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Dev blog: Alliance Logos & You - Submissions Re-Opened!

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tiberiusric
Comply Or Die
Pandemic Horde
#41 - 2015-04-15 20:30:58 UTC  |  Edited by: tiberiusric
I really wish ccp would remove this 250.man alliance limit. you can still have good established.alliances.that are just as important with a lot less numbers

even if they were put at the back of the queue and took a while to do.

please.consider this because we all would like to have our identity too

All my views are my own - never be afraid to post with your main, unless you're going to post some dumb shit
John McCreedy
Eve Defence Force
#42 - 2015-04-15 21:01:16 UTC
CCP Falcon wrote:
John McCreedy wrote:
Is there any chance you'll ever allow user-created corporation logos to be submitted alongside Alliances, rather than how we now have to rely on stock template images which neither are representative of our uniqueness nor exclusive to our corporation? In the real world, Corporation logos are often iconic and immediately speak that company's name - think Apple or Google as examples, neither of which would be near as iconic if you had hundreds of corporations using those logos. Eve over the years has had a gradual shift away from corporation focus with more emphasis placed on Alliances yet most corporations outlast most alliances. Bringing the focus back on to corporations could only be a good thing.


The sheer number of corporations that are created means that this isn't really something that's feasible in terms of dedicating manpower to it.

This is why we also have restrictions on member count and size of an alliance with regards to eligibility for logo submission Smile


Thanks for the reply. Nonetheless, the wider point still stands and it would be good if you could look in to a way to allow Corporation logos a greater degree of uniqueness and individuality. There's a lot of Corporations out there that are older than the oldest Alliances but Corporations are always treated as the poor relation. Perhaps a wider number of templates with which to create more interesting Logos with?

13 years and counting. Eve Defence Force is recruiting.
Lan Wang
Princess Aiko Hold My Hand
Safety. Net
#43 - 2015-04-15 21:05:08 UTC
these submission guidlines are rather vague, are you saying that photoshop effects like emboss etc should not be used and flat is more in keeping with eve theme, considering all npc corporation logos use effects like emobossing and glossy/shiney looking flat is not exactly keeping in theme with default logos within the game, unless you intend to also redesign all the logos to simple flat logos.

can you confirm if using textures, embossing and shiney/glossy effects will be rejected or is there leniency with using effects?

there is also no mention whether logos should be supplied with transparent background or can backgrounds be added to logos?

"Use of Comic Sans will result in liberal application of spaceship violence." Lol

Domination Nephilim - Angel Cartel

Calm down miner. As you pointed out, people think they can get away with stuff they would not in rl... Like for example illegal mining... - Ima Wreckyou*
Tritis Mentari
The Greater Goon
#44 - 2015-04-15 21:17:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Tritis Mentari
Why is CCP claiming ownership over real world assets belonging to players, when games like Gran Turismo show it is possible to distribute the trademarked logos of internationally renowned auto manufacturers without watermarking or claiming ownership?
Primary This Rifter
Mutual Fund of the Something
#45 - 2015-04-15 21:47:03 UTC
CCP Falcon wrote:
Primary This Rifter wrote:
Real talk: does CCP actually have a legal team? What kind of lawyers would seriously advise them that the best way to avoid IP issues is by creating a blatantly derivative work?


I'm not a lawyer, and this was the compromise that our legal counsel came up with.

If you have an issue with this, feel free to contact our legal department and they'll be able to advise you further.

The thing I take issue with is that it seems your legal department isn't advising you in any sensible way.

Derivative works do not magically absolve you of all legal obligations when using someone else's intellectual property. As in this case, just because you slap a sticker on someone's image does not mean that new image with the sticker is entirely your IP. The act of modifying a work does not necessarily grant you ownership of the work.
Lan Wang
Princess Aiko Hold My Hand
Safety. Net
#46 - 2015-04-15 22:00:41 UTC
Primary This Rifter wrote:
CCP Falcon wrote:
Primary This Rifter wrote:
Real talk: does CCP actually have a legal team? What kind of lawyers would seriously advise them that the best way to avoid IP issues is by creating a blatantly derivative work?


I'm not a lawyer, and this was the compromise that our legal counsel came up with.

