Valve Drops the Hammer On Infringing Dota 2 Mace

[Excludos]

I didn't even know there were chests and keys in DOTA 2. I haven't played it in a long, long time.

Its how they plan to make money off it. Its going to be free to play, and then you can buy cosmetics for your heroes. Unlike TF2, however, you can not buy anything that affects gameplay. So no buying tp scrolls for money or a +5 intelligence staff for your Invoker.
After every game, you also get a random chance to gain an item, or a chest. The chests can be unlocked with keys you buy with money, and usually have a chance of dropping something you cannot normally buy in the shop. Like the mace in this article.

The keys are actually really expensive, a lot more expensive than most normal items you can buy (one key is ?1.99 in europe). I have no idea how the contributers earns their money. But say they earn ?0.25 for every chest unlocked that includes their item, thats a whopping ?6250, or $7683, whichever you prefer.

That is a lot of money earnt from theft.

Again, to the people saying getting his account banned is "too much". Get a fucking grip.

 

[Jumplion]

I doubt the item creator produced this item out of malicious intent. We see modders making items and stuff that either mimics or completely replicates another thing (I bet you there are plenty of skins for the characters that reference some popular anime, or weapon skins that look like some famous weapon from another game or something). He probably just thought "Hey, the Aion axe thing here would be pretty neat to see in the game," as VALVe themselves do plenty of events that include items references other games, especially for TF2. Not a smart thing to do, but still.

Now, if the modder just took the model file and converted it or whatever, then that does suck and that is plagiarism. There's a fine line between just someone wanting to pay homage and see something cool in the game to just complete plagiarism with malicious intent.

Though, legitimate question, if he made the model from scratch could the item be fallen under homage or fair use or something? Probably not, but still, random thought.

 

[thirion1850]

Wonderful, glad to know me not supporting steam anymore is valid. He does something as small as this and gets banned for it and loses access to all the games he paid for.

Small? He stole another person/company's Intellectual Property and passed it off as his own for SALE in a different game product. That's not small, that's HUGE! He deserved his ban.

Yeah and he spent who knows how much off games on Steam. Ban him from ever playing the game again and prevent him from making money off the item , but losing 1000s of dollars worth of games is not fair. I'm never replacing my discs if getting banned is this easy.

Blatant, open-handed plagiarism for which he could receive potential profits and a possible big law-suit for Valve over his scheme isn't "small". He agreed to the terms of services with Steam and should be aware of the consequences. I believe it's in the agreement right above the section labeled "tough shit, don't get caught next time, you thieving prick".

Getting banned from Steam is difficult, such as his actions were. And believe me, the consequences for doing this could have been so, so much worse for him in terms of law than just losing a bunch of games.

 

[Itsthefuzz]

.

Maybe this perp deserved it but who among us is really comfortable with that WMD hanging over their heads?

Not me. Steam doesn't ban for small, idiotic reasons. If they have, I haven't seen it. That's like criticizing the police for arresting someone and saying, 'Who here can ever be comfortable knowing that someone can just come to your house an arrest you like that?' Uh, maybe the people who don't break the law?

 

[AsurasFinest]

Just so some of you realise, this guy would have stood to make around $13000 to $15000 on those crates. With artwork he stole from another game.
In Universities you pay 1000's of dollars to attend them and if you do shit like this they will kick you out, with no chance to return. Do you complain when they do that?

It's the same type of thing here.

 

[infinity_turtles]

I'd be fine with him getting sued, whether he'd owe a bunch of money would be up to a court if that was the case. And he almost certainly would. What I don't like is this "service" talk regarding Steam, when clearly their service is presented as a digital retailer selling a product. I've bought boxed copies of games only to be redirected to Steam. The fact that they can take away games I own the disc for is bullshit.

They can't, legally speaking, take away your games, They can, however, prevent you from using their service to access them... but then, so can your ISP. In fact your ISP can effectively 'ban' you from every game you have with online DRM.

ISP isn't banning me from anything, as I can always take my business somewhere else and look-y there I still have all the stuff I paid for. Anyway, games with always on online DRM go in my do not buy list...

And anytime Valve does it to someone I'm going to call bullshit.

You do realise that Valve deleting accounts isn't exactly rare, right? If they terminate accounts for instances of what they believe to be abuse of the gifting system what do you think they'd do to someone who used IP they didn't own to earn money through Steam?

and Steam games I generally avoid buying too, but I won't say always after I opened a new account to buy Orcs Must Die 2, because I want to support Robot Entertainment. I needed a new account because they tried to charge me twice for a game I gifted to someone a couple years back, I called their customer service and told no they're still going to charge me twice, and of course when I had my bank block one of the charges they banned my account. So yes, yes I do know they do this all the time. I suppose I should've more accurately said "And anytime I see Valve doing something like this I'm going to call bullshit."

