Imagine firing up a new game only to find that your original photographs or artwork were being used as part of the game’s plot line without your knowledge—and without even a proper citation. This is exactly what happened to several artists who posted their creations and designs online, only to have them snagged for use in an Internet-based, Twitter-fueled RPG called Tweeria.

Tweeria brands itself the “lazy Twitter RPG,” and it certainly lives up to that tagline. It requires little to no interaction other than posting to your own Twitter feed and conversing with other users on the social network. Every time you tweet, your “alter ego” in the game embarks on quests, slays monsters, and picks up items, just as you might do in a normal MMORPG. Tweeria currently has 14,000 registered users and receives about 18,000 visits a day.The game includes all of the basic elements of a fantasy role-playing game: mages, warriors, player-versus-player battles, achievement points, and mastery of skills—including, perhaps, a little digital pickpocketing.

Tweeria is, for the most part, a fresh and dynamic way to interact with a social network made even more attractive by the fact that it doesn't needlessly spam your Twitter followers. Where Tweeria comes up short, however, is in the fact that a majority of the art associated with the game appears to be lifted from other sources on the Internet. Some of the avatar artwork associated with certain classes and races that users can play is directly derived from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game, while other images are lifted directly from the profiles of Deviant Art users, in many cases without any credit.

The buzz about the in-game images began on Twitter after it garnered some interest from the folks over at The Verge. Several readers had commented about the game’s copyright infringement, while a few users on Twitter openly tweeted about the fact that Tweeria contained artwork that had been previously seen in the WoW Trading Card Game. The news soon spread to Tumblr, where bloggers posted screenshots of one DeviantArt user who went around messaging others and asking if they were aware that Tweeria had been using their artwork. “Thank you for your information, I didn’t authorise any sale except on deviantart. I’m trying to contact tweeria now,” wrote one user. Wrote another, “I certainly did not give any permission resell [sic] my work. And what’s worse, a page full of stolen pictures.”

The fact that Tweeria was taking images had been discovered a few days earlier. Michael Sacco, a creative developer for the WoW Trading Card Game from Cryptozoic entertainment, discovered about a week ago that official art from the game was actually being used in Tweeria. “I loaded up the site and went to choose a character and saw that the majority of player class portraits were from WoW TCG cards,” he said in an e-mail to Ars. The lifted artwork included a photo of a female elf warrior, used originally as artwork for a Night Elf Warrior in the WoW Trading Card Game, as well as a human female mage, which looks exactly like the female Mage character used for the Netherwind Presence card.

“I alerted the Tweeria twitter [account] the same day and they responded that Blizzard’s copyright agreement left them in the clear because it was a ‘personal, non-commercial project,’” continued Sacco. “Given that we license through Blizzard, any copyright disputes have to go through them, and Tweeria knows it.”

The developers at Tweeria referred back to Blizzard’s copyright and trademark policy for its use of WoW’s images, pointing to the text that says the company grants them a “license to use and display, for home, noncommercial and personal use only, one copy of any material and/or software that you may download from this site.” Despite the "one copy" language, Tweeria developers apparently argued that this policy allowed them to reuse images in their own game.

Other lifted artwork can be found in avatars like Tweeria’s female Human Warrior, which a Google Image Search linked back to DeviantArt user LeeJJ, whose signature has also been cropped out of the image used in the game. Another reverse search for some of the artwork featured on Tweeria’s page also linked back to several other Deviant Art accounts, like this picture of an elf warrior assassin, originally drawn by user HeroDees.

Tweeria also appears to be flouting DeviantArt's copyright policy, which states that users, “may not reproduce, distribute, publicly display or perform, or prepare derivative works based on any of the Content including any such works without the express, written consent of deviantART or the appropriate owner of copyright in such works.” On its actual copyright policy page, DeviantArt also notes that copyright infringement includes “placing a photograph or creative work online without proper permission” and “adapting a creative work of one medium to another” or “modifying or editing a creative work without proper permission.”

How did Tweeria end up using so many images? Its parent company, Tweenk, certainly didn't contact the artists whose images it used for its game, as exhibited by the screenshot above, but some of the uses may have been unintentional. The game developers accept user submitted photos, which may or may not have contributed to the rampant copyright infringements.

A few days ago, the developers at Tweeria posted a not-actually-that-apologetic blog post, claiming that the issues occurred because Tweeria is a “small, private, non-commercial and mostly experiment project of twitter-based RPG… we did not expect the popularity that we experience now.” The statement added that the developers “do not want to violate copyright and we greatly respect any kind of art”—but it offered no plans to remove images unless artists contacted Tweeria first and asked to have their imagery removed.

Neither Blizzard nor the DeviantArt users involved responded to Ars by publication time. Their images still remain a part of the game experience and there's a “Based on World of Warcraft image files and texts” disclaimer stamped on the bottom of the Tweeria website. However, the site doesn't appear to include a long list of Deviant Art users who had their work included in the web-based game without their knowledge, and Tweenk’s “e-mail us if you happen to have a problem” approach doesn't seem like it offers much legal—or moral—ground to stand on.

Tweenk claims that it will work closely with an art community to create a "gaming and social platform both for players and artists. But the fact remains that the company still hasn't admitted that using images lifted from others without permission is a problem, even if it's not making a profit.

Update, December 27, 2012 10:00 California time:

Ars received an e-mail statement from Alex Shteinikov at Twee Game stating the following:

“Up to this moment I have already deleted a plenty pieces of unauthorized art and will continue to do so. On the other hand I've got some permissions from authors and feel that people generally want to contribute their works into the project…It takes much time to check all the license limitations for each artwork. As the result and unfortunately for gamers, I've closed the option for artworks uploading and got massive delay in approval of small items.”

He went on to write: “Tweeria can't move forward to bigger project without cleaning all of those art licensing issues. I must have tighter copyright control. All these tasks are already in my schedule.”