One Hour One Life Forums

It isn't very professional to be saying things like that about them . Like, we understand you. But the fact remains...You declared the game was BOTH copyright free and in the public domain(which I just found out about) within the text document itself after downloading it.

Again, you need to copyright your future builds of the game. And leave the current build as it is(because you can't go back on that). Or this will keep happening to you. No amount of trash talk is going to fix this situation.

You need to talk to a lawyer and actually learn about what copyright law is. Because at this time; your misunderstanding of copyright law may have sold your game, ownership and creative rights to that mobile developer(and everyone on the internet) for next to no money.

Don't put future builds of the game in public domain, stop throwing away your legal rights to it only to complain about those rights being gone later- and talk to an actual lawyer.

We already advised you on what to do, and we can't force you to listen to us.

Yeah. Thats a problem...

I don't agree with lineage/area bans. It defeats the purpose of the game to simulate real life. And defeats the purpose of vehicle travel and bell towers entirely. But there SHOULD be consequences for purposefully disconnecting yourself or killing yourself before you become a teenager. Because thats *actually* how these players exploit the system to respawn back where they were. Not because there are multiple other families there.

Even with lineage bans, people are just going to kill themselves until they get back to their late game settlements. That's the real problem. And It's super annoying in general when you are in the early game starting from scratch(the best part, IMO. Late game is sort of boring. Everything is already made) and your settlement dies because all the players spawning in, just disconnect their way into a better village.

In my start up village, I had six children. 4 of which were girls, and they all disconnected/suicided, becoming skeletons or running away from me(why are babies that fast anyway???) except one boy and one girl. My mother(Eve) had several more and all of them did the same thing. In the end, it was just me(who was past fertility) and my son, who was literally functionally unable to carry our genes elsewhere(If this was real life; he was well enough and young enough to travel and attempt to find someone to bear his children with our family name; but no system is in place for that)- so in our frustration, our game and lineage just ended with nothing we could do about it. Which means to the game, that we failed and our genes went extinct. So Lineage/area bans are functionally useless to stop those players.

I still think it would be better for there to be a fathering system, where a male and female of no relation within a nearby radius of a player will be credited as the mother and father(players that spawn in without no-relation males around, should spawn in without fathers as normal). With the child taking on the fathers name and continuing that line. Eventually Big cities would become multicultural, until the nuke button is pushed and we are all back to being Eve's with nothing. That's the beauty of the game. It's survival of your genes. But if you are born a male, you literally are functionally unimportant(other than for physical labor) and contribute nothing to your family tree. And thats a crying shame.

So why stop whats going to inevitably happen? The point of the game is to build society from the ground up(and then nuke it to the ground); and society is eventually created by merging with other families. And players will naturally gravitate to connecting villages whether a ban is in place or not. So I don't think familial ban is very smart way to deal with the problem(perhaps reduced fertility if there is too many players in one spot).

I would instead implement punishments for people who repeatedly suicide and disconnect as children. The game clearly recognizes when a disconnect has occured(leaving a skeleton baby in your hands) and Babies/newborns should really not run that fast to be able to escape in the first place. If you are an eve and have too many kids at once and no food... and they can't run that fast... that is reality of a survival situation IRL. You take one baby(probably the female ones, since males are genetically worthless rn) and try to survive with the one to continue your genes. Thats the point.

Hell. Contact VideoGameAttorney. He's an actual legal attorney who often gives legal consultation(and sometimes defense, if i'm not mistaken) free(but not always free) for indie developers. That is like, his lifes mission. I think you definitely qualify. And yes, he is legitimate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMa6JtyAVeo https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti … developers

These are his pages;

https://morrisonlee.com/
https://www.reddit.com/user/VideoGameAttorney/
https://twitter.com/Morrison?ref_src=tw … r%5Eauthor

If he helps you, he can definitely tell you where you legally stand, and what you can do to protect yourself going forward. Even if it's not free, you'd probably save way more money than getting a different lawyer.

Well...I mean... you've let go of all your agency and rights to your work. Including your names association with it and by proxy, your credit for it as the creator. That's literally what it means. And I think those rights to your work are the parts you don't seem to realize you've lost.

