Fake or real dev site?

[Amane Kagari]

I really hate it when people scam in anyway. Especially in ways that hurts indie devs or aspiring indie devs like us. (It really makes my blood boil.) I'm really glad to see so much awareness of such "heads up" topics.

 

[killdude]

There's too much swearing to do to this thief.But I can't do it because of the rules of the community, and the swearing chamber of English is not as wide as ours.

 

[Andar]

this isn't the first time this happened and it won't be the last - but often it's repeat offenders (Like Kaus/Hanzo) and I wouldn't be surprised if it's soulpour again.
a lot of things are similiar to the last time soulpour pulled that stunt - I hoped that he left the community but even when he was known as soulpour someone traced his past to a similiar offence a few years earlier, and it has been again a few years before his second try under the name soulpour.

 

[Parallax Panda]

@Andar
I might have missed the "Soulpour" incident. Where can I read up on that?

 

[Poryg]

@Andar I don't think it's Soulpour. He's from Philippines, the thief was from Venezuela. Not to mention, he has... well, let's say learned from his mistake.
He has suffered constant harrassment and people talking bad at him so much that it affected his professional life too. And has been annoyed by the fact that even years after the incident it was still haunting him. So I don't think he would be stupid enough to do that again, not after suffering that.
Soulpour has moved on to Unity anyway and tried to cut off all ties to rpg maker community.

Not to mention, had it really been soulpour, I'd think he'd made it harder to recognize that the plugins were stolen.

 

[Yanfly]

Small update on the DMCA with Fiverr, still haven't gotten any responses back yet. I'll give it a week first before I decide that they're just ignoring me.

After that, I would encourage other users, if they have the time, to help report them, too, as such:

I've taken the liberty of reporting them on fiverr for fraud (since it's convoluted to figure out, here is how I did: https://www.fiverr.com/support_tickets/new/tos_violation and then I chose TOS violation and then fraud)

As far as Foundat.io/n/'s website goes, it looks like they still have the plugin pages up, so a lot of what they said is just probably hot air. Adding the items to cart reveal that they're "out of stock", whatever that means, but I've seen this pattern before, and they'll just be up after the roasting went by.

I also want to thank all of you who took action into spreading the news and helping uncover more of this mess as well. You guys did absolutely great!

 

[MRSchuman]

I'm glad they were able to get shut down, been on your ******* and a fan of your work for awhile and glad to see they didn't get away with taking your hard work.

 

[Marquise*]

On another note... I remember that resource we should not use tread and I thought a false dev stealing and selling on Steam tread. Would it be possible to have a pinned section of RPGM safety watchdogs so we could have in one tread and first post some DMCA action report and watch over offenders in general and links to the other concerned thievery alert threads?

I mean, it might help to regroup our watch efforts.
(Again, in things I genuinely am no expert, I certainly cannot help much or maybe get really ultra sensitive. But in other like written and visual copyrights -without being an international lawyer- I might do a passable job to recognize a pirate.)

 

[Andar]

no, especially if someone sells shop resources the first repoert should get to Degica by PM, or you should PM the artist/author of the resource that is sold illegally.
Publically posting something should only be done if there is no way to contact the original IP-Owner.

The problem is that a DMCA takes a while and there have been several cases where the offender watched this forum and took down the offending resources before the DCMA could be send.
That doesn't make a difference for some newby who simply didn't understand what he was doing wrong, but I know at least two times that someone who did this professionally got away with it because without a DCMA to the provider no one can hold anyone responsible.

And you could see the same in this topic - there was almost immediatly an answer by the person responsible for this case, clearly indicating that he was monitoring the forum.

 

[Kupotepo]

@Yanfly, Help me help you. I cannot report a takedown notice because of Youtube are only allowed a copyright owner to report.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2807622?hl=en
That is going to send a chill to Foundat.io/n to shut down "their"private videos.

@Poryg, after doing an investigation @SoulPour777 yes is from Philippine actually resident copy Mughunter code

https://rpgmaker.net/users/SoulPour777/posts/

You can listen to his music maybe get a Stockholm syndrome:
https://soundcloud.com/soulpour777

His account is Boy Who Codes:
https://rpgmakermv.co/threads/soulpour777-on-*******.1119/

@definite_lee, I do not know @SoulPour777 either until I google, but I am just verified for @Poryg Sorry for going off topic.

 

[definite_lee]

Getting a bit off-topic here... Soulpour777 is not connected to this incident, and has already been banished from the community so there's no need to bring him back up.

 

[Windows i7]

I also want to thank all of you who took action into spreading the news and helping uncover more of this mess as well. You guys did absolutely great!

As did you. Thank you.

 

[Johnboy]

Unlikely as it is, I would hope that this person, if they were duped into paying for stolen code, would at least try to get their money back from said dev.

Realistically, I think what Yanfly said is going to be 100% correct. They'll just wait for the flames to die down and try to go about quietly selling the stolen code again.

 

[Marquise*]

@Andar Understood. The inconvenient is, like for my bedbugs, if you don't use repulsive treatments you sleep with your vampires and get sucked dry in the name to be a good bait to catch them all. That is... well, there might be no good way to look at it on the creators side.

 

[Yanfly]

Following up on the update for the DMCA, seems like it's just been straight up ignored, which, doesn't surprise me given the reputation and fraud I hear about Fiverr. I'm pretty certain that reporting this user through TOS Violation will get nowhere either. The best thing we can only do is just warn users about Fiverr and their scammy plagiaristic nature.

 

[Amane Kagari]

DMCA will always ignore the "little guys". Chances are if you don't have millions or billions or at least hundreds of thousands of dollars, they don't care. Disappointing indeed. All we can do is pass the word and try to form our own little "anti-plagiaristic army" to get people to hopefully not support these guys. When I read the article Yanfly posted, these Fiverr guys are classics when it comes to being shady with fake HQ and stuff (like mafia tactics). Though, I've never heard of them until this topic. I'll be sure to stare clear of them. Thanks @Yanfly for the article.
But I have an issue with that youtuber who warned people of the scams Fiverr commits. He still endorses them despite of telling people it's a scam. This guy is somewhat contradicting himself. I mean if it's a scam and if they're shady, then why still tell people to use their service? (in the end of the vid, he tells people to continue to use the service.) Isn't it just promoting a scam after exposing a scam? Makes no sense.

 

[BreakerZero]

I just recently came across the information about this and it's bull**** that someone would go so low. It's ****** up to see this happen (and the searching I did on the soulpour incident shows that it came at the cost of a useful improvement that I would've liked to use, and simply because of the fact that everything else was suspicious) but seeing the reports that the first idiot moved on and started over is comforting even though it came at a cost because the idiot did the same thing as this one to certain, similar extents. As for locating the server IP for the site, I doubt that would be possible - the WhoIs system predates the domain formatting method used by our thief, and with CloudFlare services being used as an intermediary that doesn't help us either. Also, the fact that a Fiverr account is involved is even worse as the platform in question is likely suspect either as an abusive business fraud or that which has devolved into one. (I even saw a small typo somewhere on the Fiverr website and trying to locate the support request page is suspect as there's no easy way to find it so either the Fiverr service itself is a fraud or the platform so rife with such losers that it has devolved into the respective equivalent by nature of its own community.)

EDIT: I have taken the opportunity to close an unused Fiverr account that I still had because of this and insist/recommend/urge that you do the same in solidarity for what their "service" has allowed to occur (and especially so in this case). Also, I don't mind that people are mentioning the soulpour case in this respect due to the similarities (and I get not wanting to bring up the past @definite_lee) however the information regarding that particular case is still relevant for sake of comparison, not to mention that @Parallax Panda just wanted to know why it's a big deal to even bring up what soul did. Never mind the locations and individuals are different here or that two have now officially (and literally) played this game with Yanfly and Moghunter, but this is a load of bull**** that should never have to attest in the first place.

 

[definite_lee]

I'm sorry but I just want to clarify some things out of experience because I feel like some people here are attacking in the wrong direction.
Fiverr is essentially a middle man to connect people providing a service with those looking for a service. That's it.

