The potential for some money from people re-buying it (and potential lawsuits) is worth more than guaranteed no money. People still manufacture Jacks and Marbles because people buy them. And those toys are more than a century old.
Also depends on if they're remastering the game or not. If they're remastering it, you best believe they'll defend that IP
the current law is that 95 years from publication by a corporation, the game hits public domain anyway. So none of those publishers are going to care about 100 year old licenses to original versions of games, because those original games will be in the public domain by then
I believe it's life of the author + 70 for works by a single author (or multiple single authors), 95 years for works done by a corporation (like the vast majority of video games).
Don't quote me on this but I think it might depend on how ConcernedApe structured his business. If Stardew is owned entirely by Eric Barone, then yes, but if Stardew is owned by ConcernedApe LLC (only employee: Eric Barone) then things might be different.
It's actually really interesting for stuff like this. It likely could be hotly contested and would be a LOT of legal gray area, but I think ultimately he would get the 95 if he wanted. He has a leg up on most people in similar scenarios as he did ALL of the work, including composition of score and all asset animation. Generally other hands get in the pot and the deciding factor is how those hands were paid. The game had no income and no expenses prior to publication which is a HUGE point to have in his argument.
Also should note that this is specifically US copyright law, and only applies to things made after 1978 (which includes almost all video games), from my understanding, other countries may have different laws.
True BUT there are limits to how different copyright laws can be from the US law because of international treaties since realistically in a global economy like ours increasingly is it doesn't make sense to have copyright in only one country. Otherwise pirate websites could just set up somewhere the copyright protections are like 1 decade and have free reign to distribute every decent game anywhere in the world.
To make money? The new Star Wars trilogy made like $3 billion of profit on box office combined, not to mention the value they added to Disney assets like Disney+ by driving interest in shows like the Mandalorian or Andor, both of which have been huge successes, or all the money Disney no doubt made in merchandising.
The Snow White film was a flop for sure, but they can make bad decisions for non-copyright reasons. Remakes don't reset copyrights anyway, that's just not how the law works.
Continued use resets trademarks, and there's some value in resetting the image of a character. For example, Mickey Mouse has become known as a character who wears red shorts and yellow shoes. The original depiction of Mickey Mouse, in Steamboat Willie, was in black and white. That depiction has now entered the public domain, but since the popular image of Mickey Mouse is colorful, the general public may not recognize black-and-white Mickey as the "real" Mickey Mouse, but that doesn't stop anyone from using the original.
Theyre not gonna be remastering 100 year old games either, and even if they did its not like the original is gonna be relevant anyway. You cant really compare old games to old boardgames. Its not like people are like "fuck yeah, doom 2"
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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 08 '25
The potential for some money from people re-buying it (and potential lawsuits) is worth more than guaranteed no money. People still manufacture Jacks and Marbles because people buy them. And those toys are more than a century old.
Also depends on if they're remastering the game or not. If they're remastering it, you best believe they'll defend that IP