Developing a tribute game, concerned about I.P./copyright...

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Greetings, all. I am currently developing a tribute game for the popular anime Attack on Titan, but I have a question:

How do I avoid copyright/I.P. infringement/violation?

Here are some things about the game...

1. Completely free/non-commercial/non-profit.
2. Uses sketchup as it's 3d modeling software.
3. Made in Unity.
4. Original Storyline.

I want to know how to avoid this game being a infringement, because I think it is possible (as there is a lot of crappy fan games for it out there), and I have started working on it.

If you don't believe me, watch this...



Thank you for your answers in advance.

The only way to know for sure is to ask a lawyer.
But there are lots of commercial games that are "tributes" to other things, that don't directly borrow IPs. Metroid was a tribute to the Alien movies, for example.
Rampage was a tribute to kaiju monster movies, but the characters used are only implied to be famous monsters.
Or there are games like Carmageddon or Journey to Silius, that started life as a movie license tie-in, but the game ended up being retooled to be its own thing.
As long as you don't directly copy any characters or names, you should be pretty okay. If you're questioning whether something is legal or not, it probably isn't.



That doesn't mean anything =) Those are just "cease and desist" letters waiting to be sent.
Not every company has lawyers who spend 24/7 hunting down infringements.

I have seen at least 2 other tribute games besides mine pop up on IndieDB in the last week, so I think I am going to do it. I really love the series and I want it to be a non-profit learning experience, so I will do it, as if that many people can do it and not get sued, then I will try to do it. Thanks for the info, however.

You're fine based upon that first reason alone. If you're not trying to make money off of someone's ip, you'll be left alone.

That is not even remotely true.

You may want to perform a Google search, first.

Link: Attack on Titan Role-Playing Game.

It's been done already.