In my free time, I'd been toying around with a prototype for a (very vaguely) similar game to "What's the word" (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whats-word-new-quiz-pics-words/id573511269?mt=8), so it was interesting to see it become so popular. "What's the word" uses photos from stock photography websites. As far as I understand from their licenses (and asking some of them in emails when I was researching for my prototype), most of the stock photo sites don't allow 'essential' usage like this in games (and a very small minority allows such usage, but with quite expensive 'extended' licenses for more than a certain number of users - around 40$ / photograph). This difficulty of collecting hundreds of quality photos was a major reason I couldn't go ahead with making the prototype into a full game. But since "What's the word" can become so visible while using stock photographs, is there something I'm misunderstanding? Is there a relatively simple (and relatively cheap, at most 5-10$ / image) way to legally collect hundreds of photographs?
well.. its a russian company without an proper imprint on their website and just a web form to contact them.. no address, business tax ids etc. whatsoever i guess you can guess what i would assume..
Actually they look quite official each image they use has a copyright mark and the name of the provider. and at the bottom on each screenshot they credit the websites used. They may have made a deal for a bulk order or joint advertising.
Well, at least one of the sites that they credit at the bottom had replied to me I needed the around 40$ extended license, and even then only for up to 10000 (ten thousand) downloads of the app. I suspect they probably just used the much cheaper regular license without looking into it much (unless the customer representative who replied to me was mistaken herself). The licenses of such sites are very confusing for this kind of usage, so I don't really blame them for it. Of course they could have made a special deal as you mention, but I doubt it, given that the sites they credit are already some of the best known ones.
well if "whats the word" people had of paid for $40 a picture then why are they putting down all the copyright stuff? WHen you buy the image you would not be required to credit the author. its either a deal they have done or are they just using the free images from there sites. Most of those image sites have number of free images you can use with restrictions usually relating to crediting back the image to them.