Now, in terms of dealing with service providers on the website that are engaging in fraudulent behavior, the onus is on the accuser to prove said behavior. And I imagine whatever internal policy Fiverr is operating under that guides their response to user reporting is probably extremely rigid. Most of these types of sites want to protect their service providers, as much as their customers. (Think of eBay seller protections, or how PayPal handles disputes) Therefore, they won't rush to judgment on a case without carefully investigating and weighing the evidence. Unfortunately this results in what appears to be them not caring or encouraging fraud. I don't think that's the case. There's a process for everything.

Personally I have paid for commissions from many artists on Fiverr. The people I've dealt with on there have been mostly fantastic. So I would caution everyone against rushing to judgment. Things aren't always as black and white.

In a nutshell, I agree that Fiverr needs to take a look at this case and hold the individual(s) in question responsible. But understand that it's not as simple as "Hey look at these conversations look at this image I have proof DO SOMETHING!"

 

[atoms]

Edit: (I think I should be clear, the reason I can get mad at this is because it is complete fraud taking Yanfly and Moghunter, and other, plugins, that are for the RPG Maker community and nicely been given away for free, and then try to fool me into spending a huge sum of money from someone who stole them. It's just terrible at every angle you look at it. So sorry if I sound heated in my comments, but yes I'm annoyed by it as I'm sure many of you must be.)

I can't really comment any more then knowing something should be able to be done in this situation and it's quite irritating that Fiverr seems to be ignoring it entirely.

However, even though I don't use Fiverr, I'd assume a lot of people on there do honest work for the prices and aren't fraudsters. So I wouldn't give advice telling everyone there is not any honest people on that site, probably a lot are.

Still, this case can't be the only fraud case on Fiverr, and if they do nothing about them, which it looks like, it is terrible.

I know it's not as simple as what @definite_lee said, but in Yanfly's case, Yanfly has been able to stack up plenty of evidence for the case. I mean you can see from the images they copied a lot of the code in all those free plugins, etc. (Sorry saying more would just get me mad).

Why can't they do more other than just ignore his DMCA? Ignoring it completely is a terrible approach to it, unless I really am missing something significant?

What I am trying to say is, there should be some sort of process, even if it's not simple, and I know that small part of not being super simple is understandable, but sounds like, from this, Fiverr won't care enough to go through a process of any kind. I can't see that as being acceptable? Huh?

 

[BreakerZero]

My exact point. That's not to say that you can't find the one honest guy in a room full of sharks but when you have so many idiots on your platform it's like needles and haystacks territory, or so to speak. Even so, when you have a stupid *** contracting system design that's not only suspect but also prevents you from reaching the proper support system without knowing a few insider tricks it still adds up to looking at a big red flag to the extent where I'm concerned. #FireTheWriters

EDIT: Grammar fail. Sorry about that.

EDIT 2: The offending website and Fiverr are still up as of 2234CDT on Sunday 28 April, however the previously-posted gig file that was linked here earlier has been taken down at the very least.

EDIT 3: Not exactly your typical open/shut case of apples and oranges but here's another comparison. This morning during shift I got a call that I tried to answer to say that I was still busy (it was somewhere around 1030CDT or so and schedule runs until at least 1100CDT) and ended up explaining to the boss that my initial explanation wasn't delivered and that I had to redo as a text. And likewise, you don't want to upend someone else by modding their work using your own take and then sell it as your own. Just as it cost me a few minutes to communicate that it was premature (and for a pathetic excuse under the circumstance to make it even more embarrassing) this bulls*** costs us as a community by doing such rotten business. Essentially and practically speaking, the whole thing is a d**k move on the part of whomever's responsible for this mess, and idiots who don't know better are the ones who will pay the price as much as we already have ourselves.

EDIT 4: I noticed that there is also now a duplicate of sorts relative to the original gig so this jack*** is definitely being shady. The updated "gig" is provided below, but keep in mind that I'm only posting this for analysis reasons, actually using their services is still against community rules (or the essence of professional ethics at the very least).

https://www.fiverr.com/alexxisaaps/...f_ctx_id=0bffba2d-d7d6-44ea-9f59-aed0f11aa02d