China stole my free to play game

[Kim Jong Deux]

If you want your game not to be stolen and redistributed under another name in chia, or worse being used to make profits via ads, the simplest solution is to put a lot of "references" that would get it taken down in china.
Here are few examples:

• • Winnie the Pooh (小熊维尼) — Chinese internet users use images of Winnie the Pooh to represent President Xi Jinping.
  • Baozi (包子) — Steamed bun. One of Xi Jinping’s nicknames online.
  • Dalai Lama (达赖喇嘛) — The Tibetan leader in exile. A symbol of Tibetan independence.
  • Tibet Independence (西藏独立) — Talking about independence for Tibet is forbidden.
  • Soviet Jokes (苏联笑话) — Mocking the Soviet Union is considered making fun of communism.
  • Go, Hong Kong (香港加油) — Support for the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
  • 709 (709律师) — A group of human rights activists and lawyers arrested on July 9 (7/9), 2015.
  • Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) — Nobel Prize-winning human rights activist imprisoned by China.
  • Great Firewall of China (伟大的防火墙) — Discussing Chinese censorship is itself censored.
  • Dictatorship (专政) — Suggesting or saying that China is a dictatorship is forbidden.
  • Tiananmen (天安门) — Any references to the 1989 pro-democracy protests that ended in bloodshed.
  • June 4 (六四) — The date of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
  • Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳) — Former general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party who supported the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
  • Tank man (坦克人) — The famous image of an unidentified Chinese man who stood in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
  • Taiwan is an independent country- China considers taiwain a breakaway province, and any mention of it as a country or its flag can put someone in jail

You can't win against these kind of things using legal methods since China does not enforce copyright laws and encourages piracy and theft of them, therefore you manipulate the system against these pirates, pirate your game? fine then also get jailed cuz the game has a lot of stuff that are sensitive to the CCP. basically your game will be boobytrapped against piracy or theft in china lol. hope this helps

 

[Tai_MT]

I googled around and that was called a myth in many (US/UK) sites. You only need to defend a trademark. Only thing I read could happen is that if you sue someone you could get less compensation if the judge thinks that you haven't defended your copyrighted material for years or something.

I stand corrected.

My initial point is basically that if you do nothing to enforce your rights on your product, it can be easily stolen from you, even via legal means.

Put simply, if I steal your product, do nothing about it, sell it for profit, and backlog a whole bunch of "evidence" to say that it was mine and had always been mine and you never once objected to me doing so until money got involved... then it'll probably come down to whomever can afford better lawyers.

The person who charged nothing for their game... or the people who made substantial profit on it.

Basically, it pays to be exceptionally mindful of the business side of things and potential theft and fraud as you "create". It's one of the reasons things like "Publishers" tend to exist. They tend to handle the "headache" of such things for the Creative.

---

As for people insisting you can "put content in your game to ensure China doesn't steal it". I mean... you COULD... but piracy is a big thing over there and that doesn't really stop that sort of piracy... not to mention the ones who sell it in "local markets" will simply remove all the "objectionable content" in order to get it to market. Provided, of course, they're going to sell it through typical channels in China... which most of these sites likely do not.

Your best bets are most likely:

1. If it's free, just consider it "no longer yours" once you've distributed it to the internet. You can set up your own website and distribution channels so that your section of distribution is "more legit" and "less onerous to the users".

2. If you intend to have users pay for it, you need some sort of encryption or payment key or something to ensure unauthorized copies aren't distributed very easily and others can't sell it when they're not authorized to do so. Lawyers can help in these regards.

3. You could always distribute your own "free version" of a paid game that is basically easily available everywhere to stop most forms of piracy.... and have that free version basically contain a lot of tell-tale signs that they've "pirated' it. It won't catch everyone, but it'll get a vast majority of people.

