Posted July 17, 2015
jsjrodman: All creative works are copyright controlled by default in the post-1973 copyright conventions. This includes fonts, most of which are absolutely copyrighted and some are expensive to buy.
That these various games all used what appear to be the same font could have a few explanations.
1 - They're all built using scumm or something which came with a default font they used.
2 - They licensed the same screen-font (likely if it was good & cheap)
3 - Someone provided that font under free availability via some means, such as part of a dev kit, or simply on a BBS somewhere etc.
4 - They're not actually the same font, just very similar.
5 - Developers back then weren't worried about suits over minor assets like this
I'm sure I missed some
It would be interesting to know the actual story, but probably only a few people who worked on those games would know now.
That's interesting :3 I personally was thinking more towards stuff like "Times New Roman" "Arial" and "Comic Sans" which I thought anyone was free to use. So I assumed it was the same with any fonts. That these various games all used what appear to be the same font could have a few explanations.
1 - They're all built using scumm or something which came with a default font they used.
2 - They licensed the same screen-font (likely if it was good & cheap)
3 - Someone provided that font under free availability via some means, such as part of a dev kit, or simply on a BBS somewhere etc.
4 - They're not actually the same font, just very similar.
5 - Developers back then weren't worried about suits over minor assets like this
I'm sure I missed some
It would be interesting to know the actual story, but probably only a few people who worked on those games would know now.
But then again, seeing as those I mentioned are packaged with word processing programs, they're likely public domain.
Post edited July 17, 2015 by Dartpaw86