Somebody stole my game!

Hi there, somebody decomplied my game Ringmania, changed the title and the welcome screen, the size of the game, added mochiads, and won the game friday contest : http://mochiland.com/articles/flash-...nner-the-rings

You can play the original here, it was made 3 or 4 years ago : http://www.pepere.org/flash-developm...ania_u_25.html


It's exactly the same engine and same levels!

What a shame. I've written to mochiads to repair this. Waiting for the reply. I don't blame mochiads, they can't know all the games around the world but I'm really angry about the guy who did this. Really it's a shame to behae like this.

That sucks. Dont know what else to say.. his looks better :P . I bet it was some photoshop nerd that got his hands on a decompiler and a cracked version of flash and just reskinned. That sucks.

Please let us all know what mochi decide to do with the ad revenue generated by that game.

Wow, that must hurt. Not only did he steal it, he even won a contest with it.

sorry to hear that mate, hope mochi-ads does something about it.

sry to hear that... mochi should give you all the revenue generated by the game! Use code encryption next time! Sry again!!

That blows donkey :|

People really need to realise that the web isn't such a vast place where they can just blindly get away with stealing things and passing it off under their own name ( Just yesterday we found a hacked version of "Law of the West", with all our logos removed. Not replaced, just removed. Obviously the ad was ripped out completely ).

It would be really interesting to hear how mochi handle this. They could either be really good guys, or just corporate arses.

Good luck with sorting it out mate.

Squize.

Unbelievable. I hope mochi ads does something about it...

This brings up a very interesting topic for discussion, to me at least, is Mochi's fully open system encouraging intellectual property theft?

I really think that due to the fact that money changes hands, it would be in Mochi's interest to have some sort of proper user ID (liek Facebook asks for a passport / drivers license scan before allowing you to upload mp3s of your band).

ChrisError x

It may sound glib, but any sort of monetary gain encourages IP theft, from script kiddies dropping their own ads in front of a game, to the list of rapidshare links I saw yesterday with 1000's of Flash games in, just ready for those shovelware sites and their adsense ads.

But yeah, hopefully this will tighten a lot of things up in regards of mochi themselves ( Not that they're doing a bad job, but this was always going to happen, just a pity it's happened to Sietjp ).

Squize.

I know its been said a bunch of times in this thread already, but WOW. They didn't even bother to change the fonts :\

I just wonder how long its going to take before some drastic action is taken to avoid these issues. Its a joke

looks like he appreciates flashkit members...

here's another game he made: https://www.mochiads.com/community/g...h2k/bubbles_v4 (i thought to myself that looks familiar...)

http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=730172

No relpy so far from the mochiads team.
Well done ChaseNYC, I've just PM DelvarWorld to warn him about this. ([edit] I've just realised that half of the board has already sent a PM to him :) )
I start to think that mochiads should spend a few more time before validating a game.
Looking on google, it seems that this guy is actually a freelance located in Canada. I think he's playing a very risky game...

That's really quite despicable. This is the flash game industry at it's lowest point. I think on some level mochiads has helped us trade off our love for game creation for a love of money. No offense meant to the people of mochiads or the people who use them of course, but I do find it disappointing that this industry is so industrial.

I don't know how that guy lives with himself, I'd much rather experience the joy of creation than a fat wad of cash.


Good luck on getting this whole ordeal sorted out, jp!

jp,

read mochi ads terms and conditions - there's no way they'll pay him if they find out he's breached their contract, there's lots of clauses in there about copyright/third party material.

question is, will they profit themselves from ad space sold on the stolen material, and do they plan on passing any of it over to you?

I'm wondering how google tackle this, they close down accounts all over the place for breach of IP.

Quote:

---

I don't know how that guy lives with himself, I'd much rather experience the joy of creation than a fat wad of cash.

---

sadly that is a big trend lately

I hope too that that person gets punished,- it´s such a low act even more considering that he placed up for competitions - where one would expect that the author actually produced that title himself.

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen anyone steal games and then fix them up! That's probably why he's gotten away with it so far. Lets hope Mochi Ads is kind enough to give you all the money he earned.

If Mochi are reading this: Close down the guy's entire account! Not just this one game. The repercussions need to be severe enough to make people think twice about trying to do something like this EVEN IF IT MEANS LOSING CASH ON A LEGITIMATE GAME OF THEIRS. Violation of terms should be a zero-tolerance matter.

Hell, I'd encourage Sietjp to contact a lawyer and sue this guy as a John Doe. Get a subpoena from the court for discovery and ask Mochi for the guy's identity. Then sue his shirt, pants, shoes, and dog's collar off. Of course, Mochi might just roll over and provide that info without a subpoena, but I kind of hope they don't as I wouldn't want them giving out info to someone only pretending to be the rightful copyright holder.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. :yikes:

We're actively investigating the issue, and we will be reaching out to the developer who allegedly copied the game.

