Developers Copied Game Demo and Sell it for $2.99
11 posts across 4 communities in the last 30 days; 64% from r/gamedev.
“hello everyone im new and dont make reddit posts often so dont hate too much lmao but im just here to get some advice on my situation. Im currently making a game right now that i've been thinking of for 10+ years. ever since i was in intro to game design making games on…”
“Professional gamedev here (17yrs), and I just wanted to give you my perspective on the major issues the industry faces from this emerging problem, from what I think is the most problematic to the least. People reverse-engineering games and then re-releasing the games for free in…”
“A lot of the discourse here and in other subs around the recent wave of AI reverse engineered software is driving me crazy, so I figured I’d come on here and share some information to clear up a lot of misconceptions. Let’s start with some definitions: Reverse Engineering…”
Several developers express concern about intellectual property theft, specifically instances where free game demos are reverse-engineered, ported to other platforms (like Mac), and resold commercially without permission. This is particularly frustrating when the original creator cannot contact the copyright holder or the developer has disappeared.
SOURCES (23)
“Wait, the dev should patent this. I'm serious! This could be stolen by those 'poor' billion-dollar corporates anytime! [re: NPCs can talk back now | from universal modder on X: "Introducing NPCTalk: make the NPCs of any game talk in realtime. I made every NPC…”
“What can I do against this? We've discovered they have the EXACT same website copy pasted under a different name as well. My friend inspected the "game" download and it's some WPF app that's not a game. We're assuming it's some infostealer. It's blatantly obvious they're targeting my players because they put "a 2D sandbox MMO" in their description, which is exactly what my game is. I don't have the name trademarked but I've been publicly us”
“People do not understand their rights and restrictions today. Influencers copy videos willy-nilly, gamers decompile software, developers use other's likeness, audio, music, etc. The idea of copyright is almost none-existant. People are also able to hide behind a private account where no accountability is required. It's easy to make a new account and bypass IP blocks. Where are we heading, and what can we do? I've been a modder and professional game developer for 20 years. I remember”
“hello everyone im new and dont make reddit posts often so dont hate too much lmao but im just here to get some advice on my situation. Im currently making a game right now that i've been thinking of for 10+ years. ever since i was in intro to game design making games on gamesalad my freshmen year ive been "crafting" (last 10 years has just been mostly head crafting) but Im actually in dev of it now and im finding a game thats VERY close to my exact vision for my game. I mean they e”
“I recently played High Stakes, a really good Pico-8 game. After finishing my first run, a lot of ideas came to me to make the game better or bigger. Would it be ethical to copy the main idea(flipping cards and using power ups), make it in something like c++ and expand it(obviously stating in the credits that it was inspired by the original game)? submitted by /u/ExternalSecure3704 [link] [comments]”
“Professional gamedev here (17yrs), and I just wanted to give you my perspective on the major issues the industry faces from this emerging problem, from what I think is the most problematic to the least. People reverse-engineering games and then re-releasing the games for free in a browser or on some other platform. Imo this is simply piracy. There's some precedent for this from the music industry, which has had to tackle similar problems for years. I can't imagine this lasting too long;”
“A lot of the discourse here and in other subs around the recent wave of AI reverse engineered software is driving me crazy, so I figured I’d come on here and share some information to clear up a lot of misconceptions. Let’s start with some definitions: Reverse Engineering Reverse Engineering (in software) is the practice of creating a piece of software with the same feature set as some existing software. Traditionally this is done with a “black box” approach, where, in order to keep things legal”
“so, i noticed after schedule 1 came out there were games that took part of its name with art work of drugs/weed and started making games using the "schedule/drugs" success to make F tier games. Ultimately think this was done to maybe confuse people as to what the correct game was and now its gotten worse. Recently while checking out game demos i found a game "find the needle" and started playing it. Its a "dig a massive hole" game but with hay basically it had a bun”
“I'm gonna be deliberately vague as I'm worried if i publicly accuse them they will obfuscate the tracks as much as possible. I have been working on a game for the past 6 months, wrote it in raylibs and C++. I recently made a WASM build of the demo and threw it up on a cloudflare page so that i could share it with a few friends and previous co-workers...(ive now taken this page down now) 1 day later. I stumble upon a GitHub page....with a cloned copy of my demo, using all my assets... whi”
