Runic copyright violations

[Daniel]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to raise the red flag for a recent game release available at Reflexive, iWin, Big Fish and Real among others, named Runic.

We have all become familiar with derivates, clones and even "blatant" clones in the casual games space lately.
Most of the time, a developer can dodge legal ramifications by adding a twist or feature to the gameplay and exchange the graphics, music and sounds.


But in this case, the developer codeTurbine, went one step further in the act of cloning.
Even if you'd see through the fact that it's simply a reskin of Arcade Lab's brick breaker games (even the order of the title menu buttons, high score tables, difficulty settings, menu options, etc are identical), there’s one thing you can’t overlook in this particular case:

CodeTurbine have, rudely enough, copied several files straight out of three Arcade Lab games (Spin & Play, Bricks of Camelot and Bricks of Egypt).
The files are digitally identical (I even did a byte-to-byte compare), and it seems they didn’t even bother changing the year, month or day stamp on some of the files.

Since I’ve found files from THREE of our games, chances are that they’ve ripped files off your game as well.
If you’d like to take a peek, there are two files in Runic’s “Media” folder that has a pak-extension, but since they have the same structure as a Zip-file, you may just rename them and unpack to a folder at your hard drive.

// Daniel

[Sakura Games]

wow! well if this is really the case, I'm sure the mentioned portals will immediatly remove the game from their catalog and probably refuse to do any further deals with them!

[TimS]

Just curious -- what type of files were they?

-Tim

[soniCron]

Are you going to persue legal action?

[cliffski]

im bored so I investigated. explo.ogg looks to be a copy. unless its a default sound purchased online?
I'd be amazed if any company is stupid enough to do this. I'd sue them to oblivion if they took my stuff. I wouldnt be satisfied with portals removing them either. I'd want the game taken off sale, and compensation for my time investigating it. What kind of low life steals assets from someone elses game?

[Phil Steinmeyer]

Tim's right - knowing at least the type of file is important.

Certain file types could be legally used by two or more developers:

standard DLLs
sound files from a public or buyout library
possibly graphics files in the same way

Other files - such as graphics files you created yourself, if used by others would be a clear infringement.

[Bmc]

Are you going to persue legal action?

I'm sure you mean pursue.

[Daniel]

Just curious -- what type of files were they?

-Tim
Well, apart from practially every game idea (which I have come to understand is hard to do anything about), it was mostly OGG files from Spin & Play, Bricks of Egypt and Bricks of Camelot, but also text copied straight out of the whole Bricks Of-series (for instance, almost every sentence on the Bonus Item Help screen is ripped).

* "spawn.ogg" is copied from Bricks of Egypt's "diamond.ogg", with the same file size, identical content, and even has the original date stamp left from when I created these sounds.
* "pickcoin.ogg" and "paddle.ogg" are copied from Spin & Play (called SAP-CoinDrop.ogg and SAP-Cannon respectively), and just like in the above case, everything is 100% identical.
* "mutliplier.ogg" is a copy of "SAP-ScoreTick.ogg", that has been decoded, ramped exactly 2 semitone and re-encoded.
* "metal.ogg" is a truncated and re-encoded copy of "SAP-BulletMetal.ogg"
* "explo.ogg" is copied, and not even renamed, from Bricks of Camelot. Identical content and dates.

All of the sounds above were sampled, mixed, re-equalized and tuned by either me or any of the other guys at Arcade Lab, and don't come off any public library.
This was also the reason it wasn't hard for me to notice the rip off in the first place.

I'm sure the mentioned portals will immediatly remove the game from their catalog and probably refuse to do any further deals with them!
The portals have already started to reply to me, and it seems Runic will be pulled off their sites immediately.
I haven't recieved an answer from all of them yet though.

[bignobody]

That's really lame. CodeTurbine, thy name is mud.

[Daniel]

Are you going to persue legal action?
I'm sure you mean pursue.
Not as the first step!

I've written to CodeTurbine, and asked them to either pull the game back for good, or alternatively change all the ripped off elements.
I do expect them to do either, or we will of course take legal action!

I do realize that since the game has been out for a while, and even been at Real's Top 10 chart, the game has already generated a hefty sum.