If you have an issue with this, feel free to contact our legal department and they'll be able to advise you further.

The thing I take issue with is that it seems your legal department isn't advising you in any sensible way.

Derivative works do not magically absolve you of all legal obligations when using someone else's intellectual property. As in this case, just because you slap a sticker on someone's image does not mean that new image with the sticker is entirely your IP. The act of modifying a work does not necessarily grant you ownership of the work.


wont they just use the version in game for anything they need, the owner will still own the original logo and hold all the rights to the original piece of artwork, i dont see an issue here

Domination Nephilim - Angel Cartel

Calm down miner. As you pointed out, people think they can get away with stuff they would not in rl... Like for example illegal mining... - Ima Wreckyou*
DaReaper
Net 7
Cannon.Fodder
#47 - 2015-04-15 22:08:29 UTC  |  Edited by: DaReaper
Primary This Rifter wrote:
CCP Falcon wrote:
Primary This Rifter wrote:
Real talk: does CCP actually have a legal team? What kind of lawyers would seriously advise them that the best way to avoid IP issues is by creating a blatantly derivative work?


I'm not a lawyer, and this was the compromise that our legal counsel came up with.

If you have an issue with this, feel free to contact our legal department and they'll be able to advise you further.

The thing I take issue with is that it seems your legal department isn't advising you in any sensible way.

Derivative works do not magically absolve you of all legal obligations when using someone else's intellectual property. As in this case, just because you slap a sticker on someone's image does not mean that new image with the sticker is entirely your IP. The act of modifying a work does not necessarily grant you ownership of the work.



as part of submitting you are giving them the right to use make a dirivative work they own. don;t really see an issue. Unless you are a lawyer, or work for ccp, why does it matter? They are accepting logos again, in the end who cares. Goons still own there bee, ccp can use there version of the bee for when they branch out into other stuff (if they do) and there will not be any pissing and moaning. its a win win. So why gripe?

If ccp is doing it worng, it STILL doesn't effect you in anyway. It will come back to bite ccp in the butt. But again, unless you are a lawyer and understand copywrite and international law.. then... your opinion is not very valid.

But in the end.. you care why?

OMG Comet Mining idea!!! Comet Mining!

Eve For life.
DaReaper
Net 7
Cannon.Fodder
#48 - 2015-04-15 22:12:57 UTC  |  Edited by: DaReaper
and further more primary, falcon is not a lawyer, so he won;t answer you anyway. If you want an answer or want to discuss it your best bet is to write to ccp legal department and ask them.

But again, unless you are a lawyer(or del with international and copywrite and ip law daily), then i'm going with you have zero idea what you are talking about

no one but soemone from legal will answer you, thats how larger companies work. When i did retail for best buy, the moment someone mentioned sue (i worked in geek squad) we were instructed by managment to stop talking, write corp's number on a peice of paper, give it to them and tell them to have a nice day.

the company i currently work for, any legal question i have to farward to legal.

So... mail legal, and stop spouting stuff you either don;t know, think you know, or do know, on the forums and ask the guys who will actually answer you.

sheesh

OMG Comet Mining idea!!! Comet Mining!

Eve For life.
CCP Darwin
C C P
C C P Alliance
#49 - 2015-04-15 22:18:47 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Darwin
Lan Wang wrote:
can you confirm if using textures, embossing and shiney/glossy effects will be rejected or is there leniency with using effects?


There are a couple issues with such filters.

A blurry (not anti-aliased, but flat-out blurry) alpha risks banding or broad darkening of underlying color when applied to a ship in our color space. Effects that produce broad color gradients inside a sharp alpha also risk banding when converted to our color space.

Beyond that, there's a tendency among some novice designers to overuse such filters because they produce a "3D-ish" look with little design effort.

Yes, there are cases in our existing corp logo library where elements feel somewhat embossed, but they avoid broad color gradients, blurry alphas, and excessive color range.

The way that I'd explain that part of the guidelines to a designer is to say that alliance logos are better if they look graphic, which is to say that they have clean edges and a minimal color palette. I would say that you can achieve a shiny or glossy look within the constraint of being graphic, but it requires care to do well.

