This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m covering an important part of making a game! It’s all about Licensing!

What do you mean a License?: Well it’s allowing someone to use someone else’s software for your own use. For example if you own Photoshop you have a license to use it for your own purposes whatever they may be.

What does that mean in a game?: Game companies often license out their own software that they use to make games, often called a game engine. Some prominently and well known ones are Cryengine, Unreal Engine and Unity. This isn’t the only thing though that is licensed for use in games.

What else?: Here is the real big issue that’s affecting lots of people these days. It’s the music that the game has, it has a different set of copyright laws and while they are fine for personal use (read: for you to play the game); it often isn’t okay for it to be used for other than that. So if you stream or make Let’s Plays of games you need to be really careful of what you use the background music for. Grand Theft Auto V for example has a bunch of actual music in the radio stations, along with some “in-game” music as well. If you aren’t careful and you violate the license you will probably get your videos taken down. It’s frustrating for localization as well, but that’s a topic for another week.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!