But as most Game Distribution Agreements between developers and portals states that the developer must be the exclusive owner to all names, trademarks and trade names, and must NOT infringe any patents or copyrights, CodeTurbine has already made a breach to these terms.
A breach usually leads to the portal discontinuing the distribution, as well as keeping any and all royalties generated by the product.

Personally, I'd rather see that CodeTurbine can handle things on a bona fide basis, pull the game back and lose all royalties, than for us to taking legal action and sue them off all royalties they've come across by piggy-backing off our games.

[Daniel]

Hmm, seems like their copy-n-paste happy fingers couldn't stay away from our site either... :(

[DangerCode]

Hmm, seems like their copy-n-paste happy fingers couldn't stay away from our site either... :(

Jeez, man. Those guys have really ripped you good. You must be furious.

[cliffski]

so what will happen to the royalties from these games? this is absolutely unforgiveable.
It will be interesting to see who continues to sell this game, as I certainly won't deal with anybody who does so.

[Bmc]

just to play devil's advocate it could be the case that the developer hired someone to do the website and sounds (which is not implausible) and they ripped you both off (taking your assets, and reselling them to Runic guy)


but this is probably not the case

[Daniel]

Have a look at this! Chicken Invasion:
http://www.codeturbine.com/index.php?comm=details&pid=15

Doesn't look too different (or sound very different for that matter) to InterAction Studio's Chicken Invaders:
http://www.interactionstudios.com/chickeninvaders.php

This was just an observation though! I can't tell if they're affiliated in any way....

[Daniel]

so what will happen to the royalties from these games? this is absolutely unforgiveable.
It will be interesting to see who continues to sell this game, as I certainly won't deal with anybody who does so.
If you follow a typical GDA, the portal in question can withhold (and eventually keep) all royalties!
I don't really see this as a problem. My main concern is that the game gets pulled back a.s.a.p, not to damage the 'Bricks of' IP!

As for direct sales, I don't think there's much to recoup, as their publicly available tracker says their daily amount of visitors is ~5.

[impossible]

Wow, I actually thought Runic was an Arcade Labs game, and I'm sure most portal customers think its an official sequel to Bricks of Camelot and Bricks of Egypt.

This brings up another interesting idea... the topic of "sampling." I understand that many people are strongly anti-clone, but if I wanted to use sounds or graphics from one of your games and offered to pay you for the license how many people would say yes?

[Mike Boeh]

It's gone off of Reflexive....

[Nexic]

I would also request 10% of all their earnings from the game...

[Davaris]

I wonder what country they are from? They seem very well funded.

P.S.
I really like the artwork on their world map. Sweet!

[joe]

Have you tried to contact CodeTurbin already? If not, I think it would have been better if you have contacted them before you wrote this post to the public.

There are some scenarios you can think of so that it's not CodeTurbins direct fault. Probably they have used a freelancer who have sold them your files as "his work" or an employe has "stole" it without anybody else in the team knows.

Okay, to be honest, because they also copied texts and other things I don't think this could be true... but you never know ;-)

But please don't understand me wrong - if I were you I would have been very angry about them, too...

I also think they should pay you some kind of compensation.

[arcadetown]

Welcome to the world of lazy rip off artists, guess it just means you have fans. Can't tell you how many times we've uncovered lazy webmasters stealing assets from our site, hacking our flash games, and even infringing on our trademark. I truely feel for you.

[yanuart]

man.. this thing is sick !!

[sillytuna]

We had this happen to us once as well. We released a level editor to one of our games, and found out that someone was claiming to have created a new sequel to the game. They weren't even claiming to have done a new level set, they were actually selling XXXX 2.

I was furious and got legal involved immediately - seemed to do the job. I was that close to driving to the guy's house (they were in the UK) I must admit.

With these guys being based in Romania it's going to be difficult, so what I'd do is check out a few of their other games and see if they've done it to anyone else.

It is possible that a member of staff is responsible - you'll just have to see what the response is from them and decide for yourself.

[Sakura Games]

Taking legal action when people are in different countries is always difficult and expensive. But I guess that if you cut off all their connection with portals (which seems this case) and make them a bad reputation can do more damage than a normal legal action... (if they don't make any money they'll stop eventually)

[Daniel]

Have you tried to contact CodeTurbin already? If not, I think it would have been better if you have contacted them before you wrote this post to the public.
The reason I posted it in the forums was to alert other devs! Like I said before, since they've stolen things from several Arcade Lab games, chances are they've stolen from other devs as well.

