If we don't sell it for money can we use an established universe or does Choice of Games choose what is sold?

I have been working on an an reimagining of the entire DC universe currently just working on short stories for fun but I was considering turning it into a game but if that’s against the rules even for free I won’t try.

COG wont publish anything that will infringe on copyright including what you’re suggesting. (Have a look at the full rules, they’re on the main site if you’re wondering what you can and can’t do.)

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I’m pretty sure copyright only affects commercial distribution and not personal usage

If you’re giving it away completely for free( completely free, not free but with ads involved), then I’m quite positive it shouldn’t affect anything

As for CoG publishing, it’s free stuff being given out, what sort of publishing would you really need?

Yeah, I thought by the title that they wanted COG to distribute it as a free game on their site which they’ve said they won’t do for anything that has a copyrighted material like a DC based game (whether free or otherwise).

If it’s something that is just going to be shared with friends on a non-commercial basis, you can probably use it that way as long as COG isn’t officially involved I would think. (It’s unlikely DC would get involved in a personal small scale project but as with anything copyrighted, they can ask to have it taken down if they feel like it.)

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Well I did mean sharing it on CoG for no personal profit for me since writing it would be payment enough. So the CoG can’t get involved was a helpful answer

If it’s just a link shared on the forums and hosted elsewhere, you’d need to check with the mods :slight_smile:
(But any official involvement like being hosted by COG would be a no go.)

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I think there were once a few fanmade games that were esentally just interactive fanfiction that got taken off the site for that. To my knwledge they were never actually published of the sort but they simply posted the demo link on the forum.

Do you have a credible source for that? because it seems highly unlikely

CoG taking down something like that would be like wattpad taking down a good chunk of their content since there are A LOT of fanfics on there referencing copyrighted materials. But for the most part the major companies just couldn’t be bothered about those stuffs as far as I know

Hypothetically, even if CoG did have some irrational fear of copyrights attacking free content and that fear was legitimate, the worst that could happen is the supposed companies request for the content to be taken down( which is possibly the case for what you mentioned). I’m pretty sure the trademark owners have little to gain from filing a lawsuit against a small business hosting a forum which just happens to have an user making non-profit content( absolutely an enticing court case, am I right?)

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Fanfiction does exactly the same sort of thing all the time and in essence you thing would just be interactive fanfiction, so I would say as long as there absolutely no profit or you expect it to appear on the site here (likely not) you should be fine. I’m actually creating a fan CYOA for X-Men myself so I can relate.

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It was simply something I heard a while back on a thread while I was still ghosting. I was just throwing it out there.

If you in any way intended to publish it as HG or anything, the answer is No.
Just write a plain fanfic and put it on ao3.

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