Open Letter to the Mobile Developers

Christoffer · 2019-03-04 00:10:19

Quite right, fragilityh14!

Jason, I'll attempt to answer your post #72 now:

On onetech.info:
This is a great site and I use it all the time. I'm glad it doesn't cause any emails to you, but I get both emails, forum posts and tweets about how "it's buggy" (because of misunderstandings - not actual bugs), "it's only correct for PC", "why is there no support for my language", etc. The latest such post is in the very thread you linked to in our forum.
I also get requests about the PC version. Confusion happens in the reality we are dealing with here. We can take more steps to limit it, but we can never get rid of it entirely. It's good to keep that in mind when looking for solutions.

It's possible that we never should have picked the name we did. It has added to confusion, but it has also added benefits to both of us. Maybe the benefits have outweighed the downsides, maybe not. We can't know for sure.

When we did pick the name, you made one thing clear to me:
Don't lie to other people by claiming that it was entirely made by ourselves, since that could deceive someone into buying the wrong thing.

Regarding this, you specifically made it clear that it was not about attribution to you. In fact, attribution was entirely voluntary:

Jason wrote:

You don't HAVE to say that it is based on my work, by the way (there is no attribution license in place here), but if you're claiming authorship yourselves, you'd better mention this so as not to commit fraud.

So this rule only had to do about a strongly held principle that you shouldn't lie to people, and particularly not when your work was involved.

This made quite an impression on me, and I have carried it with me since. I thought you a unique person and I remembered what your priorities were, because of this. We still put your name in there though, why wouldn't we?

In October, we sent quite some emails to each other. You felt a need for clarification. In addition to 1, you were now also concerned about one more thing:

Jason wrote:

As I've thought about this more and more, I think that my main concern here is lingering confusion in the mind of game players. I have created a body of work during my life, and I want everyone to know which things are really part of that body of work.

For us the ball had just started rolling after a struggle with bad numbers in September. I am sure I was reluctant to rock the boat, but nevertheless we made an agreement to put the word unofficial in descriptions and splash screens. I now remembered your two priorities:
1. Don't lie to other people by claiming that it was entirely made by yourself, since that could deceive someone into buying the wrong thing.
2. Don't claim that Jason made this app, since that could mess with his legacy.

So to the TapTap debacle:
You already know how the text came to be missing in both the description and the splash screen. Miscommunication in the first and misunderstanding in the second.
It seems that the video was the really infuriating thing to you though, so lets talk about that now.

jasonrohrer wrote:

And the "meet the devs" video, specifically, was beyond the pale in terms of sliminess. You made this video, intentionally, and approved it. There is no way that video was posted without you seeing it first. It was no accident.

The publisher wanted to do a movie about the purpose of the game (it is the unique factor with the game, so this makes sense). They asked me to shoot myself explaining what I thought was special about it. They also asked for shots of the team members. We used an iPhone and about 10 minutes for this, because we simply had no time. After working with this project since March, it didn't seem strange to me that I should talk about the game, nor that the team involved should say hi.
We sent the clips, and they made a movie clip out of it. We saw it once it had been uploaded to taptap. We had no time to be involved, but of course I looked at it. I agree with you now, that from your point of view it can look like "meet the team behind OHOL" rather than "meet the team behind OHOL for Mobile". At the time my only thought was: "Ok, the sound quality is bad and it's apparent that I didn't rehearse it, but they have their video." Funny how they renamed Pontus into Otis". In fact we renamed Pontus to Otis in our team chat. That's how much effort we put into making this video, we didn't even bother correcting his name.

By telling you this, I am not saying the video wasn't a big deal. I understand that it was. But there was no malice in it. The intent you believe was there, simply wasn't. Only stressed out people with too much work on their plate to stop and really think about how it would seem to you.

Also, I feel I have to make something clear here: There is a game called "One Hour One Life for Mobile" and there is a team which is making it. It is a game first and an "unofficial adaptation" second. It's not an unofficial game, and it is made by us, based on your game. And currently, this game is officially the only game on the AppStore with OHOL gameplay in it. You need to stop thinking of it as one PC game plus an appendix. We have also spent man-years on our game. OHOL belongs to you, and OHOL for Mobile belongs to us. That was always our agreement.