But I'm starting to realize that this is personal :(
Spin & Play, our 'Bricks of' games, and now even elements off our site!

And yes, I've contacted CodeTurbin and got a couple of replies.
We'll see what happens...

[Daniel]

I would also request 10% of all their earnings from the game...
Thanks but I don't really see a point in that!
Either they pull the game off the market completely (which is my initial hope), or if we will have to go through all the trouble with legal actions we will claim ALL earnings plus compensation for damaging the 'Brick of' IP (even ppl HERE thought Runic was an Arcade Lab game)!
Remember, even if they could get away with a stolen game mechanism, the can't get away with the copyright violation!

[Daniel]

sillytuna and sakura:

The portal freeze out is enough for me, but I agree - if things don't settle, legal action is the only way.

As Romania will be added to the EU in 2007, they probably have a decent, "non-corrupted" legal system, so a lawsuit will probably be worth the efforts.

Besides, this whole clone business would need to see someone set an example.
You simply can't violate copyright laws and get away with it.

Speaking of portal freeze out:
I'm glad to say that Reflexive has pulled it off their cataloge already.
It has also come to my knowledge that there are people at Big Fish Games working on it.
I have also received several replies from iWin, saying they're currently dealing with things over there.

[BarrySlisk]

sillytuna and sakura:
As Romania will be added to the EU in 2007, they probably have a decent, "non-corrupted" legal system,
Hmm...that's not what I heard (there was a radio program about the coming members less than a week ago). But I may confuse it with one of the other countries. But I think they are equally poor and corrupt.

[Escapee]

I played the runic game a while ago (downloaded from Bigfishgames, they still have it there). The art style ,game mechanism & sounds effects are way too similar to the breakout games from Arcadelab . Hope you will be able to reach solution that's fair to the creactive folks of Arcadelab.

[cliffski]

sillytuna and sakura:

Besides, this whole clone business would need to see someone set an example.
You simply can't violate copyright laws and get away with it.



I agree with you 100% and wish you every success. If everything is as it seems and it is blatant copyright theft, then I certainly wouldn't shed a tear regardless what happens to the people responsible. Such people deserve to be permenantly blacklisted from every reputable vendor, payment provider and web host. This kind of thing really gets me mad, its bad enough having to argue with the 'information wants to be free' idiots at slashdot.
Do please keep us informed as to how you get on.

[RiVEN]

i think you all better be careful of posting your games here

http://forums.indiegamer.com/member.php?u=4242

methinks he's fed up with copying Daniel's games and is probably looking for new ideas ;)

[svero]

I agree with you 100% and wish you every success. If everything is as it seems and it is blatant copyright theft, then I certainly wouldn't shed a tear regardless what happens to the people responsible. Such people deserve to be permenantly blacklisted from every reputable vendor, payment provider and web host.

Yes but how do you REALLY feel about it? This kind of talk has me thinking I should cancel all my work on Kludos and Governocracy.

[Escapee]

Yes but how do you REALLY feel about it? This kind of talk has me thinking I should cancel all my work on Kludos and Governocracy.

LOL :D (man i shouldnt have laughed , this is serious issue , Ahem.. ;) )

[Andy]

If everything is as it seems and it is blatant copyright theft, then I certainly wouldn't shed a tear regardless what happens to the people responsible.

I'm wondering if I get the things correct.
Are we still talking about that five sounds guys used to produce their own or Daniel has found any another infringement?..

I assume SIMILAR gameplay and SIMILAR artwork doesn't count. As far as they are different at least SOMEHOW.

PS I've noticed we've got another new forum member - codeturbine - by yesterday. It would be great to listen the explanation on issue from another side.
PSS Please don't get me wrong. Infringement is infringement. The question is if guys really made the things wrong or just puchased these sounds from some "grey" sound effect "designer". Could it be that they just shown to him: "we would like to have the sounds to these ones" and he copied them?

[Mike Boeh]

Normally there is a 48 hour waiting period before a user can post, but I just gave them the ability to post now.

[Andy]

Normally there is a 48 hour waiting period before a user can post, but I just gave them the ability to post now.

Yes. Thanks a lot for your always support Mike. This is exactly what I was meaning.

