[sarchertech]

It’s not an actual problem. Games don’t ship with the editing tools from the engine because engine editing tools aren’t suitable for that purpose.

That would be like shipping photoshop with your game to allow people to customize their character’s hair color.

[rpdillon]

I think there's a misunderstanding about the license. The license doesn't care at all about whether or not you're using the tools from Defold. They care about whether or not you're giving the ability to modify game content in a commercial product.

> “Game Engine Product” shall mean software used for video game development. This includes both the content authoring software and the software used to show the created content.

The license allows redistribution so long as:

> a) You do not sell or otherwise commercialise the Work or Derivative Works as a Game Engine Product; and

So my read is that any tool that allows you to modify game content constitutes a game engine product and they specifically do not allow you to sell a game engine product built with Defold.

This weird technicality that is invented in this discussion about whether or not you're using Defold's built-in engine tools, or developing your own tools on top of Defold is entirely irrelevant to the language of the license.

[sarchertech]

After reading the license more thoroughly this is actually even less of an issue. The key thing about the wording is that it says you may not sell it “as a game engine product”.

It’s not enough that your game could be used by someone for video game development, a reasonable person would have to believe you were selling it as video game development software.

There’s definitely some gray area here for something like Roblox which is a game, but also allows people to develop and sell video games. But the risk of Defold suing you and a court finding that the map editor you added to allow people to make free levels for your puzzle game constitutes selling your game as video game development software is so far down the list of things you need to think about at all that it’s not worth considering.

If you want to make something like Roblox that is essentially a game engine, I wouldn’t use Defold. Otherwise I wouldn’t worry even a little bit.

[rpdillon]

I agree with your emphasis on 'as' in 'as a game engine product', and I think you're making a good point.

My worry is about 'otherwise commercialise', in cases where the ability to have fan made levels is an advertised feature, as is often the case.

But I agree that this is less of an issue than I first thought, and appreciate your explanation.

[Philpax]

Plenty of games have, with the most famous example being Valve's games, which (eventually) ship the same tools Valve uses for game creation.

[sarchertech]

Shipping the custom tools the developer built to make content for their game is relatively common.

Shipping 3rd party engine tooling is not. At all.

The equivalent to what valve did would be if Defold released some games made with Defold and then released the Defold engine, which is basically what happened.

There’s also nothing stopping from releasing your game, linking to Defold and saying use Defold to mod this game.