Someones ripping off my game -

[Jake]

I started Escape in 2002 for the uDevGames contest, and still support it. I am now finding this -

http://escape.spacebar.org/

At first I thought, "Well its a game with the same name as mine...", and then I realized "Hey, its a 2D puzzle game like mine", and then I played it.... and said "WTF! They copied my push blocks, lasers, teliporting pads, toggle blocks, cannon tubes, self destructing walkways and who knows what else!". I have only looked at the demo levels, but I am 100% sure this guy had to have seen my game and tried to steal the good elements AND improve upon them.

What should I do, my initial reaction was to let it go, BUT its free and competing directly with my product and has my name, causing confusion (thats how I found out about it). What legal rights do I have? This is really bothering me... what would you do.

Keep in mind my Escape is selling over 100 dollars a month so I want to protect it.

[socksy]

Improve upoun your game to make the trial version just as good or better than the free version they have. Contact them asking politely for them to change the name of the game because of the confusion caused. Then release a new version of your game with an x added somewhere and say how brilliant and a new leap it is in game style etc.

[Jake]

I don't want to spend time improving on Escape, I am putting my effort into Hydrothermal, GL Golf, and my new motorcycle game.

I think I will ask him to change the name, its not too much to ask. But what if he refuses?... I guess I can look into that if he won't change the name

[NCarter]

This guy cites Adventures of Lolo and Chip's Challenge as references, and that makes me think that he's reached the same design as you purely by coincidence. No offence, but the features of your game that you mention are all things which appear in other games, so it's entirely reasonable that someone else might bring all of the same features together into their own game.

It's very bad luck that he chose the same name as you, though. I think that's a coincidence too... if he were being malicious, I think he would have chosen a different name to hide the similarity.

I think the best thing to do initially is politely discuss the situation with the developer to try to convince him to change the name. Only resort to legal threats if a) he won't co-operate and b) you can actually back it up. Seek real legal advice if necessary.

Incidentally, I don't think your sales will diminish immediately (or completely) anyway. People will see one or the other game first and may buy yours in preference to his. Do some promotion and make sure people see yours first. ;)

[JustinFic]

I don't want to spend time improving on Escape

You may need to. Even if the guy does change the name and apologizes profusely there's still a free game on the market that offers the same gameplay as Escape. Maybe it's time for a sequel, or Escape Deluxe, or something.

[Blorx2]

Don't worry, Jake, I like yours better than any other tile-based game I've ever played...that's why I never played this.

SDL_EDIT: WTF? THIS guy is an idiot! He's messing with the best Tile-based game of its era! I mean, seriously, politely e-mail him and ask himto change the name. If he is not co-operating, tell him that he's gonna have a talk with your lawyer (if you don't have one, don't worry, he don't know that).

[ellrx]

he's a little more than a squatter, especially since he's committed to doing more than one version on different platforms ( NES )...from the sounds of it he's more dedicated to the concept than you.

on the other hand if we didn't notice him maybe noone else will...all it'll take is a 3D version and a little marketting and noone'll give a damn who he is.

Unless you can scare him into compliance, you'll have to settle for the fac ttha this is called 'Tom T's Escape', which is like 'Roger's and Hammerstein's Cinderella' or prefacing it with 'Saban's Mighty Morphng Power Rangers' in both examples the producer's didn't expect that much protection from imitations but went for the subtle distinction ( or the narcisscism of small differences if you're cynical )
and all 3 cases the names are generic...it'd be like if i named a game 'run' or 'airplane'...its not Atari-2600 days gotta standout...

despite there being probably 10's of thousands of hop and bop games created over the years, independently and corporately only 2 names come to mind...Mario and Sonic...stand out or fall back.

[Jake]

This guy cites Adventures of Lolo and Chip's Challenge as references, and that makes me think that he's reached the same design as you purely by coincidence. No offence, but the features of your game that you mention are all things which appear in other games, so it's entirely reasonable that someone else might bring all of the same features together into their own game.

It's very bad luck that he chose the same name as you, though. I think that's a coincidence too... if he were being malicious, I think he would have chosen a different name to hide the similarity.

I think the best thing to do initially is politely discuss the situation with the developer to try to convince him to change the name. Only resort to legal threats if a) he won't co-operate and b) you can actually back it up. Seek real legal advice if necessary.

Incidentally, I don't think your sales will diminish immediately (or completely) anyway. People will see one or the other game first and may buy yours in preference to his. Do some promotion and make sure people see yours first. ;)

Did you actually play through the demo of his game and many levels of my game? If you did you will notice SO many simularities.

If this game was for instance a RTS or something other than a tile based puzzle game I wouldn't care so much, but they are just so similar and have the same name.

I am starting an email right now, I am going to try to explain my situation to him in a nice manner.

[Jake]

Here is a draft of what I am sending him, I have to go to a show now so I haven't really revised it yet

Hi Tom,

My name is Jake Leveto and I am the owner of Nuclear Nova Software ( http://nuclearnova.com). Back in 2002 I started a game called Escape (http://nuclearnova.com/escape.php) and entered it into a macintosh game contest at uDevGames.com. Sense then I have turned it into a small shareware game selling around 10 copies a month. I played your game Escape and I really like it, in fact it is VERY similar to my game. I have no problem with the similarities, I like thinking games and I think everyone has the rights to the ideas we share in our games. But, I think that we may have problems with having the same name in the future once you leave the beta stages. For instance there will be a big problem sharing names on download sites such as download.com, apple.com, twocows.com, versiontracker.com, macupdate.com, and all of the other major download sites.

