Freesound Forums

Hey all, I’ve been pondering on the meaning on the definition of commercial use for a while now. Namely, I’m a part of a dev team that’s working on building slot games. However, we’re not working in the real-money side of the business. Instead, we’re making games for social casinos where people don’t use money to play, nor are we actually supposed to earn any money through these games.

Since the games we’re making are nothing more than simple free browser games in this context, I figured we could probably use a free audio library for sounds and samples. However, where our games will be found is throwing a wrench in my train of thoughts.

Teams like ours rarely ever host games on our own sites. Instead, we allow different vendors, mainly social casinos that don’t work in the ‘real money’ sphere, to embed our games within their sites. Our games also end up on sites like https://www.nodepositdaily.com/features/metal-music-themed-free-slots/ this one where there are ads and similar revenue generating systems in place.

My question is, can we still use sound clips and bites that are not for commercial use, even if our games end up being embedded in third party sites where there are ads and other forms of revenue generating schemes?

The simple answer is no.

More license info:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

The way I see it :
If you use none commercial works, your own work must be none commercial and stated as such.
If a party (casino or website) uses your work in a commercial setting, they're the ones in the wrong.
I would guess it also means you cannot give permission to a commercial entity to use your games knowingly that they'll use it in a commercial setting.

I am not a legal expert in any domain or country.