Massively Overpowered

"do I have to distribute my work under the terms of the GPL even if I don't distribute any GPL code directly"

That is an interesting question that have a handful court case in the US, however the result has gone both way. The primary example of that has been cheat software that injects into copyrighted games, which both goes again the copyright and EULA of the game. In the example of blizzard, there is cases when they won against the cheat software on copyright grounds, as you can read here: (https://massivelyop.com/2020/02/28/lawful-neutral-cheating-copyright-law-and-the-wow-glider-lawsuit/).

Basically, the art of work that get created when you run software is also a kind of copyrighted work, and a bit like how movie character is copyrighted as well as an actually movie itself. If a second company make a new movie with the same characters, story and so on, even if its all "original" code, it is still a derivative work. The article above describe those as "non-literal elements", the graphics, sounds, animations and characters produced by the literal code.

So to answer the question "when is my program a derived work of a GPL work", it would seem to be when the non-literal elements of the GPL is changed in ways that require copyright permissions by the GPL author.

It should be noted however that in practically all cases involving the linux kernel, companies that distribute non-gpl kernel modules are also distributing the kernel as part of products.

You normally speaking shouldn't care. But there have actually been Kickstarter cases brought to court that were resolved in the favor of the backers.

Examples:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/feds-take-first-action-against-a-failed-kickstarter-with-112k-judgment/ (most likely fraud)

https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/32334/court-orders-fines-payments-kickstarter-case (seems to have been either bad timing or someone that needed the court to get off their ass)

https://massivelyop.com/2022/10/12/chronicles-of-elyria-dev-celebrates-dismissal-of-backer-lawsuit-as-next-phase-of-heros-journey/ (many millions of $, case dismissed)

So it's a bit of a toss-up. Especially the second is weird because the state is awarded $54K versus a pittance to the backers and apparently the backers did in fact receive their stuff.

All in all, other than outright fraud I don't see much in terms of real world recourse here, and even then you have to wonder if you shouldn't just write it off. The last one is interesting: by handing a lot of $ to a project initiator you are also effectively funding them from defending from you suing them...

I have a soft spot in my heart for ahead-of-their-time or there-but-for-mismanagement game oddities. :-)

There's also an alternative universe where the Japanese game industry cracked the MMO formula instead of Ultimate Online / EverQuest. See Sega's Heat.net / 10six: https://massivelyop.com/2016/07/23/the-game-archaeologist-segas-10six-mmo/

As a beta player, it was hellaciously fun, in a very similar way to EVE, even on dialup.

Other oddities:

LucasArts' 80s Habitat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)

3DO's pre-Niantic Meridian 59: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59

Sierra's The Realm Online: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online (also beta'd this one, which was really slick and well-executed)

Though the latter bit about the ‘size of economy’ is doubtful to me: the populations of top MMOs are in millions each, but surely the players don't spend the sums of their monthly rent and food bills in the games. This report from January 2021 puts the daily volume of transactions in WoW at about two million USD: https://massivelyop.com/2021/01/21/world-of-warcraft-players-move-21b-gold-through-the-economy-every-day/

I eyeballed the rate for late-ish 2021 from this hastily found site, at 20 bucks per 200k gold—seemed to change little in the past year, so hopefully holds true for January 2021 as well:
https://www.playerauctions.com/market-price-tracker/wow/

Here are a few stories about sites/services being shutdown...I expect the real deuluge won't happen until after it takes effect.

StreetLend.com - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16954306

Super Monday Night Combat - https://www.polygon.com/2018/4/28/17295498/super-monday-night-combat-shutting-down-gdpr

Tunngle - https://www.tunngle.net/en/

Ragnarok Online - http://massivelyop.com/2018/04/26/ragnarok-online-shuts-down-in-europe-due-to-new-regulations/

Verve - https://adexchanger.com/mobile/verve-closes-european-business-thanks-to-gdpr/

SteamSpy - https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/8bdkuz/steam_sales_tracker_steamspy_will_no_longer_be/

> an epic last stand to try to kill the invincible dragon, something that had only been done once before and was itself a legendary piece of MMO history.

From a story linked below it sounds like the sleeper has been killed many times. The article seems to incorrectly state this 2022 attempt would be the second kill ever…

>> players of Rallos Zek, who were congratulated by SOE and given official confirmation of a game-first accomplishment. The Sleeper would be killed many times after this, but never quite as memorably.

https://massivelyop.com/2022/04/04/the-game-archaeologist-when-everquest-players-killed-the-unkillable-sleeper/