"Busted" or not, everything you are describing is copyright violation. Even if you gave the game away for free, you are distributing their music without a license.
Nobody's saying you can't do it, and if you are making just something fun and cool for friends, then nobody really cares, but under law and all policies, it is illegal and completely enforceable should anyone care. If your game "takes off" for whatever reason and it hits the internet running, you could be in for a world of hurt.

The moment you start selling it, even to friends and schoolmates, without permission, it becomes both illegal and wrong, and even more enforceable.
The cost of licensing Megadeth or whatever is straight up out of your league, so find a buddy who has a similar band and get his permission to use his songs. It gives your game character, and is a good act of kinship between you.
It sucks, but if it isnt just for you and a friend or two, its the way IP works. Play safe, and take advantage of these crappy limitations to exercise some creativity in your game design and soundtrack.

EDIT: I'm not trying to be a dick, but I gotta tell you what's up. Make your own decisions, but if I interpret the rules of these forums correctly, further stating that you plan to rip those songs without license constitutes piracy discussion and may warrant mod action. Just a heads up :)

Does anyone know how much money we're talking about for a license? (Normal price)

and,

do you think they'd cut me some slack if they knew I was a 17 year old kid making a video game for his friends?

Gardon

Does anyone know how much money we're talking about for a license? (Normal price)

and,

do you think they'd cut me some slack if they knew I was a 17 year old kid making a video game for his friends?

Gardon

Does anyone know how much money we're talking about for a license? (Normal price)

and,

do you think they'd cut me some slack if they knew I was a 17 year old kid making a video game for his friends?

Gardon

I dont have an offhand figure, but you can bet it'll be a goodly sum.

Heres your best case scenario if you get caught: You recieve a cease and desist letter threatening jail time and severe fines for you or your parents, and you have to immediately stop all distribution of your product.

Worst case scenario: They decide to be dicks and charge you damages and say lots of mean, threatening things. If you are still 17, those damages will come out of your parents. If you are 18 by that time, they will come out of you. See the cases of 14 year olds getting their parents sued by the RIAA for using p2p programs a year or two ago to see what kind of damages they could put on you. Worst case.

If you make this game and give it to three or four buds, lets be realistic: no big deal. But if you charge a dollar for it, you're stepping into hot water, and if, like I said, for some reason its that totally cool and it blows up onto the internet, then you will have your world rocked.

Allow me to offer some advice:
Build your game such that any songs can be used for any level. Have some general tunes built in, but have an easy menu to change them. THen, anybody with -legal backups- of their megadeath CD or whatever could use your "recommended track list" to set up the perfect soundtrack.

Do I have to put the *wink* in there?

Just dont distribute the songs with the game. Leave the legalities in whether or not someone playing the game should have the songs any way. Take the distribution out of the equation.

Sound good?

Ya definately.

To be honest, I was thinking about a recommended playlist too, but the problem is what if the people don't have the songs. There are different moods of the game, you know, and it's just not the same.

However, since napster and kazaa are popular these days, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find those songs :P

But the question is... would they take the time to download those songs when they want to play a simple game?

Gardon

But it would be cool though if I had some songs built into the game... like blank tracks with the lengths of the actual songs, so like the people could just make their own file, make the name the same as the file I put into the media folder during distribution, and voila! the same length track, same name, but not my song.

I'm curious, would it ok if gardon used copyrighterd music, but didn't sell the game, but instead gave it away for free??

Heh, and "asked" for donations.

I don't know man, but that would be cool. I don't see the harm if I don't sell it, but then again, what if the player doesn't own the music, and copied it off the game to listen to at their leisure?

Gardon

No, you can't just use someone's copyrighted material without having their permission. That's what "copyright" means; the right to make copies. It doesn't matter whether you make any money from it or not, it's still illegal.

If you did release the game including music without the permission of the artists involved, then it's likely you'll end up in one of the positions that krikkit outlined in the post earlier. There's also a chance that the RIAA might decide to make an "example" out of you, since they tend to be doing that kind of thing these days.

All in all, it would be better to either use your own music, or music that you've got permission to use (local artists looking to make a name for themselve), or let the player choose their own tracks.