- May 2, 2017
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Stuff is reaching CSI levels.
Italian website selling porn games and claiming to own the copyright for them
- Thread starter Runey
- Start date
- Jul 27, 2017
- 1,155
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Bruh. I understand you're pissed off that your game is getting sold by some scammer, but copyright disputes aren't a matter for the police. And this whole "my friend knows where he lives and is going to go there" shit is kind of creepy. Either sue the guy or let it go, don't get dragged into doing something stupid.
The issue isn't that. The issue is they are now in contact with Patreon to get my game shut down, and are telling them I do not own any copyright for my game. I simply asked them to take my game down, and they're now trying to ruin my career.
What they're doing is illegal, no question about that. I wasn't ever going to file any complaints as long as they took my game down from their website, but now they've escalated things.
I didn't ask him to do any of this, he said he was going there. I gave him some of the information I knew to him so he could confirm everything he found with what I have.
If the situation stays as it is, he's going to keep attempting to get mine, and maybe even others patreon accounts shut down. I don't want anybody to lose their livelihood over a liar and a thief.
edit: I'm not sure exactly what my Italian friend is doing though. It was a bit hard to understand completely what he meant. I believe he's going to leave a note on his doorstep or something? Honestly, I don't know. I would prefer he just call the police instead. I don't know exactly what he's doing.
- Jul 27, 2017
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Maybe, but there's a difference between criminal and civil law.
You don't call the cops for copyright infringement. That's not what law enforcement is for.
If anything fucked up happens as a result of this you might be liable. And fucked up things can happen when you show up to random people's houses. You don't know this person, he could be dangerous.
Why would you lose your livelihood over somebody telling lies? Unless you're actually infringing copyright yourself or you think Patreon is just going to ban you because some Italian retard tells them you are in broken English. In which case you should probably think about using an alternative platform anyway.
- Aug 11, 2017
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There are some norms in the Italian Code of Intellectual Property incriminating its infringement in certain cases.
I'm very doubtful about whether one of those would apply, but it's a possibility and it could arguably be indeed up to the public prosecutor to investigate on the matter.
Couldn't have said that better myself =P
The feeling I got is just a salty person doing empty threats tho, a bit like kids.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't actually contact Patreon and even if he did, he'll get ignored.
The feeling I got is just a salty person doing empty threats tho, a bit like kids.
I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't actually contact Patreon and even if he did, he'll get ignored.
I don't know Italian law, or anything about Italy. Only that copyright infringement is a serious crime in Italy.
You think? I don't know. I hope he doesn't do anything he shouldn't be doing. But you have me worried now, haha.
Patreon is known to ban people for not even breaking their terms of service. If they believe it would be too much of a hassle to deal with any threats, they may take the easy way out and ban some pages. But I don't know.
edit: My italian friend got back to me. He wasn't going to talk to him or anything, as far as I understand he was just going to try and make sure he wasn't going to call the police on someone who had nothing to do with this.
- Sep 1, 2017
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Two wrongs don't make a right.
This is a much better idea.
Normally I'd also suggest contacting the owners of the servers that the site is located at (abuse@iws.co), however, being that it's physically in the Netherlands, which tends to be pretty lax on this stuff, and run by a company from either Armenia or the United Arab Emirates (IWS Networks LLC/Ltd), I'm not sure how much luck you'll have with that. You could try the hosting service
You must be registered to see the links
(
You must be registered to see the links
), but considering that "warez" is in their name, I don't know how much luck you'll have there either. If you wanted to go a bit more public, you could try
You must be registered to see the links
, but again, I'd doubt they'd respond.In any case, this means that it's not just US and Italian laws which apply here, but likely the laws in the Netherlands as well.
- Nov 20, 2017
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I would try to go over their payment service. In my eyes they would not happy with for what their service is used and most likely would go against their TOS.
And without the money their whole operation would be drying out.
And without the money their whole operation would be drying out.