And so, I have extreme difficulty believing you are going to feel the way you claim; if or when a bigger company lawfully takes your game and makes potential millions off of it while claiming they created all of it Especially based on your reactions to whats happened so far. Your game is steadily gaining an audience... and steadily gaining traction, it's inevitable that the game will eventually become it's own thing. The problem is... you will inevitably lose all your credit for it. Legally. Whether you are okay with that or not(and evidence on these forums really implies you are not okay with it).

I don't think the library comparison is within the same league at all either. The library is a physical entity, and peoples access to it is ultimately limited by whether the library has it at all, or if it's currently being borrowed by another person or not. The internet is infinite. One copy of your game can be obtained by millions of people; if someone either steals it or posts the entire thing for free. It's a completely different ballpark, and you stand to lose thousands to millions more dollars than JK rowling ever did when her books were put in libraries. At least, so long as you won't defend your own rights to your work.

And also, libraries are further NOT a comparison... when you consider that a person(lets call him Frank)can't just borrow a Harry potter book from the library, erase JK Rowling's name and picture out of the book- and then legally republish the book in stores around the world alongside the original, for 7 dollars cheaper; except instead with 'written by Frank' in place of JK Rowlings name on the front and back. That's LITERALLY what you are currently *legally* allowing for your game. And legality is all that matters.

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(At this very moment in time. Christoffer could literally just ignore you and legally restore *his* game to it's original state, and legally put his name/company name on it; and there is not a THING you could do about it. And his is apparently the more popular version- so in time his name would eventually be associated with it instead of yours. Especially if he had his own website for it that was identical to this one, because he could actually legally do that too(because you forfeited all your rights to it). And you wouldn't be able to do a THING about it. As the court would declare Christoffer is within his legal rights that you freely gave him. He could go further than that and legally call his version the *offical* version and his website the *offical* website as well.)

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And that is why World of Warcraft copyrighted their game. So people can't just make a brand new game or publish the same game with their assets and legally claim they made and own all of it and the 'world of warcraft' brand for commercial profit. (So I think you might be misunderstanding their business model and copyrights role in it's regulation...;;;)

So you say you don't believe in copyright law, well, okay I guess. I don't understand it(since copyright only exists to protect the creator, not necessarily to prevent users from making their own servers), but I'll respect your opinion. But as an industry professional myself; I'm still going to caution you. The decision you are making means that what has happened to you with Christoffer and China, is only the TIP of the iceberg. A lot worse is GOING to happen than that, unless someone just posts the entire thing for free. Which is probably going to happen too. But as long as you are prepared for that... then I guess it's none of my business.

But if this game turns out to be your magnum opus, that one smash hit that would've otherwise defined your career.... I just... Personally as an individual, I would be gravely upset if I saw someone else lawfully taking full credit and ownership of my own hard work for profit. You seem to think that people will always know and knowledge that you made it, but without those protections... your name isn't going to be the first one people associate with the game forever, at the rate this is going.

Just like how people steal artists artwork, and fill their galleries to pretend to be them...stealing their identity... or selling the art on mugs and shirts. That has a very real HIGH possibility of happening to you, except on a more damaging scale. Because you don't even have the general copyright protection all artists get by default(as you declared it opensource and are actually okay with people reselling your game). And I can't help but be really concerned and stressed out about it for you by proxy.

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Copyrights and trademarks aren't big evil things that stifle creativity and destroy things like modding communities. They solely exist so that people cannot claim to be you. To steal your credit. You could set your trademark/copyright protections so that everything you are doing now remains the same; but your brand(game name) and your credit for having MADE it is protected.

That is why everyone is confused at why you won't do it...  You are  putting so much effort to enforce your rights for your work, in exactly the way the law would handle it for you. Except the way things are currently, the people stealing credit are legally in the right and you aren't.

I don't know what can be done now. But If I were you, I would try to put the games title under trademark and make it so that newer assets and updates/features are covered under copyright law(separate the builds on different severs if you have to), but the ones currently out are not. And make a spot on your website that clarifies what is and is not public domain.

But im not even sure you can do that anymore. Everyone is right. Without copyright and trademarking; anyone can just take your game and sell it for much less than you. Meaning, you are making more and more updates- but getting less and less customers because a cheaper version is available elsewhere that is simply porting the updates you make. That is the oldest trick in the theft book.