Remember that a medium-term goal of the art and graphics team is to enable alliance logos on ships themselves. These should look, preferably, like painted logos, not like airbrushed photographs. I'm sure there are some fantastic logos that would fly by approval that somehow use those types of effects, but if you have to ask, you probably shouldn't be using them.

This guideline is not an absolute limitation, it's just firm advice. Given that advice, we look forward to your submission. :)

CCP Darwin  •  Senior Software Engineer, Art & Graphics, EVE Online  •  @mark_wilkins
Lan Wang
Princess Aiko Hold My Hand
Safety. Net
#50 - 2015-04-15 22:32:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Lan Wang
CCP Darwin wrote:
Lan Wang wrote:
can you confirm if using textures, embossing and shiney/glossy effects will be rejected or is there leniency with using effects?


There are a couple issues with such filters.

A blurry (not anti-aliased, but flat-out blurry) alpha risks banding or broad darkening of underlying color when applied to a ship in our color space. Effects that produce broad color gradients inside a sharp alpha also risk banding when converted to our color space.

Beyond that, there's a tendency among some novice designers to overuse such filters because they produce a "3D-ish" look with little design effort.

Yes, there are cases in our existing corp logo library where elements feel somewhat embossed, but they avoid broad color gradients, blurry alphas, and excessive color range.

The way that I'd explain that part of the guidelines to a designer is to say that alliance logos are better if they look graphic, which is to say that they have clean edges and a minimal color palette.

Remember that a near-term goal of the art and graphics team is to enable alliance logos on ships themselves. These should look, preferably, like painted logos, not like airbrushed photographs.

This guideline is not an absolute limitation, it's just firm advice. Given that advice, we look forward to your submission. :)


ok this was maybe something i havent thought about was the logos being used on ships, which i can understand the guidlines now, i do prefer flat and minimal style logos and prefer to keep things away from photoshop but alot of people do ask for minmatar style rust effects to be more in tune with what the alliance/corp does etc, sometimes industrial themed logos are requested which require these sort of effects, which probably wouldnt work on a minmatar ship from what you have explained.

that should also clear up the transparent background question when supplying png files also, you will need them as transparent backgrounds...

Thank you for the fast response.

Domination Nephilim - Angel Cartel

Calm down miner. As you pointed out, people think they can get away with stuff they would not in rl... Like for example illegal mining... - Ima Wreckyou*
Silvonus
Spacewreck Emporium
#51 - 2015-04-15 22:50:37 UTC
CCP Darwin wrote:
A blurry (not anti-aliased, but flat-out blurry) alpha risks banding or broad darkening of underlying color when applied to a ship in our color space. Effects that produce broad color gradients inside a sharp alpha also risk banding when converted to our color space.

Alliance logos on ships confirmed?
CCP Darwin
C C P
C C P Alliance
#52 - 2015-04-15 22:59:18 UTC  |  Edited by: CCP Darwin
Silvonus wrote:
Alliance logos on ships confirmed?


I did state later in the post that that's a goal. :)

To be clear, it's one among a number of possible future features and it is not planned for the near term, but we're definitely trying to lay the groundwork with the new alliance logo guidelines.

CCP Darwin  •  Senior Software Engineer, Art & Graphics, EVE Online  •  @mark_wilkins
Sean Roach
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#53 - 2015-04-15 23:16:26 UTC
Two things.
I'm a layman, but I've never heard of copyright requiring that. I'd think a license from the creator to CCP to use the work should be sufficient. Maybe Iceland's IP law is really as strange as has been suggested.

Two.
I've run across a few ships whose branding was based on the IP of Douglass Adams. I think they're about to have to rebrand.

Okay. Three.
My portrait certainly didn't take 3-6 months to be updated to every player with whom I chatted in corp or local. Why can't the logos be pushed like portraits?

P.S. I want to see an eight-legged horse in an icon. Please do this before Disney manages to CGI one into the next Marvel movie.
Lando Cenvax
The Nose Picker Clown Group
#54 - 2015-04-15 23:21:59 UTC
Those Requirements... Shocked
One Word: OVERKILL

You should possibly consult with your lawyer again.
Your first and biggest mistake is to claim ownership of the content. This makes CCP the owner of any logo thus responsible for any copyright issues. This is imho a quite stupid move. Have the content uploaded by the user under a special license so it remains his property like everywhere else on the net... That might require a minor EULA-Change, but that's it. Then logos are subject to same laws as videos on youtube or posts in this forum. Afaik any nation on this planet that has made a decision regarding approval of user-content finally came to the conclusion that pre-approval is not the way to go. The operator of any plattform (may it be a video-plattform or discussion boards like this one) is not responsible for the content in first place, but has to remove content upon claims from copyright holder.

