Elysian Shadows

While I'm writing this, I'm also updating my website to include a "license" section. Normally I'm pretty liberal with use of my stuff, but it's starting to get annoying the things people think they can get away with. And the objectionable cases I've found out about-- the people have told me themselves!

Generally it's been people embedding my tutorial videos on their site, which I don't approve of. They should link to my YouTube or homepage. They claim that they're "helping me get more pageviews" but I think I'm fine without them. :P This is simple enough to fix, however, as I can turn off video embedding.

Though I'm a bit at a loss with this one.

TomatoGG wrote: Oh btw, a few friends and me are creating an enhanced version of ur Cow Tippin' game for the XBox 360. 1-4 four players can play at the same time.

Moosader wrote: Are you planning on selling it on the Creators Club (or whatever it's called)?

TomatoGG wrote: Its now called XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG). XBLIG does not support free games, so we would still have to sell it but we will go for the lowest price of $1.

Moosader wrote: But you do realize that this is my intellectual property, and you can't just take someone else's game, port it and sell it? Open Source isn't the same as Public Domain.

You can sell this game, but only if you change the title and don't have the cows.

And also keep in mind that I have been working with XNA as well, and I reserve the right to write my own ports of my own games and sell them for my own profit...

TomatoGG wrote:Sorry if i have given u the impression that we are ripping off ur game. We did not download nor use any of ur source code. It would be pointless for us to port SDL/Allegro C++ programs to XBox since these libraries are not available for that platform. We wrote everything from scratch. We also did not use any of your graphics or sounds for the game. All graphics are drawn by us and we not use any PD graphics. What I did originally borrowed was the concept or idea of ur game. But since then we have modifed the whole concept and gameplay and the latest iteration that we are working on now has very little resemblance to your original game. But still all we can do is to provide videos, demo copies of the game, and even any portion of the source code to you to prove our point. As for the title, we are using Cow Tipping and not Cow Tippin' but if you insist that they are the same, we dont mind changing it. But I would like to bring to your attention that there are already other games with the title Cow Tippin' or Cow Tipping.

But not to have cows in our game?? But there are lots of games with cows. But if you insist on this point, than I will inform the guys to scrap the game. We do not wish to go through as what happened to MobiGame.

What do you guys think? (Besides that she doesn't seem to understand that you can infringe on intellectual property even if you don't read the source code of the game)

Here's the video she posted of her version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJxhXLFO4Nk

Here's my original old version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z_s__O7OI0

It is true that it has been modified quite a bit, and that it's "Cow Tipping" instead of "Cow Tippin'", so I don't know what all I can do about it at this point. I don't even mind too much that it's a rip-off of the Cow Tippin game. Better that than Rawr Rinth or something.

I'm pretty sore, though, that they thought they'd just take one of my games and sell an improved version of it. They honestly can change the graphics and rename it and it'd be fine, and it'd probably be okay as it is, I'm just a little hesitant, though.


Oh, and here's my license description page:
http://www.moosader.com/license.html

i need to mark the calender...

Dunno what to say. That kinda sucks I guess, as they did pretty much just make a polished replica of your game.
But it's not like you didn't borrow the idea from someone else and change it a bit in the first place.
I guess that's what happens when you show other people your ideas.

avansc wrote:i need to mark the calender...

What?

dandymcgee wrote:I don't think there's much you can do, it's not like the idea of a game where you tip cows is completely original.

I know it sucks to have someone make something based off of one of your ideas, but in reality they've changed it quite a bit and haven't really stolen anything other than the idea to make a game about tipping cows.

avansc wrote:i need to mark the calender...

?

No idea what Avansc meant either.

I don't know. I told them it's alright since they've changed so much, but I would be angry to find a straight port of my board-game-about-tipping-cows being sold somewhere.

And yes, there are plenty of games about tipping cows. But at what point does it become different enough? I guess it's a hard question to answer, which is why people sue over that sort of thing.

I'm honestly not that worried about Cow Tippin'. What I'd be more worried about is finding something like an "Action RPG featuring a Dinosaur saving Eggs named Roar Rinth" or something.

Moosader wrote:
No idea what Avansc meant either.

I don't know. I told them it's alright since they've changed so much, but I would be angry to find a straight port of my board-game-about-tipping-cows being sold somewhere.

Sorry 'bout that, after watching your video (and seeing how similar it actually was) I edited my post.