4. Remember that if someone wants to break the law... they'll find a way to do so. Laws are useless if they're not enforced, if they don't exist, or you can't catch people who are breaking the law. Outlawing something doesn't mean people are less likely to do it. Making the legal way to do things far easier to accomplish than the illegal way is what typically curbs crime.

 

[TheMeowingFox]

The OP basically screams "I'm getting free exposure, yeet" when...no one's gonna ever know it was them that made it.

Theft is theft, even when they're only stealing credit away from an otherwise free title.

If you're reading this, OP, I really encourage you to exercise a little more pride in your craft. Please. If it happens again, and you want to make money off of it, it won't be as funny then when you struggle to prove that the property is yours.

 

[Arthran]

The OP basically screams "I'm getting free exposure, yeet" when...no one's gonna ever know it was them that made it.
...
If you're reading this, OP, I really encourage you to exercise a little more pride in your craft...

Just because a person is disinterested in getting credit for their work doesn't necessarily mean that they lack pride in their craft. Not everyone creates things with the intention of receiving recognition from others.

 

[Iron_Brew]

Just because a person is disinterested in getting credit for their work doesn't necessarily mean that they lack pride in their craft. Not everyone creates things with the intention of receiving recognition from others.

True, but people who take credit and/or profit from the works of others are curs and deserve to be regarded as such.

 

[Arthran]

True, but people who take credit and/or profit from the works of others are curs and deserve to be regarded as such.

I certainly won't deny that. I was just saying that it's not really appropriate to tell somebody that they lack pride just because they aren't concerned about fame and fortune. It just seemed like sort an unjustifiably condescending statement to me, so I felt I should point that out. We all have different things that we care about, and different reasons why we choose to create stuff, and I don't think that there is really any grounds to say that one is better than another.

Some people create things for their own sake, and aren't really seeking validation from others. And some people are happy as long as other people are benefiting from their creations, even if they aren't personally being recognized for it. Those people aren't necessarily "wrong", and they don't necessarily lack pride. They just have different motivations than some other people might have.

 

[TheMeowingFox]

Just because a person is disinterested in getting credit for their work doesn't necessarily mean that they lack pride in their craft. Not everyone creates things with the intention of receiving recognition from others.

While I really could have worded that better, to be perfectly fair, no issue whatsoever with this response; I would like to say that you may have read me a little too literally.

What I said and how I said it is in specifically this context, no other. It merely baffled me that someone could be so lax about having their work reuploaded without credit, that's all. I definitely am not insinuating that for any other, or all creators.

Edit, due to an afterthought; it's one thing if the person in question is fine with reuploads or shares in their ToU or whatnot without credit, but this is literally theft...

 

[Storyteller-Hero]

A common misconception is that China does not enforce copyright, but it actually does...IF you register the copyright with the CPCC in China.

A lot of small time indie devs probably don't even register their games in their own country, which is why they're popular targets for piracy.

It's worth noting that for the American copyright system, although one can sue, it's a lot harder than if they registered their copyright (registration shifts the burden of proof entirely on the violators instead of the copyright holder) - paying the fee for copyright registration and possible legal counsel from the start can save a lot of trouble later on, but the dev has to have enough faith that their product will actually sell well enough otherwise it could ultimately be a waste of money for them. For a small game that costs a few bucks, from a dev that has little following/reputation and has not invested heavily into marketing, it's usually not worth it.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. I am however researching this stuff because I intend to invest into fees for registering my game's copyright and trademark.

 

[Arthran]

It merely baffled me that someone could be so lax about having their work reuploaded without credit...

Edit, due to an afterthought; it's one thing if the person in question is fine with reuploads or shares in their ToU or whatnot without credit, but this is literally theft...

I mean, the OP obviously *is* fine with his work being re-uploaded (at least in this case), since he explicitly stated as much. Yes, he stated that after it had already happened, instead of in a TOU beforehand... but that doesn't really change things on his end. Either way, his work got re-uploaded, and he's fine with it.

