Hey,
I have a question regarding an online service I'm planning to create. Here are some background details: I'm sure you know of these micropayment based "free to play" mobile games where addicted people are spending thousands of bucks a week in order to stay on top of rankings and leaderboards.
I'm planning to make a subscription based online service that would provide these players tools and "calculators" on how to play more efficiently. Some of the game aspects require lots of experimenting and time to get best possible results required for ranking well in the in-game contests etc. So people would definitely be willing to pay in order to save some time and effort.
These calculators would utilize commonly known mechanics of the game so that players enter details of their game character related in the particular aspect of the game and the calculator would produce information about how and what the player has to do in order to maximize their performance. I suppose some might even call this cheating because now something that used to require experimenting and time is suddenly calculated for you automatically, but since it doesn't interfere or modify the original software in any way that's not really the case. Basically a smarter person could do this same thing on their heads or using pen and paper if it comes to that. Would just require them to figure out the math behind the game mechanics themselves.
Yet, I'm still not sure if this is 100% legal. I'm not using any of the game files, data or servers in any way, it's all based on what I have myself experimented as a player. I don't include any copyrighted material, screenshots or anything owned by the company behind the game. It's just mathematics based on experimenting and providing those numbers to other players.
What worries me is that I would basically be making money over their game, although indirectly, and I'm not fully sure if there are other aspects of the law preventing this that I'm not aware of.
I have a question regarding an online service I'm planning to create. Here are some background details: I'm sure you know of these micropayment based "free to play" mobile games where addicted people are spending thousands of bucks a week in order to stay on top of rankings and leaderboards.
I'm planning to make a subscription based online service that would provide these players tools and "calculators" on how to play more efficiently. Some of the game aspects require lots of experimenting and time to get best possible results required for ranking well in the in-game contests etc. So people would definitely be willing to pay in order to save some time and effort.
These calculators would utilize commonly known mechanics of the game so that players enter details of their game character related in the particular aspect of the game and the calculator would produce information about how and what the player has to do in order to maximize their performance. I suppose some might even call this cheating because now something that used to require experimenting and time is suddenly calculated for you automatically, but since it doesn't interfere or modify the original software in any way that's not really the case. Basically a smarter person could do this same thing on their heads or using pen and paper if it comes to that. Would just require them to figure out the math behind the game mechanics themselves.
Yet, I'm still not sure if this is 100% legal. I'm not using any of the game files, data or servers in any way, it's all based on what I have myself experimented as a player. I don't include any copyrighted material, screenshots or anything owned by the company behind the game. It's just mathematics based on experimenting and providing those numbers to other players.
What worries me is that I would basically be making money over their game, although indirectly, and I'm not fully sure if there are other aspects of the law preventing this that I'm not aware of.
