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Yep, you read that right, The Olympics stole my game.
My game 'Snow Day':
http://thepencilfarm.com/media/0802/sd_title.jpg
Olympics game 'Fight the Winter Clouds':
http://thepencilfarm.com/media/0802/fuwa_title.jpg
Read the full story at The Pencil Farm.
I know flash game theft is nothing new around here, but I was surprised to see it happen on such a high-profile site.
Please Digg the story if you find it interesting.
Impressive but sad story. Good luck.
makes me angry as well- so blunt and ignorant. I have many chinese friends and can sadly only agree that chinas major society is just used to copying everything and thus often they dont know any better. Kinda like our culture downloading music and movies from the internet but instead in a more broader way. Is that perhaps the result of being so long isolated from the rest of the world?
I hope you get at least some feedback from them- and if so let us know
Shocking, but I hope you get a nice compensation for this, in which case it might be a good thing :)
I must agree with Render that piracy is rampant in Chinese society (this information also coming from a native Chinese friend of mine).
Everyone, I think we can help cadin by DIGGing this story. If we can get it onto the front page of Digg, it could cause quite the scandal.
True. You should also send this info to kotaku, they can generate some nice traffic and get someone's attention.Quote:
Originally Posted by VENGEANCE MX
<dreaming>it would be nice for example if mochi ads would disable accounts used by users who ripped flash games- to strengthen the flash community </dreaming>
Thanks for your support guys.
Chinese piracy is definitely not surprising. Lots of my games end up on Chinese portal sites. You would think that since they are making something for a site that has such a high international audience, and since there is already much talk about China's disregard for intellectual property rights, that they would be a little more discreet about it. But I guess not.
They're communists. Whats yours is theirs.
Take solace in the fact that half of your computer has been built by them for a few cents an hour.
So funny.Quote:
Originally Posted by lesli_felix
I might buy into that a little more if they weren't busting people left and right for selling unauthorized Olympic merchandise.
Dang I never knew that this happened. Why cant they just see your design, and use that as a basis for their game, instead of copying the entire game. You might want to look into copyright protection, if you haven't already. You might be able to get it copyrighted and then if they do steal your games again you would be able to take legal action some how. I use to have a site about copyright and such but I lost it. It had to versions of copyright, one being a free type and the other you have to pay for. Does anyone know what site im thinking of?
google?
The other two games are probably just inspired by Orisinal games, they look and play differently. But clouds game is stolen, I mean not simply similar but same game. Cant believe they have done that.
Sad story. Dugg - I hope that helps.
But I fear you'll probably need some proof that you didn't steal their game. There is a reason lawyers share a name with merciless, cold-blooded killing machines.
I think having that '©2006 Cadin Batrack' will have been a godsend. You could sue.
Even the footie game looks like pixelkick minus the scrolling. Controls are the same and the games last for 90 seconds. I wonder if chris has seen it?
This is all very sad, but you have to appreciate that china is a very different world. The developers probably got thrown into a locked room and told to come up with the goods in 24 hours or get shot.
Cadin, I wonder what would happen if you ripped the pretender game from their site and hosted it on your site as an example, would they be cheeky enough to ask you to cease and desist? It would at least draw their attention to the original game.
Very sad
WOW. i'm looking forward to their response. i'd talk to a tv or news network about it also. i reckon they'd love this kinna thing.
Damn that sucks. I hope they were cheated by some chinese "game company" and not just outright decided to steal these games.
http://www.thepencilfarm.com/blog/20...ng_olympi.html
bit more of a chat on slashdot about it too
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/03/09/0146224.shtml
This could SO be used to your advantage. Everyone knows the Chinese are unscrupulous, and although you've such a clear cut legal case I wouldn't expect you'd get a penny out of them. More likely somebody'll get fired and that'll be that, or they'll claim they made the original.
Don't just digg the article. Make a vid that compares your game to their game and throw it on YouTube. Get the attention of the cable news channels. The story will probably be picked up by the media and generate a nice buzz around your game. Then you pop in a little link back to your article which also has links to your original game, as everyone who reads it is bound to play it to see just how similar it actually is, so throw mochiads/adsense on it and at least get some $$ for your trouble. Once news escapes that you were the original author, think of how many millions of folks will have played it. And any publicity is good publicity.
Damn I wish the Beijin Olympics would steal one of my UltraSports games, I'd be laughing my ass off. You're gonna make a ton of cash from this if you handle it right.
p.s. I realised I had to start encrypting my stuff a while back, I suggest you do the same from now on.
whoops, I'm blind, just saw the other thread. Can a mod delete this thread please
If u havent done so, make the International Olympic Comittee about your findings, probably they'll be more willing to help and set things out with the Beijibg Comittee?
why not leave this thread,- will cause more traffic on google and or other news/ search engines.
This deserves some attention imo.
