Theft? A lot of discussion goes on about this subject. Should we look down on it or not. But what is theft? We all know what it is, right? And yet, when you see people cast accusations about theft, we see a lot of different definitions.

When it comes to game creation, we can at least agree that when you put on an entire game you didn’t create yourself, nor was involved in the game’s development in any kind of way, that you are a thief, right?

When it comes to using other people’s elements, like graphics, audio or sometimes even code, we get different definitions. Some people are simply outraged when you used code somebody else wrote in your own game. People who yell like that, are only would-be critics who are actually just idiots, who will never get anything from the ground. Especially when creating a big game, you mustn’t even want to do all the work yourself. Of course you can say that the guys who brought us a game like Final Fantasy did all the work themselves, as well, but don’t forget that the current “them” refers to over one thousand professionally trained people, so how can you even begin to compare a one-man production or a production made by a small team with a franchise like that? And trust me, even games of that caliber aren’t written with own work alone.

There is no need to re-invent the wheel, when others did it for you? Did you think a car manufacturer created all the parts of the cars they create themselves? No way!

A basic rule is that there is nothing wrong with using stuff other people created.

But, there is a rub. If you just blindly put into your game what other people created, you have a big chance you are violating copyrights, and then you actually become a thief. So don’t go into that direction!

That doesn’t mean though you need to spend billions of dollars for this stuff. If you ask how you can convert a bigendian number into a littleendian number and vice versa in C#, and I tell you it can both be done by the same routine:

		
			// Like this
int startnumber = 20000;
var vbytes = BitConverter.GetBytes(startnumber);
Array.Reverse(vbytes);
var resultnumber = BitConverter.ToInt32(vbytes, 0);
// However that's less relevant now...
		
	

Are you a thief when you would copy the code above into your own program? Of course not! In this case the code was put onto the internet in order to show you how it’s done, and even if you don’t wanna think about it too much, you can just copy-and-paste it, as it was basically the purpose.

There’s hardly a programmer in existence who writes all the code himself. Heck technically if you write a program in C you are already using other people’s code, and then I’m not counting the code of the compiler, but we all know that C, like basically all programming languages, comes with a set of libraries which you can use to make your C program work.

		
			#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    printf("Hello world!\n);
    return 0;
}
		
	

By typing that “include” line I actually copy the code of the file “stdio.h” into my own, and by compiling the machine code tied to that library get linked into my own, not to mention that by making the function call “printf” I am calling code I didn’t write. Due to this set up it’s even impossible to claim you wrote all the code you need yourself. Even with assembler code you cannot claim that any more, since assembler code always need to communicate with the underlying OS kernel, which you likely didn’t write yourself.

A lot of libraries were even put up for free onto the internet in order for you to use them. Some paid, others for free. Always be sure you read the license prior to importing these into your game. It’s for this reason that I decided not to use a Lua script which could compress and decompress lzw into my own code, as it had a GNU/GPL license forcing me to to use the GNU license only. Now I do release a lot in GNU/GPL, but I don’t like to be forced to this, especially since I can need the code for some assignments I accept that forbid me to go open-source, and then the GNU/GPL would contradict my assignment. So always be aware of this.

Assets are in the same boat. People who can code, compose and draw are very rare. And you shouldn’t even WANT to master all that. And if you run a one-man show, don’t even try it. The internet is full of graphics and audio released in the Creative Commons, which is basically the ‘open-source’ license for artwork and all shapes and sizes. Sure, using a song by an artist like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Aerosmith, Nirvana and well, you name it, is illegal, and I recommend very strongly against the practice. But why not using a song from a site where all music is offered up under a free license and of which the artist allows you to use the music pieces? Of course, you sometimes risk that you hear the same song in another game (happened to me several times), since they had the same lack of restrictions as you had, and if you’ve heard certain pieces too often, then maybe using a tune you never heard before, but which is still released under a free license, do it. Most licenses do obligate you to give proper credit to the artist, though, and even when they don’t have this obligation, it’s only good manners to do it anyway.

Also when you accuse somebody of theft because of stolen assets (in my work as moderator I’ve seen this several times), be sure to check the license of the person being stolen from. I’ve seen “stolen assets” used in games, that were totally conform the license restriction (or lack there of) set in the original license, and were thus not theft. And don’t bash down games because they contain code done by others or assets done by others, if no license setups were broken.

Nobody can do all the work alone. Everybody is reliant on others, basically in every task they are given, or every task they set up to themselves. It is important that you learn to develop your own style, and the more you can do yourself, the better. But some “critics” think you should do everything yourself. That’s not how the world works, or how the world as ever worked at all. If that was the way the world worked, we could never come where we are now. The Romans, the Greeks and the Egyptians, the three great groups of people who practically invented the base of the current society could also only achieve what they did because everybody did only that what they were good at, and leave the stuff they were less good at, or which would otherwise be inefficient to do themselves to others. Although their technology is nothing compared to creating computer games, the basic rules that counted then still count today. In that sense we can say that some of the must fundamental pillars of our way of working haven’t changed in the past millennia, and if we our society to prevail for the next millennia, I think it’s better we don’t try to defy this basic rule, either. Times change, but some things don’t.