to happen.
But foss game clones aside, as long as the appstores are full of minecraft clones that ... yk cost money or have ads its probably realistic to not worry too much.
@lord_of_the_dumpster: Right, I forgot about the recent addition of skins. Even if not identical, the default templates look quite similar to Steve and Alex. Thanks for pointing that out.
This game is almost a 1:1 copy of Minecraft but with bugs and missing features, which would be fine if copyright didn't exist. The code is original and legal, but creative content of Minecraft like biomes, dimentions (Nether, End), items, mobs, their names, models, the game's looks and feels were all copied. Even Steve's face was traced/copied. This goes beyond copying an idea for a game which is legal by itself. IMO the game is a legal hazard for Minetest community and contributing to it makes you prone to legal problems. The contributors of this game have often vague understanding of copyright and they think that Minecraft's EULA protects them somehow because it is liberal - this isn't true, actually read what an EULA is and read Minecraft's EULA. For EULA to work you need to buy the game and use it so it only applies for people who actually bought Minecraft in the first place. If you didn't buy the game then standard copyright applies and this game is not much more legal than widespread pirated launchers. Here some contributors are even aware of the threat, yet the issue keeps being ignored: https://git.minetest.land/MineClone2/MineClone2/issues/2617
Not giving you an upvote until legal problems get resolved.
converted review into a thread
issues should be created on a packages issue tracker or as normal threads
The issue has been there for 2 months and as I wrote in my original post it remains mostly unaddressed. Or should I maybe make an account on their issue tracker to repeat myself? I think that players should know that this game has not one but many copyright issues as the sole purpose of the game is to create a clone - not a game inspired by Minecraft like other games, but a clone. All this game gets are upvotes while these copyright violations render it technically nonfree software - modifying, sharing and playing can get people into legal trouble. I think thats a serious problem. Promoting this game when it's essentially violating Microsoft's "intellectual property" is not the right thing to do. If that's not a valid opinion then what should I do? Play the game even more, make a list of all copyright violations? It's not my responsibility to keep MineClone2 compliant with the law or to give the game's contributors lectures on copyright.
Essentially meaning until the project doesn't exist anymore - the potential copyright problems are a fundamental thing, aren't they it's not like that can be "resolved" by changing a couple of names here and there.
Furthermore right now there aren't any legal problems (i am aware of). It's not like we're talking about criminal law. It only becomes a legal problem at the point where the holder of the alleged copyrights decides to do something about it. There is really no clear right and wrong with this stuff (or anything in civil law tbh)
Now i'm not saying you're wrong, indeed i've made similar points before, but it's not like you're definitely right either. Many clones of games exist and there are court rulings to both sides.
Pretending this is a clear cut issue is neither doing the issue itsself justice nor the people who have put hard work into this. And diffuse fearmongering ("the game is a legal hazard for Minetest community" - how ?) is probably not helpful either.
To make it very clear: you are not a judge assigned to a copyright case regarding mineclone2 (afaik?!) in turn you are not who decides what is a violation of copyrights - a maybe similar real world case:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_Holding%2C_LLC_v._Xio_Interactive%2C_Inc.
just to show that things are more complicated than you make them out to be even though that ruling isn't exactly in "our" favor.
Thank you for volunteering your time doing it anyways though :P
@lord_of_the_dumpster: We care about copyright, and as we're not copyright lawyers, it's impossible to tell how our project would stand against copyright claims. But from your comments it's obvious that you're not a lawyer either, which makes me wonder why are you so sure about your claims.
About names, if you look in a dictionary, you'll find nether as the "world below" or underground. So it's not invented by Mojang and neither is the End. Dimensions are also not a Minecraft invention. Mob names, sure, they exist as such because this is a game focused on a Minecraft-like experience. And as I mentioned in the issue that you pointed to, there are plenty of differences between MineClone2 and Minecraft, and there will be more.
About Steve, it looks nothing like our male character - ours has a different look and colors, and even facial hair. Maybe you looked at someone's game that has Minecraft textures. The maintainers have always cared about copyright and removed the proprietary images when found.
Sure you can create a user in our issue tracker, but if you really care about the right thing, you first need to understand that its contributors already care about not breaking copyright, and this is a work of love for gaming, for the sake of learning programming, for the community around it, etc. If you want to actually help, be very specific on the issues you bring up, so we can address them. Vague concerns don't help.
Microsoft's intellectual property? How? Mojang made the game. Also, when complaining about textures, please look at the actual game by yourself first before jumping to conclusions that we copied "Steve"s texture.
