It's very easy to get into the beta, and it's the most played game on steam practically every day.Mr.Mattress said:
Valve Drops the Hammer On Infringing Dota 2 Mace
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
What sort of idiot would even try to pass off copyrighted material as their own. Even from an obscure game such as Aion where the item has very little resemblance. Yes, greater chance to get away with it (it got voted to be sold) but still. What's the point. It's like me submitting the skin for a staff from Magic & Mayhem.
He at least could have had the balls to go for the Glaives of Azzinoth.
Then again, it is ironic that Steam condemns him for plagurism since *some* of the DotA2 skins for Heroes still look almost like Warcraft 3 models. Like Disrupter or Enchantress.
He at least could have had the balls to go for the Glaives of Azzinoth.
Then again, it is ironic that Steam condemns him for plagurism since *some* of the DotA2 skins for Heroes still look almost like Warcraft 3 models. Like Disrupter or Enchantress.
He plagiarized someone else's IP and peddled it as his own. If I had the choice between seeing Valve entangled in an IP lawsuit and kicking his butt off the service, I'd go for the latter. His loss of Valve stuff he might have bought is harsh, but it's a much smaller loss than if he would be held accountable for his deeds in court.
Everyone can try to sneak in some fun stuff and cross-pollinate IPs, I know I enjoy it. But if a service allows you to make money selling your own, original stuff you just don't even try to get away with something like this.
He wanted to see the world on fire? Well, he sure got his ass burnt.
Everyone can try to sneak in some fun stuff and cross-pollinate IPs, I know I enjoy it. But if a service allows you to make money selling your own, original stuff you just don't even try to get away with something like this.
He wanted to see the world on fire? Well, he sure got his ass burnt.
You're joking, right? This was handled with motherfucking Martha Stewart levels of leniency. The guy could've been sued for several thousand dollars and been saddled with even more in court and legal expenses, but instead lost a few hundred bucks worth of games. Are you really saying that that would have been better, as long as he gets to keep his games?! 'Cuz let me tell you, if Valve didn't handle this, you can bet your ass NCSoft would have, and they damn well wouldn't have gone easy on him.Andy Chalk said:
So let me ask you, which would you choose: lose a couple hundred dollars worth of games, or be sued for plagiarism by a multi-million dollar corporation?
Denying him any profits from the item, taking away his right to create any other content, and even taking direct legal action against him (suing) for it all makes sense. Some of this even goes across to future steam accounts he might have been found to make. Taking away his games and to a lesser extent access to buy more games is going too far though. Yes, suing him for all he's worth is fine, but taking away the games he already owns isn't (unless you can somehow treat them as assets in the suit).
The fact is, steam and other similar services need to treat the games you have bought or otherwise own as YOURS, anything that denies you access to those games is therefor tantamount to theft. If I buy something and the seller forcefully takes it away at a later date after I've paid, there is no other word for it. You don't own services though, like online play, so you can still be banned anytime, but even if the game is online only you still own your copy of the game. As it is, it's like if the bank had the right to close down access to your account permanently at any time without notice, and after doing so did NOT have any requirement to give you the money in your account.
The fact is, steam and other similar services need to treat the games you have bought or otherwise own as YOURS, anything that denies you access to those games is therefor tantamount to theft. If I buy something and the seller forcefully takes it away at a later date after I've paid, there is no other word for it. You don't own services though, like online play, so you can still be banned anytime, but even if the game is online only you still own your copy of the game. As it is, it's like if the bank had the right to close down access to your account permanently at any time without notice, and after doing so did NOT have any requirement to give you the money in your account.
Andy Chalk said:
Not sued by NCSoft, Not sued by VALV[sup]E[/sup]
Not taken to court for any reasons involving passing off other people's content as his own. and then selling it.
You're totally right, losing access to a gaming account is a huge deal. The reason for an EULA and ToS document is in these kinds of cases, which allow a company to take pretty much any action they want against you if you break their rules.
This is probably the most lenient of decisions that Valve and NCsoft could have taken for the time being. Nothing happened to the dude except he lost access to some games.
Would you feel the same way if I took everything you've written for the escapist, toddled over to CVG and posted it there as my own content, and got paid for it?
dogstile said:
I have a Timebreaker, I have to say, the original design didn't look very mace-ish. It does now.
