(07-11-2015, 12:59 AM)Petie Wrote: That's tricky, especially in the case of something like BIT.TRIP RUNNER. As much as I enjoy the sounds in those games, I'm inclined to say that they wouldn't be allowed. Despite the fact that they're not "songs", per se, the randomness of the notes and obstacles doesn't really differentiate well enough between options to avoid nearly reproducing a usable piece from the soundtrack. I'm open to other opinions on this though.
And that being said, the individual sound effects themselves should be fine - just not the arranged pieces.
When it comes to instrument samples, I'd say that more fits into something like the "soundfont" of a game, which I don't entirely see a problem with personally. I'm not staff anymore and I'm not part of the VGR legal team so I don't know what weight my opinion holds, but I do recall Dazz or other staff in the past having issues with it though.
Like, in the example of BIT.TRIP RUNNER I don't see what's wrong with sharing little bonks and quirky tones that happen when you slide and jump.
I mean, we have users on here who compose chiptune using a board that supplies all those notes and samples. It'd be pretty much the same thing IMO, except a stricter "library" would be in place, so you could compose "chiptune" music in that style and have it sound authentic to the source material (OK - basically, imagine if I gave you the Banjo-Kazooie soundfont, and you created music using the instrument samples from that game, so you can create authentic-sounding, golden-age-of-Rare sounding music in something like FL Studio. It's up to you to pitch-shift and whatever though to get it to sound legit)
Stuff like that would be actually fucking amazing.
I don't know the exact legal issues, but as long as you're not supplying the actual music samples (like, I believe Bemani songs are added to the game in segments. You shouldn't be able to share those segments) or the means to arrange the song to reproduce it yourself (like, don't supply MIDIs and provide instructions on how to reproduce the song yourself by listing the assigned layers that the samples belong on) I feel like it should be okay.
tl;dr
IMO
DO share the guitar riff and cymbal clash samples that make up the songs
DON'T share the "sheet music" or pre-recorded, composed music samples
I'd like to see what staff has to say about the issue, though :/