The license agreements for usage of M.U.G.E.N from Elecbyte have expired and it appears that a new license agreement will never be granted. Thus, any current distribution of M.U.G.E.N has not been authorized by Elecbyte and is technically illegal. With the license expired on all versions, when running the M.U.G.E.N program, the user is reminded of this through a nag screen. While illegal, some view that the purpose of the executable's nag screen was to encourage adoption of newer iterations of the engine. Evidence of this can be inferred by the brief period of time that a license was made available from the release date of a version of the engine--it was often not long enough to develop an original character from start to finish. However, Elecbyte has never taken any legal action; the company has disappeared without explanation. People chose to continue using M.U.G.E.N, and deprecated versions of it, despite the lack of a new license (the DOS version was still in widespread use when its license had expired at a time when the Linux version's license was still valid). Creations, such as characters and stages, for use with M.U.G.E.N are not a part of Elecbyte's license (provided those creations do not include the executable as well), only the software itself is.[5] It is up to the individual whether or not to violate Elecbyte's license by using M.U.G.E.N. Elecbyte itself has not made a public statement since 2003, when they stated that the project had "hit a snag".[21]
Most characters and stages are of dubious legality as well, as most are made using sprites and sounds ripped from copyrighted games. For this reason, some standing communities enforced a loose "time-release" rule, whereby they do not allow linking to characters made from recent games. [22] Eventually the time-release rule was limited to Neo-Geo games as those could be emulated as soon as a ROM was dumped and released. While this has no actual impact on the legality of the materials in question, it served to avoid any legal pressure from the copyright holders, and as a means to keep M.U.G.E.N from 'competing' with commercial games and drawing their ire.
Not all companies have a fanart approach to the engine/game. SNK Playmore responding to an email query asking directly about their material being used in M.U.G.E.N creations that they don't support any usage of intellectual property outside of their company,[23] However this decision was later reversed and they allow M.U.G.E.N works as long as they are for private, non-commercial use or resale. A later email query was sent by former MugenGuild admin Messatsu to clarify the situation further, allowing for the works to be distributed freely over the internet.[24] Capcom was sent a similar email query, the response stating they understand that it is just fan art[25] and as such, are not threatened by it. The response under closer inspection is actually just a re-wording of their stance on fan art websites. It should also be noted however that the subject of M.U.G.E.N has come up on Capcom USA's forums with no hostility shown by Capcom's staff, a response very different to that given to projects like Street Fighter Online to support themselves.[26]
However, French-Bread (known as Watanabe Seisakujo prior to 2003), the creator of the Queen of Heart games, and the co-creators of Melty Blood, have asked that content from their work not be made for the M.U.G.E.N or the game Knuckle Fighter X. [27] However, they began loosening their stance regarding conversions, when during the release of Melty Blood, they requested that sounds and voices from the game itself not to be used with the converted characters, as opposed to outright content bans earlier imposed. [27] This limitation for the Melty Blood series was removed in subsequent installments of the game series; however, previous other content bans persist, notably in regards to the Queen of Heart series. Since then, French Bread has not expressed objections of conversions from their later games, like Glove on Fight or Ragnarok Battle Offline.
[edit] Controversy over Redistribution of M.U.G.E.N Works
There has been debate over the act of hosting the works of content creators for the engine without consent from them, a practice dubbed "warehousing." Warehouses and content 'megapacks' are generally seen as ideal for new engine users who are able to obtain a lot of usable content quickly with little searching. Arguments have risen against this practice. Since the "warehouse" would host all the content they previously downloaded, the content users are unaware of the original source of the content and possibly miss any patches or updates related to each piece of content. Another issue stems from the fact that many authors gain revenue in one form or another by visitors to their sites, be it by advertising banners on their site or merchandising (such as that sold by Mugen Institute for their original Dragon Claw character.) The use of "warehousing" has the potential to drop the amount of visitors to the author's web site, resulting in a loss of feedback, distribution of updates, or as in the case of Mugen Institute a possible loss of revenue.
There is some controversy on the legality of warehouses. Although most of the authors have not registered copyrights pertaining to the code or graphics used to create the content, much like hosting a videogame FAQ it is considered in violation of the author's copyright unless permission to host is given.[28] The debate ranges from original design by authors as well as derivative works or fan art often taken directly from previously released video game characters.[29] A violation of copyright of the original designs would be where the original author has good standing to legally sue an offending web host if the correct documentation was filed before the release of the content.[30] Typically it is argued that legal action is not sought for the misuse of most M.U.G.E.N creations because the origin of sprites and sounds has been ripped from commercial games even though the program code is crafted from scratch or templates.
The debate over warehousing has been long standing, but several key arguments stand out:
* The argument that the engine itself is freeware due to payment not being required or asked for and the timeout function of the program still leaves it fully functional, and thus covered under freeware laws. In reply, opponents state due to the license agreement[5] obtained by Elecbyte, which in part may still apply, M.U.G.E.N itself is actually shareware, and covered under the laws governing such.[15]
* The argument that when copyrighted characters or sprites such as those owned by Capcom or SNK are used in the works, the works themselves are a violation of copyright and thus any claims are to be argued as null and void. Capcom, SNK and other companies have not shown any ill will towards those using sprites/sounds from their games when creating content for the engine, despite being aware of the practice for several years. However, French Bread previously had a notice on one of their older websites that expressed not to convert material found in their games.
* Some sites host original characters generated by the author themselves (such as those by Reu or Rikard), in which case the characters are still copyright of their authors. The copyright on the code itself is the key factor here, though the claim of copyright has been misinterpreted to cover the sprites or the character concept.
As M.U.G.E.N. add-on creator Igniz once stated at the MugenBR forums:
"Imagine that you're in school. Now, let's take that Capcom, SNK and the rest are the text books. Now imagine that a M.U.G.E.N. character is your classmate's homework. You get the rest."
However, people who don't support this stance cite Elecbyte's official statement in the enclosed documentation that "the reason for the open file formats is so that you can share techniques with other developers."[15] Yet there has been a great deal of controversy regarding permission (or lack thereof) between coders.
