Maya educational in free games.

[Anonymous]

I am currently making a video game with unity, i needed some assets to the game so I have been making them with Maya educational (Because i am a student and i don't have money ok.).

Now I want to ask: Can I use Maya to make assets to my game which I'm going to publish for free to itch.io?

I could state that it is just for education purposes on the itch.io page but I am still not sure if it is allowed.

[maurice.patel]

As a student you are entitled to use free educational software for anything that could be reasonably interpreted as furthering your education. The specific terms and conditions are here: educational license. A free game woudl qualify as non-commercial use so the only question is whether work you are doing is really for educational purposes or not. If it is you should be OK.

[Anonymous]

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@maurice.patel wrote:

As a student you are entitled to use free educational software for anything that could be reasonably interpreted as furthering your education. The specific terms and conditions are here: educational license. A free game woudl qualify as non-commercial use so the only question is whether work you are doing is really for educational purposes or not. If it is you should be OK.

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Thanks for quick information, that solved my problem.

[damaggio]

Are you sure about his Maurice, that website does make a profit from other peoples assets and games.

[Anonymous]

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@damaggio wrote:

Are you sure about his Maurice, that website does make a profit from other peoples assets and games.

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Yeah but big amount of the games there are free and i am gonna put my game there free too.

[mspeer]

Hi!

This is a bit of a grey zone.

Even if you don't make money directly with this content, there are many ways to make profit with this.

Every commercial driven platform makes (more) money by offering (more) content, even if the content is free.

itch.io is a commercial platform:

"Why was itch.io made?

itch.io was made to give game developers a marketplace where they get to control how their content is sold."

If you really want to be safe side, either use a private site to share the content/game or license Maya for 1 or 2 months and use the content as you like.

Additional information:

"Software and cloud-based services subject to an Educational license of entitlement may be used solely for purposes directly related to learning, training, research or development. The software and cloud-based services cannot be used for commercial, professional or any other for-profit purposes."
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/account-management/account-access/education-program
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/account-management/account-access/education-program/...

Also read this:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/student-version-of-maya-for-youtube/td-p/5663234
https://www.autodesk.com/company/legal-notices-trademarks/software-license-agreements/educational-li...

[Anonymous]

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@mspeer wrote:

Hi!

This is a bit of a grey zone.

Even if you don't make money directly with this content, there are many ways to make profit with this.

Every commercial driven platform makes (more) money by offering (more) content, even if the content is free.

itch.io is a commercial platform:

"Why was itch.io made?

itch.io was made to give game developers a marketplace where they get to control how their content is sold."

If you really want to be safe side, either use a private site to share the content/game or license Maya for 1 or 2 months and use the content as you like.

Additional information:

"Software and cloud-based services subject to an Educational license of entitlement may be used solely for purposes directly related to learning, training, research or development. The software and cloud-based services cannot be used for commercial, professional or any other for-profit purposes."
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/account-management/account-access/education-program
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/customer-service/account-management/account-access/education-program/...

Also read this:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/maya-forum/student-version-of-maya-for-youtube/td-p/5663234
https://www.autodesk.com/company/legal-notices-trademarks/software-license-agreements/educational-li...

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Well yes i could basicaly use wix to make a website to share it there and if i know wix is not getting money from your web pages, or i could use some other game sharing websites that have all games free and have no ads (that would mean that my game wont raise the profit of their website.

Tho i don't really think that is too needed because the amount of assets is probably less than 15 so it isn't really too much... i don't know, what do you think as a good solution (i can't really buy maya because i currently have almost no money).

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

You should focus your efforts in learning the software so you can create a portfolio and later you can apply for a job in any industry you desire.

You can still play with Unity and use that as your game work when looking for a job.

I doubt that there's a "Free website" (as pointed out by mspeer and many other posts like this on this Forum)  out there, so better to be safe and concentrate on your skills.

[Anonymous]

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@damaggio wrote:

You should focus your efforts in learning the software so you can create a portfolio and later you can apply for a job in any industry you desire.

You can still play with Unity and use that as your game work when looking for a job.

I doubt that there's a "Free website" (as pointed out by mspeer and many other posts like this on this Forum)  out there, so better to be safe and concentrate on your skills.

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well it might be a good solution and i think i could use blender too because the models are not too hard to make.

[maurice.patel]

It's a very grey area. TI don't know much about itch.io myself, but typically posting free content to 'platform' sites like YouTube of Facebook in not necessarily considered commercial as long as you are in no way monetizing the content itself. Although these platforms are commercial platforms themselves it can be considered acceptable as a means of sharing free content for non-commercial gain. What you cannot do though is charge for the content either directly or through advertising included in the content.  A lot of this really depends on your intent though. Are you publishing just to learn about that process or because you hope your game takes off?  From a compliance perspective, we want students to learn how to do things by doing them but if your goal is to build an audience or market for future games then it would not qualify. As was posted above, maybe using a commercial license of Maya LT or Maya for a month or two is enough and will give you commercial rights and greater flexibility.  Also for educational purposes, it can be better if you get your projects endorsed by someone at your school as then the educational purposes are much more unambiguous.

[mspeer]

Hi

As my post missed this, you can of course also use Maya LT to create assets for games.

30$ is not so much money and you can use the content/game as you like, that should be affordable.

[dgorsman]

Really bad idea.  Lets say for arguments sake it takes off, and a developer wants to pick it up for distribution.  Whoops - you can't, you don't have rights to do so.  And when they hear it's been done with bootlegged content, chances are they'll steer clear to avoid other potential legal potholes.  So long for that payday...

I have to disagree with @maurice.patel on this one.  It's quite clear in the terms of use that the EDU licenses are for learning, not for sharing.  At the very least you should make abosolutely, crystal clear the contents are generated with EDU content.  While there likely won't be serious legal action beyond a takedown notice, it's better to be on the side of angels.

Instead, work the numbers: how much it would take to create the game using commercial viable assets?  How much could you reasonably charge?  How long will you expect to generate money from it?  From there you can get an idea of the kind of money you need up-front (just like any other developer, by the way).  Get a small business loan for the amount, pay it off with the income from the game.  There is nothing like pointing potential employers or developers shopping for new content to something you've built that is valid both commercially and intellectual property -wise.

[maurice.patel]

Hi - I might have misread the original question, but what you are talking about is creating a game for commerical reasons in which case, yes, you cannot use edu licenses. My understanding was that this was for educational reasons - and therefore there is no intent to ever monetize the game in any way in the future no matter what happens. If you are developing a project as a student it is legitimate to share it for several reasons including getting feedback from the community, your peers, other industry professionals and even from players so as to learn more and improve your game authoring skills. These would all legitimately fit into the scope of an educational project. As I said i don't know itch.io so maybe its not suitable given its T&Cs and business model, but sharing per-se is not against Autodesk EDU T&Cs. We even encourage it on our own community sites like AREA where students are welcome to post and share their work.

However, I agree with @dgorsman that using commercial licenses may be a better option if you want to ensure you retain the rights to use the assets at a future date without having to redo them - it does give you full control of them