He'd be able to launch games that don't require steam manually from his PC, assuming that he had them installed. That's how I played most of AC:R, because it uses the ubisoft launcher.Sotanaht said:
seems like a simple recolour.dogstile said:
this is the dota 2 mace:
and here is the Aion mace it ripped off:
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume this guy directly ripped off the Aion mace, I think a ban was a reasonable punishment.
I actually owned the original dota 2 mace so it looks like I am one of the 25,000 who has a shiny immortal mace to hold onto.
You do realize your facebook can get banned? They own everything you post there as per the agreement you passed by to start posting on their website, so they can own your personal information and deny you access to it. Your phone service, has a copy of all your phone records that they can hand over to the police if they are requested to do so as per the agreement you signed when you took your shiny new phone out of the box. Do you see where I'm going here? Don't whine about something you already signed. If the TOS is onerous you shouldn't have signed it. that covers the valve QQing crowd.
As for the "what if" he came up with it himself scenario being philosophically discussed. Ask a patent clerk how that works. If your not the first it's no longer original, therefore you lose your right to call it your own.
Finally, He knew he could get screwed over here and even if he didn't, guess what, in the real world people will laugh at you and call you a dumbass for not knowing the rules. he broke several very severe laws in a time when they are heavily enforced. He's lucky to still be out on the streets, that is if he didn't get arrested and pursued by his governing body anyway.
As for the "what if" he came up with it himself scenario being philosophically discussed. Ask a patent clerk how that works. If your not the first it's no longer original, therefore you lose your right to call it your own.
Finally, He knew he could get screwed over here and even if he didn't, guess what, in the real world people will laugh at you and call you a dumbass for not knowing the rules. he broke several very severe laws in a time when they are heavily enforced. He's lucky to still be out on the streets, that is if he didn't get arrested and pursued by his governing body anyway.
probably not a ton right now, since dota is still in closed beta I'm assuming that when the final game is released they'll become a little more valuable.ResonanceSD said:
I also own a pair of earbuds, maybe valve loves me or I just have good luck. in a couple years I might get a game or two for these items.
Absolutely no luck involved with getting buds, buddy, logging on to TF2 with a mac got them.Limecake said:
I hate playing hard carries so there's no reason for me to keep the damned thing -_- but it's quite tempting to get a strange sapper + stuff for it.
"an awfully harsh punishment and one that I don't think necessarily speaks well of Steam"? Considering how much legal trouble this guy could have gotten Valve into (and still could, for that matter) that's probably the easiest punishment he could get. He should count himself lucky he didn't steal the design of something made by a more dickish company, one that would have actually sued Valve.
Can't disagree more frankly. The guy literally stole, tried to scam money out of Valve and their users in the process, and caused them some headaches in having to verify this and rectify the situation. Sorry, but banning him from Steam and having him lose access to his games is appropriate. It means Valve is taking a hard stand on this not only being unacceptable, but says that there will be some very real consequences for people who are going to try and cheat Valve and other users. Valve doesn't want people like that using their system and they're making it very clear here. And all of this is without mentioning the fact that this guy opened Valve themselves up to a lot of legal liability and the potential to be sued had they not caught it so fast.Owyn_Merrilin said:
Considering the punishments for such blatant plagiarism anywhere else are far more severe this is letting him off quite lightly. Pull this stuff in University and you'll be expelled. Pull it in the real world where a company like Valve isn't there to nip it in the bud and you'll find yourself sued into poverty. The only reason I'd say he doesn't deserve to have worse come at him and be sued is because he will never see any money from this since they caught it before he was paid.
Let's put it this way: if you steal from a store, they can take back what you stole from them, but legally they can't take back what you've legitimately bought in the past. That would be theft on their part, and it would be wrong. It's a moot point anyway, because it turns out that Steam bans no longer remove access to your games, just the store and the community[footnote]which is totally justified in this case, and within Valve's rights[/footnote], but what everyone thought was going on at first would have been inexcusable. Should he have been punished? Hell yes. Should valve have been punished by the government if they had done what everyone thought they had done? Fuck yes. As far as I'm concerned, what everyone thought they did is worse than what the plagiarist actually did, because we're talking about them accepting people's money, selling them products, and then taking those products away as soon as any of their customers does something they don't like. That is illegal under any system of consumer law, for damned good reason. And yes, this was an extreme case, but if you think it takes something this major to get a Steam ban, you're delusional.Vivi22 said:
Perhaps, but we're not talking about stealing a physical item. We're talking about blatant copyright infringement which opened, not only the perpetrator, but Valve as well to legal liability and defrauded thousands of paying customers. This wasn't a case of stealing from one person and causing harm which is easily rectified by returning what was stolen.Owyn_Merrilin said:
Fair enough. Then he gets a slap on the wrist and those who are morally outraged by a blatant criminal being harshly punished can calm down a bit. I wonder if it would be worth NCSoft's time and effort to sue this guy though. He certainly deserves it whether it were to happen or not.