What you are suggesting here is going by whitelist and manually approving content. This is painfull for everyone, inefficient, discriminating smaller alliances and technically neither necessary nor beneficial in any way. Even if you are paranoid when it comes to exploits of the upload-file, there are tools for that. I would rather suggest to go by blacklist:

  • Executors have pay at least once by credit card for sake of real-life authentication. Just to cover that. So you are 100% on the safe side.
  • Alliances that are found to upload non-compliant logos will be punished. Heavily. Just to scare of people from uploading illegal stuff.


So you are about as safe as a Titan in 1.0 Space piloted by a player in an NPC-Corp...

Regarding the logo design guidelines: You do realize that even the ingame-logo-designer has a lot of templates that don't really match the game-setting and/or could violate your requirements (national colors can be easily introduced into logos with the existing templates creating something like a flag as a background)? Even and especially the argument with painting the logo on ships would most like trigger a re-design inside the alliance if the logo looks crappy ingame. Who wants their ships to not look good? If that doesn't work, CCP still can take action. But again: White-List approach = imho wrong way to go. Just publish the tech-specs required for the logo so people can create it accordingly. People design textures e.g. for their aircraft in Flightsim, so a logo can't be that big of a challenge. Those who really don't have any designer in their ally could still use your "email-upload-service" for a few PLEX processing charge... Smile

OT: Talking about bad rendering: the black textures "inside" of the Panther still look strange (greenish) ingame, needs some adjustmens. imho
Arrendis
TK Corp
#55 - 2015-04-15 23:28:28 UTC
Quote:
Submission Style Requirements

Copyrighted material may not be submitted for use as an alliance logo.


Iceland is a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. The Berne convention holds that creators of "artistic works" hold a copyright for those works from the moment of creation.

So, given that by definition, Icelandic law is required to consider all "artistic works" to be copyrighted material... what, exactly, is ok to submit?
Sean Roach
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#56 - 2015-04-15 23:42:02 UTC
Arrendis wrote:
Quote:
Submission Style Requirements

Copyrighted material may not be submitted for use as an alliance logo.


Iceland is a signatory to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. The Berne convention holds that creators of "artistic works" hold a copyright for those works from the moment of creation.

So, given that by definition, Icelandic law is required to consider all "artistic works" to be copyrighted material... what, exactly, is ok to submit?


I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume they mean you can only submit your own stuff.
Carneros
The Night Watchmen
Goonswarm Federation
#57 - 2015-04-15 23:45:18 UTC
Yes, it's a complicated subject.

Nevertheless, I'm excited.
Logo submitted.
Can't wait to see what it looks like in game.
Sabriz Adoudel
Move along there is nothing here
#58 - 2015-04-15 23:50:25 UTC
Irony:

When my alliance gets a logo submitted (probably a derivative of James 315's face), it will have a CONCORD Seal of Approval stamped in the top-right corner.

I look forward to that day.

I support the New Order and CODE. alliance. www.minerbumping.com
Arrendis
TK Corp
#59 - 2015-04-16 00:09:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Arrendis
Quote:
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume they mean you can only submit your own stuff.


I'm going to go out on a limb here and point out that this whole new logo system is because CCP's last round of 'hey, we're claiming ownership of your logos' was massively stupid and a violation of IP laws in a huge number of countries including Iceland - so assuming they've got a solid grip on what their own laws say they can and can't do is kinda getting ahead of yourself.
Justin Cody
War Firm
#60 - 2015-04-16 00:33:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Justin Cody
The idea is to differentiate in a minimal but meaningful way the difference between organizations in EVE and organizations that exist outside of EVE. Not saying that they'd exist regardless of EVE but some do.

Even so if CCP wanted to be really anal retentive about it then they'd revoke alliance names with copyrights attached to them and make it "AllianceName@CCP" when you see it in EVE.