Now to your damage claim:

jasonrohrer wrote:

With that much damage done, and that much lack of concern demonstrated, what can I do? I can't put the cat back in the bag. I can't have 600K Chinese players un-see what they saw during that 40-day window.
The normal recourse in this situation would be to sue for punitive damages, or reach a monetary settlement, outside of court. The money awarded would bring justice to an otherwise unjust situation.

Let's compare this to the two rules you have set up for us, and on which our agreement is built:
1. Don't lie to people about the origin.
Here you claim that by omission, we have let people think that the game they see was entirely made by us, potentially tricking them into downloading it, thinking that they couldn't get it anywhere else.
I agree that the mistakes we had made created such a potential situation, but where is the damage to these people? This was a free trial download and no money changed hands. Clearly no fraud happened.
Again, your words:

Jason wrote:

You don't HAVE to say that it is based on my work, by the way (there is no attribution license in place here), but if you're claiming authorship yourselves, you'd better mention this so as not to commit fraud.

So there is also no damage to you, in this regard. If an unknown number of people who could have learnt that OHOL was from you, didn't, this does not violate our agreement. You can't claim damage for the lack of attribution, because you have made it very clear that you don't require that attribution. To me personally, and in your statement of "no copyright".

2. Don't claim that Jason made this app, since that could mess with his legacy.
Well, our entire error in this instance was that we didn't let people know that there was a PC game which we had built ours on. Clearly, we did not claim you had anything to do with our app. Also no violation of our agreement, and no damage to you.

I think that you got mad about China (which is understandable) and used it for leverage against an agreement that doesn't suit you anymore. But the damage you claim as justifiable reason to make your demands punitively "harsh", is inconsistent with your promises to and requirements of us. There is no reason to be harsh. Let's be fair instead. We could still amend the agreement.

We have an agreement, and we made an error. In all agreements, the standard is that if an error occurs, there is a time frame to rectify the error once it has become known. If the appropriate action is taken, then the agreement stands. We did act with all possible speed to rectify the error once it became known to us. Thus the agreement stands.

However, the reason for the agreement remains. We love your game and we love our game, which wouldn't exist in its current form without you. We want to do right by you. We want your legacy to be the way you want it.

Here is where conversation comes to play. I understand that you now feel that our original agreement didn't go far enough, once our user numbers skyrocketed. So yes, let's talk about how we can reduce confusion between games and increase the understanding for what works do and don't belong in your body of work. I am at your disposal in this.

If you had stated at the beginning that our game should be called "unofficial" and have strange texts in the UI implying that it shouldn't exist, we would not have spent a year of our team's time and resources on this. Thousands of people who have played OHOLm would be the poorer for it. No matter if we still are able to sell the game, we don't want to work on "Unofficial OHOL". We have said that we are willing to work on "OHOL Mobile Mod" and that we also will clarify other wording. Most people on this forum will tell you that this is a great offer. (If someone else had the strength to read all the way here, feel free to agree or disagree).

The reason there is no confusion from 2HOL is the lack of user base. What we now know, is that when a derivative work of a public domain game reaches users in the 6-digit range, the number of confused people also increases. I believe this is inevitable, but that we can do more than we have done to limit it. You haven't exactly posted on your page that OHOLm exists and how it differs from OHOL, have you? Maybe you should at this time, to improve the understanding of your legacy? We also have places where we haven't thought to make the distinction as clear as possible. We are willing to improve on this.

If I pushed back too much the last time we agreed, you have certainly pushed forward this time. Now take your win and be gracious about it! I ask you to work with us on your own goals. To our mutual benefit, and that of many many players, now and in the future. Let's get back to work?

jord1990 · 2019-03-04 00:46:56

If we take a step back from the emotions involved I think that "Mobile OHOL mod" for the name is a pretty fair offer and a good compromise that both parties can/should be pleased with.

but for me to call it that im also counting on a clear explanation in the first rows of the description on how it isnt made with any involvement of the original creator. A splash screen seems nice but the previous one I've seen is was in my opinion not clear enough to read in 2 sec. Maybe you could fix this by making the players have to manually close the first time they launch the app.

I don't see how putting the same text explaining how it is an unofficial port in the family tree browser would do anything but make the app less neat. But maybe a little info button could be added there or in the menus so that people who go looking for info to report a bug press it and get a little pop up explaining everything.