IP infringement is one of my pet hates, and I totally agree with you, it's a form of infringement, I mean you can't fault them for infringing the concept of cow tippin' , since there are many "turn over the [blank]s and the adjacent [blank]s will fall down", but such a lazy attempt at renaming the game by adding the additional 'g' and keeping in with the "cow" theme makes them seem like they are intentionally infringing on your IP.

If they were to simply come up with their own characters, and market the game with a name to that effect as opposed to your own concept.

It really really PISSES me off when people think they can 'adapt' your work and take credit for it, when they're too f***** lazy to come up with their own ideas, I know this because It's happened to me before, and nerves are still raw...


EDIT: I somewhat flew off the handle, but it would make me pretty angry if I worked on something for a while, and someone decided to divert the credit/reap the rewards towards themselves when it was you who developed the concept, also, I like the license terms, they seem very fair.

programmerinprogress wrote: EDIT: I somewhat flew off the handle, but it would make me pretty angry if I worked on something for a while, and someone decided to divert the credit/reap the rewards towards themselves when it was you who developed the concept, also, I like the license terms, they seem very fair.

Yeah. I've been discussing it on my message board with her. She responded before I was able to, saying

TomatoGG wrote:Never mind my last post Rachel. I talk to the guys and they are going to scrap the project.

But I keep trying to reiterate that she doesn't have to scrap her hard work--- She can even use cows and keep it as-is, but if she is so inclined, I'd appreciate it if she did change the game pieces. Even if she makes it "Cat Tipping" or something.

The name definately would be an issue for me, a simple addition of a letter seems like a blatant infringement, but a brand new name would disassociate the two games to some extent, and as long as you're personally happy with their team using the concept in part, then there's no problem.

I've also been googling my game titles today, too.

I find it odd that someone (or a bot?) has taken it upon themselves to upload my games on Softpedia, though at least it's under my name.
http://games.softpedia.com/developer/Ra ... -8372.html

It's apparently also available here, which I guess I don't mind either:
http://free.macgames.jp/category/mac-os ... ing-games/

LOL what the hell? Rawr Rinth on "freegolfpros.com"
http://www.freegolfpros.com/pmotion/video/LpfgqWHgLP0
Apparently Rawr Rinth is a GOLF TRAINING VIDEO XD


I can say, however, that I wish I didn't have to find these things out myself. Yes, it's fine that Rawr Rinth is on a Mac games directory site, but I wish I woulda known or been contacted. I don't really like Softpedia having my games, as it's higher on the list than my own website for some games.

Moosader wrote:I've also been googling my game titles today, too.

I find it odd that someone (or a bot?) has taken it upon themselves to upload my games on Softpedia, though at least it's under my name.
http://games.softpedia.com/developer/Ra ... -8372.html

It's apparently also available here, which I guess I don't mind either:
http://free.macgames.jp/category/mac-os ... ing-games/

LOL what the hell? Rawr Rinth on "freegolfpros.com"
http://www.freegolfpros.com/pmotion/video/LpfgqWHgLP0
Apparently Rawr Rinth is a GOLF TRAINING VIDEO XD


I can say, however, that I wish I didn't have to find these things out myself. Yes, it's fine that Rawr Rinth is on a Mac games directory site, but I wish I woulda known or been contacted. I don't really like Softpedia having my games, as it's higher on the list than my own website for some games.

Wow that's really messed up.. as for the golf pros videos lmfao I have no idea.

you really dont get why i said i should mark the calender..
have any of you ever dated a girl(in real life i mean) for longer than a month.. if you still dont get it you should
probably just end it now...

anyways... i dont know if this is stealing IP. its an idea. one which was not even original to begin with.
i think she is just touchy that someone else might benefit from something of hers that gave them an idea.

Well I see it this way. It doesn't seem like a huge rip off because it's "Cow tipping" (A common thing brought up in our culture, more or less). Find me a board-game-style thing based on Cow Tipping, though. That's harder to find.

I think if the person had ripped off Rawr Rinth, you'd be more likely to agree with me, because it's "Dinosaur RPG in a suburban neighborhood", because that's somehow more original than a cow tipping puzzle game.


And, not on period yet. Still half-way through my birth control pack, so I'm not scheduled for that for a few weeks. ;P

...and now you know why I support closed-source software.

GyroVorbis wrote:...and now you know why I support closed-source software.

That doesn't really have anything to do with this. They didn't read my code, and it's not like it's hard to figure out how to make any of my games. :P

I guess I'm going to go, painfully, through all my videos now and turn off embedding now too. @_@