I know that it may be hard to do what I am asking, but would you consider changing the name in the beta stages of your game? I hope this isn't a problem because I would love to be able to settle this together to benefit both of us.

Thanks,
Jake Leveto
Nuclear Nova Software

PS : If you played the PC version of Escape it is outdated and unsupported, the mac version has many more enhancements and is actually responsive and has smooth player animations.

[Blorx2]

Sounds nice enough...can you post his draft here when he replies?

[NCarter]

Here is a draft of what I am sending him...
That's a very reasonable letter. Sounds good to me.

[LaRue]

You may want to go over your draft again.
" Sense then I have turned it into a small shareware game selling around 10 copies a month."
Shouldn't that be "Since then..."

I don't think you are feeling time, but if you are that is awesome, otherwise the word you are looking for is since.

[PowerMacX]

Doing a Google search for "mac game escape" (without the quotes) returns spacebar's escape on the first place, followed by Ambrosia's EV. Doing a link: search for spacebar's escape returns 61 hits, but only one for nuclearnova.com/escape.php. It turns out 60 for nuclearnova.com/ many of them from iDevGames threads. Putting your competitor's link here is going to hurt your relative pagerank ;) (you could put it as plain text instead)

PS: I bet he/she will consider uDG 2005 after your letter :)

[Jake]

You may want to go over your draft again.
" Sense then I have turned it into a small shareware game selling around 10 copies a month."
Shouldn't that be "Since then..."

I don't think you are feeling time, but if you are that is awesome, otherwise the word you are looking for is since.


Thanks, I was a HORRIBLE speller but the spell checker built into OS X has made an average one, now all they need is a green line for grammar! (it takes about 5 or so times for me to get out of a bad habit but I stop eventually)


Good point about google page rank, I will add that into there too.

[Carlos Camacho]

mac --> Mac
macintosh --> Macintosh

BTW, are you saying his levels are copies of yours?

Why don't you ask him to visit this thread. :p

[Tom7]

I found it myself. ;)

I appreciate the tone of the message you sent, Jake. (Some of the other posts in this thread are a little worrisome, though...) I feel like I need to clear up some facts so my reputation isn't tarnished:

* I've had a game called Escape since at least 1996 (See an embarrassing, broken old web page: http://members.aol.com/vroomfonde/escape/). That means I preceded Jake's version by 6 years. The one that you can find on http://escape.spacebar.org/ is a port (and update) of that to modern operating systems, though there have been several other ports, too.

* I've never played Jake's game called Escape, though I did see it when uploading my game to some mac shareware sites early this year.

* Since I haven't played it, I can't comment on similarities, but all of the things you listed above can be found in the Lolo series, Chip's Challenge, or Soleau's Bolo series, all of which predate both our games.

Anyway, as I told Jake, I'm not interested in changing the name of my game, since it has substantial historic value to me. If you think it's "first-come, first-serve" rules, then I guess it should be Jake that changes his name, but I'm also happy for us both to use the same name. There's plenty of room on the internet.

- Tom
http://tom7.org/

[Taxxodium]

A couple of things I learnt from my law class (at school, not a programming class :p):

Anything you make is automatically protected. Ideas however cannot be protected.
For example, if I were to make a Tetris game, I can do it if I make my own graphics and make everything myself. Ofcourse, the name Tetris may have been protected so I'll need to change that, but I can use the idea of the game.

If have prove that this guy "stole" some of your graphics then you have the right to let him know about this violention in copyright.

Other things you can do are listed here: http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9123

Good luck!

[Fenris]

Tom,
I'm happy to see that you showed up. It's comforting to see things like this worked out in a good way. I hope that you can solve it without resorting to physical violence. ;)

[diordna]

GAAAAH PHYSICAL VIOLENCE!!! HACK, BURN, SLASH!

I'll supply the torches :)

[Dan Potter]

With Tom's response, what can we say then except that great minds think alike? :D

[PowerMacX]

I guess the lesson here is:

Don't use a fairly common word as the title of your game.
Search every potential name in Google/VersionTracker/MacUpdate/etc. before committing to it.


That's how I came up with "Okugai" - every other title I could think of was already taken! :lol:

[kelvin]

I guess the lesson here is:

Don't use a fairly common word as the title of your game.
Search every potential name in Google/VersionTracker/MacUpdate/etc. before committing to it.


That's how I came up with "Okugai" - every other title I could think of was already taken! :lol:

I usually use google/versiontracker to search for name conflicts. Just recently I started to build a new Dashboard.widget. Good thing I searched too; I found one name conflict for my first name. :ninja:

As far as the name conflict with Escape, I like the "Jake Leveto's Escape!" resolution. Very easy and no real negatives. In fact I think it was David Perry whose keynote at GDC 2004 was specifically this: Sticking your name on your games is going to be a must for advancement in the Video Games Industry. Especially now that you have solid numbers for sales of Escape.

Also, I think it's a good opportunity to maybe rehash the graphics, tidy things up a bit, and apply the dev knowledge you've gained since the initial release of Escape. Heck, you might even make an apple downloads front page ;)

[Steven]

On the other hand, if something with your name flops, it's rather hard to change that...

[kelvin]

On the other hand, if something with your name flops, it's rather hard to change that...
If you don't want to ante up, take your drink and leave.

[JustinFic]

If you don't want to ante up, take your drink and leave.

Agreed- and having your name on a bad game is still better than not having your name out there at all.

[MattDiamond]

My question is, now that Tom has found us is he going to hang around? This could be our new technique for arttracting new members. Everyone go out and accuse someone of plaguerizing. :-)

[Blorx2]

I would but I don't have any finished games, :lol: