Rip-off tossers

[Burai]

They're not really comparable situations. Bleem was a tool, not a game in itself.

Yeah, but the principle is the same.

Sony spent years and £billions developing and selling a machine and some cocky young upstart goes and releases a piece of software that does exactly the same thing and has the cheek to charge money for it.

Basically it robs Sony of £129, every single time it's purchased. Is that fair? After all Sony came up with the idea and the concept of a PlayStation software player first, but Bleem completely rip off the entire concept and profit from it.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

my preferred option is "Acknowledge the ripoff and stop selling it for money". That lets them keep going, use it as a skills demo, and let's face it it's probably not making much money anyway. Calling lawyers would probably squish them altogether. I think my option is pretty reasonable.

The Amiga game is linked in my post in the other thread, it works fine in UAE so you can see that they are absolutely and entirely the same game.

I think that's the most Sensible (har har) option here. Let's face it: no-one is losing any money over this and the original game is probably pretty hard to come by if you're not an insider. But it's not 'done' to steal an idea, claim it as your own, and use it to earn money. Then again; Microsoft got pretty big that way. Threats and sueing wouldn't be the right thing in this stage though, I'd first inform them of what they're doing wrong and see if they take any action.

Do you have a license to spread the original Amiga game BTW? B)

[Eoin]

I'd be caught between options 2 and 4. Possibly leaning towards 2 as I think it has the most chance of resulting in the game being credited and distributed freely.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Basically it robs Sony of £129, every single time it's purchased. Is that fair? After all Sony came up with the idea and the concept of a PlayStation software player first, but Bleem completely rip off the entire concept and profit from it.

Well, if we're talking morals here rather than law (which is implied by using the word "fair"), it's actually doing Sony a favour. The hardware earns them nothing or next to nothing (or even loses money), while increasing the potential audience for PS games, on which they get a fat licence fee on every copy, stands to make them a packet.

[MK-1601]

Haven't compared the games under scrutiny here, but I thought clones where they don't actually swipe the code, graphics, level layouts, sounds, name or other indicia outright were pretty much safe under law.

There's currently quite blatant 'unofficial' versions of Pacman, Bubble Bobble and Puzzle Bobble on sale in high street games stores.

Being able to legally protect (and we're talking patents here, pretty much) a game idea is a concept dangerously open to abuse.

Never mind that many developers of a certain vintage cut their teeth cloning existing games.

"But it's really really cheeky to charge loads for a game that's not really his at all."

It's still his work.

[horse_code]

everything's a rip off these days. why, the fax machine is just a waffle iron with a phone attached.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

"But it's really really cheeky to charge loads for a game that's not really his at all."

It's still his work.

A pirate has to put work into cracking a game, copying it, lugging it to his market stall etc. But it's still ultimately someone else's work he's profiting from. Are you excusing the pirate? Because I'm having trouble seeing a distinction.

[Francobash]

How likely is it that this a coincidence? Could that be possible? I think it'd be best to make the author/rip off merchant aware of the situation and get him to credit Sensible. So that's option 2 I suppose.

[Burai]

Well, if we're talking morals here rather than law (which is implied by using the word "fair"), it's actually doing Sony a favour. The hardware earns them nothing or next to nothing (or even loses money), while increasing the potential audience for PS games, on which they get a fat licence fee on every copy, stands to make them a packet.

But it never truly helped Sony. After all, they still had to pay off their R&D costs and manufacturing costs for the hardware in the first place.

Bleem basically said "Thanks for spending all that money on developing hardware. Now we'll make that hardware pointless, leaving you with unsold units and making us a profit in the process."

Not to mention that Bleem had no anti-piracy measures in place whatsoever...

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

But it never truly helped Sony. After all, they still had to pay off their R&D costs and manufacturing costs for the hardware in the first place.

But they do that through software fees, not hardware sales.

[Burai]

But surely that £130 would be nice to have in the bank seeing as they've already made a shitload of consoles anyway?

[MK-1601]

"But it's really really cheeky to charge loads for a game that's not really his at all."

It's still his work.

A pirate has to put work into cracking a game, copying it, lugging it to his market stall etc. But it's still ultimately someone else's work he's profiting from. Are you excusing the pirate? Because I'm having trouble seeing a distinction.

Don't be ridiculous.

Someone writing what is, according to you, a derivative game cannot be classed as 'piracy'.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

How likely is it that this a coincidence?

Terrifically unlikely, I'd say. Play the coverdisk and the demo and judge for yourself.

[JPickford (retired mod)]

This game is written in Blitz, I recall the author talking about it. I'm tempted to go over to the Blitz forum and ask for a response. Perhaps that would just be stirring.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

"But it's really really cheeky to charge loads for a game that's not really his at all."

It's still his work.

A pirate has to put work into cracking a game, copying it, lugging it to his market stall etc. But it's still ultimately someone else's work he's profiting from. Are you excusing the pirate? Because I'm having trouble seeing a distinction.

