Are the Pokemon images licensed?

Question

I'm creating a tickbased game about Pokemons, and I enjoyed the pictures available here. These images are licensed? How do I get permission to use in my game? Thank you for your attention and congratulations for the great job here!

ps.: Sorry my english, I'm Brazilian and I'm learning it.

Comments

Your English is very good. :)

Answer 1

The Sugimori artwork that you see at the top of the Pokedexes is made public by Game Freak. The sprites and so on are not licensed at all, but are used under a "fair use" policy (similar to images on Wikipedia).

However, you won't be able to make a Pokemon game that is 100% legal as they do not give out licenses or permission to make games. Many games like Pokemon Tower Defense have been shut down by GF/Nintendo. But feel free to play around, unless it gets really popular they probably won't touch you.

Comments

Thanks for reply. The game that I want to develop is to exercise my programming skills, and not for commercial purposes. Anyway, I'll be careful to not violate any copyright of Nintendo or any other company involved in my project.

Thanks again for reply! Success!

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Hey, if that's the case then how is showdown and such legal? I don't understand

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Strictly speaking they are probably not legal. But I think they help improve the popularity of Pokemon so GF is fine with them existing.