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The Fight for WorldBox

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326 pointsdoppp40 comments

Google and Apple should be forced to refund all the money for these scams and pay fines for it. As long as their interests are aligned with the scammers they will let it happen.

They need to be held accountable for what they sell the same way Silk Road was.

What scam?

alright I'll bite: The scam of copying someone elses game just because they refused your offer of buying it, since that's essentially what happened.

It sounds like they implemented it from scratch, which means they simply beat him to market. I'm not sure what the issue is here.

The issue is they stole the name. Had they made a clone under a different name, it would be fine.

His game was already on the market

They didn’t beat him to market, Worldbox had been out in the market before they even approached the dev about it or hiked the trademark. That’s why he believes it will be possible to invalidate their trademark.

Worldbox had been in the market for 8 years. They stole the code (given the cloned app's appid is called Worldbox) and rejigged the sprites. Then tried to trademark "Worldbox" (which isn't the name of their game) with the plan to then change name and kick Worldbox off the store.

Then why are they opening so many shell companies? what are they so afraid of? and why ex-workers say they do copyright infringements all the time?

Look like they are not making it from scratch...

The business model of 3 day free trials followed by $10 a week subscriptions? Nobody would pay that on purpose

Making a bad clone of a game is old and ok. Making a clone of a game and stealing and assuming its name on other platforms and other countries is the scam.

Hahahahahahahah.

Google and Apple do not give a single RATS ASS about this guy and his game. They want to make money. That is the only reason they exist.

If they make money from from him or someone who stole his game... they literally do not give a single shit.

I wish it was different. But it is not. [edit ... added this line]

which is... precisely why GP suggests that they _should_ be held to account

What a painful read. Im always surprised to find/meet these people who spend 20 hours per day, trying to make other people miserable. I guess I shouldn't be.

I do wonder how they sleep at night. Probably see themselves as thrifty and clever.

Like babies, on pillows filled with dollar bills.

Unfortunately, humans are very good at getting used to doing the wrong thing. It's probably a survival feature, otherwise it would be too easy to trap yourself in a situation where you're paralyzed by your conscience.

Or maybe people are different and can rationalize differently.

Differently does not mean correctly, or ethically.

I find it odd because if they tried that hard doing something legitimate, they might be just as successful too. Maybe it stems from some kind of deep-seated insecurity about their ability to create or taking responsibility for their decisions if they fail.

wow that sounds incredibly exhausting for an indie dev. Good thing they have a good community to at least correct the fake reviews on the apps

This was hard to read. I am furious.

Fenced App Store make this problem 100x worse with their shitty search (especially the iOS one) and their hands-off approach with regards to IP. If you hold a trademark, you can bring other apps that yes that trademark in their name down.

I don't even know what should be done with people like this. Are there any appropriate deterrent measures? Do scammers on that level require psychotherapy? What can be done about all this?

They're engaged in fraud - misrepresentation for profit. That should be enough to breech the various appstore t&cs, and be banned.

Anki has a similar problem (a copycat also called anki).

Should be prison time.

TLDR: a group of people are setting up po box companies that they use to clone indie games and sometimes even to steal the name trademark. Obviously, they then sell while deceiving customers and at a much higher price, thereby milking and ruining the hard earned respect of the indie game.

Would be nice with a TLDR on all links as many are not deserving of a click.

How good are auto-tldr algorithms nowadays?

Below is the majority of the post, before it gets in to all the links and such, run through SMMRY[0] set to only use 7 sentences (92% reduction). It obviously doesn't tell the full story, but it isn't bad for a tl;dnr.

My name is Maxim and I'm an independent game developer.

With millions of downloads it is definitely my most successful game so far, and that's thanks to a very active fan base which I'm very grateful to have.

It's really cool to see people play the game in front of your eyes.

You evaluate behavior - are they passionate gamers? Or rather cold business people.

You check out their game - it looks like a copy of a popular game you know.

The answer So as with many other people who offered to buy the game - you politely decline.

How come? How come a copycat can use the name of the original game? You guessed it... trademarks.

[0] https://smmry.com/

Sounds like some key phrases from the page. If GPT-3 would be able to glue them together?

If you actually care about something, nothing is "tldr". If you regard something important as "too long", then you aren't doing due diligence.

Some authors do tend to repeat themselves and use unnecessary language, or use the title to hook you into reading the article for a piece of information that they only reveal at the end

Totally misses the point:

> as many are not deserving of a click

How do you do "due diligence" on a HN link without clicking on it? Do you use Google to look at the story and then click the link if it turns out not to be clickbait or other crap that you believe doesn't deserve a click?

Really Bad

Too bad the doxing happens very late in the post.

The bad actors are:

-Alexander Novikov

-Egor Agafonov

-Eugene Kluchinski

I think a dox is valid in this case, as hopefully young developers will stumble upon this page and avoid tainting their own names by associating with the thieves.

>The bad actors are:

I used to think it would be a good idea to call out people for their mis-deeds but after a while I realised that these stories are often followed up with some crucial missing information. It probably isn't the case here but it happens often enough that I'd be wary about calling them out.

Did you read the full post? What sort of missing information could possibly redeem them? They've built an almost-exact clone and are filing trademarks for his game's name all around the world. The information given in the post has heavily contrained the possible explanations of this.

There’s been plenty of examples of people on the internet (especially Twitter) getting it wrong.

It’s actually a hobby of some groups to spread the wrong names purposefully.

This is why doxxing is usually outright looked down upon. It’s a mob rule tactic that can be very dangerous.

Regardless if this case sounds “correct” or “just”.

In this case, it would be difficult for him not to dox them: his game is closely attached to his identity, and the filers of trade marks (and directors of companies, for that matter) are all matters of public record. These names etc are all in the public domain for pretty much this reason.

That may be but let it float around in other channels instead.

I like to put work in maintaining the idealism of HN as the morally sane plane. One of which is where we don’t engage in doxxing here.

I also don’t think or care if dang should delete it, even if I think it’s bad or fuck em. Cultural chastising with plenty of upvoting and downvoting is enough IMO in order to keep a community not shit.

As in any major subreddit if you want an example of shitty.

The enemy in my mind is fostering internet mobs which is going too far and abandons due process. And them thinking they are contributing to the world by mixing IRL destruction with their internet activism or vigilanteism

Those tactics should not be embraced or encouraged on our site given the obvious downsides, two of which being a) they get the wrong person way too often though newbie investigations that should be left to professional. Beyond handing them tips and advice by the work of autists AND b) it encourages thought policing on and c) doling out overly harsh punishments that don’t fit the ‘crime’, etc etc

We figured out these risks already long in society. We’re just mostly repeating them in far too many cases to make mob internet justice worthy of our time.

If TFA could find them online, then collecting and displaying all that public info is not doxxing.

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