“Someone I don't know contacted me claiming they made a version of my game. They sent me a video, but I haven't opened it because I'm worried it could contain a virus or somethin. they're asking me for $200 and threatening to publish it on Steam if I don't pay. what is this? submitted by /u/psicodart_games [link] [comments]”
“Hello everyone, We wanted to share something important and ask some help. Recently, we discovered that My Own Hero Party has been stolen and reuploaded to Douyin mini-apps, they basically got the version that I had uploaded on itch, and I left a lot of gameplay still blocked there to not be playable because it was not polished yet, they made all that part available, wrapped in a mobile shell and added Ads, and uploaded to Douyin. The stolen version uses the exact same files, it is not a remake,”
“Ever since the original developer announced his game "Needle in a Haystack", several copycats have copied the concept on Steam. End even the name! AI has made this even easier. I’ve heard people say that, anyway, “no one owns this popular phrase". But you wouldn’t go naming your games "War Hammer", "Civilization", "Mine Craft", or “Bannerlord” without risking a lawsuit on the grounds that they’re "common words". And I’m not sure you really n”
“When I was building my demo I took out a chunk of code needed for the full game and replaced it with a metrics call. In the first 5 hours of my game demo being up on itch, and only 3 downloads, I already see that metric has been fired! Now I have plans for my next version doing silly things to the game when that triggers Are there any other thoughts on avoiding issues with people hijacking demos? Anyhow, Be careful out there with your demos!!! submitted by /u/LittlestDev [link]”
“Hi I'm the developer of Slotbound. I've been working on it mostly by myself nearly for a year now and the demo is currently on Steam. Today a Chinese player contacted me and told me there is a game on Douyin called 军团毁灭大战. At first I thought it was just another game inspired by Slotbound. Then I saw the screenshots. And... yeah. They didn't just make something almost same Most of the pixel art, unit designs, UI layout and other parts of the game look almost directly taken from Slotbo”
A while ago I made a mini arcade controller for a game called pop n music and made a video about it https://youtu.be/IBQVEidvWy0?is=d2i7J9bthSe\_7VD4 I checked my comments today and someone said it…
“I'm a solo indie developer, and I've been working on my game entirely by myself. I released a demo on Steam back in July, with the full game planned to launch in about two months. Yesterday, I found out that there are already two separate pirated versions of my game on Douyin/TikTok Mini Games. This wasn't just someone copying the idea or taking some assets. They reverse-engineered the actual game, changed the name, modified parts of it, removed all of the developer information, adde”
“hello so apparently some developers don't want to use Godot due to the ease of stealing the project and then selling it. Which is extremely painful especially if you spent the majority of your time trying to make your game perfect. however I can't find a single UE5 or even UE3 project that was stolen. I want to use Godot C++ and I prefer it way more than Unreal Engine BUT THE FEAR IS PUSHING ME BACK. submitted by /u/StudyHard23 [link] [comments]”
“Of course it all depends. But also, where I am, the winner gets all the expenses with the lawsuit paid as well.”
“I've been working on a small game called 'typecaster' for about a year. I'm a very amateur gamdev, and this is my first full game project. A few days ago I assembled a small team to help finish the game, with art music and some more complicated programming bits i was struggling with. Yesterday, a member of my group messaged me with a link to a steam page of a game that is also called Typecaster, and shares the same gimmick of typing in the names of spells to cast them. The gamepl”
“A few days ago, my friend (who is also the composer for my game) randomly sent me a link to the Japanese App Store. At first, I had no idea what I was looking at until I opened it. It was my game. Someone took my project without my permission, reverse engineered it, ported it to Mac, and uploaded it for $2.99. The ironic part is that this was just a free demo made for a game jam. I honestly think it takes a ridiculous amount of audacity to do something like this, especially with a free game (the”
“I've been able to reverse-engineer my favorite PC game as a kid. An old game that was written in Turbo Pascal, abandonware. The copyright belongs to a dev who has gone AWOL and disappeared, can't be contacted anymore. I started doing this as a small fanfare, rebuilding in Rust for my own enjoyment. It allows me to procedurally generate new content, use AI to remake graphic and audio assets. But I want to release it publicly (free) for other fans to enjoy/build on. Just concerned about le”