You both seem to agree that there is allot of confusion and Chris the ball is mostly in your court when it comes to fixing it. Jason I can see why you are hesitant to give a little bit of wiggle room. But you gave to much wiggle room in the past and now you are paying the price. I personally recommend you cut some of your losses (how awfull that may sound) and come to a compromise while this is all still in good faith.

Anyway what do I know, I'm just a blunt Dutch guy giving his 2 cents.

Edit: I forgot to add that I should also be abundantly clear that mobile is being played on different servers.

Last edited by jord1990 (2019-03-04 01:00:26)

Christoffer · 2019-03-04 01:22:30

What about something like (WiP):
A fan-made unofficial adaptation and extension of the PC game (which is in the public domain).
Not affiliated with the original creator, and running on separate servers.

jord1990 wrote:

A splash screen seems nice but the previous one I've seen is was in my opinion not clear enough to read in 2 sec. Maybe you could fix this by making the players have to manually close the first time they launch the app.

Agreed. This also came up in a team discussion today.

jord1990 wrote:

But maybe a little info button could be added there or in the menus so that people who go looking for info to report a bug press it and get a little pop up explaining everything.

This too. Both info-button and the in-app bug-report thingy.

jord1990 wrote:

You both seem to agree that there is allot of confusion and Chris the ball is mostly in your court when it comes to fixing it.

True. There are a few things that Jason should do too, but not a lot. When people try to find out about his body of work, they won't come to us to read about it. Therefore, he should also explain the situation somewhere in connection with PC-OHOL. (Preferably without the non-approval lingo). This is not in our hands, but most of the rest seems to be.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-04 02:05:36

Whether you did it on purpose or with malice doesn't matter. It was done, and it was done with some amount of carelessness. And it was extremely damaging to my legacy as a designer. I've been doing this for 15 years, and OHOL is the crown jewel of my career. To have sole authorship of it claimed by someone else---to even a single person, let alone 600K Chinese visitors to an app store, or 100K+ Chinese players, for 40 days straight---is irreparable.

I'm sure you made sure that the Dual Decade logo was present on the splash screen, for example. You cared about that.

From the very beginning, I said you didn't have to give me explicit credit, but I warned you that if you were taking sole credit, you would be committing fraud. Fraud was the word I used in May 2018. Fraud does NOT require a commercial component to be fraud, so the fact that it was free doesn't matter (though the commercial implications of diluting my legacy as a designer are many). And fraud via negligence is still fraud.

By the way, when, in any of our "friendly agreements," did we ever discuss the possibility of a completely free demo of this game offered to hundreds of thousands of potential players? Could you imagine that drastically devaluing the service that I'm offering? According to my data, the average player gets their fill of OHOL after 15.9 hours of play. The Chinese audience has had plenty of time for that in the 50 days that the free trial has been running so far.

I'm not saying that it was my place to approve such a plan. But the fact that I didn't even know about it undercuts the "friendly spirit" that you're conveying here. (When I saw 9000 concurrent players mentioned on Twitter, I assumed they were all paying players---I only learned that it was all free this week.) You were caught up in your own commercial interests to the point where you didn't consider my welfare at all.

So, I continue to stand where I stand. I gave you wording, and I'm not asking for rewrites. That is what the optional "more info" button is for---that is where you can put whatever wording you wish.

And finally, as for having "original author Jason Rohrer" clearly visible in the store description and menu screen, that is an attempt at a correction for the "By Dual Decade" thing that went out to 100K+ Chinese players on the splash screen. Which ever ones who are still playing, in a few weeks, will hopefully think, "Hey, I heard of DualDecade before, but who's this Jason Rohrer guy?"

You are claiming authorship, you are now calling it "your game" above..... okay, then if you're doing that, you better mention me too, or you are making a false claim of sole authorship, or at least implying that through omission.

We've tried your version of handling this, and your massaged wording, since August. Now let's try my version of handling this, and my specific wording, and see where it takes us.

Maybe, in some future negotiations, we can discover a better place for the wording in the app than on the Menu screen. Maybe we can find a better way to title the game clearly than "Unofficial." But right now, we're in emergency damage-control mode, and we need to get this info in front of Chinese players (and others too) as quickly and bluntly as possible, so they just can't miss it, in a hopeful attempt to correct whatever portion of the damage that we can. In my estimation, the Menu screen and the Title are the two best places to do that, and the wording that I requested is the best way to do it (and in the store page too, just for good measure).

