The Journey to Hope characters are becoming copyrighted soon. "Soon" may mean as soon as this year or when Zombified Chapter 1 is close to being finished (probably next year.) What this means is that you can still use them of course, I love seeing your OCs and fan projects. What you cannot do is make money off of them, and one day, I'm going to make this legal. I'm also doing this to prevent anyone from taking these characters out of my possession or using them for something I don't approve of. That might mean I'll have to remove every single thing mentioning Journey to Hope off of Scratch on my end. Every game, every picture, every instance of the logo? Gone. because Scratch doesn't care about protecting artists nor their copyrighted work. And to make a legal contract for copyright (or right now, "in words" contract, which is different and not legal but can be used as proof in a court case), I need to make sure I can properly secure the rights to my work. I can't do that if Scratch marks everything I post as copyleft. That's not fair to me or my community. If I want to make sure Journey to Hope has a chance of success in the future, I need to be able to secure it as truly mine. Especially now that I'm working with team of people. They need to know that they're my characters too.
Q & A for after you read. Q: What about Aster? A: That's a tough one. He was originally an OC of friend so I don't think I can copyright him as he belongs to someone else. I'll have to think of a replacement character. (The whole "he knew the cure" thing anyway was too soon. I can work with the idea, but I need to stretch it out a bit!) Q: What about our cameos? A: There will sadly be no more cameos in Zombified past Chapter 1. Q: What do you mean by "monetized"? A: When Zombified releases in full, it will be a paid game on Steam, using both Turbowarp and general JavaScript to string all the chapters together for a full game experience! Q: Will we be credited for our ideas? A: Absolutely! You will be listed in the credits by Scratch usernames on Chapter 1. Not sure what I'm going to do for Steam's full release... any ideas on that? Q: When is the full release for Zombified coming out? A: I'm not even close to done with the free Chapter 1 yet. Probably 2030. Q: Can I still make fangames? A: Yes! Yes yes and yes. Just don't make money from it. It also depends where you make it how you should credit me. Scratch - Anywhere else - "SunnyDev Entertainment on Itch.io" Q: I dOn'T lIkE that ur copyriteing them >:(((( A: Well, tough luck. It was going to happen eventually. If this bothers you, it really shouldn't. You can still make fan content and OCs, there's nothing wrong with that. I'm just copyrighting them to protect them. Q: Don't you need to go around and ask other people who you've obtained designs from for licenses? A: No. All Journey to Hope designs for My OCs are original, I am not about to go around and ask random people for licenses to copyright my own characters. If a character needs to be redesigned, I will do so. And also, "that design LOOKS like my character's even though it's a coincidence so you can't have it" does not count and I do not need a license from you. And if you're the Scratch Team looking at this project and thinking >:( remember that... -I'm only human -I'm an artist that cares about protecting my work -I do care about the safety of kids and therefore I rate my games accordingly -I support remix culture but also believe that credit is important -I'm a developing, adult Indie gamer that developed thanks to you guys. If it wasn't for you and this wonderful place I grew up in, I would've never become one. What I ask of you now is to respect my journey as I move on to new things and respect that I'd like to protect my work.