Piracy is obviously against our terms of service, and we treat these matters seriously.

Feel free to ask us any additional questions here: support (at) mochiads.com.

Maya

Welcome, Maya :)

Not sure why this has turned into flaming MochiAds, I doubt they are able to tell by looking at the game that it has been made by decompiling other swf and changing parts of it. Same thing happens in every portal where any user can upload whatever they like, some of them doesnt even pretend to care if the swf was simply stolen, not to mention the case when it has been changed.

Thanks for looking into it Maya :)

no flaming of Mochi was meant by anyone I think. It's just this is going to become a big issue as time goes on and (hopefully) Mochi becomes more and more successful. I do think some sort of real world ID at the log in process would possibly discourage some people.

ChrisError x

Tony, I don't think this is a classic case. This one is similar http://board.flashkit.com/board/showthread.php?t=761178 but in most of the decompilation cases, they only remove the protection, or remove a logo, or add a highscore script.

And I agree MochiMedia is not directly involved, but I hope anyway they will try to discourage other people to do the same on their plateform.

I don't think there was any mochi flaming here, just all of us showing concern.

I don't want to hi-jack this thread in any way, but nGFX has done a blog post ( When very pissed, in an American way that is ) which may hopefully be inspiration for anyone else who suffers hacking / ip theft:
http://blog.gamingyourway.com/PermaL...19aa05dfe.aspx

( The venom in his post has even shocked me :) )

Join me whilst I look into my crystal ball... I see in a year of so a site purely listing Flash hacked / ripped games ( Like http://www.copyscape.com or http://pirated-sites.com/vanilla/ but for our favourite format )

Squize.

I have been in similar situation and felt the same pain of my game being stolen. It still hurts.

However, I would like to point out that unlike many other sites MochiAds has been developing system to help preventing the theft:
http://mochiland.com/articles/mochia...ption-services
I suggest you all to try it out at least, honestly think it can be great way to avoid your games falling into hands of thieves.

To quickly update everyone: We have suspended the account of the person who allegedly violated our TOS and copied the game. We're not currently distributing any of his games.

We're also going to issue the contest winnings to sietjp :)

Thanks for surfacing this issue, everyone. As tonypa mentioned, we have free encryption tools you can use in your games to help thwart piracy of your game. Also, incidentally, I ran an article this week that offers a tutorial on protecting your game: http://mochiland.com/articles/tutori...our-flash-game.

And, of course, speaking up about issues like this and supporting your fellow game developers is as much a tool for you to thwart issues like this as preventive measures like encryption. So keep up the good work, guys!

Here are the latest news.
Mochiads is adressing the problem very seriously. The account of the developer has been closed. They will let me display a message to display the true name of the game instead of the preloading banner. Here is the message I would like to display.

Quote:

---

Hi, the true name of this game is RINGMANIA, I developed it in 2005 on PEPERE.ORG

The version you are playing is a pirated version. Some said it's better, but if you wish to visit the original version, click here.

Thanks to the Mochiads team for letting me display this message.

- JP

---

Any funky suggestion for the message is welcome ^_^

I'm not sure I understand, the pirated version of the game is going to stay up? Who gets the money generated by the pirated version of the game? It all goes to mochi?

Why not just leave the ads and give you the revenue? The damage is already done since the game has been posted. At least this way you can get some revenue of out it.

@ChaseNYX, the ads has been cut for the pirated games. They accept to display my png instead of the ads.

@flashisland, I didn't thought about this solution. But I prefer to inform the players about the true name and original version of the game.

Sounds good, as long as you're happy with the solution that's all that matters. :)

Whilst it may seem a nice gesture for mochiads to keep displaying ads and transfer the revenue, it's probably best in the long run if they disable ads completely. This will deter people from making fraudulent challenges to IP they don't own.

There's also no way that someone whose IP has been compromised should feel obliged to open a mochi account if they don't have one already.

I think jp and mochi have handled this really well. It's this kind of example that sets a great precedent and stops pirates from trying this kind of thing in future.

Lesli, read 2 posts up (by Sietjp).

What do you think happens to a Flash game that's posted on a site, and the Mochi ad doesn't work anymore? THE GAME STILL PLAYS, but with no ad!! This is worse than displaying the message Sietjp is talking about don't you think?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ray Beez

This is worse than displaying the message Sietjp is talking about don't you think?

---

This is exactly why I'm a bit surprised that Mochi is actually keeping the game online instead of pulling it completely. As I understand it, the game can be played after Sietjp's message, correct?

Edit: Just checked out http://mochiads.com/games/the-rings/ and it looks like Mochi did take the game down after all.

Errr, like I said, neither mochi nor sietjp can pull the game as they dont host it.