This game is a blatant rip-off (please don't censor us)

Game Dev Tycoon
#124

What is interesting about the starting of this post and the spin-off reactions by numerous trolls, is to actually see the effect of bringing forward the problems of piracy in gaming. Linking that fact to, for some people, a number of similarities to Game Dev Story from Kairosoft. It is however, in my opinion, a silly and skewed argument. Yes, games are being pirated. Yes games in the past have been rebranded and molded into a different format, including those very boring and uninteresting games that resulted from it. But here is a small developer, who obviously were inspired by this concept and thought they could to some degree improve (with their take on gamedevelopment) on the gameplay mechanics and graphics. Personally I also looked at the coding of the game, and I believe they genuinely took the effort to create a whole new game in regards to mechanics, storytelling and graphical presentation.

It’s just that the overall statements were given by people who probably because they haven’t REALLY played both games end to end, or because they simply “FEEL” like it’s the same. My opinion goes towards a direction to actually love both games and wanting to support both developers with buying them. The reason I would say is because I simply have a massive interest in playing these sort of games and being in control of a game development company.

I would conclude with agreeing with @historicalgamer with his comment regarding the general response of GHG concerning the link to Game Dev Story. Also I believe this publicity has been a good impulse for them because I know that they tried very hard for months to get their game out into the open. I just hope that all this doesn’t take too much from them and that they will be able to come out on top.

#125

i dont like and dont play any handheld games, so this game was new to me, pretty good so far.

#126

The part that i find difficult to understand is …
HOW !? can you get so confused ? The website name is “greenheartgames.com” and you immediately think that the game dev is kairosoft ?
Either you have a very short focus span, or you are a troll.

2 Likes
#127

These sort of false premises lead to some very wrong conclusions, for obvious reasons. This game was shown to me through the stream greenlight project, and as such, I had to dig to see if it was in any way was affiliated to Kairosoft (which was my initial reaction that it had to be, seen how blatant of a copy it was). It is the name, plus the startling similarities that result in these problems with copy-right infringement. So please, don’t put up a false premiss to your questions. I am not interested in trolling, and I have yet to understand where the attention span can come into play.

I am sure people are able to see the far disparity between GameBiz II on one hand, and the striking similarities between Game Dev Stroy and Game Dev Tycoon.

1 Like
#128

as some has pointed out its not a rip-off,its deriviated from it sure. but a rip-off is usually a (Poorly) recreation. which this is not,though the demo might not reflect on that. the game is noticibly different as you progress trough it. the 2 games are like mario and sonic,one is made in the image of the other, but is hardly a rip-off. also if the similarities are the thing that bothers you…why does it? isn’t it great that there is another game that has the same theme as the other you enjoyed?.

1 Like
#129

Well if you take it like that, then you could say that GDS is a copy of GB3 but adapted to fit on a phone screen.
If you really want to see a rip off, then go see WarZ, then you can better understand what it means for a dev to copy another game to the letter(and in a bad way as well)
Also i guess that you jump to this conclusion because you just played the demo, not sure if you did a full playtrough.
I played both of them, and i don’t feel like this one being a rip off.

P.S. Tell me if you were to make a game like this, how would you make it any different ?(UI and gameplay) why reinvent the wheel, when the old one spins pretty well.

#130

I’m a fellow software engineer (albeit for high scalability systems instead of game development) and I could assure you that even if they somehow managed to decompile Game Dev Story’s source code, study the game’s core rules and algorithms, and reimplement those rules and algorithms using their own implementation, it would still not count as violation of any copyright law. A program’s structure and algorithm is not copyrightable, see Oracle v. Google case for a recent example.

So in short, the technical details is not the issue in here, but rather moral issue in pretending that they are not taking the gameplay from another game, while at the same time claiming gameplay originality where no such thing exists in their product. Again, there is nothing wrong with being unoriginal, refinements to existing concept are good and marketable.

However, if we would like to discuss possible violations of legislation, I would worry more about the name that the developer choose for this game. Both Game Dev Story and Game Dev Tycoon have quite similar name and both operates on the same competing market (video games). This opens up the developer to possible trademark violation.

For a comparative case, Bethesda owns trademark to The Elder Scrolls game, and when last year Mojang started the development of their own game titled Scrolls, Bethesda sued Mojang for possible trademark violation, stating that the use of the name Scrolls would cause confusion with its own The Elder Scrolls series. The suit was later settled when both companies come to the understanding that both games are not direct competitor with one another, since they have vastly different gameplays and genre.

In Game Dev Tycoon’s case, the developers could not reach the same kind of settlement, since the case for trademark violation is stronger due to both games having nearly the same kind of gameplay and could be considered by the court to be a direct competition with each other. This is regardless of the technical detail where both games operates on different platforms: the court could easily rule that both game are similar enough to cause consumers confusion when purchasing the game.

