Flappy Bird MMO | Hacker News Reader

Flappy Bird MMO

69.164.192.211

113 pointsanonymousab58 comments

What are the copyright issues involved with this?

People get upset about Zynga and other big game companies cloning games, yet this 'clone' is a direct copy of graphics, etc. - minus adding multi-player capability.

Not a single mention of this in this thread either at the time of posting this comment.

The original creator gave up $50k/day and took the #1 game off the market. If he had no interest in continuing to make money off of this game, why would he be interested in pursuing legal action against someone? He'd probably just withdraw the lawsuit when it got too complicated, as that seems to be his M.O.

Agreed. He is incredibly unlikely to pursue anyone and has actually given a few of the knockoffs his blessing. You're wrong on one point though...the $50k/day isn't going anywhere. The ads are still active on 100M+ installs. He is still raking in cash and will until people stop opening the game on their devices.

Oh, so because you get away with it - it's okay? Is that your stance with Zynga and other big companies then too?

My stance on this particular matter is that he has done everything short of open sourcing this game, up to and including giving his blessing to several knockoffs. 100M+ people have the original game, and that game is still generating substantial revenue for him. Everyone that already had the game when he pulled it is likely sticking to playing the original. I'm not making a Flappy Bird clone, but I think that those who are probably aren't going to be facing any lawsuits. That's all I said.

This sound as intelligent as "You shouldn't drink and drive, because you can get a big ticket".

Sorry but how do your assumptions to attempt to justify this make copyright infringement OK?

The original creator gave up $50k/day and took the #1 game off the market.

Why do people think he gave up $50k/day? The hundred million or so installs are still out there. The advertising account is still active and in full effect. It is entirely possible he is making even more from the controversy.

Please do not lump me in with the jealous haters who have made the whole flappy bird thing so annoying (jealousy is tiring and obvious, and it has fueled 98% of the commentary on this) -- I applaud him for what he has done. But there is a lot of fiction surrounding this story.

> He'd probably just withdraw the lawsuit when it got too complicated, as that seems to be his M.O.

I agree with your point but this makes you sound like a complete asshole. Just because you can't imagine giving up $50k/day doesn't mean that he's weak or stupid for doing it (which is the implication I get from this sentence).

such is life

Just getting a little geeky about social interactions here: the asshole bit is saying "that seems to be his M.O." about anybody- it reduces a person into a predictable pattern and insults their personal agency, even if valid. It doesn't actually imply weak or stupid, it implies predictable, reducible- that's where the insult is. A person can be strong and intelligent and still be insulted by "that seems to be her M.O."

</overanalysing>

MY GOD! Why is everyone so obcessed with the 50k/day. It's his game and he can do with it whatever he wants! Just because it earns him a lot of money and it is the #1 game in the app stores it doesn't make him obligated to make the choices you would make.

Maybe taking it off the market is a stupid decision (which I'm in no position to comment, as the context is a bit too complex). There are guys that accept to be kicked in the nuts for a youtube video. It's stupid, but it's their nuts. They can do whatever they want with it.

With that said. While IMO it's ok to do this king of thing, the guy still has it's copyright. By your logic "I don't steal because I may be arrested" is a valid thought. It's not. You shouldn't steal because it's WRONG!

Ownership of content doesn't require a monetary interest, it can be about wanting to control how that content is used.

And wow, nice angry sting on the guy. Must really burn to see someone hit success like that and not care about it.

"Doesn't generate money anymore", "Won't sue me", etc. those are all not in the slightest reasons to infringe copyright. In fact there are never reasons to do so.

The only reason why people are doing so at the moment is because they will get upvoted and retweeted because it's Flappy Bird.

IF there are copyright issues, then they are only with Nintendo.

AFAIK the assets are all original, so there ARE copyright issues and they AREN'T with Nintendo.

I bet Nintendo could convince a jury that the graphics were copied. I doubt they will though.

This is unlikely, especially as its fairly easily demonstrated that they are, pixel-for-pixel, quite different. There have been a lot of non-Nintendo green pipes, internet commentators with small reference pools notwithstanding.

