TGB Pro licensing question

#21 Was section 4 of the TGB (Fees) changes recently? I don't think it was always a requirement for everybody to show the TGB logo. Grimm's Hatchery on Yahoo! Games shows no logo, but was made with TGB.

I've been an advocate of GG and TGE for a while, but this really changes that. I don't even recall getting an email about the change. The way this change was handled was really, really tacky. If I had known that a EULA change was going to be snuck into the situation, I would have bought the commercial version before this change.

Considering how TGB and TGE have been changed so much that the "codeonce" concept is worthless, I'll probably have to retool a lot of it to work in TGE.

Addendum:
My real bouef with this stems from it being a sudden and rather drastic change to the EULA. In my eyes, it hurts GG's credibility, and it's unlikely that I'm alone in feeling that way. Our original plan was to start the franchise in TGB with a much more ambitious follow-on title in TGE(A) if people like it. Now, I have to worry that the licensing would suddenly change between now and then.

Will the new licensing come with high quality documentation and tutorials? History shows that to be very, very unlikely. So can somebody explain why a new development team would want to deal with random changes to the EULA and questionable documentation support? It's all quite disheartening.

#22 I suspect this change came about when they were purchased. I have to admit that after having the loading screen in my game for a week, it is not so bad. I would rather go straight into the game, but as was said above, it isn't anything that gamers aren't already used to (splash screens).

#23 @Gellyware
The difference between indie and commercial is completely about budget now. For game developers, that was always the change. For the serious games and simulations industry, new EULA's were usually being developed with the GG legal department depending on other contracting options. So it made sense to move that to a "contact licensing" mentality to develop those applications since that was where it usually ended up anyway.

@Jason
It was announced in Brett's blog. The particulars of the EULA change are there.

The change is directed towards 1) simulations and serious game licensees which require individual license tweaking the majority of the time, and 2) product recognition.

I wish it had been announced in a different way, like you said, an e-mail or the like to licensees. This is a big issue when any company changes its EULA.

And as we talked about before, the codeOnce feature should work fine for logic. The problem would be constraining calls between the 2D and 3D engine scenegraphs for specific features of the engines. Logic should be the same, however. If you are writing an a* algorithm, though, you will have to rewrite the pathing logic to work in three dimensions instead of just two...unless you only use two dimensions in your 3D world.

#24 David,

Announcing it in a blog is hardly an announcement. The changes makes sense and put it more in line with other widely available, highly affordable engines, such as Unity and others (which was my assumption upon reading the new EULA).

The point in mentioning CodeOnce and the documentation is that GG seems to think they're exempt from professional behavior because they're GG. It's quite obvious that basic logic written in a common language would be usable in multiple places. Why not brag that I can also use my sound and graphics in multiple games? Should I really be dazzled that my math and information structures can be used in multiple projects utilization a similar theme? The simple fact is, CodeOnce is a popular selling point of Torque; but as a feature, it's non-existent as advertised. TDN is another selling point of Torque products, it's a shameful mess of assorted documents of questionable accuracy. The answer to that? Maybe our users will fix it.

That whole, "Aw shucks, we're just GG, you shouldn't expect too much" attitude is tolerated because they've been very amicable towards indie developers. A sudden, unadvertised changed to the EULA flies against that entire philosophy and should be considered as a warning sign that restrictions and expectations will be increased on licensees, but the licensor should still be kept to rather low standards. This really isn't a matter of GG tightening up their own ship and improving the overall usability of their tools and raising expectations of licensees as a result, it's just arbitrarily raising expectations on licensees without having the grace to inform them properly.

#25 I'm thankful that you'll be respecting the older license for commercial owners like me with older versions; I'm sure I won't be upgrading to any future versions with this news.

Brett's blog said:

Quote:We'll also now be requiring the display of a Torque logo or "splash screen" as just about every other game technology company does to help build their brand. Emergent, Epic, Unity, Valve and others all do this and it makes sense.

Forgive me for being blunt, but GG is not in the same class as Epic/Valve, and frankly I liked it that way. These changes (which like everyone else I had to stumble on in a random post; yet another example of the tremendous gap between GG-indie and the professional league of game tools they're trying to align themselves with) dull the 'indie' shine of GG products. Maybe that's what you're aiming for, however the support, documentation, and technology isn't of a calibur to justify this, and it stings the little guys in a bad way.

I've personally pushed Torque technology to several small but active, VC-funded gaming start-ups and convinced them to purchase commercial licenses; they certainly don't hang around here and read blogs. They're going to be pretty surprised when they find out about these changes, and I have to say I regret being such an evangelist now.

#26 Hi David,

When you say ""contact licensing," what is that exactly? I'm just trying to understand if there is a special licensing to remove the TGB logo.

Again, it's not because of embarassment but it's more that it just doesn't seem professional or appropriate for my audience (casual gamers, women 35-60).

Can you imagine every commercial, tv show, or movie displaying all the equipment and tools used to make it?

Imagine....

"The following commercial was filmed using the Hitachi professional HD video camera." and at the end
"Editing done with Adobe Premiere and After Effects."

I guess women 35-60 need to be aware of garage games and your tools as a possibe mid-late life carrer change or hobby, game programming.

This bad news comes at a time where it's too far beyond in my project for me to go back to using blitzmax and start coding the game from scratch.

Unless there is affordable special licensing to remove the logo, this will be my first and last game published using TGB.

I was more than happy to fork out the 1250 in a few months to upgrade to the commercial pro just for that option as well as to support GG. That's nearly 13 indie licensense fees. Think you'll make that or more with your logo alone in a splash screen that mostly women 35-60 will see?

#27 E-mail licensing at garagegames.com with your particular needs. As far as I know, there is not a special license to remove the logo, but that is what negotiating licensing is for. If you need the logo removed, then that is what you need to contact them about.

As to making the $1250 or so, it may not come from your title, but it may come from another one with a different target market. Your target most likely isn't concerned with creating games, but the target of a twitch shooter or RPG often is. If the visibility of GarageGames or TGB doesn't fit your target market or impedes getting your product onto portals, then contact licensing with your concerns.

#28 Alright, Thanks David.

Hope it all works out.

Charles