 

[scotth266]

He probably just thought "Hey, the Aion axe thing here would be pretty neat to see in the game," as VALVe themselves do plenty of events that include items references other games, especially for TF2. Not a smart thing to do, but still.

There is a large difference between the two. When Valve releases an object in their games that references another game/creative work, it is either a promotional tie-in that has the direct permission of the creators (see Hero Academy as an example), or the reference is something that wouldn't violate copyright law (their halloween costume for the engineer was a reference to old horror flick The Fly, for instance: but it isn't copying anything directly and the copyright for the movie may have already expired.)

This on the other hand is a blatant ripoff. As you said:

Now, if the modder just took the model file and converted it or whatever, then that does suck and that is plagiarism.

Which appears to be what he did.

Though, legitimate question, if he made the model from scratch could the item be fallen under homage or fair use or something? Probably not, but still, random thought.

It would probably depend on a number of factors - if he had the files to show that he actually made the thing himself, whether or not he had been an Aion player, etc. "Homages" are tolerated to a certain degree, as are "creations" that look familiar to other work, but this work is apparently so similar to the original that it doesn't seem like this was a case of either happening.[footnote]I believe that whether or not someone pursues you over copyright violations depends mostly on their lawyers and how merciful the copyright holder is feeling. Some artists allow remixes of their work.[/footnote]

 

[Jumplion]

He probably just thought "Hey, the Aion axe thing here would be pretty neat to see in the game," as VALVe themselves do plenty of events that include items references other games, especially for TF2. Not a smart thing to do, but still.

There is a large difference between the two. When Valve releases an object in their games that references another game/creative work, it is either a promotional tie-in that has the direct permission of the creators (see Hero Academy as an example), or the reference is something that wouldn't violate copyright law (their halloween costume for the engineer was a reference to old horror flick The Fly, for instance: but it isn't copying anything directly and the copyright for the movie may have already expired.)

Yeah, I know it's different, but my point was that the midset for some people could be skewed a bit when they see VALVe doing this kind of stuff all the time. I'm sure tehre are plenty of threads out there that are like "Like this thread if you want to see VALVe put in the Power Rangers Battle Suit for the Heavy!" in the hopes that VALVe will strike a deal with the company and make something like that. And as I said, many modders already take copyrighted materials and make items out of them as a form of homage to the source material.

Though, again, this doesn't excuse actual plagiarism, which this case seems to be.

 

[LazyAza]

As someone who has scooted around the edges of copyright infringement I'd say his punishment was indeed harsh. Simply just not letting him have the money from sales of the item and disallowing him to share content for the game in the future would seem fairer to me.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Yet one more reason to envy pirates. Some company can't come along and essentially delete your game library.

Maybe this perp deserved it but who among us is really comfortable with that WMD hanging over their heads? I can picture a consumer law requiring the refund for the destruction of any "digital property" like this. A long term Steam library is not an investment to laugh away.

Did you even read the article? THe dude stole a design from NCsoft, published it to Dota 2, made MONEY off it, and caused legal crap for VALV[sup]E[/sup]

I'm not sure what you think you're entitled to when you agree to Steam's ToS, none of the above is covered though. It's not a WMD, It's proportional response.

Ever seen this? In this scenario, The President's idea is entirely justified.

 

[marurder]

So lets say someone else does it and then Valve gets sued for copyright infringement? Of course the same steps may follow. Remove the offending material, ban player. But then They would still lose money on legal fees and if found guilty (probably wont) have to pay more than the price of a 'few games'.

Perfectally fair to ban the player from all his games if he's cheating the system. It's called "life".

If you don't agree to it, don't use services such as STEAM, Battlenet. Where everything is linked.

 

[Snotnarok]

He was caught stealing from another game and getting it submitted, I think there was a bit of a decent reason to shut him out of the game especially since that should be common sense.

 

[Loonyyy]

Full on plagiarism and you think being locked out of steam is too heavy? If you were caught doing this at university you'd be banned from graduating. There are many cases in the real world where you get charged thousands of dollars for this sort of willful infringement. I think he got off lightly really.