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-04 02:47:37

I'm done for tonight.

I will wake up tomorrow and hopefully find that you have taken the initial steps that I've asked you to take.

Trick · 2019-03-04 04:16:10

This work is not copyrighted. I place it into the public domain.

Do whatever you want with it, absolutely no restrictions, and no permission
necessary.

Jason Rohrer
Davis, California
March 2018

************
"Do whatever you want with it, absolutely no restrictions, and no permission
necessary."
************

From a legal standpoint, it seems that you really don't have much to go on. "Absolutely no restrictions, and no permission necessary" is pretty explicit. You voluntarily and actively relinquished your rights to what happened with mods/adaptations/etc.. I won't comment on the extent to which I think this is a questionable business decision - it is what it is, and they are your wishes as the creator (though, I would respectfully caution you to reconsider this position going forward). Unfortunately, it seems you signed a cheque you weren't completely willing to pay out (likely because you did not foresee such an outcome), and now you're wanting to change the rules of the game after it's already been played. This isn't entirely fair to the mobile devs.

That said, from a moral standpoint, I completely understand why this has become an issue. 1. You shouldn't have your time wasted by bug reports/etc. from something you are not affiliated with because people are confused. 2. You deserve to be acknowledged for the work that you specifically did, and also not have unrelated work misattributed to you. 3. People deserve to know the reality of what they are purchasing.

I think putting the words 'unofficial' or 'unapproved' into the title is not fair. It was approved - you gave your tacit approval when you said no restriction/permission necessary. And, it *is* the official mobile version of the game.

There is obviously a need for clarity, though - I think 'OHOL Mobile Mod' as a title, with a clear disclaimer (that has to be manually closed) upon the launch of the game indicating that it is an adaptation of the original PC version (and a link to the website), would be a great compromise. I also think the mobile devs MUST put a bug-report function in the app itself so as to avoid emails making their way to Jason. Bonus - a push notification or a one-time 'notice' explaining this to people who have already downloaded the app (i.e., to clarify to those who have already downloaded the game the reality, and to inform them that they should not be emailing Jason for support). This can at least do some damage control that Jason is clearly concerned about.

ryanb · 2019-03-04 05:10:11

Jason, I appreciate you putting OHOL in the public domain, but I feel like there are invisible strings attached to it that are not made clear up front. Imagine this scenario:

Someone copies the source code of the game, builds it, and then sells their own server logins for $10 with no credit to you or themselves. This means they would not be committing fraud since they are not taking credit. However it would do great damage to the original OHOL because it would undercut the game.

I don't see anything in the public domain license that prevents this. Would you have an issue with it? In that case public domain might not be the correct license for OHOL.

Now imagine they modified the game slightly, introduced some bugs and extra artwork that wasn't yours, but still no credit mentioned. It would make OHOL look bad and you would get bug reports, however this still falls within the public domain license. Would you have a problem with it? In that case public domain might not be correct.

If you are ok with the above scenarios, then the real issue is where credit is given. In that case a notice should only be required wherever they take credit for the game (wherever their name and logo appear). This means areas of the game which do not mention their name should not require any notice.

Last edited by ryanb (2019-03-04 05:25:51)

Chard · 2019-03-04 05:24:37

Trick wrote:

From a legal standpoint, it seems that you really don't have much to go on. "Absolutely no restrictions, and no permission necessary" is pretty explicit. You voluntarily and actively relinquished your rights to what happened with mods/adaptations/etc.. I won't comment on the extent to which I think this is a questionable business decision - it is what it is, and they are your wishes as the creator (though, I would respectfully caution you to reconsider this position going forward). Unfortunately, it seems you signed a cheque you weren't completely willing to pay out (likely because you did not foresee such an outcome), and now you're wanting to change the rules of the game after it's already been played. This isn't entirely fair to the mobile devs.

The disclaimer is about copyright. It says copyright in the first sentence and it is in a file called no_copyright.txt. Jason is concerned with fraud and the impact on his reputation which are unrelated to copyright.