I found a copy of your page for this game from February 2007 (but not the game itself) on the Internet Archive. That might be helpful.
http://web.archive.org/web/200702060...encilfarm.com/
Although the game's been removed, the act of infringement was done. Perhaps a good lawyer could still extract some compensation from them, pro bono. Your story made Slashdot.
Sucks - hope you get compensated.
this could work out to be good for the overall Flash games industry. The theft of Flash games is so often over looked due to the culprit not normally being high profile enough to care. The exposure that this has had already (Slashdot etc) and a hoepfully satisfactory conclusion for you, could work as a great deterent for this happening in the future.
Chris
Chris, did you check out their 5-a-side game?
http://en.beijing2008.cn/funpage/gam...ll/index.shtml
I saw this come up on reddit. I hope they are forced to give you so much money that the Olympics must be cancelled. ;)
That really sucks, but on the bright side: Free publicity!
~Ork.
Hey guys, a quick update on this story:
As a couple people noted, the story got picked up by Reddit and Slashdot this weekend. The article on my site is getting some pretty good traffic.
Last night (or this morning if you're in Australia) the Sydney Morning Herald put up an article about it on their site. Shortly after that article went up the game was taken off the Olympic site.
I'm still trying to get the story on a few more news sites, but I think it's not as powerful now that the game is down.
Thanks to everyone for helping me spread the story. I'll let you know when/if I get a response from my letters to Sohu and the BOCOG.
Wow! congratulations pencil farmer, Im curious if you actually hired a lawyer to help you out on this case, but if you dont get some compensation at least Im glad to hear they took the game down.
cool,- way to go
Now that this has gotten some press attention, I'm sure there are lawyers that would take on your case. You probably can't get much monetary compensation after the lawyers take their 90%, but you could milk this for all the press and traffic to your site you can get. Some lawyers would jump at the chance just for the press attention they could get out of it, not too mention padding their resume with an action against the IOC!
Well, chinese are going to execute the guy responsible for stealing the game.
( they actually have, already, a few people who caused them embarassment recently )
That should be justice enough. Now if we can set this as a standard for all other flash game thieves, that would be cool.
decompile and decapitate. Even sounds catchy.
My wife is an artist and used to have a lawyer on a small retainer for issues like this (back when she worked for a larger company and they paid the retainer).
The way every case of copyright infringement was handled was the same.
1) Lawer makes a cease and desist letter giving a 'reasonable' time for the site author to remove the offending IP breach. Reasonable time is usually a week. Included in this cease and desist is evidence of prior copyright of the original works. Legal action is threatened if they do not comply. If the offender is on the internet, the ISP and hosting company are also copied.
2) After a week, the lawyer would sue them. Funny thing is that step 2 never arrived. Some 40+ incidents over 5 years and all of them removed the offending material within a week.
The steps are called out in the DMCA I believe.
Of course nothing as big as an Olympic site was involved here. When it comes to litigation, you have to prove damages and prove intent or knowledge of the IP infringement on the part of the accused. There is so much IP out there, nobody can get ANYTHING from a second party without risk of some of it infringing on a copyright. That is why the accused must be given a chance to rectify their 'mistake'.
IP laws are meant to PREVENT theft of IP. Not as a get rich quick scheme or a means of revenge if anyone ever uses your stuff. The threat of damages is just there if the offending party does not back down.
Unfortunately, people use it as a get rich scheme all the time. Like the company that sued Sony PlayStation for their rumble tech. They waited until Sony was way too far into production to simply stop using the tech.
Wow, what a story. In a sense it's maybe not so bad for you and us. As you tell it, it brings a lot of traffic to your site and it shows the pb of stolen flash games on the head lines.
Unreal.
I'm just picturing the "agency" pitching for the job, "We've got this idea for a game, here's a link to one in a similar style"
I'm mean what the hell ? These people pitched for the gig knowing full well they were going to steal your game and reskin it.
Even if the budget was tiny ( Even so tiny that it would have been turned down ), it still would have been the done thing to approach you to licence the fla first. It's just pure greed on their behalf. I mean they could even have used the Olympics as a way of getting you to give it to them for free, I mean it's pretty good exposure and a lot of bigger agencies have given games for free or a nominal fee for the pr.
It's great that they've been busted though, that you're getting extra traffic because of it, and that it's spread to the media at large.
For purely selfish reasons, hopefully it'll hightlight how wide spread this is with Flash and make shovelware thief sites think twice in future.
Squize.
PS. This thread has the best title ever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Squize
Funny thing though, that's not a million miles from how it usually works in the industry.
The difference being the ripping off is much less obvious, and the code is written (mostly) from scratch.
True, I often include a couple of reference links in GDD's if it's a specific genre, but there is a ton of difference from "Here's a game to help you visualise it, although the version we'll do for you will also do this and this and look like this..." and "Play this game, hope you enjoy it, as it's exactly what you're getting" :)
Squize.