In a commercial game, you can't just use the fonts included with windows (Arial, Times New Roman, etc.) because they're sublicensed by Monotype. I admit I'm a little intimidated of even asking how much a license to use, say Arial, for a commercial game would cost from Monotype :P So I've been looking around at free fonts, trying to find an Arial-esque (clear, non-Serif'd) font we can use. It's proving tricky, and to make things worse, most of the fonts I've downloaded so far don't have any license agreement in the zip file, just the .ttf files. I'm using the Microsoft ttf shell extension that lets you see if the license info is embedded in the font file, and that's turning up blanks too. What do other studios do with fonts? Pay someone to make a set of fonts you use in all your games? Scour the web looking for free fonts that fit your needs? What pitfalls are there to look out for when using free fonts? Seems like nothing is simple... Any feedback or linkage is appreciated ;)

If you're releasing your game for Windows, there's about a 100% chance that the user's got Arial installed on it. Why not just find the already-installed arial on the machine and use it?

Hmm. So if we only redistribute the application that makes the fonts and run it as part of the installation process, that would get around the legal implications? (We don't use the .ttf files, we generate texture maps of them then render them as 3d quads)