[Daniel]

We are currently straighten things out with CodeTurbine!

I just want to point out that it's more than 5 sounds and the cut-n-pasted texts, but I'm not going into details right now until our negotiations are done.
Copyright laws are a complicated matter, and includes many aspects of art, design, trademarks, etc.

Like I said, the top priority for me is that the current, illegal version of Runic gets pulled off the market asap.
CodeTurbine has promised to apply the changes necessary to not infringe the 'Bricks of' concept, and if they manage to do so, Arcade Lab will consider the copyright violations healed.

[Anthony Flack]

In a way, it's ridiculous that it's the reuse of a few sound effects that can effect the takedown. I would hate to see an original game get taken down because of an infringing bleep or two. But in this case, it seems like justice - even if it's justice served by a technicality.

[Andy]

In a way, it's ridiculous that it's the reuse of a few sound effects that can effect the takedown. I would hate to see an original game get taken down because of an infringing bleep or two. But in this case, it seems like justice - even if it's justice served by a technicality.

This is exactly what I was thinking about.
I assume some portals started to delete the game too early even before receiving the explanation from opposite side. This is pretty easy for established developer to attack the beginner ( hope this is not the case ) but is it fair?

Daniel mentions "infringe the 'Bricks of' concept" - but this just doesn't work. Concept are not either trademarkable or copyrightable. Unfortunately? May be. But this is the fact.

And sure thing copy/paste of some text at website has no any connection to the game itself.

That's why I was wondering what else was infringed if any.

[cliffski]

I thought it had been made clear that the sounds were made by arcadelab. If thats the truth, then thats pretty much the end of the argument surely?
It might sounds not that mad that only a 'few sounds' had been copied, but you have to apply the principle that its wrong to steal 100% surely?
Hey, we could all have great artwork and sounds if we didnt have to pay, I'm about to write a check for thousands of dollars to one guy, just for the licence to use art he already made, in my next game*. You bet your ass it would be easier for me to just steal the renders from his website, he might never know, but thats thoroughly thoroughly wrong.


* sadly not kalled Kludos :D

[Daniel]

I assume some portals started to delete the game too early even before receiving the explanation from opposite side.
It's illegal to knowingly sell a product that contains unapproved copyright protected files, so the portals MUST act to keep their backs clean! I have provided instructions to the portals so that they can confirm my claims.

Yes, I was just referring to the ripped OGG files, as they were the first, most obvious catch we had on CodeTurbine which then further lead us onto the track of other violations.

But like I said, I'm not going into details until things are either settled or turned into a lawsuit...

What I can say though, is that based on our initial negotiations, I assume Arcade Lab and CodeTurbine can come to a friendly agreement!

[Andy]

But like I said, I'm not going into details until things are either settled or turned into a lawsuit...

Pardon for not mentioning this in the previous post. I do accept and support your position on this. The problem that you've started this discussion here by yourself that's why the questions have appeared. :)

Cliffsky, are you still in your wars as always? :D
Please check my previous posts in topic. Does anybody said that this is correct to steal sounds or artwork from another developer games? I was wondering if we should listen to explanation of another guy at first. When you order the sounds for your games do you check all the games in world to be sure the sounds weren't stolen from any of them?

[LilGames]

Romania... I know someone who left that country several years ago.He's a real nice guy. Very honorable and an excellent coder. But he never had anything good to say about his homeland. You can find alot of piracy, hacking, counterfeiting, corruption, etc there. It would not surprise me in the least if the games even include reverse engineered programming.

[Tom Gilleland]

If everyone would just buy my Zillion Sounds 2.0 (http://www.beachware.com/clip.htm) for all their sounds needs, then we wouldn't have problems like this!

Peace and harmony through royalty-free content :)

Tom

[Andy]

If everyone would just buy my Zillion Sounds 2.0 (http://www.beachware.com/clip.htm) for all their sounds needs, then we wouldn't have problems like this!

Tom. I have a copy of them dated by 1993. That one for Windows 3.1. ;)
Don't I deserve the free update for being probably eldest your customer from here? :D

[Applewood]

I don't condone piracy in any way, but I think all this talk of law suits is a bit brassy tbh. The offender should fix his stuff up and apologise, but how much money are you going to sue a foreign author of a shareware game for anyway? You'd better find a seriously cheap lawyer.

