About fonts and their licenses

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UpsetChicken

Hi. I am making a game and I am planning to use a font from Google Fonts, which are free. However, I know nothing about licenses, and therefore I can't tell if I really need or not to apply the license of Apache on my game.

My game will be released for mobile devices, so I probally can't put the LICENSES.txt file on my game's folder. So, what do I do?

Thanks in advance.

cybereality

Yes, you can use Google fonts. If the game is closed source, I don't think you have to worry about the license. The license only comes into play if you distribute the source files. They also have some good quality fonts on this site (for free and paid) just make sure you click the commercial use button if you want to sell your game.

https://www.fontspace.com/

Calinou

My game will be released for mobile devices, so I probally can't put the LICENSES.txt file on my game's folder. So, what do I do?

To be in the clear, you need to include a "Third-party notices" button on your game's title screen, with a Label or RichTextLabel listing font licenses. See Complying with licenses for more information.

DaveTheCoder

Do the Google fonts require attribution? ~~I couldn't find any license information, except for the notice at the bottom of the page.~~

I'm not using any of their fonts, but I'm using some of their icons, where there's a similar notice.

Correction: I found the license on the github pages. In most cases the license is Apache 2.0, but there's a section of Ubuntu fonts that has its own license.

cybereality

I stand corrected. I guess for Apache 2.0 you do need to put the notice somewhere, I guess it can be under an About button on the title screen or something like that. I thought it only applied to source distributions, but I guess I was mistaken.

UpsetChicken

Would just adding a link to the Godot Licenses Page (https://godotengine.org/license) in my game enough to comply with all terms, even the Third Party ones and Google Fonts?

cybereality

No, this has nothing to do with Godot. You have to follow what it says for the specific license of the font (each font may have it's own license, but commonly Apache 2.0 for Google Fonts).

UpsetChicken

Ok. But what about other commercial games? There are some games (like Undertale) that use fonts that were not created by the dev, so why doesn't all commercial games include any kind of notice too?

duane

@UpsetChicken said: There are some games (like Undertale) that use fonts that were not created by the dev, so why doesn't all commercial games include any kind of notice too?

I don't know that this is the case, but you can make special arrangements with an artist, bypassing the usual license. Sometimes, all you have to do is ask. As long as the creator is ok with it, it's legal.

cybereality

If you buy commercial licenses, like I have for my demos, you don't have to include the license text.

duane

I also noticed that if you use google fonts in some way that does not distribute the actual font files (not even embedded in your application), you don't have to include any attribution. If you used their fonts in a png graphic, for example -- if the commercial game were to bake all of its text into graphics, or in some other way make it impossible to recover the original font files, they wouldn't need to cite the license. If you printed a physical book with them, you wouldn't have to. It's only when the files go into your project that you have to.

Edit: I wonder if there's any way to get godot to link to fonts on the player's computer, using whatever font libraries they have.

cybereality

Well Godot PCK files are not really protected (such as using encryption), but technically you are not distributing the font file itself. It is a form of embedding, though there are some ways to decompile the file. However, it is not as easy as just opening a ZIP file, so I'm not sure what that would be considered legally.

duane

For that matter, you might be safe if you just included the Apache license in the pck file. You could argue that anyone who could get the font file out would be able to see the license.

UpsetChicken

@duane said: For that matter, you might be safe if you just included the Apache license in the pck file. You could argue that anyone who could get the font file out would be able to see the license.

So, since I am using them on a mobile game, I am not redistributing it, which means I don't have to include a notice to anything?

Megalomaniak

No , you are and you do, but you might be able to do it in a 'lazy' way.