So you see, there are legal frameworks where this kind of dispute could be carried on properly and in a more matured way than arguing baselessly in an internet forum. If I were Green Heart Games developers, I would contact the nearest intellectual property lawyer for their legal advice regarding possible infringement for the name of the game.

#131

How about you all shut up, because none of you is from Kairosoft’s legal department. If they wish to pursue legal action, they will contact Greenheart Games, not spam their forum. 2 games in the same genre with similar mechanics are not automatically rip-offs of the other, as evidenced by pretty much every shooter ever.This idea has been used literally dozens of times by various groups over a period of decades. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. I enjoy this game and will continue to play it.

#132

it doesn’t change that it was stolen. Also GDS was also released on the PC.

#133

Except GameDev Story was actually released on PC before mobile. And it is a pretty in-depth game. Just look here http://kairosoft.net/pc/gamedev2.html
It’s just it was never translated to English.
As much as I want a proper PC game, I will vote against this Game Dev Tycoon since it is the most blatant rip-off. It is not “inspired” by. Just like those fake Chinese Nokla and lPhones. This game was created intentionally to ride on Kairosoft’s coattails and to mislead people into buying this game thinking it is genuine.
Ironic that devs wasted time releasing fake pirated version when they whole-sale pirated Kairosoft’s IP.

Steam would be stupid to Greenlight this blatant copyright violation.

#134

I’m really surprised how people throw around terms like rip-off, copyright infringement, or stolen the game…

In no way have we infringed on anyone’s copyright, nor have we ripped anyone off. If you want to see a rip-off look at Zynga:

They copied the game mechanics one to one. Note that this isn’t actually illegal but I would definitely call it immoral since they essentially abused their market position to promote the game over Tiny Tower.

We did not do any of the sort. Play the game and you see that there are heaps of things that GDS doesn’t have or does differently.

And to the people who claim that we try to hide the fact that we were inspired by GDS: look at our About page and look at early interviews:

What makes me sad about this is that it deters any form of improvement on an existing idea. If no one is allowed to take an existing idea a bit further and into their own direction then how will games ever evolve?

1 Like
#135

2 wrongs doesn’t make it right…
I played your demo, and every mechanic I experienced there was essentially 1:1 copy from GameDev Story.

1 Like
#136

yea, if your idea of ‘mechanic’ is pick a topic, genre and platform then maybe but try to make game dev simulation without this.

#137

Similarly, only because we have three dev stages as well doesn’t mean the mechanic of these stages work the same. Try to develop a good game in GDS as your first game… impossible. absolutely possible in Game Dev Tycoon because the whole thing works completely differently.

#138

What are the chances that you have the same in-game resources like bugs popping up or that you can keep developing the game past its dead line or that you have short-term contracts?

If you were to create a Theme Hospital style game, nobody would make a peep.
But the fact that there is so much negative backlash should make you think really had.

edit: oh ya, and timer ticker as 3 dots? Out of every other possible way to represent passing time, you just happened to come up with identical way to do it? You should play PowerBall lottery, you’ll win every time.

1 Like
#139

bugs work completely differently in GDS than in Game Dev Tycoon…

#140

[quote=“PatrickKlug, post:139, topic:468, full:true”]
bugs work completely differently in GDS than in Game Dev Tycoon…
[/quote]During game development bugs show up; after game development you spend time fixing them or release the game as is…doesn’t sound “completely different” to me.

1 Like
#141

that’s because you don’t know the details on how the games works.

#142

I don’t get why this is still up for discussion, nobody is around complaining that CoD, Halo, battlefield, half-life etc are all clones of GoldenEye.

I doubt that even one in one hundred of the people purchasing the game have heard of Game Dev Story before, let alone are purchasing it because they think this game was made by the same developers.

Personally, I found about about this game during the Windows 8 beta, since then I have purchased both this game, and game dev story - I would have never even known about game dev story had it not been for Game Dev Tycoon.

@PatrickKlug, I don’t know why you’re even justifying this with so many responses. Your game is similar. Your game is inspired by. But your game is definitely not a carbon copy, its not plagiarized, and you obviously haven’t reused any of the code. Let the thread live, let people read it, let people make their own decisions. You guys have worked hard to create a great game, people will recognize that, and a thread like this won’t convince people that your game is a copy. Just in case you are not convinced - link.

2 Likes
#143

Its clear from completing the demo that this game was inspired by games such as gds but it is very clear that they are vastly different especially when you start engine development. All i can say is play the demo before judging it. If I started avoiding games because of clear similarites I dont think I’d ever play an other military fps again. Anyway in a nutshell play the demo and you’ll see how different the games are. I bought it straight after playing the demo

1 Like