Project Credit Requirements and Guidelines

[CT075]

Quickstart/Checklist

• Projects posted on FEU must include some form of credits.
  • This can take the form of a formatted text document or in-game credits (if you do the latter, please be sure to mention it!).
• Don’t take assets (especially sprites) from other projects or Google.
• Assets taken from the graphics repository must have creators credited by name.
• When in doubt, anyone whose work is featured in your project should be credited by name.
• Overcrediting is better than undercrediting.
• A good faith best-effort is better than nothing.

Good examples of project credits include those for Sacred Echoes and Vision Quest. An example of something that is not an acceptable credits listing would be something like “assets taken from the repo” – this would violate the requirement that F2U asset creators be credited by name.

Full Policy

@dancer_A

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

In a nutshell, we require that all fanmade assets used by projects posted to this website be used with explicit permission. This permission can take many forms:

• A private agreement between the artist and the project creator
• An admission from the creator that the work is available for general use (aka “F2U” or “F2E”)
• An explicit licensing agreement (e.g. CC0, CC-BY-SA, etc)

It’s important to note that many forms of permission are conditional. For example, assets from the communal graphics repo are assumed to be “free to use with credit given”, meaning that the creator needs to be named somewhere in your project credits.

You are strongly encouraged to give credit to any code assets used by your project, either explicitly or referenced. If code is released under a license, please follow the terms of that license. As general practice, any code snippets posted on FEU with no other license is assumed to be released under CC0 public domain, but please check whether the author is asking for credit!

Assets ripped from commercial titles fall under a gray area and will be addressed on a case-by-case basis. In general, they are assumed to be fair game.

[CT075]

FAQ

Do I need to cite myself?

• You can if you want to; it can help reduce any confusion over asset authorship or ownership.

Do I need to cite Nintendo or other commercial entities?

• The above crediting and permission policy applies to fanmade assets only. For assets directly ripped from other Fire Emblem titles, don’t worry about it, we all know where they’re from. For direct sprite rips from other commercial titles, it is a courtesy to list the name of the game and possibly the ripper, but it is not required.

What if the creator doesn’t require credit to be given?

• This can get messy, because we (your audience) won’t be able to know what agreements you do or don’t have. Strictly speaking, it is within the rules to use an asset without credit if the creator explicitly tells you that it is okay to do so, but you should make a note somewhere that this is the case to avoid being reported by well-meaning onlookers.

What about AI-generated assets?

• As per our AI Art Policy, works that are primarily AI-generated do not require explicit permission to use, nor do they need to be credited, regardless of the original prompter.

I’m a creator. Can I withdraw permission from a project that uses my work?

• Yes, but you should tell the project creators directly that you are no longer allowing them to use your work – We don’t expect project creators to scour the internet to discover that you’re pulling your work.

  Permissions apply at the time a public release is posted to FEU. Project creators won’t be required to retroactively scrub any previous releases.

  Note that many real licenses irrevocably grant rights to use your work under the license conditions (notably, most of the creative commons licenses). Permissions on these cannot be withdrawn by the license terms.

Why are code and art held to different standards?

• Many real lawyers have tried (and failed!) to nail down what, exactly, constitutes “using” someone else’s code. Our policy attempts to reflect those of the wider programming and artistic communities regarding allowable use.

What if my work was made by a team?

• This can be handled on a case-by-case basis, but if the individuals involved are okay with being collectively credited as part of “The [Project] Team” (etc), that’s fine.

Legally, what does “F2U” and “F2E” mean?

• We made a previous post here discussing how we treat fair use. If you want more precise language, we treat F2U as CC-BY-ND and F2E as CC-BY with the exception that the creator may revoke the rights of individual users to the work in question.

Can I splice pieces of F2E sprites into my own work?

• Yes, with the following caveats:
  • The creator of the original work must be credited by you and anyone that uses the derivative work. In other words, if person B makes a mug using parts from person A’s F2E work, then both A and B must be credited by any downstream users of that mug.

How do FEU’s crediting guidelines apply to commissions?

• If said commissions are posted on FEU, then they will be treated like any other creative work and held to the same guidelines. Otherwise, ultimately, what you choose to spend your money on is up to you. Buyer beware, and so on.

Can I use F2U or F2E assets in my commercially-licensed game?

• “F2U” and “F2E” are terms for FEU-internal use only, and do not constitute or replace a proper license on the works in question. We make no guarantees about the legality of any works released under those terms as they pertain to any real-world intellectual property statutes. FEU is not the venue under which to sort these issues out, talk to your lawyer (and the artist!).

What happens if my project does not meet these guidelines?

• That depends a lot on how much you’re missing. If you’re just missing a few things, we’re typically happy to let things slide while you fix them. For bigger infractions, we may temporarily de-list your project until you can get your credits in order.

This policy is different than [past decision]! What gives?

• That’s one of the reasons we’re taking the time to write this down. In the past, we largely enforced project crediting by vibes and relied on word of mouth to spread good practice. By putting this out in the open, we’re hoping to be more direct about what is and isn’t allowed use.

[CT075]

Some clarifications/updates:

• Code authors who want to avoid the whole song and dance of fully licensing their code may put a notice either in their thread or in the source code itself noting that attribution is required, and FEU will respect that. We don’t have any particular legalese for what “F2U”/“F2E” means about code in general (you should look up previous problems with intellectual property around code if you’re interested, this gets really complicated), but a rule of thumb is that if you used it in any meaningful way and the author wants credit, you should list them. There’s no shame in overcrediting!

  Caveat: If either the unlicensed code in question or at least one public release of your project was published before 2024-02-29 (the date that this policy takes effect), a best-effort attribution is fine.

• These requirements are not applied retroactively – projects with releases currently on FEU will not be required to be updated to the new standard until their next public release. As far as we know, most projects currently with public releases are already following these guidelines in spirit. If you spot a project published before 2024-02-29 that is missing a credits list, please let the staff know and we’ll deal with those on a case-by-case basis.

[CT075]

Since some further edge cases have come up recently (these have also been added into the FAQ above):

Can I splice pieces of F2E sprites into my own work?

• Yes, with the following caveat:
  • The creator of the original work must be credited by you and anyone that uses the derivative work. In other words, if person B makes a mug using parts from person A’s F2E work, then both A and B must be credited by any downstream users of that mug.

How do FEU’s crediting guidelines apply to commissions?

• If said commissions are posted on FEU, then they will be treated like any other creative work and held to the same guidelines. Otherwise, ultimately, what you choose to spend your money on is up to you. Buyer beware, and so on.

Can I use F2U or F2E assets in my commercially-licensed game?

• “F2U” and “F2E” are terms for FEU-internal use only, and do not constitute or replace a proper license on the works in question. We make no guarantees about the legality of any works released under those terms as they pertain to any real-world intellectual property statutes. FEU is not the venue under which to sort these issues out, talk to your lawyer (and the artist!).