It's not really that uncommon of a mindset. There are plenty of people, myself included, who release software and source code under the MIT license--meaning that other people can use it however they want (even sell it), without having to give credit to the original author. As far as I can tell, the majority of Japanese MV/MZ plugins are actually under the MIT license. A lot of people just don't care about receiving credit for their creations.

Of course, I'm not saying that the people who stole the OP's game aren't dirty thieves. Even without his blessing, they'd still continue re-distributing his game, and I'm sure that they're re-distributing plenty of other stolen games without the blessing of the authors, so I'm certainly not excusing them or anything like that. I'm just saying that I actually can relate to the OP's stance on the matter.

 

[Kim Jong Deux]

Just put the flag of Taiwan in the game if you don't want it pirated in china.
It could lead to serious issues to anyone who has it within the mainland. cops will literally bust their door if they get reported lol.

 

[yooz]

Because I am not good at English, the following reply is written by using translation software. If there is any unclear expression or ambiguity, please forgive me;

As a Chinese, I am sorry that you found the piracy of your own games on the Chinese website. In fact, there are many such piracy acts in China, and some people even pirate the works of people from their own countries. This is attributed to the fact that we did not pay attention to copyright awareness in the past, but in recent years our country is emphasizing the relevant laws, and our people's awareness of protecting the copyright of others is becoming stronger and stronger, I hope we can see the improvement of China's network environment in the future.

(In fact, we also have a headache about domestic piracy. We have carried out copyright protection, but no country's laws and enforcement methods are perfect, so some people can always find opportunities to break the law. Fortunately, we will work hard.)

In addition, as for the rumors mentioned by some people, China has not banned Winnie the Pooh, and I have never heard of such rumors as "steamed stuffed buns".

If sensitive topics involving Chinese politics are put into the game, it may indeed reduce the probability that some games will be pirated, but it may not be eradicated (some people dare to do so); However, if someone has such a history in his creative career, it will really make the Chinese people reject all his works from now on. Please consider carefully.

 

[Arctica]

My personal favorites are the obvious AAA rips that people try to pass off as their own original work.

 

[Skittal]

Wait, free to play games are being stolen for advertisements, and revenue?

 

[Andar]

@Skittal yes
and it's not only games and only china - there have been more than a few cases where someone copied free stories, changed the titel and a few names and then put them for sale on amazon.com.
because it will take the original author some time to even detect the theft and get amazon to take them down again, and the people who did this use false names and vanish with the gains they got until detected.

 

[JohnDoeNews]

What's offensive about Winnie the Pooh?

His last name is Pooh! That is another word for ****. How is that not offensive?

 

[123edc]

*throws in my daily 5 cent of random useless knowledge*

Pooh were an Italian pop band formed in 1966 in Bologna. Over the course of their career, Pooh has sold over 100 million records. Some of the band's most popular songs include "Parsifal", "Dove comincia il sole" and "Pensiero".

 

[Summer夏]

It's a pity that you will have such an experience,Because of the independent network environment in China,Things stolen from abroad become common and difficult to safeguard rights.
You can try to appeal through the following email. I hope it will be helpful to you.

aligames-tousu@alibaba-inc.com

 

[yooz]

Wait, free to play games are being stolen for advertisements, and revenue?

In fact, they rarely make money directly by stealing games. Most of the time, they put many pirated games on a website or other places in the name of exchange and learning, so that tourists can download them for free through specific channels, and then use the advertisements on that website to gain profits. Many people make profits by taking advantage of this loophole

 

[Skittal]

@Skittal yes
and it's not only games and only china - there have been more than a few cases where someone copied free stories, changed the titel and a few names and then put them for sale on amazon.com.
because it will take the original author some time to even detect the theft and get amazon to take them down again, and the people who did this use false names and vanish with the gains they got until detected.

Dang

 

[nbgamemaker]

I admire your positivity and can see your point, but they stole your work and if they aren't giving credit or linking to where your game can be downloaded it's not helpful as free advertising imho.