There is something I do not understand though...
Those that purchase the games do not wonder who made them? It would only take a quick google search to find out they have been scammed but if I had to guess, since they changed the title, it's safe to assume that they also deleted the credits.
Those that purchase the games do not wonder who made them? It would only take a quick google search to find out they have been scammed but if I had to guess, since they changed the title, it's safe to assume that they also deleted the credits.
Their userbase is likely 99% Italians who don't come over to the "English" side of the web, like F95 for example. All of their games seem to be translated in Italian, so it's likely they have no clue.
- Aug 5, 2016
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I've personally been in Italy for a while and people don't speak English so it does t surprise me that they would prefer to pay something like that instead of the original.
We need to form an Adult game devs union of some type to go after cases like this
fapunion
My doubt arises from the fact that those games, including yours, are in development.
How can you sell a game in development without the buyers rising an eyebrow?
Even if they split the game in two and put a big 2 in the title still won't make much sense unless they also bother to rewrite some parts, other than translating.
Idk, just seems weird to me
- Aug 3, 2017
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Runey and other developers do have the right to defend their work if they so choose. Once informed about the site, Runey asked his game to be taken down as someone else was profiting financially off the developer's work. Unfortunately in response, the people behind the site escalated things when they threatened Runey and other developers by going to Patreon to snuff their livelihoods. That's not okay especially since Patreon is the premier platform for works like Runey's and they can be very fickle about suddenly pulling the plug as they have been known to do in the past.
"Man's got a right to protect his property and his life." This includes his livelihood--his means of earning income to live.
I can understand why Italians would purchase content off shady, fly-by-night websites such as the one in question. Most of them don't speak English (let alone read it) with any proficiency; so, having something already translated is evidently worth the risk to them to purchase while likely knowing that such works are stolen despite the claims on the website saying otherwise.
It's quite unfortunate that things are getting out of hand. I hope a resolution can be found. Don't need someone getting hurt or worse because things went sideways (such as that Italian friend that went snooping around in town).
Edit/Clarification: That Italian friend isn't harmed, but is snooping around as I understand it. Don't want this person to get into a situation that could be dangerous, after all.
"Man's got a right to protect his property and his life." This includes his livelihood--his means of earning income to live.
I can understand why Italians would purchase content off shady, fly-by-night websites such as the one in question. Most of them don't speak English (let alone read it) with any proficiency; so, having something already translated is evidently worth the risk to them to purchase while likely knowing that such works are stolen despite the claims on the website saying otherwise.
It's quite unfortunate that things are getting out of hand. I hope a resolution can be found. Don't need someone getting hurt or worse because things went sideways (such as that Italian friend that went snooping around in town).
Edit/Clarification: That Italian friend isn't harmed, but is snooping around as I understand it. Don't want this person to get into a situation that could be dangerous, after all.
Well any lobby with meaningful power working for the independent of the adult industries would be great.
Anyone motivated to work on Bruxelles'technocrats, should be easier than in the US and once a regulation on something is done on the biggest market the rest tends to follow.
If not a union we could still make a de facto association in form of grouping and keeping a watch.
Anyway, DD is not affected by that particular website but we already had some russian site putting their banner inside our game. I dealt with that practice as a programmer, figuring they weren't very likely to have much skill to go around my countermeasures.
Now I kinda feel dumb not to have followed that more closely or looked their site of behalf of other devs.
- Jun 2, 2017
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We italians honestly don't care for that. And even if we do, we certainly don't go on google and write the name of the game itself to see if there's any progress or anything (let alone an adult game. I can probably say that with AAA games we do, but for these one's we don't. Trust me). Also, they wouldn't even find out that those games are sell illegally since the original names got changed in something more italian and, with that, you'll never find the true source.
But even if they find out the truth, we honestly wouldn't care. As long as they get sold here and in italian we just turn a blind eye over everything unfortunately.