Do I need to buy a license for a font to use it in an iPhone game? [closed]

Question

I am using the Calibri font in a game that I am developing for the iPhone, and I'm unsure if I need to pay for a license for it. I use the font in Adobe Photoshop to generate textures that are then used and displayed at runtime. I will not embed the font binary in the game.

Do I need a license for the Calibri font? If I do, does anyone know about how much a font license would cost in a case like this?

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I wrote Ascender Corporation and asked them about this issue. Here is the e-mail conversation:

Ascender Corportation,

The game I am making will only be available on the Apple App Store for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. I am not embedding the font in the game, I am only using it in Adobe Photoshop to generate textures that will be displayed when the game is running. Please, tell me about the license that fits this circumstance.

-Andrew

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Andrew,

Thank you for the additional information. We can provide you with a license to distribute the Calibri regular font in a single game title, on just the iPhone/iPod Touch platform in one bitmap size for $750. Our standard license term for game developers is a perpetual term but for Calibri we can only provide renewable two year terms. We have reduced the license fee to reflect the shorter term. You can renew the license for additional two year terms at your option. There are no unit reporting requirements and the license fee includes warranty and indemnification from Ascender Corporation.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if you want to proceed with a license. Best regards, Ascender Corporation

This seems a little egregious, $750 for a single size? I am not even confident that the game I am making will make that much! Does this sound right?

Answer 1

I think the best way to think about this is that you are effectively signing up to a contract with a font foundry if you wish to use one of their fonts. This contract (license) could probably say anything it likes. It can say for example that you may not use the font on a tea-towel without paying an extra $1000, or that you have to give them your first born child if you use their font in a Flash file. I jest but you get the idea, the foundries are supplying a font and it is up to them what the terms/details of it's usage are.

Some foundries (maybe including Ascender here) are a bit over the top with their license fees. They are hot on getting what they can from sources like interactive games. Other foundries, (such as FontFont and CanadaType) are far more reasnoble and friendly to such usage. Yes, for full/rich vector based editable embedding of a font in an application, the foundry should be compensated fairly of course, but some foundries take the mickey and sadly the font industry cannot get its act together and be a little more co-ordinated in their approach to licensing for new media technologies. Instead what you end up with is lots of confusion and wildly different prices.

I personally dont think you should have to pay for a special license to just use images/bitmaps of the font characters in a game but what does it matter what I think, again you have to bear in mind it is up to the foundry to set the rules for their products. Therefore the people who are saying you do not owe them a dime for such usage, are sadly very wrong.

Obviously we can vote with our feet and not give certain foundries our business if we feel they are being unreasonable, right?

To the person who commented on fonts not being copyrightable, that is clearly a load of rubbish. Also, it's worth noting that fonts which arrived pre-installed on your PC or came with software you bought, is not being given away free. Im not too sure where the 'license' for these fonts resides but there will be one!

Also, as someone else mentioned check out fontsquirrel.com if you are looking for something simple and cheap/free. I'd also recommend FontFont.com for excellent quality fonts

Answer 2

According to the Free Software Foundation, "[I]n the US... [a] font face -- that is, the look of a font, is not copyrightable."

So there you go.