Don't be ridiculous.

Someone writing what is, according to you, a derivative game cannot be classed as 'piracy'.

Explain the difference to me.

Both people (the pirate and this coder) have undeniably done "work" to get "their" product to market.

Both are profiting, however, from selling someone else's intellectual property. It's not a "derivative" game, it's the exact same game.

Tell me how the two situations are functionally different.

[Burai]

Both people (the pirate and this coder) have undeniably done "work" to get "their" product to market.

Both are profiting, however, from selling someone else's intellectual property. It's not a "derivative" game, it's the exact same game.

Tell me how the two situations are functionally different.

Because the pirate is selling someone elses work in the exact form in which it originally came, whereas the developer has seen the game idea and completely recreated the game from scratch with his own code, own graphics, sound and so forth.

Analogy time:

The pirate went into Superdrug and stole bottles of Eternity and sold them down the market.

The developer smelt Eternity for reference and set up his own perfumery and then painstakingly created his own exact copy of said Calvin Klein aftershave. He decided to charge people for his version also, due to the time and effort he spent on it.

[MK-1601]

Explain the difference to me.

Both people (the pirate and this coder) have undeniably done "work" to get "their" product to market.

Both are profiting, however, from selling someone else's intellectual property. It's not a "derivative" game, it's the exact same game.

Tell me how the two situations are functionally different.

Well, firstly you need to prove that the offending party is distributing your intellectual property without your authorisation.

And even then, it's plagiarism, not piracy.

Purely out of interest, what would you pinpoint as being the IP that has been plagiarised? The concept of a game about trainspotting?

Furthermore (bearing in mind that it's the distribution of IP that's the issue, not whether the distributor makes any profit out of it) why don't Bally (or whoever) sue you for 'pirating' their pinball machines/fruit machines?

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Because the pirate is selling someone elses work in the exact form in which it originally came,

Not true, though. It's packaged differently, it may have had patches applied, it may well come with extras (mission disks etc), and of course as we all know the disc will also be stuffed with child pornography.

The justification given was that the coder had done work in order to rip the game off. But the pirate has unarguably done work too.

[Juria]

no, he got a free sample of Eternity, put it in his bottle and charged money for it.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Purely out of interest, what would you pinpoint as being the IP that has been plagiarised? The concept of a game about trainspotting?

No, chiefly it's the gameplay mechanic - or, as JP has characterised it, the content of the game.

Furthermore (bearing in mind that it's the distribution of IP that's the issue, not whether the distributor makes any profit out of it) why don't Bally (or whoever) sue you for 'pirating' their pinball machines/fruit machines?

They'd be perfectly entitled to do so. But I'm not talking about suing, I've already said my instinct is not to do that, merely have the game properly credited and its free status restored.

Also, when I port a Bally table to VP, I'm not claiming to have designed the game all by myself, all of their trade marks, logos etc are left in place. It's openly acknowledged that it belongs to Bally and that this is merely a porting of their work to a different format. As I said in the initial post, it's the lack of credit and the profiteering out of something created to be free that I object to, not so much the actual copying of the game.

[the_debaser]

I can understand how you might be riled Campbell, but as they own the game rights I can't see how you have any claim on them. It probably would've been nice to see you credited with the original idea or something, but I pretty sure they don't have to do it, unfortunately.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

I can understand how you might be riled Campbell, but as they own the game rights I can't see how you have any claim on them.

Are you confused here?

[marsh]

I'd have thought it would have been down to what they got when they purchased the dregs of sensible software.

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Everyone's getting confused now. It's not Codemasters who've done anything wrong. They are the legal owners of all Sensible IP now, including Sensible Trainspotting.

[marsh]

Everyone's getting confused now. It's not Codemasters who've done anything wrong. They are the legal owners of all Sensible IP now, including Sensible Trainspotting.

Nowhere on the website, in the credits, in the readme or the scrolling message on the demo is there even the slightest acknowledgement of where the entire idea was swiped from.

I'm sure they just did it to piss you off then.

It worked.

[roberthazelby]

Personally I the publishers, Demon Star should be allowed to continue to sell the game, only if credits are given to Sensible Software both on the web site and in the game itself.

It seems a shame to screw some small (what I assume to be) 1 man band of a company up as they've obviously got some talent.

Go for the crediting of Sensible say I!

Rob

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Go for the crediting of Sensible say I!

Well, their website asks for 24 hours to respond to emails. They've had about 11 so far, we'll see what happens tomorrow.

[Dimahoo]

Oh no. Talk about stirring nests.

Just as well i never posted 'bullet muchers' then, eh?

In fact, many of them games are blatent rip offs being sold for hideous price.

I hate to say this but they're more expensive then Moby games (and not much better either).

[The Liberal Elite]

So you can prove that these people ripped off the idea then? it's not possible at all that they might have come up with it themselves?

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

Play both games and suggest that with a straight face.