In response to Flame Sage
In addition to what Airjoe said, graphics from old games may now be public domain. People might have permission to use certain graphics. Heck, there's even the chance that someone posts a tileset on another website, then the same person later uses it in a BYOND game (it looks like they're ripped, but they're actually the original artist!). There are too many ways that graphics may or may not be legit that it's difficult for the staff to reliably make the call.

Ignoring the legal issue there's still the issue of quality. Most of the games that feature RPG Maker graphics aren't that good. It's also an art style that's often seen. If BYOND had 100 different, high quality card games it'd be difficult for you to make a card game that gets featured - it wouldn't be because the game is bad but because it's been seen before. It just isn't feature worthy. Ripped graphics act the same way. If you ripped graphics from a very obscure game and nobody knew they were ripped, they wouldn't think any less of your game. If you used a commonly-seen tileset people would judge your game.
Flame Sage wrote:
http://www.byond.com/games/Enigmaster2002/IconUltima
(Contains tons of icons from other sources, now this normally can slide because they are uploaded by other players, but the base world map does contain RPG Maker graphics.)

All graphics released with the game were either made by volunteers or found in free icon packs on this site. Whether or not the ones in free icon packs were stolen or not is up to speculation.

Considering I have no knowledge of what the RPG Maker graphics look like, as we're going back twelve or so years since I last looked at the software, please provide a list of which tiles come from it and we'll see what we can do to fix it.
In response to Mr.Professional
You can't copyright game mechanics.

Assuming SAx has the right to distribute all the icons in the game (i.e., he made them, someone made them for him, freely distributable icon pack, not a sprite rip), then the game doesn't break copyright law and is fine in that sense.

There might be a trademark issue with the use of the name 'tetris', but that's a different matter.
In response to Tom
One of the extremely popular Naruto games, Naruto GOA, uses this sprite sheet's weapons:



Section 1 and 4 look fairly similar. Section 3 looks very similar (I don't have a photo, but the exact graphic in section 3 on the right is used in the game too). Section 2 looks like the exact graphic with a slight color edit.
In response to OrangeWeapons
OrangeWeapons wrote:
One of the extremely popular Naruto games, Naruto GOA, uses this sprite sheet's weapons:



Section 1 and 4 look fairly similar. Section 3 looks very similar (I don't have a photo, but the exact graphic in section 3 on the right is used in the game too). Section 2 looks like the exact graphic with a slight color edit.

Are you mad? 1 (the large shuriken) looks nothing similar, the size of the blades is completely different, and the middle section is smaller, not to mention that the GBA version seems to have a whole bunch more animation frames (GOA's only has two)

The kunai and needles share outlines, but I'll chalk that up to the fact they're all pixel art and there's only so many ways to can get the shape of something. Especially the needles, with are basically just a one-pixel line with an outline.

The small shuriken on the bottom also look pretty much nothing similar -- they don't even have the same outline! (And like the bigger one, there's a big difference in how they're animated.)
In response to OrangeWeapons
Most of those aren't even close.

Also, this is more about games using entire tile sets rather than a few things looking similar here and there.
In response to SuperAntx
Look at the second one again.
In response to OrangeWeapons
They're very similar but they have slightly different color palettes. Out of all the comparisons you made it's the only one which fits the profile of the supposed ripped sprite. When working with objects that small it's not hard to see why they would look similar in the first place.

While working on Decadence I had multiple artists attempt to submit stolen/modified material as their own work. If it hadn't been for a few other artists pointing it out there would be ripped sprites in Decadence right now. Because of this I can't really blame a game for having a few ripped sprites here and there when the vast majority of it is original work.

As I stated in my previous post, this is a matter of ripping entire tile sets. Having a only a few bad icons can easily be fixed.
Page: 1 2 3