next »

[moi]

This happens all the time, Aquin would need to track all of china, can you do that aquin?

[mewse]

I don't know how payments from sold goods on the App Store currently works, but why can't they just always be delayed by, say, a week. That way, when stuff like this happens, the payment can be withheld until the matter has been resolved... and then paid out to the actual rightsholder of the game. There'll be less risk of these kinds of pirates actually making any money from their wrong-doings then.

Payments from the App Store are delayed.

App Store payments ordinarily occur about a month after the end of the month in which the sales were made, assuming that the total payment-to-developer would be $150 US or more.  (If less than that amount, payment will be delayed until a month after the month where the accrued payment-to-the-developer reaches $150 US)

So forget your "a week" delay, Apple's already delaying the payments by six to eight weeks.  Should be plenty of time for this sort of issue to get sorted out.

EDIT:  If you're a registered iOS developer, you can see Apple's App Store payment policies here.  Just added this link because the information is kind of tricky to find, if you don't know exactly where it is.

[Aquin]

It's true, I couldn't possibly find all of them.  But I think doing that would be a waste of time.  Instead of going after these jerks, we should be holding Apple liable for copyright/trademark infringement.  It would be easier.

And in case anybody is wondering what Apple does when this comes to their attention:  Garden Gnome Carnage is still up and still available even *AFTER* the investigation.  And the only reason they bothered investigating in the first place was because of complaints.

Simply put, Apple is only interested in covering their ass.  Which makes sense.  But it's leaving a lot of developers, who have no recourse otherwise, in the damn cold.  I guess we could argue all day about who did what, but it'd be less effective than answering/debating the following question:

What do we do about this growing situation as a group of indie developers ourselves?

[Chris Z]

I think maybe we should compile a list of violations and put it up as a link from the front page.  If enough of us sputter about it, maybe it'll go somewhere. 

This isn't a bad idea, especially if it gains traction outside of the indie game dev community.  Derek didn't mind getting involved with the Langdell stuff and this is less personal and has wider impact.

[Aquin]

I wouldn't really mind keeping a list, but I'm not sure how we could find out about all the violations.  I imagine there are quite a few that nobody's even detected yet.  Still, even with such little attention, I still notice this topic coming up at least once a week these days. 

[Craig Stern]

Apple really needs an incentive to start checking this stuff.

What do we do about this growing situation as a group of indie developers ourselves?

You know how people will put together a legal defense fund for someone who's been wrongfully sued? The thought occurred to me that perhaps we could put together a legal offense fund to support Wolfire in suing Apple.

[Aquin]

Yeah, I think I could get behind that.  I'm not the richest gent, but I'd be happy to help out even if it's not much.   

[Nix]

I'm not sure trying to sue Apple would be the most fruitful idea. Suing the guys who stole the game though might actually get somewhere.

[Aquin]

We've gone over it before, Nix.  Targeting Apple is kinda the only thing that can work.  These frauds are usually in other countries and difficult to track down.  Apple's review process is *clearly* not rigorous enough to screen out the weasels and they're benefiting off this whole mess (albeit indirectly, but it still makes them culpable.)

It's sorta the only realistic scenario, if *any* legal action is to ensue.  I'm just not sure how they'd respond.  Apple is not known for their kindness.

[mewse]

Aquin, can you point me at the data you're referencing, supporting these statements?

A:  "These frauds are usually in other countries"
B:  "and difficult to track down."

And anyhow, surely you'd be able to get the information from 'B' from Apple, if you had a legitimate grievance, yes?  It might require a court-ordered subpoena, but you could easily get that by filing a lawsuit against a "John Doe" fraudster, and demonstrating to the court that Apple must have details of their identity.

[Aquin]

Actually, yes.  A lot of fraudulent claims has come out of a sorta umbrella con-scheme going on in China.  

But let's talk about a specific case, involving something that happened a few weeks ago.  You can check the thread on TIGS here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17029.msg488755#msg488755

In this case, the user yzhapp, simply ceased to exist once he was caught.  According to Apple's own profile on the developer, all the contact information turned into dead-ends.  I tried my best to track anything down, but after the story broke, the chinese seller simply disappeared.

It seems Apple didn't even make an attempt to contact the seller, even to verify information or veracity of the app.  I'm not sure they ever had useful contact information in the first place. They still haven't contacted the affected developer, even after the popularity of the reddit article, but at least they pulled the offending app.

So at least there's a sorta happy ending: http://www.halfbot.com/?p=380
Of course, the original devs are still out a ton of money.

In the end, it seems *publicity* and public shaming of Apple is what brought about the conclusion.  I'd like to see more of the same for similarly affected indie devs.

But at the end of the day, hoping to catch these guys one at a time is just not gonna work;  we need to encourage Apple to be better at their review process for new apps.

[Christian Knudsen]

Payments from the App Store are delayed.

App Store payments ordinarily occur about a month after the end of the month in which the sales were made, assuming that the total payment-to-developer would be $150 US or more.  (If less than that amount, payment will be delayed until a month after the month where the accrued payment-to-the-developer reaches $150 US)

So forget your "a week" delay, Apple's already delaying the payments by six to eight weeks.  Should be plenty of time for this sort of issue to get sorted out.

EDIT:  If you're a registered iOS developer, you can see Apple's App Store payment policies here.  Just added this link because the information is kind of tricky to find, if you don't know exactly where it is.

Thanks for this info! So how do these frauds ever make any money from the games they post to the App Store (assuming the fraudulent games are discovered in time)? Maybe it's just that the games don't earn more than $150 per month, so they do get paid right away? Also, do you know what happens to any accrued funds when a game is found to be sold illegally? Are they simply refunded to the buyers?

[moi]

Two words : class Action suit

[sugarbeard]

A website needs to be set up to keep track and investigate these offenses. There's tons of mainstream blogs that are covering this issue now also (Gamasutra, Kotaku, etc...) The wheel are turning and we need to give this issue a bigger push to really get the ball rolling.

We can create a site that tracks these offences, and the people perpetrating them, that's step one. Step two is to take this directly to Apple.

Once we have a list, and proof, of more game devs that are being ripped off and exploited (since this is happening every other week, a big list should come about quite easily) then this issue should be taken to Apples doorstep. I don't think suing Apple is really the best solution, as much as outting them and there application process as being completely broken. Tech sites like Gizmodo etc... would probably follow such a story if we could present it with the facts and numbers behind whats going on. I think pressure from the tech / geek community could maybe be enough to get Apple to rethink how it goes about handling these issues. Suing someone like Apple would require an insane amount of money, where as bad publicity in the right places could harm there relationships with there developers. Hit them where it hurts.

[Aquin]

Yeah, passing around the list amongst the various top sites would definitely help us out.  Of course a few of these offenses have been mentioned on Slashdot, so I'm not sure how much further we could really go with it.

@mewse, even with the payments delayed, the fraud isn't usually uncovered for quite awhile.  That yzhapp guy ripped off quite a few games over the course of ~six months before he was nailed on any of them. 

I suppose one could argue continued diligence on behalf of the original creators, but that seems like an impossible task.  I don't think any sane person would seriously make that argument.