For a rather long time now I've wanted to make a small free game based on Skyrim but in a new game engine. The problem I quickly ran into however is of course, copyright. The game I have in mind will serve as an extension to Skyrim which means that it would contain the assets from Skyrim (buildings/drawers/braziers etc) and needless to say they are under some kind of copyright protection but from what I've read thus far I can't really find a proper answer to what's allowed or not.

I'm a big fan of Skyrim and because I've been trying to make the game for such a long time it has now become an unbearable itch that I have to.."scratch" and although there are a million options on other assets that I can use...it's not exactly the assets from Skyrim so it won't "feel right", if you know what I mean..

I've already had a chat with tech support and they weren't sure themselves and one of the recommendations they gave me, was to post on the forum about it, so hopefully someone here will be able to shed some light on this and maybe other options I can explore in regards to this. Cheers.

You are not allowed to use any assets from Skyrim. Bethesda/Zenimax owns all of it and you're not allowed to distribute any of it.

I think that much is obvious when it comes to any game not just Skyrim in particular, but from what I've read there seems to otherwise be some exceptions, I just don't know if they are really true and if so to what extent. The game will be free, but then again, Bethesda can do as they please even if I don't make any money off of it. I just need to be sure what's their official stand on this kind of matter before I can think of other options.

AFAIK every time this issue has been brought up, the official response is that you are not allowed to distribute any assets from their games. Maybe a dev will see this thread and confirm that.

Spoons, I'd really recommend that you Use the PM system and get in contact with one of the Administrators here http://www.gamesas.com/user/365941-gstaff/ might be the best to contact.

Aah, ok, because I did a few searches on the forum before I posted and didn't find anything on it or I didn't look well enough.

Tyvm, I'll see if he can help me with an answer on this matter.

You cannot under any circumstances distribute or redistribute Bethesda's assets, without first obtaining a licence from Bethesda, which is never going to happen. That much is clear.

What is less clear is whether you can create a new engine that uses Skyrim's assets with installation instructions so that people who legally own Skyrim can run some of its assets in your engine. That may be something you could do as a mod, as long as you are not combining assets from more than one game. You would have to look at the EULA and you might also want to take a look at what they are doing with Open MW. Open MW is a mod that creates a brand new engine to run Morrowind. It is perfectly legal, which is why the Open MW mod can be discussed here in the forums.

What you are describing sounds like it could be similar in its approach, with the main difference being that, unlike Open MW, which aims to emulate vanilla Morrowind gameplay but in a new 64 bit engine, gameplay in your mod presumably would not be identical to vanilla Skyrim.

The search function here has been broken since last year.

However, there is one thing that aren't broken or have been lost over the years and that's this post made by Pete. His post is perfectly clear about what copyright rules that Bethesda has for TES game assets.

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/646582-important-forum-information/