@coolycool  
Yeah … I’m still curious of how they can get away with having Sweetie Belle as a “company” logo.  
Guess it’s stylised and different enough. Based on Sweetie Belle, but not the same character.

I mean, if you get a C&D you just gotta say “What? Nooo t’aint Sweetie Belle in our Logo… It’S uhm… Marshmellhorse Jr.”

@Exedrus  
A lawyer in practice, or something.  
Probably in the green with the experience they’ve sought.

@Liggliluff  
They’ve indicated in the past that the game would include canonical locations and characters. They’ve also had SB in their logo since pretty much the beginning. Considering they consulted a lawyer on the matter, I suspect they are very much in the legal green here.

@AaronMk  
Let’s see how accurate this is …  
(2:30) Borrowing setting and plot is just fine … that’s been done thousands of times. However; you can’t borrow a character, that character is copyrighted. You can make your own character; that is a reference to the original character.  
(2:50) I’ve tried listening to this sentence a few times … and I’m confused. Does he say pirating is legal or illegal?  
(5:50) Does their project contain any character Hasbro owns; or are all custom made?  
And their logo is a copy of Sweetie Belle … a character created by Hasbro.

@Liggliluff  
It’s dangerous, though, since you only avoid C&D by not being detected, for the most part, but asking for license would mean drawing attention.
 
I wonder if that’s how the Gameloft game happened or something…
 
I mean, they almost certainly wouldn’t license a PG-13 game with shooting and death in a grimdark future, but I dunno how tight they’d be with more cutesy games that match the intended franchise image better if you can promise them money.

@AaronMk  
Easiest is to not wander into the minefield to begin with… to be honest.

For the record in case there was doubt: project’s still alive, and the folk behind it are as cautious in stepping around the legal minefield as you can be in the post-Fighting is Magic world.

@Cirrus Light  
You can buy a licence, if they expect you to meet their requested quality.
 
But you’ll have to ask for a licence; you can’t just expect them to hand it out like flyers.
 
If they make a prototype that makes Hasbro believe in it; maybe they’ll even put some money towards it even.
 
—
 
If you only knew how popular something becomes just because it’s a reference.
 
• Make your own art/story with your own characters; few people cares.  
• Make art/story based on an already existing franchise; a lot of people suddenly care.  
• Make a crossover between two franchises; you’ll have two groups of people interested, plus those people who overlap might become even more interested.
 
—
 
I have no facts begins it; however, it feels like the Discord messenger service just got popular because of its name, and bronies flocked to it.

@Liggliluff  
It’d be nice if they’d just license it out, though. Basically just say they want a cut of the profits, then the development team gets to still do it, and Hasbro gets money out of it that they didn’t spend anything to get or put forward any risk. Money for nothing, as it were.
 
In reality they’re concerned what groups will do to the image of the franchise if they let that happen, and don’t want to bother overlooking it to make sure the image stays what they want the image of MLP to be.
 
Can’t say I’m too upset with FoE, though… Massively overrated IMO _{And I’m probably just really jealous as an author of how freaking unbelievably famous it got for what’s a freaking crossover introducing like hardly any new ideas whatsoever}

Is it sad that you can’t take other people’s property and make something on your own with it?…  
Even fanart is illegal; but it’s often overlooked because it’s so minor.  
But when a game is developed where it starts to look high quality … that’s when it starts to be an issue.

Heh, as if THAT game will ever get shut down. XD