It does require broader similarities than green pipes. And Nintendo is on record that Flappy Bird does not violate their IP.[1]

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/02/10/no-complaints-about-f...

You don't have to actually copy assets to be guilty of copyright infringement. Copying the look and feel is sufficient. See any of the Tetris or Pac-Man cases, for example.

Pac-Man except for when King.com is the developer, of course.

So as long as one uses things that might already have infringed copyright, it's okay to do so?

I strongly disagree. If there's a problem it's the (allegedly) original copyright holder and the (allegedly) copyright violator's problem. This does not allow others to copy it, just because it's currently viral.

I'm going to write a Flappy Bird text adventure, where you play a desperate attention-grabbing software developer.

The aim of the game is to get onto the HN front page by in some way leveraging Flappy Bird fever.

(not a dig at this specific example - this one is quite cool)

Extra credit if you kill the game just as it starts to get popular.

I know, right? Atleast he wrote a notice:

>Sorry guys, I can't handle the pressure. Just kidding. Server will be back in a few hours (about 8 hours or so).

And i will write a post about playing the flappy bird adventure ;-)

Flappy Bird Text Adventure By The Numbers (medium.com) [300 votes]

Why Can't I Be a Female Hacker in Flappy Bird Text Adventure? (blogspot.com) [500000 votes] [100000 comments]

I have generally ignored this flappy bird malarkey, but this sucked me right in. Nicely done!

Not working on Firefox nor Chrome on Win7, is it slammed by traffic?

The gameplay would be more interesting if, instead of progressing even if you don't jump trough one pipe( like now ), you would always start from the beginning. Then the bird population would get more and more sparse as you progress; with a possible checkpoint system.

Sorry, the text field got stripped by a faulty browser plugin.

I found this on 4chan. The creator said to go ahead and post it elsewhere but didn't seem interested in sharing the source or anything.

Though I'd imagine this will be backlinked at some point.

Seems to not be working for me, is the server down?

it's getting HN hammered, there are ~600 players concurrently playing right now.

It just changed so that the pipes have a bigger gap, its pretty fun now, you can really race people. Someone called 'flappy swag' was just ahead of me ...

Is the responsiveness of this actually the original Flappy Bird responsiveness? I'm assuming no, because good lord it's terrible.

Wow that is nicely done - front page HN - ~700 concurrent users and I'm having fun playing! Good Work!

This is actually pretty clever and one of the better remakes that I've seen around. Nice job on this.

Down.

HN effect

Now that's a cool spin on this.

Any chance sharing the server side? Curious how something like that is done.

Yup.. I'd like to see the code which handles these concurrent connections.

Not working as of 8:23 AM EST on Chrome

Not working as of 14:12 GMT on Chrome either ;)

Still not working. HN killed its node.js server.

The 'bubble' that it shows around the bird really messes with my sense of collision detection.

I am at 200. Who can catch me? :) https://www.dropbox.com/s/gnemb53o287ae0b/Screen%20Shot%2020...

Not to invalidate your achievement, but with the current gameplay all it takes to weight down the spacebar, and wait.

A score of 200 would be much more impressive.

That's why I wrote "who can catch" me and not "who can beat me?".

What is with "The Day We Fight Back"? Anonymous group?

Got it.. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1xm761/we_are_the_day_...

New header title: "The Day We Flappy Back" !

lol It's so slow with 800 players I can't even see where my bird is.

It was much more reactive at ~200 players, I was playing around modifying the javascript to remove collision detection (there's a method with a long ternary statement that ends ? !1 : !0, change the both to !1) etc until it hit ~700 users and started dying for me (presumably when it hit hacker news).

Javascript games = cheating?

To write a secure online multiplayer game in javascript, the server would have to assume the client has been compromised by default and verify everything server-side. This wouldn't work for anything fast paced, but it'd suffice for RPGs and puzzle games.

For example, in an RPG, a client says it's moved 5 tiles north. The server receives it, but before broadcasting it to other players, the server would have to read the map and make sure it's valid (e.g. there's nothing in the way).

Best 404 ever. ha!

it's back

asd

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