"Asset licences in plain English: CC0, CC BY, royalty-free and 'personal use'"
Every asset in your game comes with permission to use it, and the words of that permission matter more than the price. This is a plain-language guide to the licences you'll meet most, not legal advice: if a licence decides whether you can ship, read it in full and ask a lawyer.
The common ones
| Licence | Commercial games? | Credit required? | Main catch |
|---|---|---|---|
| CC0 (public domain dedication) | Yes | No | None, though trademarks in the asset (logos, car badges) may still be protected |
| CC BY | Yes | Yes - name the author as they ask | You must actually show the credit somewhere reasonable, such as the credits screen |
| CC BY-NC | No | Yes | "NC" means non-commercial; a paid game, or a free one with ads, is commercial |
| CC BY-SA | Yes | Yes | "Share-alike" can require your adapted asset to carry the same licence |
| Royalty-free (store licence) | Usually | Usually no | Each store writes its own terms; read them |
| Personal use only | No | Varies | Can't be in anything you sell |
Store licences: the clauses to look for
Marketplaces (Fab, the Unity Asset Store, CGTrader, itch.io sellers and others) each have their own licence, and individual sellers sometimes add terms. Before you buy for a commercial project, look for:
- Seats. Is it one person, a team up to a size, or the whole company? Studio-size tiers often cost more.
- Redistribution. Almost every licence forbids reselling the raw files. Check whether your product counts: a game is fine; an asset pack, template or level kit that includes the files usually isn't.
- Engine or platform limits. Some licences tie assets to one engine.
- Editorial-only content. Real-world brands (cars, weapons, logos) are sometimes sold for editorial use only and can't go in a commercial game without the brand owner's permission.
- AI use. Some licences now forbid using assets to train generative models; some stores require disclosure when assets were AI-generated.
Keep a record
For every third-party asset, keep: where you got it, the date, the licence (save a copy - pages change), the order number, and what credit it needs. A simple spreadsheet is enough. When a publisher, platform or buyer asks, you'll have the answer in minutes.
Where generated and procedural assets fit
Assets made by procedural scripts are owned like any other work by whoever made them, and they're licensed the same way. The questions to ask a seller are the usual ones: who owns the output, what the licence lets you do, and whether any part came from material they didn't have rights to. Good sellers say how their assets were made; we say ours are generated procedurally in Blender by our own scripts.