And you've done that to yourself- because you are greatly underestimating what people and companies alike will take from you, without those people even being remotely sorry about it. If their version of game gets more popular...  even if their version costs less, they'll eventually make more money than you'll ever make; and you'll have done all the work. That is the reason copyright exists. So people are right when they say you are getting upset with something you've very clearly made a choice to do to yourself. Don't complain about it, and don't beg these other people and companies to stop- because technically they ARE lawfully doing it within their rights you gave them.

So DO something about it. Separate the opensource from the newer build; and then copyright the new version of it with the newer assets you've released. This will prevent people/companies from getting the modern/futuristic assets you have planned to release, as well as the more stable builds of the game lawfully. This will leave the people who are selling and marketing the opensource builds with a inferior version permanently unless they know the programming to alter it. Other than that, I don't know what else you can do.

Because as that article says about your games case(https://legalinspiration.com/?p=682#more-682):

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"Everybody hates cops until it’s their house being burgled, sort of thing. His post above details his issues and complaints, and contemplates various things he might to do deal with them. The thing is, we have systems for this. He just doesn’t want to participate in them. Again, his right. But he can’t have it both ways. “I don’t believe in trademarks, but you’re confusing people as to the source of these goods.” “I don’t believe in copyrights, but you’re changing my game to the point where it’s bringing my creation into artistic disrepute.”

"So, from my general understanding of what’s happening, here’s my non-legal opinion as to what he can do about this:

Nothing.

From a legal perspective, of course. From a moral/ethical/public opinion perspective, he can do exactly what he is doing – try to make people aware of the situation and try to pressure the mobile developer into helping to reduce the harm. Perfectly viable approach in many respects. But we have a system for dealing with just this problem: namely, consumer confusion as to the origin of a good or service. It’s called trademark law. He doesn’t want to use it. Mr. Rohrer is a gifted artist and a very smart man, but he’s not smarter than the cumulative efforts of hundreds of years of brilliant legal and commercial minds which created our current system. If he tries to create some sort of new approach, what he will do is recreate trademark law, because this is how we got trademark law in the first place."

"When I do consultations with potential new clients, one of the things I am fond of saying is that you cannot protect ideas. No legal system of which I am aware allows you to do that and philosophically, I’m not sure it can be done. What you can do is protect specific embodiments of ideas. You can patent inventions. You can copyright artistic creations. You can use specific distinctive names and other identifications as marks to identify your particular embodiments in trade (i.e., trademarks.) But once an idea is out, it’s out. It’s like the wind. No one can catch the wind for themselves: the wind blows, or doesn’t blow, for everyone. Once something is in the wind, it will flow to everyone in time.

By releasing his work into the public domain, Mr. Rohrer has put it into the wind. He has every right to complain, morally speaking, if people are acting in ways he finds objectionable and/or cause him to have to deal with problems he did not create. But he doesn’t believe in the systems we’ve evolved to help address exactly these questions.

I reviewed the discussion on his forum about the situation (well, one of them) and the more I read, the more that I got exactly that impression: he has a problem, the problem is a solved problem, but he doesn’t like the known solution. He’s even discovered the law of moral rights, but in the US at least, moral rights are inextricably associated with the concept of unfair competition (the case he cites, Gilliam v. American Broadcasting Companies, basically imported European-style moral rights into American law by saying you can’t alter a product, including an artistic work, and then pass it off as the original to the public.) In other words, it’s back to the ultimate underlying principle of trademark law: no confusing the public as to the source of goods or services, including making people think that a good or service was created by someone else when it’s no longer the good or service they created."

I disagree this would complicate things and make it a spreadsheet game. I was thinking this:

If you can only store 5-10 unique objects in it(initially I was thinking 20 objects period. But 5-10 stackable with a limit of 10-20 would be better) then I don't see how that would make it spread sheet at all. Especially since items would still decay; so you will be constantly losing things from within the storage(spoilt items should appear next to or below the healthy version or just disappear from the count).

I just think It would make things cleaner for everyone. Especially if crates were built near forges, farms, bakeries or the medic to desern their purposes. Humans aren't idiots. You can easily figure out that if a crate is next to a farm, thats where you are probably supposed to put all the carrots. Or.... yaknow. Someone else is just going to TELL you thats where the carrots are.

