The Olympics Stole My Game

[cadin]

Yep, you read that right, The Olympics stole my game.

My game 'Snow Day':


Olympics game 'Fight the Winter Clouds':


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.

[fil_razorback]

Impressive but sad story. Good luck.

[renderhjs]

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

[Fall_X]

Shocking, but I hope you get a nice compensation for this, in which case it might be a good thing

[VENGEANCE MX]

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.

[moony4money]

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.

[renderhjs]

<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>

[cadin]

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.

[lesli_felix]

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.

[cadin]

They're communists. Whats yours is theirs.

So funny.
I might buy into that a little more if they weren't busting people left and right for selling unauthorized Olympic merchandise.

[Daffas]

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?

[samvillian]

google?

[tonypa]

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.

[Taels]

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.

[VENGEANCE MX]

I think having that '©2006 Cadin Batrack' will have been a godsend. You could sue.

[lesli_felix]

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.

[The Helmsman]

Very sad

[BlinkOk]

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.

[hatu]

Damn that sucks. I hope they were cheated by some chinese "game company" and not just outright decided to steal these games.

[DominumBelli]

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