Cave Story freeware license

I know that I am coming 12 years late to the party but I surprisingly cannot find the answer to this question anywhere...

Has anyone ever tried to talk to Pixel to have him clarify under what license he is releasing the freeware version of the game?

In the freeware version of Cave Story the Readme.txt basically just says that

このソフトはフリーソフトです。
実行中の事故は使用者各自の責任とします。
（制作に悪意が無いことをご理解ください）

which loosely translated via Google Translate says

This software is free software.
Each user is responsible for the accident being executed.
(Please understand that there is no malice in production)

Unfortunately this doesn't mean anything from a legal point of view and since copyright is by default an all-rights-reserved thing, we are technically all breaking the law by redistributing copies of cave story and creating mods on top of it, which I doubt is what Pixel wants!

The reason I ask this is because I think it would be very nice if we were, for example, allowed to package Cave Story for Linux distributions. Even a partial measure such as releasing the game data files and music under a creative common license would already help a lot because there is the free-software NXEngine that only needs those files to get a working clone of the game as a result.

 

Well considering Pixel doesn't own the rights to it anymore, you'd be better off asking Nicalis.

 

Are you sure about that? I'm talking about the original version of the game, not the steam version.

From this interview I found on youtube I got the impression that Nicalis isn't stopping Pixel from distributing the freeware version of the game:

(please jump to the 4m 50s mark. I can't find a way to post the timestamped link in this forum...)

 

I don't know all the details but I was under the assumption that Pixel sold the rights to the game to them. Nicalis has decided to continue to allow distribution of the freeware game but they've also been rather aggressive about prosecuting clones or derivatives such as the Flash port and even nxengine itself. Pixel himself is historically very closed-source/distribution-without-modification biased so it'd be an uphill battle either way.

 

I don't know all the details but I was under the assumption that Pixel sold the rights to the game to them. Nicalis has decided to continue to allow distribution of the freeware game but they've also been rather aggressive about prosecuting clones or derivatives such as the Flash port and even nxengine itself. Pixel himself is historically very closed-source/distribution-without-modification biased so it'd be an uphill battle either way.

Were there ever any issues from Pixel or Nicalis with distributing the freeware version on the Tribute Site or were they completely fine with it?

Is there legal precedent for blocking game clones if they don't redistribute stuff like graphics, story, characters, etc.? Wikipedia says those can be copyrighted but software design and game mechanics is harder, and expensive to patent.

The United States Copyright Office specifically notes: "Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles."[21] The underlying source code, and the game's artistic elements, including art, music, and dialog, can be protected by copyright law.

@Noxid Were there ever issues when/after you released CSEngine for KSS given that it's sort of a clone of the original game and reuses characters/setting?

 

Nicalis has decided to continue to allow distribution of the freeware game but they've also been rather aggressive about prosecuting clones or derivatives such as the Flash port and even nxengine itself.

I'm pretty sure that it was just the flash port, and that was mostly because hundreds of sites were abusing it for ad revenue.

 

There's a thread here that discusses the rules on Cave Story's and Cave Story+'s copyright rules and who owns them, etc.

It seems that Nicalis is the more aggressive one on using their assets and stuff like that while Pixel is much more relaxed about it (allowing mods, even ones using his original art assets, story, etc.).
So if you use one of Nicalis' art assets for something, you'd be in legal trouble, especially if you earned money from it. Pixel's probably not aggressive about mods, ports, and using the assets because he was never making money from the freeware anyway, nor is anyone else.

This raises a question though since if Pixel's fine with the Tribute Site redistributing the full game (including the data folder), why does NXEngine not include the data folder? Did the TS ask for permission back in late 2004/early 2005?