Sorry, I'm on your side really, but "Someone stole a few files from my breakout clone" ? The irony is killing me.

[Adrian Lopez]

[...] the changes necessary to not infringe the 'Bricks of' concept [...]I was sympathising with you until I read the above. Perhaps Atari should sue you for infringing on the Breakout concept?

[DangerCode]

Ahhh geeze guys, those this really need to become another one of those clone threads? :rolleyes:

Daniel's assets were ripped off and he's more than happy for Runic to exist without stealing his work. It all seems good and fair to me.

[Tom Gilleland]

Tom. I have a copy of them dated by 1993. That one for Windows 3.1. ;)
Don't I deserve the free update for being probably eldest your customer from here? :D
In the tradition of US/Russian cooperation, I'm going to give you a free update! :)

I'll email you a link...
Tom

[Davaris]

I wish I had heard of your products before. They would have save me a lot of money. Why don't you put them in you sig?

[Adrian Lopez]

Daniel's assets were ripped offI know, but is there really that much more left to say about the lifted assets?

[val]

Good sounds, buddy! Runic is 7/10 on Real's Top this week.

We are here, in Elbonia, beleve that you should ask for compensation from the Romanian developer, since expences to lawers will cost you 30K that will never be reimbursed by that company.

This way I do not think it's reasonable to stop game sales on major portals, but you can negotiate very good percentage of sales, much more than you could earn on music/assets.

But if you decide to kick their asses, I really wish a good luck to you.

[cnmoore]

I'm not a developer, but I play a lot of games. I love shareware; I think all software should be sold that way. But as an enthusiast I am disturbed by this attack on Runic. I bought it on Sept. 29 when it was briefly available at Reflexive.Net.

I've always noticed lots of similarities between games - Bricks of Egypt uses the same sound for coins as Insaniquarium, both Runic and Bricks of Egypt use basically the same set of powerups as the Reflexive Ricochet family, etc. etc. I've always just assumed that developers use each other's neato ideas; of course I am not talking about files, but about player experience.

There is very little similarity between Runic and Bricks of Egypt. Runic has really beautiful backgrounds and graphics in general; the gameplay is very different since in Runic you collect coins and can buy spells or extra lives; the shooter is easier to aim and the game is altogether easier to play. And loads really fast. Not that I haven't enjoyed Bricks of Egypt, but Runic has become one of my favorites.

I sincerely hope that the trouble can be worked out, as Runic is a very well designed game in my opinion and deserves a market.

[luggage]

I think you may be blowing it up out of proportion here. Will someone really think they're playing a Bricks Of game because of a couple of SFX being the same? Of course not. And it's not theft - nothing was stolen.

It might have been as simple as someone using a few placeholder SFX that they never got round to replacing. Or maybe they used a contract audio guy who used the same SFX and it was unknown to them? Anyway, they're resolving the issue.

[cnmoore]

Confused because of similar sound effects? How about the similarities between Bricks and Insaniquarium (the gold drops)? Between Bricks and Ricochet Lost Worlds? I think this controversy is all pretty weird.

Stealing is bad for sure, but Runic and Bricks seem so dissimilar to me that I really wonder about motives. Seems like any game could be killed by someone yelling piracy. Are all the Tycoon games by different makers confusing? All the match-3? And for that matter all the breakout games, of which there are surely at least 20.. Two new ones at Reflexive: Boom Voyage (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=game_detail&AID=660) and Meteor (http://www.reflexive.com/index.php?PAGE=game_detail&AID=657), which I haven't tried, and the Lego one which I didn't like.

[luggage]

Copyright violation and theft aren't the same thing. You even quote a description of the term which backs that up.

I'm not saying what they did was correct, I just think there's been a LOT of over-reaction on this thread.

[Daniel]

Confused because of similar sound effects?
If you read the earlier posts, you'll realize they weren't similar! They were copied straight of our 3 different AL games. Even the date stamps matched the exact same minute I was sitting in my studio, sampling/mixing and producing these sounds!

Regardless of this, there's nothing more to discuss on the topic! Arcade Lab and CodeTurbine have straightened up all issues, and there's a new version of Runic available!

Can a moderator please lock this thread?

Thanks for all comments, support and opinions!

[arcadetown]

Closed and done.