Softpedia

General Discussions
#1

This Softpedia site bothers the hell out of me. Every time I put some WIP game up for others to test, privately, it somehow always ends up at this Softpedia site, which starts to redistribute it. This must be illegal, I have not given them any permission to do this, how the heck can they just take my intellectual property and distribute it without asking any questions?

softpedia.com, registered by some Romanian guy. Romania is part of the EU, and they must be enforcing intellectual property rights.

#2

No matter how annoying or illegal, the idea that you can publish something privately is pretty naive :slight_smile:

Just raise the bar a little by adding some registration procedure. Or maybe make every download unique, so you can track who is leaking your app to softpedia.

#3

Nobody is “leaking” this. Softpedia is a robot site, this is just an automated process. But somehow, they go out of their way to actually run the game, make screenshots, etc., so there must be a willing human hand to actually test this and knowingly redistribute (illegaly).

Funny thing, they’re allowing the people to download just the game jar, without any of the dependencies. Yes, like that’s gonna work. So, they’re total retards, don’t know how to steal webstart games (probably one of the big pluses with webstart games, hard to steal in some automated manner and redistribute as a downloadable package).

#4

Put the download behind a password? In some trivial .htaccess file.
As long as the release is private, you can distribute the password too.

#5

Have you tried contacting them?

#6

Yeah, it’s some kind of semi-automated robot/scraper that collects them. But there must be at least a little human involement since I usually see some kind of badly written blurb (usually a hand-written first line and then copy/paste text of my own).

I’m never sure what to do about them - on the one hand it’s free linkage and awareness, on the other hand they’re redistributing without my permission and usually they’re outdated versions from months ago.

#7

You can perhaps submit a PAD-file with the updated version info.

Here is a link to an editor for such files:
http://pad.asp-software.org/padgen.php

#8

Make stuff where redistribution actually helps you rather than hinders you. That’s our new Plan A anyway.

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

Again, has you actually tried contacting them?

#10

Well, I believe in that if I make it I control it. My game isn’t even done yet, and they go ahead and publish it for the world to see, like it’s a finished product that they have permission to redistribute. It’s even tagged as “FREEWARE/FREE”, even though I’m planning to sell it.

That’s like taking work in progress and give it away for free, without permission. I know that’s illegal. They’re hosting the game files, so it’s even more illegal.

A large game studio would never approve of this, and would probably sue them. A indie developer has no chance of that due to the legal cost.

Where’s Batman when you need him? >:(

And yes, I’ve sent them a email telling them to remove it. No reply, yet. (btw., it’s they that should be contacting me first, to ask me for permission to publish the game, not me contacting them to tell them to remove the game).

#11

Cat’s out of the bag now though isn’t it, and it’s unlikely anyone’ll do anything about it. Next time: make sure whatever you actually release has some way to monetise the exposure, I suggest! As for me, I’ve long since given up worrying that our stuff’s pirated all over the web. And the next game’s online only, sidestepping the problem completely…

Cas :slight_smile:

#12

Jeff Minter used to write obscene words all over the work in progress screenshots of his games. That was to discourage big sites stealing and displaying them on their site.

You could do something similar with your games.

#13

If you put your game up as an applet you could put in a test that makes sure it will only run from your server. Then they would have to hack the jar for it to work.

#14

[quote=“appel,post:3,topic:36286”]
I asked them to use only the JNLP link instead of the JAR and they did.

#15

I suggest you to add information about who is the game developer and stuff inside your game, even with links to your website, so whenever someone starts a game from softpedia(or somewhere else) he can learn about you and your work. You can add information about your plans about the game, like selling it in the future, etc. You can even force the user to open your website when the application is closed like PuppyGames does :stuck_out_tongue:

Dunno exactly, but for now that all of our stuff is free, Softpedia don’t bothers me so much.

#16

I have felt a bit violated by them - my unsolicited ‘developer home page’ (I won’t give the link) shows some of my games but the ‘links’ all lead back to their home page, so no free PR for me! It does have a link to my 4K page that works. But… who the hell takes them seriously anyway? I don’t much begrudge them the few cents they might have made out of my work.

#17

I’m fed up now.

I just received 3 emails congratulating me that 3 of my other games (in dev) have been added as well. I guess that’s the reply I get after sending them a request to remove my game. They also added one game that they had added before but I told them to remove after I sent them a lengthy legal threatening email, so they are violating that.

Now I sent them a very threatening legal letter as well.

Thinking about getting a lawyer to look at this, but it might be cheaper and more fun to travel to Romania, find this guy and scare the shit out of him.

#18

Finally, they complied.

FYI: If anyone does this to you, send a threatening (legal references etc.) email to as many email addresses they have (sales@…, webmaster@…, support@…)

#19

They’ve got all my games and utilities too. Not too fussed as they had public domain type licences.