I think I agree with this guy. You pay to be at university, at least in Australia, and the HECS fees come to about $1000 per subject per semester, so $4000 a semester. If you plaigurise on a subject, you're instantly failed, and potentially barred from taking the course for 12 months, or even barred from the university. If someone does this after first semester, they're losing more than $4000. Compared to that, which is generally seen as fair, I'm less than sympathetic about the loss of a steam games library, epecially since the guy not only would have known what he was doing, but did it for profit. As punishments for plaigurism go, this is light.

 

[subtlefuge]

Wonderful, glad to know me not supporting steam anymore is valid. He does something as small as this and gets banned for it and loses access to all the games he paid for.

Small? He stole another person/company's Intellectual Property and passed it off as his own for SALE in a different game product. That's not small, that's HUGE! He deserved his ban.

Yeah and he spent who knows how much off games on Steam. Ban him from ever playing the game again and prevent him from making money off the item , but losing 1000s of dollars worth of games is not fair. I'm never replacing my discs if getting banned is this easy.

As easy as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.

1. Gathering the art assets from a game.
2. Making adjustments for use in another game.
3. Willfully passing on work as your own idea.
4. Ignore several warnings of actions and consequences along the way.
5. Be lucky and not have anybody notice.
6. Never admit to what you have done.
7. Lie, cheat, steal, and be generally a person of zero integrity.
8. Profit.

Banning is really a blessing. By removing him from the service and quickly fixing the issue, they've saved him the uncomfortable position of being liable for being the delightful person he's been lately. Something you and him seem to have in common is an inability to understand consequences to actions. Maybe he can make a new account when he learns how to function in society again.

 

[Berenzen]

I've seen two other cases of plagiarism aside from this, and this it basically just a slap on the wrist in comparison.

The first time was a fifth-year university student. Plagiarised, was caught and immediately expelled from the University. That's just a little over $22500, and he's blacklisted from every University across Canada. He cannot complete his degree, meaning the job market is now limited for him.

The second time was the Dean of Medicine at the University of Alberta. He was caught plagiarising a speech that he gave to the graduating class, and he lost the position of Dean, and I believe he lost tenure as well. Basically everything he does is now under scrutiny, one misstep and he's fired. He took just a little over $100,000 salary drop for that. Considering he has probably close to twenty years left before retirement, that's about two million dollars that he's lost out on.

So yeah, this guy got off lightly in comparison. He could have had a lot worse.

 

[edos63]

I suppose this guy deserved it, but what worries me is that Steam may start banning accounts for more minor copyright infringements, or even accidental ones. Can this sort of thing be reversed?

 

[Two-A]

Wonderful, glad to know me not supporting steam anymore is valid. He does something as small as this and gets banned for it and loses access to all the games he paid for.

Small? He stole another person/company's Intellectual Property and passed it off as his own for SALE in a different game product. That's not small, that's HUGE! He deserved his ban.

Yeah and he spent who knows how much off games on Steam. Ban him from ever playing the game again and prevent him from making money off the item , but losing 1000s of dollars worth of games is not fair. I'm never replacing my discs if getting banned is this easy.

It's not like he was banned for saying Half Life 2 sucks in the steam forum. He was banned for stealing content from another game and releasing as his own, and ripped off over 2000 users in the process. This, when combined with the fact that he was going to make money off the item's sale, which means he was basically trying to set up a con.

 

[lacktheknack]

Full on plagiarism and you think being locked out of steam is too heavy? If you were caught doing this at university you'd be banned from graduating. There are many cases in the real world where you get charged thousands of dollars for this sort of willful infringement. I think he got off lightly really.

This. I sat through four different lectures in University, all of which boiled down to "if you put someone else's work in as your own, WE WILL BAN YOU FROM THE WHOLE SCHOOL SYSTEM. Then, we will HUNT DOWN EVERYONE YOU'VE EVER LOVED AND KILLLLLLLLL THEM. And you will also get a zero in the course. And no, you don't get your tuition back."

This guy caused even greater problems to Valve, so Valve sure as hell don't want him as a contributor.

 

[lacktheknack]

Wonderful, glad to know me not supporting steam anymore is valid. He does something as small as this and gets banned for it and loses access to all the games he paid for.

Small? He stole another person/company's Intellectual Property and passed it off as his own for SALE in a different game product. That's not small, that's HUGE! He deserved his ban.

Yeah and he spent who knows how much off games on Steam. Ban him from ever playing the game again and prevent him from making money off the item , but losing 1000s of dollars worth of games is not fair. I'm never replacing my discs if getting banned is this easy.

Under other circumstances, this is punishable by jail time.

What were you saying about it being unfair?