Trick wrote:

I think putting the words 'unofficial' or 'unapproved' into the title is not fair. It was approved - you gave your tacit approval when you said no restriction/permission necessary. And, it *is* the official mobile version of the game.

This is sophistry or semantics, I can't decide which. What does "official" mean? In a very real sense the mobile app is not the same game so it isn't the official mobile version of anything except itself. And yet it uses the same name, a name under which Jason has been selling the game and in which he has presumably invested some time and effort and which will forever be associated with him. And then putting that in front of an audience 10-100x larger than the PC game's audience, I can see that people might be misled as to what is "official", their impressions of the one then infecting their impressions of the other. Changing the name in this way is not ideal. It would've be cleanest and most equitable for the mobile app to rebrand itself before, emphasising its distinction, as it markets itself. Sadly things have gone beyond that and the "unofficial" label is a bandage more than anything.

Chard · 2019-03-04 05:34:07

ryanb wrote:

Someone copies the source code of the game, builds it, and then sells their own server logins for $10 with no credit to you or themselves. This means they would not be committing fraud since they are not taking credit. However it would do great damage to the original OHOL because it would undercut the game.

Jason's value proposition includes more than access to the main servers though. It's hard to pin down exactly I suppose but I reckon the key thing Jason has to offer is authenticity. Fans of the game will want to support Jason and the ongoing development, perhaps even if they already bought the $10 version. Then of course there's getting to hang out with the lovely people on the forums, can't ignore the draw of that. I'm not certain how this would shake out, would be interesting.

Christoffer · 2019-03-04 12:56:56

One thread which is recurring here is that the understanding in the community for which is what, needs to be improved. The amount of ideas contributed in this forum thread has been a good inspiration and we have begun taking steps to implement some of them. This could have happened sooner, if I had just been notified by Jason that he wasn't happy about the situation. Better sooner than later though. The "actual" Android launch in China hasn't happened yet and we have some time to put more info in place before it does. We will try our best to
- put bug reporting inside the game
- Info screen that you have to actually say "I understand" to the first time, and which can be found again through an info button later.
- Further improve wording in App Store listings and in various more seldom seen places.
- In China (the only place where the app name is not in English) there name was too closely translated from OHOL, so we will make sure to use a different name than the one Chinese people use for the PC version.

Some of this will happen sooner and some will take more time, but we should at least hit Jason's three-week target.

This may not include "punitive damages" (as it shouldn't, brrr), but the actual improvements will happen. If there was a growing problem, I'd have hoped for a more cooperative spirit and a striving on both sides for win-win solutions a long time ago instead, but these changes are the decent thing to do and will be good for everyone, players as well as game developers.

Christoffer · 2019-03-04 13:09:33

Ok, I just read a post on our own forum for a second time, and felt a chill down my spine:

jorji wrote:

By registering the trademark, your Chinese publisher seized the name for themselves, and I didn’t see how could that benefit to Jason when he already mentioned his “ commercial Chinese release on the horizon ”.

Jason, is this what it's been about all along? Do you have a release coming up in China, and are trying to undermine your perceived competition?

If that is the case, then I am at loss for what to say. We would gladly have helped you in any way!

I'm not going to take the word of one of your fans over yours, but I really need you to answer this one with complete honesty.

Edit: No, I don't believe it. I think your fan had misunderstood something. Still, please deny it so I can remain 100% confident that that's not who you are. And please let the fan know that this is not about competition.

Last edited by Christoffer (2019-03-04 14:04:50)

st2019 · 2019-03-04 13:53:36

A way to get the interpretation sovereignty of your game back:

1. Finish OHOL (only bugs, no new content). This will be the real foundation of your work. Anyone can use it as they wish, like you ever wanted it.

2. Create a new game: "Jason Rohrer's One Hour One Life" (Like Sid Meier or Colin McRae did) - with copyrights, also based on your OHOL. As you can see in this whole discussion, it's the only way to prevent others from disturbing the real meaning of the game. They can still work on OHOL for free, but they need to go their own way because they can not just copy all your ideas any longer.

3. Grant access for those who building things based on JR-OHOL, like onetech, modders, whatever. Make them ask you if they also can earn some money by using JR-OHOL (ads). You decide what is wrong or right. And give everyone who has bought OHOL a key for JR-OHOL. If you continue updating weekly, the game will become very quick something different, something better. And others can't just copy your stuff. They have to go their own ways.