Sorry for my initial rudeness, I was annoyed that day.
@cora
Not necessarily. The easy way would be to go wild and creative - making a minecraft-like game that's not minecraft - any other minetest game does that - see NodeCore, Exile, hell even XAEnvironment.
So imagine that one day MCL2 becomes a complete clone of Minecraft and starts gaining popularity, hurting Microsoft's revenue. You could receive a mail from their lawyers giving you an ultimatum: "delete this game or we're meeting in court". Isn't this a problem? Would be sad to trash all the good work.
What kind of clones are you referring to? Game ideas can't be copyrighted and a voxel sandbox game can't be copyrighted. These clones are sometimes backed by big companies as opposed to Minetest.
I'm aware of the fact that copyright law is vague enough, yet there are some good practices you can follow: naming things differently, making different GUI, changing the gameplay. Currently MCL2 is almost 1:1 Minecraft.
It is a hazard though - getting random people sued, and their work removed is not that far from reality, especially given Microsoft's past.
More later, the post is too long.
@cora
continuation:
I made that post because I had a course on basic copyright law at my university. If I'm not mistaken then non-trivial combinations of non-creative things are copyrightable. So for example the name "creeper" itself is not creative, but the combination of the name, texture, shape of the mob and features like exploding is copyrightable. Your creeper is too similar to that from Minecraft. Even the shape of the mob is copyrightable by itself - it's quite unique IMO, unless you can prove it's really common and was widely known before Minecraft was created.
Given that you're serious about copyright and I was wrong, then I can try looking for examples of MCL2 actually breaking copyright in an obvious way and also for some materials explaining how copyright works to back it up. (if I find some free time). Initially when I found out that MCL2 exists I was impressed, but then I started reading about copyright and found out the issues.
@Nicu
I'm not a lawyer but as I wrote in the other reply I had a course on basics of copyright.
As I wrote in the other reply creative combinations of non-creative things are copyrightable. So you can't copyright ideas like the hell, underworld, etc. but you can copyright the combination of the name Nether, the obsidian portal with that purple thing whatever it's called, mobs that inhabit it, especially the new biomes (their appearance, color, mushrooms) and the use of gold there - that's creative and therefore protected by copyright. Also novel names like "netherrack".
What am I looking at then? I downloaded MineClone 2 through the game. That's obviously a traced Steve texture.
https://ibb.co/hfRr7VD
If so then I'm sorry for my initial assumptions, though if I'm right then you will have to overhaul the game greatly.
I can do that, but that's a lot of work both for you and me. I hope that the examples I provided at least give you an idea of what should be addressed.
@PrairieWind
I quoted the term "intellectual property" because I don't really like copyright myself. Though that's what lawyers call it. Also yes - Microsoft bought Mojang some time ago so they own it and they hold the copyright.
See above. Did I download a wrong game/version somehow? I'm using the in-game downloader but I'll check the source code to make sure I'm right.
Yeah, so I took my time to set up Minetest on a clean OS and installed MineClone 2 directly from the source code to confirm that's not an error or my side (like some texturepack, mod, etc). It turns out that the Steve-like texture is also there.
This is how it looks like if you missed it im my previous reply: https://ibb.co/hfRr7VD
The face almost pixel-by pixel identical, and the colors of the clothes. Did some of your contributors push this without your knowledge or something?
So @Nicu, what were you referring to actually? Previously you had that man with red clothes and a beard, but what I see in the game is clearly not that texture.
Seeing that Steve texture was one of the reasons why I made my initial post.
https://osgameclones.com/
there are many clones which are similarly close to the original - the most well known ones probably being openttd (transport tycoon) and freeciv (civilzation). But you might notice that list even has a number of minecraft clones - and yeah some of them are similarly "clones" - or "reimplementations" or whatever anyone likes to call it.
The fact of the matter is if microsofts sends a dmca takedown it doesn't seem likely anyone would go to court over it. In light of that there is basically 2 things we can do: change everything that migh piss of microsoft in the slightest and live in constant fear or just accept that this risk exists.
You might not realize this but the codebase of mcl2 is huge. Going that first route would be considerable effort. And its not like we can't still do that if something like it were to happen.
But foss game clones aside, as long as the appstores are full of minecraft clones that ... yk cost money or have ads its probably realistic to not worry too much.
@lord_of_the_dumpster: Right, I forgot about the recent addition of skins. Even if not identical, the default templates look quite similar to Steve and Alex. Thanks for pointing that out.
Just in case: I'm extremely busy with irl stuff recently so I can't find time for a proper reply, please be patient.