HIB Developer Alledges IP Theft

[Kreij]

Wolfire Games, organiser of the recent $1 million-earning Humble Indie Bundle and developer of indie action game Lugaru, has fallen prey to "illegal" game cloning.

Wolfire alleges that a group of developers including Alex Matlin and Michael Latour, in the guise of 'iCoder' was guilty of " simply downloading the app and resubmitting it to the same distribution channel at a lower price."

Wolfire's Lugaru HD sells on the Mac App Store for $10, and iCoder's 'Lugaru' for $0.99.

This just pisses me off. If the allegations are true, you can't get any lower than this. :shadedshu

Source : gamesindustry.biz (registration required for full article access)

 

[KainXS]

Damn, . . . . . . Now thats some dirty shit.

they fired back with this nonsense

“The license we were granted allows for non-exclusive redistribution of the source code or the compiled product, modified or unmodified, for a fee or free of charge,” an spokesperson for iCoder said, referring to the code’s release as part of the Humble Indie Bundle."

 

[Kreij]

The HIB let you give all the money to charity instead of the devs if you wanted.
I don't think buying it from the Apple App store gives you that option, but if a dev is wiling to give his IP and source code away to help charity ... and you steal it ... (sorry, can't print this comment without getting myself banned).

 

[Mr McC]

Scum: any court ruling should oblige them to hand all profits over to charity.

 

[Kreij]

If their reply about the licensing terms is true, then Wolfire has no legal standing at all.

Still ... I can't imagine making my claim to fame (or a profit) by being the monkey on the back of an Indie developer.
As if they don't have enough problems staying alive in a cutthroat video game market as it is.

I've bought more Indie games in the last year than AAA titles.

 

[Mr McC]

If their reply about the licensing terms is true, then Wolfire has no legal standing at all.

Still ... I can't imagine making my claim to fame (or a profit) by being the monkey on the back of an Indie developer.
As if they don't have enough problems staying alive in a cutthroat video game market as it is.

I've bought more Indie games in the last year than AAA titles.

Maybe it isn't legally wrong, but it sure as hell is morally wrong: it stinks.

Yeah, Indie games are getting better.