What is the legality of commissioning an artist to draw artwork of your Everquest gaming character for your guild site? What about for artists to offer paid for commission services? In the past I've noticed people have gotten cool sigs and profile pages of their characters, but the major ones aren't active anymore. I've read Daybreak's policies and it is the usual legal stuff you would expect to see. It doesn't tell me much when other companies who have similar language, have different policies. There's a wide range in tolerance. Some companies are supportive of fan works and others have absolutely no tolerance at all. What's the current stance? JK Rowling, for example, has no problem with people creating/commissioning fan works, but Pern freaks out if anyone is doing fan character Pernese dragons.
Nobody cares. Have you seen the amount of fan art out there? You can find it all over teespring and other websites. Unless you're making bank on someone else's IP, you're probably not going to get bothered by any lawyers, and the worst you'll get is a cease and desist. don't worry about it.
I'm sure there's nothing wrong with paying someone to take the time to make EQ artwork for your site. But someone making EQ artwork and going around advertising it to sell is likely a no no.
^This^ If an artist is advertising that they do commissions, then you could go ask them to make pretty much whatever you like and since it is a one off made specifically for you, then there will not be any legal ramifications. If however an artist is advertising that they are making and selling art from EQ, then they would likely have an issue legally.
If you ever go to art shows or exhibits you'll see trademarked stuff and people all the time. Its very legal for the most part. There are some nuances but if you're interested in reading more there is a very famous case that comes to mind involving tiger woods @ https://www.rcfp.org/appeals-court-allows-artist-sell-painting-tiger-woods/
This can’t be answered unless we know where you are. The answer varies by jurisdiction. US Fair Use would likely consider it a news publication about a character in game and find it to be protected by a limitation to copyright. Fair dealing limitations in many common wealth countries are similar. Nearly all countries are a party to the Berne convention which contradicts some of these laws and the case law resolving that conflict are varied. Aside from that, DBG doesn’t care. You’ll be fine. Maybe you could get sued, but that means nothing really unless D G actually suffered damages. They could maybe get and injunction to make you stop and for you to pay their legal fees. It’s not a criminal violation. Seriously dude, don’t worry so much. You’re not hurting dbg, and if anything you’re helping by positively growing the community. Have you ever seen someone ask to go pee on an airplane when the fasten seatbelt sign is on? The flight attendant doesn’t have the authority to say it’s ok, and in fact could get in trouble if he doesn’t tell you that you must stay seated. No one, including the flight attendant likely cares, and they definitely don’t want to deal with a biological spill and emergency landing if you explode. This is the same thing. There’s no many hops to jump through for dbg to actually ok this, but they are almost certainly fine with it as long as it isn’t an EQ lore based fanfic of morally apprehensible erotica.
I would think you cannot use any copyrighted material such as the saying "Your in our world now" But this is some that is selling although the artist is deceased https://www.keithparkinson.com/product-category/everquest/
MMO developers are usually incredibly tolerant towards threads where an artist trades a signature or artwork for some in-game currency. I have seen this happen in countless MMO and never once did I see a developer or mod interject, if anything these treads are usually supported, or even get stickied by mods. Trading it for real-life money is something very different.
There is a website using the everquest trademark in their domain name selling hacks and cheat programs for over a year + now. I think you'll be fine selling artwork to folks.
Selling art work is usually fine, if you're doing paintings and such its transformative. If you took a screenshot and just did a print of that then ehh you could technically be in the wrong. Nintendo protects its IP really strongly and even they don't seem to go after people who make original works of art. Really any company that goes after someone who creates and sells fan art (unless that art directly competes with some of their actual products), should be boycotted.
