Font: How does it license?

Game Play & Game Design
#1

So, I’ve been working on making my entry for LD#23 better since it was just dreadful as a game, but interesting as a proof of concept. Anyway, I realized that my choice of font is probably one that I’m not entitled to use in anything that might be considered ‘commercial’ and I was thinking of putting it up on the Android Market if I could get it working well enough.

Anyway, my question is whether anyone happens to know of Fonts that are available for commercial use or failing that an inexpensive (Read free) program for creating fonts?

#2

If you get it from site which screaming free fonts, they’re free to use.

#3

Google web fonts are free for any type of use.

#4

I opened google’s but all fonts look same to me :expressionless:

#5

Bear in mind if you rasterise your fonts into a bitmap and use that instead there are no restrictions whatsoever.

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

Seems legit :slight_smile:

#7

I dunno^^
Changeing only the appearence of something does not make it copyright less. Like ripping a music CD to mp3s^^

#8

A lot of “free font” sites have rip-offs of popular fonts (LOTR, GoldenEye, etc), which is obviously not legit, and even many of the so-called “free” fonts have varying licenses.

For example, some will only be licensed for personal or non-commercial use. Others will forbid any sort of modification or embedding (i.e. creating and distributing it as a bitmap font is sketchy ground).

In general, if a font’s license isn’t clear on a “free font” site, I’d just find a different font.

EDIT: As to the OPs question, it really depends on what kind of font you are looking for. There are plenty of free ones if you look.
League of Movable Type
Open Font Library
Google Web Fonts (check license; mostly SIL OFL)
PT Sans
04 Bitmap/Pixel Fonts
Roboto (Android font)

#9

Under U.S. law, the finding of Eltra Corp v. Ringer is that you cannot copyright the appearance of a typeface. A font however is an implementation of a typeface, and is as copyrightable as any other code. This doesn’t pertain to “trade dress” issues pertaining to a product that uses those fonts, so a newspaper using the NYT’s exact typefaces and layout could still get sued into oblivion, but not over the typefaces alone.

Mind you this is U.S. law – some other countries do allow typefaces to be copyrighted. And of course a lot of the “free font” sites aren’t using anything like copied typefaces, they’re just giving away commercial fonts. Stick to the vast library of truly free fonts out there.

#10

If I were you, I will to have deal with legal issue later as long it’s true that my game is so sensational hit ;D