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[eliris]

Hey there all of you, I'm new here so Hope we have a great time together.
Well I am a game designer, I am willing to start a serious project (big game, indie game if possible) similar to a game named Lyle in cube sector (known worldwide but the author used music without permission), so I don't have the contacts to the music maker, some even doesn't have any trace online, some are too big artists that they don't reply.
So if I make a game and put credits to them even at the beginning, will it be ok or bad?
thanks

[Saga Musix]

The obvious answer is: It's not ok.
The sensible answer is: If we're talking about some 20 years old modules, noone does probably care.
A good suggestion: Try to find someone who could write some music for you, or resort to music for which you can get permission to use, or look for public domain / CC-licensed stuff on ModArchive (the license filter might help there).

[eliris]

Ah, ok thanks to you or letting me know, well I'm going to try out your tips,
well while I was searching for music for my game, I avoided artists such as Dubmood or zabutom or estrayk, as they're still alive but doesn't reply

[Saga Musix]

dubmood and zabutom are both still pretty active. You can try reaching zabutom f.e. on #chipmusic on irc.esper.net, for dubmood I don't know any private contact details but he's active on pouet.net.

[eliris]

okay

[Tricky]

In the most legal sense it's true that it's not ok, and I see notes about artists being alive or not. Copyrights expire after death, but that takes at least 50 and can even be up to 90 years after the original creator's death depending on your country.

Although I do agree with Saga that it's unlikely anybody would care, I am (being a game designer myself), mostly not for it to take any music unless the artist either explicitly granted me permission or if a piece of music, regardless of the site on which I obtained it, or has a license that explicitly allows it like most CC licenses (check the license,as some CC licenses can still be pretty restrictive). Actually that goes for anything I add to my game, from code to music, to even art if I can't create it myself, well anything. Since even if it's unlikely anybody will care, if you by chance find somebody who does care you can still have a problem.

Having been a moderator of a big gamedev community, I've seen some fights over artwork, music, stolen code, well whatever (even about stuff that had a free license, go figure), and if you can at least make sure your hands are 100% clean, you can at least hold a good story in case trouble comes. Out of professional reasons I won't go into the deep of cases I've come past, but I can tell ya, those fights were really really terrible... We all know the internet can be cruel, but in some cases people really went far.