Weapon soundtrack rights..

[kjs335]

Is it legal to use weapon soundtrack from a commercial game for commercial purpose?

If it's not, what do most people do to get the sound apart from recording it?

[Ricardo C]

Is it legal to use weapon soundtrack from a commercial game for commercial purpose?

In most cases, no.

If it's not, what do most people do to get the sound apart from recording it?

You can have have a sound fx specialist create/record the effects for you, or you can purchase pre-recorded sounds.

[Sol_HSA]

The pretty much "de-facto" sound effects library is the Sound Ideas' general 6000 library. http://www.sound-ideas.com/

If you've wondered why some movie sound effects sound somewhat familiar, it's because you've heard them in dozens of games - and they come from that sound library.

Sound ideas also has a game-specific sound library available (in wav format - the "normal" sound libs are audio tracks on CDs).

and no, I'm not affiliated with them =) the sound libs are tad bit expensive (you can blow tons of money on them), but I'd consider it an investment..

[ErikH2000]

There are some cheap sound effects collections out there. See Beachware's A Zillion Sounds 2.0 and Snap's 2000 Sound Effects both of which have war and weapons sections. Check the budget CD-ROM rack at places that sell software for collections that cost ten bucks. ...well, in the US anyhow. I don't know how it is elsewhere.

Please don't rip weapon sound effects from other games, though. It's easy to get legit sound effects, and we ought to support more sound effects production.

-Erik

[soniCron]

There are some cheap sound effects collections out there. See Beachware's A Zillion Sounds 2.0 and Snap's 2000 Sound Effects both of which have war and weapons sections. Check the budget CD-ROM rack at places that sell software for collections that cost ten bucks. ...well, in the US anyhow. I don't know how it is elsewhere. Has anyone bothered checking for the legal waivers in any of these products? I've got a couple "Bunch-O-FX" CDs from two different sources, and neither comes with any licence agreement authorizing the user to redistribute the sounds in any legal capacity. There's no legal information on Beachware's site that I could find about their sound effects product. I know the author posted it to these forums, so the intent is clear. But I'd like to see the licence agreement before purchase the effects. Has anybody else noticed this "problem," with other sound effects packs? Has anybody else cared?

[Tom Gilleland]

Okay, I just added: "These sounds are completely royalty-free." to our web site for Zillion Sounds. How's that for service! :)

http://www.beachware.com/clip.htm

The only limitation is for someone to take our sound collection and sell it as thier own, or put a big chunk of it as sound clip media in something like a sound editor program. But if you want to use a bunch of sounds in your game, no problem.

Tom