Chard · 2019-03-04 14:01:59

Christoffer wrote:

Ok, I just read a post on our own forum for a second time, and felt a chill down my spine:
jorji wrote:
By registering the trademark, your Chinese publisher seized the name for themselves, and I didn’t see how could that benefit to Jason when he already mentioned his “ commercial Chinese release on the horizon ”.

That post is here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … 001#p48001.

I interpreted him to be referring to the commercial release of One Hour One Life for Mobile in China. Beyond the free demo version.

Christoffer · 2019-03-04 14:08:05

Chard wrote:

Christoffer wrote:
Ok, I just read a post on our own forum for a second time, and felt a chill down my spine:
jorji wrote:
By registering the trademark, your Chinese publisher seized the name for themselves, and I didn’t see how could that benefit to Jason when he already mentioned his “ commercial Chinese release on the horizon ”.
That post is here: https://onehouronelife.com/forums/viewt … 001#p48001.
I interpreted him to be referring to the commercial release of One Hour One Life for Mobile in China. Beyond the free demo version.

Ok, so the fan was dead wrong. Thanks for restoring my world view, Chard. Jeez.

Chard · 2019-03-04 14:39:45

Christoffer wrote:

Chard wrote:
I interpreted him to be referring to the commercial release of One Hour One Life for Mobile in China. Beyond the free demo version.
Ok, so the fan was dead wrong. Thanks for restoring my world view, Chard. Jeez.

As further corroboration. Jason has never been interested in translating the game himself although did provide support for fan translations. His reasoning if I recall was because he wanted a community that could talk to him about the game, that he could relate to. Something along those lines anyway, I'm not certain and I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth.

Christoffer · 2019-03-04 15:03:38

Chard wrote:

Christoffer wrote:
Chard wrote:
I interpreted him to be referring to the commercial release of One Hour One Life for Mobile in China. Beyond the free demo version.
Ok, so the fan was dead wrong. Thanks for restoring my world view, Chard. Jeez.
As further corroboration. Jason has never been interested in translating the game himself although did provide support for fan translations. His reasoning if I recall was because he wanted a community that could talk to him about the game, that he could relate to. Something along those lines anyway, I'm not certain and I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth.

Yes, I remember that well. It seemed against everything I had heard before. It's just that Jason has been so dead set against listening to the advice all over this thread. Fans as well as friends from the game dev world. Whenever someone has pointed out a flaw in his reasoning, he has come back with other reasons to demand the exact same ting. When flaws are pointed out again, bam, another set of reasons for the same outcome. The outcome seems much more important than the reasons behind it.

Chard · 2019-03-04 15:47:46

Christoffer wrote:

Yes, I remember that well. It seemed against everything I had heard before. It's just that Jason has been so dead set against listening to the advice all over this thread. Fans as well as friends from the game dev world. Whenever someone has pointed out a flaw in his reasoning, he has come back with other reasons to demand the exact same ting. When flaws are pointed out again, bam, another set of reasons for the same outcome. The outcome seems much more important than the reasons behind it.

I suppose I could argue that such dialectic is how people form rationally supported points of view and that changing one's view is part of that process. But honestly I'm not seeing it, the core of Jason's reasoning has been reasonably consistent, never straying far from the perception of affiliation or endorsement and the potential damage to his creative legacy. This is based on my recollections at the moment; I don't have time to reread the entire thread to see if that is supported or not.

I understand you are a fan of the game and that's wonderful but Jason is a lot more than a fan, it has personal meaning to him beyond merely playing it, it has been three or four years of his life. I try to bear that in mind when he talks about it. I don't have anything in my life that has lasted so long, I can't imagine what it feels like to put so much of myself into something.

Greep · 2019-03-04 16:00:02

I think a lot of the clash here is just Jason understimating how much damage even any name change at all could cause to a game's sales, let alone having an ugly change like unofficial in it, with the damage likely being irreversible. For instance, an equally valid solution to misunderstandings would just be to have Jason change his own game's name: if it's not a big deal, why not? Obviously not gonna happen, cause it IS a huge deal!

