There’s just no decency in people these days
TL;DR I think most people are full of goodness.
In this instance that’s definitely the case that it’s shitty behaviour IMO but in general I still hold dear to my view that most people are good and it’s my default position on new people I meet, with some bad vibe exceptions, until proven otherwise.
It’s like the old Mr Rogers quote about looking for the helpers. I see (and try my best to also do and am so lucky to be married to someone the same) so much good in this world.
Calling this dude a douche-canoe is too generous.
This man is an absolute douche-barge.
A discharge barge.
Did my part and reported the steam page, don’t know if anything will come or it with the original copy not being on steam.
I think this is one of the first times I read news like this and go out of my way to do something about it, what scumbag Terry Brash is
People arguing a lot of legal stuff while I just think this was a dick move.
Same here. Terry didn’t even bother to change up the artstyle. Forget being inspired by something, his game looks like a straight-up copy. What a tool.
The “article” reads like a drama. The dude has all original code and artwork and a different game engine. The screenshots show a very simplistic thing… you wouldn’t sue someone because their stick figures look too much like yours. If the game was copied that quickly there wasn’t much substance there to begin with imo.
I agree that it’s all original code and art, I would even say that he’s well within his right to post his clone since there doesn’t seem to be any copyright-able IP he could be infringing on.
But I wholly disagree with the notion that “if the game was copied that quickly there wasn’t much substance there to begin with”. There are limitless examples of world changing inventions that were trivial to build, but no one had thought to do it, and the same goes for art. The difficulty of making something isn’t what makes it genius, in fact it’s usually the simplicity of a genius idea that makes people go “damn, why didn’t I think of that, it’s so genius!”
It sounds like this guy accomplished little more than burning the few bridges he had, and dragging his own name through the mud. Just…not a smart move.
no one had thought to do it
Could you please give some examples of this? I’d love to know more.
A lot of stationary: paper clips, staples, pencils, sticky notes
A lot of toys: yoyo, slinky, hula hoop, Play-Doh, crayons
Packaging: cardboard box, plastic bottles, plastic bottles with the lid on the bottom, aluminum cans
You use inventions all the time that you could probably just build from home now that you know what they are. But there’s nothing that says you/we are already aware of every simple invention. Just think about all the simple, yet revolutionary ideas no one has thought of yet…and if you can do that, you’ll be a billionaire.
But games and art aren’t exactly like that. People train by copying great art, and code and games especially are iterative. It’s not like he took a super useful thing and made millions by claiming he invented it. He took a game, made a clone and added features, admitting it was a clone. Like snake and pong and brickbreaker.
I wouldn’t consider any of those to be trivial to build though.
Ok.
Not the person you initially asked, but a good one is Eli Whitney’s cotton gin that made separating the cotton fiber from the seeds much easier. It had traditionally been done by hand, which is very time consuming. Whitney’s invention greatly simplified the process and made cotton farming much more economically viable as an industry, ultimately leading to an extreme expansion in chattel slavery in the Southern United States and serving to solidify a planter aristocracy that would eventually seek to split with the United States in order to create its own slaveholding empire, triggering a Civil War that would decimate a large chunk of the country and kill three quarters of a million people.
I wouldn’t exactly call a cotton gin “trivial” to build…
I mean, this entire discussion hinges on the definition of “trivial,” so…cool.
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The entire design is a copy, down to the art style and color scheme…
I feel like it matters that he’s not selling it though… He liked the idea, added features he liked and is sharing what he made. He also mentions that it’s a clone. He sounds like a jerk, but like…
In a way, it’s kindaworse he’s making it free. He’s not profiting from it, he’s just screwing the other guy for no reason.
Guess I just don’t understand how it screws the other guy
Ok, so imagine that you’re hungry and you come across a sandwich shop that has your favorite sandwich for $15, but the shop next door has the exact same sandwich for free. Which sandwich are you gonna eat?
No, wait, that’s not important. Most people are gonna eat the free sandwich, so even if you eat the $15 sandwich, you’re statistically irrelevant.
Yeah, maybe some people that weren’t hungry are gonna get a free sandwich, but the people who were hungry are also getting free sandwiches, which means that the guy trying to make a living selling $15 sandwiches is gonna have to close shop unless he starts lacing his sandwiches with cocaine.
Maybe I’m bad at itch.io but it looks like they are both free. Lemme offer another analogy.
Your and your friend have sandwhich parties and one day you compare notes. Your friend’s sandwich is really good, so you make it yourself and add some things. Now you really like the sandwich so you throw a sandwhcih party with the new sandwich and tell everyone it’s based on your friend’s sandwich.
Then your friend asks why you coppied his sandwich and you’re a jerk about.