It's just convenient and gives people a place to put things. Like, earlier I was trying to make clothes. But all of the needles and thread were spread randomly in the village. It took me like, 10 minutes of play just to locate our needle and thread. And an additional amount of time JUST looking for our shovels and other tools. Not to mention, things are so cluttered, you often have to try a few times to pick up the actual item you wanted, if you misclicked.

Someone told me to move today because I was in the way of the ONE specific thing they wanted. There was no blank tiles on the map to stand on. Every single area of the village had SOMETHING uselessly sitting in the open for no reason. So in principal, depending on what you needed- EVERYONE was in the way.
(It should be noted that before Decaying was introduced; this was an ENORMOUS issue with one hour one life. Nothing ever went away so you had villages entirely FLOODED with baskets and tools which made everything so difficult)

So I disagree. I believe storage is a good thing. The resources it would take to make would be exceptionally useful over multiple generations. And thats the point. Difficult things to make are normally the most worthwhile.

It certainly doesn't HAVE to be the way I envisioned it. But I feel like other ways would be harder for the developer to implement. Like, individually stacking carrots in a carrot only crate, so the number of them is fully visible in world view. But doing something like that would mean he would have to do the same thing for all objects. IDK. Not an easy compromise to make.

But everything laying all over the ground(for no reason) breaks the immersion for me, personally.

That could have easily been fixed by implementing respawn times(like 1-3 or so real life days) for items/animals. That wasn't a player issue, it was fundamentally a game mechanic issue IRL real animals can retake abandoned burrows, real plants can grow and rocks can emerge from under the earth or crack off of other bigger rocks. This game does not have that. Jason wasn't taking into account that people would kill things purposefully....... but making it so that the ecosystem doesn't self recover is a huge game flaw in an MMORPG in the first place.

I don't get what 'specifically' your deal is. You are mad at people for giving criticism for a game (that they love btw) when it's really none of your business. If you like the new feature- fine. But if people feel that newly added feature is broken, then they have a right to say they don't like it. You can send angry fanboy comments my way all day but it won't change my opinion nor anyone elses.

Thing is, I don't really agree with Jason here.

I don't think civilization had progressed far enough to it's full potential yet, and as a player; I didn't feel like(nor anyone else I think)the gameplay had stagnated at all. Only people that respawned and died over and over to get to specific villages felt that way(and they deserved it). We still hadn't even gotten to the point where more than a couple villages were inter-connected. And we still have a huge issue where most villages and family trees don't last longer than 5 or so generations on average. And most people still didn't have any clothes.

Now bigger societies aren't going to happen. Because the apocalypse just means that both griefing is far easier and more destructive now; and society isn't going to have a chance to evolve past individual villages and camps... when a far better idea would have been to make easy to make items like bows and baskets decay(I don't think buildings and floors should though) after a few days real life time has gone by; to relieve stress on the servers.

I was excited these days about logging in and building more roads to connect more villages. I was seeing some great progression with how much roadways helped. Now if I log in it's going to be all gone; and it's very disappointing and demotivating.

I know adding a reset button was going to be necessary eventually; but I was only okay with it thinking it would happen when we hit a modern society stage. Adding the apocolypse was just an easier way to get rid of excess items on the server instead of programming them to decay or to stack into one item. I'm not very okay with it.

Its been a lot better recently because now there is a knife cooldown; so they can't just run unto a group of people and click into everyone sequentially with no fallback anymore.

That is an extremely poor excuse and defense. Most people want to play the game on the main server- and for the money that they(and we) spent we shouldn't have to worry about people exploiting the games(main sever)flaws by killing themselves until they spawn into a growing society for the sole purpose of killing everyone in it.

The fact that you can mass murder in the main server of the game is a huge game breaking exploit that makes the game nearly unplayable in it's current state. Right now, every village is at a stalemate from having to start over and over again, which defeats the purpose of the game. Which is extremely bad whether there are other custom servers or not.

Some people argue that its realistic. It isn't. Not when there is nothing in the game that would alert people to a murder(like a scream) and not when there is no possible way for the average citizens to hide or defend themselves when it takes so long to find a weapon or load a bow in the first place. It isn't a good mechanic, and if it can't be fixed right away- I'd argue that for now player killing on the main server should be disabled until proper measures or implemented mechanics make it more balanced.