If the main damage was mostly caused through video, I don't see why it can't be rectified through video. Can't you just be proactive about mentioning jason, maybe get on some chinese youtubers or whatever and clear the air?

Last edited by Greep (2019-03-04 16:10:48)

Dodge · 2019-03-04 16:13:06

Greep wrote:

I think a lot of the clash here is just Jason understimating how much damage even any name change at all could cause to a game's sales, let alone having an ugly change like unofficial in it, with the damage likely being irreversible. For instance, an equally valid solution to misunderstandings would just be to have Jason change his own game's name: if it's not a big deal, why not? Obviously not gonna happen, cause it IS a huge deal!
If the main damage was mostly caused through video, I don't see why it can't be rectified through video. Can't you just be proactive about mentioning jason, maybe get on some famous chinese youtubers or whatever and clear the air?

"If it turns out that this change absolutely destroys your business (which I don't think it will), and you demonstrate that to me with precipitous graphs, we'd be in a good place for additional negotiations at that point."

Doesn't seem to be an issue about sales since he's willing to negotiate if the sales go down

Greep · 2019-03-04 16:18:37

As said, these sorts of things can be irreversible. Trust me, I've worked in this sort of setting and something as stupid as changing the sprites in a game's multiplayer lobby can cause massive irreversible damage. I'd be really hesitant to ever touch a name. And the first part of that quote left out is important

Last edited by Greep (2019-03-04 16:19:42)

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-04 17:12:24

Likewise, Greep, what the mobile devs did in China, which put the game in front of 600K new "fans" with a false claim of sole authorship, is irreversibly damaging. In what they were presented, OHOL = DualDecade.

Here is my trailer for the game, which has been on YouTube for exactly 1 year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT4JktcVQuE

It has 569K views. Total views. Total number of humans on the planet who have ever watched so much as one second of the video. That's a lot of people!

Now look at the TapTap store:

https://www.taptap.com/app/153717

669K Followers. That's in about 50 days, and is 100K more than ever watched my original trailer. And all of them (up until a recent change demanded by me) were given the false impression that DualDecade was the sole author/creator/originator of OHOL. Many of them watched a "meet the devs" video, which also gave full credit to DualDecade, and implied that they were the minds behind OHOL.

So, at this point in history, MORE humans have been given the false impression than have EVER interacted with the video that gives them the truthful impression.

And Trick, yeah, I relinquished all rights relating to copyright. I'm not trying to stop the mobile devs from making copies, making alterations, or commercially exploiting those copies and alterations. More power to them on that front. Do what they want. Make whatever changes they want. License the results however they want. Charge what they want. Translate however they want. Sell in whatever countries they want. Make whatever deals with whatever publishers they want. Those are all the thing that are normally governed by copyright.

But don't mislead people. Don't cause confusion through ambiguous statements of fact. Don't make false claims of sole authorship. Don't make any false claims at all, at least not as they relate to me or my work. Making false claims is illegal and immoral.

What they did in China for 40 days was illegal and immoral, and had nothing to do with copyright.

ryanb, with the $10 OHOL, it would obviously depend on the situation, and how misleading it was. It sound to me like it would be pretty clear to people. But if it looked just like my website, so that most people couldn't tell the difference, that would be a problem. I mean, obviously, these words, along with everything else, is in the "public domain" technically:

5,190,247 lives lived for a total of 902,640 hours
372,127 people lived past age fifty-five
288 generations in longest family line
283 monuments completed, 1656 in progress
a multiplayer survival game of parenting
and civilization building by Jason Rohrer

2058 Player Reviews, 94% Positive

However, if someone else made a website with exactly those words, but was selling access to other servers for $10, that would be misleading. They wouldn't be making a false claim of authorship, but they would be "impersonating" me and my service. They would be "passing off."

Likewise, my "do what you want" license does not allow people to make a "@jasonrohere" twitter account and pretend to be me. Recently, someone else had a "@OneHourOneLife" twitter account, and was pretending to be me (interacting with streamers and fans, answering questions as if they were me). When I reached out to them and told them to stop, they offered to sell me the account. Guess what? All of that is against Twitter's rules. I had the account taken down. Does this mean I don't believe in the public domain after all? No, it has nothing to do with that.

My identity, and the truth about me and my work, is not protected by copyright. It's protected by other legal and moral principles.