That’s how this reads to me
I didn’t realize he wasn’t trying to sell his game, so I guess we need a different analogy.
Ok, imagine you and your brother are making a website where friends can post about their lives and keep up with each other during and after college. You’re pretty open with your project and then one day the one weird guy in your friend group launches your project without consulting you. The project takes off and makes billions of dollars. You sue the weirdo and he gives you some money, but you’re still pissed about it. Did you get Zucked?
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Because he didn’t make the idea or hone it into a game. So much of a game design is just trial and error
Yeah because you are also a taker instead of a creator. If you knew how ideas are born you would also feel disgusted
Ideas are nothing. Everyone has a million daydreams, the most special and creative idea in the world is worthless if you can’t express it.
Execution is everything. Hell, you don’t even need an idea - you can draw random design elements out of a bag and come up with something great
No. I work as a game designer, and I can just straight up tell you that you are dead wrong. Ideas have both quality and value, and they interconnect to make the backbone of interactive experiences
Ideas have both quality and value, and they interconnect to make the backbone of interactive experiences
That’s it exactly. The way the ideas interconnect and the way they’re presented to the player is everything. That’s execution, that’s everything - the ideas are just what’s in your head
No
He told his friend about the game. I don’t think he would have done so if he copied or felt he had “stolen” anything. If he remade the game with this own code and assets then he put a lot of work into it and he can be proud of that (and telling his friend shows that he was). Comparing the game, i do think the clone is better made / more polished. So he really like the game and made a better version of it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. IP has to be respected (can’t just copy assets or code) but if that’s the case then anything goes and that’s a good thing, it gives us better games.
Think PalWorld, for example, Nintendo, one of the most copyright abusing companies in the world, doesn’t sue them and it’s arguably a better game than anything Nintendo has come up with recently (no new / modern / good / 3D Pokemon games).
This looks much more egregious than palworld/pokemon. Palword has very distinct gameplay from pokemon and adds many features and gameplay elements that nintendo has never done. It’s much more similar to Ark if anything in terms of gameplay. The only thing it takes from pokemon is the fact that it’s a creature collector game and a couple of the pals look like they were generated by ai trained on a database of creatures from other games, but even that isnt conclusive. It definitely takes inspiration from Zelda, but again thats a few gameplay elements, not the whole game.
If you have any interest in playing a good Pokemon game, Pokemon Legends Arceus is excellent. Palword may be just a bit better, but if you have a lingering nostalgia and a desire for some fresh and well executed mechanics in the Pokemon universe, PLA slaps.
I don’t respect ip
I don’t respect the way IP is abused by large companies. I support short-term IP as I think it does help individuals in a net-positive way for everyone.
I could be convinced that short-term IP is bad too, but regardless I think long-term is the the big problem. Games from the 80s should all be public domain by now.
No. I just don’t respect ip.
I respect that.
The only laws I respect are gravity and conservation of momentum, and even those are debatable
And manslaughter
Both games are completely free and without any sort of monetization, I do think he definitely should have linked to the original game and taken it down when the original creator asked, but a fan remaking a game doesn’t sound that unusual
No-one is profiting, no one is losing anything, why does it matter?
Humans care about belonging and fairness. Profit is one type of political good that can be distributed based on different criteria, for example by selling a good or a service or by stealing or copying someone’s code. But profit is not the only political good that exists. There’s also relevance. There is credit. There is legitimacy.
TL;DR: Money is not the only thing that humans care about. Humans also care about fairness.
It says in the article that he explicitly stated it was a clone, so yeah. only bad thing was being kinda a jerk when asked to take it down
I guess my only takeaway is that if I want to protect my IP then anyone who has access to the software should be required to sign a terms & agreement that specifically written to prevent this kind of thing, regardless IANAL, but i’m pretty sure this is all legal according to copyright law. The engine and therefore the code is different, the assets are custom and slightly different. If this were a trademark or patent related case then there might be a something else to go on.
Yeah pretty much. You can’t copyright gameplay mechanics, so there’s nothing illegal about it. It’s just a dick move.
Tell that to
Zod’s snapped neckthe nemesis system.That’s a patent, not copyright.
All my games are Foss. honesty if that happened I would be more upset they didn’t want to just collaborate on the same code
That’s disgusting behaviour
Dude just destroyed his indie rep in one fell move. Regardless of what you feel of the situation, noone wants to “talk shop” with the guy known for stealing ideas
Reminds me of 2048 making a slightly worse clone of Threes and then releasing it for free.
And enormously outperforming the original, too. A shame, I like threes.
If it doesn’t have Blackjack and Hookers, then it’s a shitty clone.
aptronymic!