No, it would be taking away access to their games after they committed a criminal act and left Valve open to civil liability. Had Valve not caught this so soon they could have been on the hook for some rather large legal damages had they been sued. And for all any of us knows, they may be within their rights to remove access to your Steam games under such circumstances based on the TOS. And let's face it, worse clauses than that have been upheld by courts in EULA's. Hell, the way ownership of software is viewed under the law is that you're buying a license which is controlled by the creator, not a copy of the software. This could make taking away access when you abuse said license to commit a crime and profit from it perfectly acceptable under the law.
It may be a bit of a grey area, and maybe there is some case law I'm not aware of that says otherwise (I'm not a lawyer so I don't have a high level understanding of the legislation and case law on this subject), but it may not be as black and white a situation as you think it is.
I never claimed that Steam bans are only handed out for committing a crime, nor did I ever say they always resulted in loss of access to games. I assumed that specifically happened in this case because that was what the article claimed, but I never assumed nor implied that it was the norm. But thanks for being insulting and condescending anyway.
It's black and white, not grey, digital games are property, the law just hasn't caught up to reality yet -- at least not in the US. The EU treats it like what it is. And their TOS isn't worth crap except, again, in the US, where corporations effectively own the government. You can't sign away basic rights in a contract, especially not in a contract of adhesion, which is what these EULAs are. The laws in this country are effed up majorly.Vivi22 said:Perhaps, but we're not talking about stealing a physical item. We're talking about blatant copyright infringement which opened, not only the perpetrator, but Valve as well to legal liability and defrauded thousands of paying customers. This wasn't a case of stealing from one person and causing harm which is easily rectified by returning what was stolen.Owyn_Merrilin said:
Fair enough. Then he gets a slap on the wrist and those who are morally outraged by a blatant criminal being harshly punished can calm down a bit. I wonder if it would be worth NCSoft's time and effort to sue this guy though. He certainly deserves it whether it were to happen or not.
No, it would be taking away access to their games after they committed a criminal act and left Valve open to civil liability. Had Valve not caught this so soon they could have been on the hook for some rather large legal damages had they been sued. And for all any of us knows, they may be within their rights to remove access to your Steam games under such circumstances based on the TOS. And let's face it, worse clauses than that have been upheld by courts in EULA's. Hell, the way ownership of software is viewed under the law is that you're buying a license which is controlled by the creator, not a copy of the software. This could make taking away access when you abuse said license to commit a crime and profit from it perfectly acceptable under the law.
It may be a bit of a grey area, and maybe there is some case law I'm not aware of that says otherwise (I'm not a lawyer so I don't have a high level understanding of the legislation and case law on this subject), but it may not be as black and white a situation as you think it is.
I never claimed that Steam bans are only handed out for committing a crime, nor did I ever say they always resulted in loss of access to games. I assumed that specifically happened in this case because that was what the article claimed, but I never assumed nor implied that it was the norm. But thanks for being insulting and condescending anyway.
As for the difference between copyright infringement and theft, yes there is a difference, but it doesn't matter to my example. The point was, he broke the law, but what everyone thought Valve had done was, if anything, worse. I'll give you another example, based on what used to be a real punishment in certain countries: you can't cut off someone's hand for shoplifting, even if they signed a contract saying that's what would happen if they shoplifted. Or how about this one, which is closer to what happened here: you don't take someone's physical record collection because they got caught downloading music. The theft of the records is actually a much more serious crime than the copyright infringement involved in the downloading.
By the way, the last part, about what it takes to get a steam ban, was less aimed at you and more at the people in this thread who had literally been claiming it takes something this major to get a ban. Look through it. There are people saying that nobody should be saying "well what if valve took your games?" because obviously it takes something this major, and the great and powerful Valve would never ban anyone for anything less.
You see the difference here is you said "EA" if this were EA doing it it wouldn't matter one way or the other - people would be all up in arms about how horrible EA is and how much BS being banned from the games you bought off Origin is ...Andy Chalk said:
Now since this is Valve and Steam its obviously "Steam is a service, not a product" despite, you know, having paid for products on their service.