I see that OneTech has an MIT license. That license requires that the copyright statement appearing in the license be included in all copies and derivatives of OneTech (and thus, your authorship proclaimed, at least tucked away in that copyright statement).

Here's a claim: "I wrote OneTech. It's a Jason Rohrer creation."

Your MIT license doesn't forbid me from making that statement, right? I'm not even distributing your software. And even if I was, what if I made that statement in the Readme, or on the website, but tucked your copyright statement away somewhere else?

The point is, there are other things that forbid me from making that statement, other than copyright and the licenses that copyright empower you to grant. You don't have to spell such things out in a license (and almost no licenses do spell it out).

Even a CC BY license, which requires attribution, doesn't specify how attribution should be made in a way that is not misleading ("you may do so in any reasonable manner"---does that sound legally precise to you?). If it was upside down in the back of the book in 6 point font, that wouldn't be sufficient or in a "reasonable manner." But this would be handled on a case-by-case basis.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-04 17:30:53

And, here we sit. It's morning.

More than 72 hours have passed since I made the initial request to the mobile devs for these changes.

72 hours are more than enough time to implement this initial portion of the changes (app store text) and demonstrate a good faith effort to correct the confusion and make up for an unjust past situation with 600K Chinese players.

I hope that I'm just looking at a cached version of the app store text, but as far as I can tell, it has not been changed. 9:21am PST.

https://www.taptap.com/app/153717
https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta … .evolution
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/one-hou … 13914?mt=8

Instead, the 72 hours have been spent arguing with me.

This is a very unfortunate and sad situation. I was hoping that we could all start moving on, and get back to work, this morning. When I woke up this morning, I was talking with my wife about whether this would be like "Christmas Morning" when I turned on the computer. And she said, "No, it won't be." And then I asked her what the opposite of Christmas Morning is, and she didn't have a name for it.

What's the opposite of Christmas Morning?

Monday, March 4, 2019

The day that the mobile developers refused to take any of the clarification steps that I asked them to take.

The day that I was forced to take action.

(Yeah, that sounds dramatic... I guess it is dramatic.)

Chard · 2019-03-04 17:32:59

Greep wrote:

I think a lot of the clash here is just Jason understimating how much damage even any name change at all could cause to a game's sales, let alone having an ugly change like unofficial in it, with the damage likely being irreversible. For instance, an equally valid solution to misunderstandings would just be to have Jason change his own game's name: if it's not a big deal, why not? Obviously not gonna happen, cause it IS a huge deal!

Does being damaging to their business make it wrong? Did the mobile developers have a moral responsibility to highlight that they were selling a derivative work and the original work uses the same name but is unaffiliated? Those who bear the fault, theirs must the remedy be. That is the material difference. If the mobile developers should've been more proactive in their duty they must bear the responsibility of failing that duty.

Dodge · 2019-03-04 17:33:06

Greep wrote:

As said, these sorts of things can be irreversible. Trust me, I've worked in this sort of setting and something as stupid as changing the sprites in a game's multiplayer lobby can cause massive irreversible damage. I'd be really hesitant to ever touch a name. And the first part of that quote left out is important

If the whole game stopped selling just because the sprite in the lobby changed it probably wasn't a good game anyway

The content aka the whole game is more important thant a 30 letters title

Also unless i'm mistaken you can change the title any time you want on the app store so if it's really an issue and sales drop it can be changed anytime and is not definitive.

zed · 2019-03-04 18:00:52

Christoffer wrote:

we are willing to work on "OHOL Mobile Mod" [..]. Most people on this forum
will tell you that this is a great offer. (If someone else had the strength to
read all the way here, feel free to agree or disagree).

Since you ask... no, I don't think this is a "great offer". I would probably
read the "Mod" in "One Hour One Life Mobile Mod" as a character-saving way of
saying "version".

More generally, your posts on this thread have given me a bad impression of
the team working on this mobile port. Jason made a very clear request. Trying
to weasel out of it like this does not look good.

One Hour One Life Forums

#76 2019-03-04 00:10:19

Re: Open Letter to the Mobile Developers

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Re: Open Letter to the Mobile Developers

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Re: Open Letter to the Mobile Developers

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Re: Open Letter to the Mobile Developers

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Re: Open Letter to the Mobile Developers

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