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Tag: Theft
VidAlpha: IGN Brasil Caught Stealing Videos
Roblox Claims Tommy Tallarico Does Not Own “Oof” Sound
If you haven’t been paying attention to his Twitter account over the past while, Tommy Tallarico of the Amico Tallarico clan has been in a back and forth kerfuffle with Roblox over allegations that Tommy owns the rights to the “oof” sound effect that has become iconic to Roblox over the past decade or so, and that Roblox is continuing to use the sound effect without his permission and without compensation. Tommy has been attempting to negotiate a settlement to avoid a potential legal battle but has yet to have any luck.
Roblox has officially responded to the allegations, claiming that the oof sound was obtained from a stock sound CD-ROM that was legally purchased consisting of copyright free sounds. They further claim that Tommy has furnished no proof of ownership, although admit that they have been working to reach a fair resolution (which would be needless if Tommy didn’t own the sound).
Roblox’s founders, Erik and David, got the oof sound (along with all the original Roblox sounds) from a stock sound CD-ROM they purchased of licensed, copyright free sounds (not from an illegal website as Tommy has suggested on social media).
We deeply respect the rights of IP creators, and we have built our platform over the past 12+ years based on respecting and honoring creators.
Despite the fact that Tommy has no copyright to the “oof” sound (and in response to our requests he has presented us no proof of ownership to it) we’ve nevertheless been working in good faith to reach a fair resolution with him. As part of that, we have asked Tommy to become part of our creative community and we look forward to exploring that opportunity with him further.
The full statement can be found at the following link. Tommy alleges that he created the sound effect for the game Messiah which readers can listen to at the embedded video below. Tommy has also stated that he has possession of the original recordings of the sound.
Um… I have the original DAT tape recording, a video, a contract and my metadata on the sound. As well as a ton of sounds just like the one they took. Yes… lets go to court and see who wins. @Roblox ignorance on display. How about showing your proof of this so called https://t.co/iMezQbJWPk
— TommyTallarico (@TommyTallarico) January 11, 2020
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Gustavo Canine Games Blames Network For Fraudulent Copyright Claims
A growing number of reports have been coming in over the last couple of days of Youtube creators seeing their Let’s Play videos being hit with copyright strikes, with the source of the strike being an entity that definitely does not own said copyrights. The strikes appear to be coming from a “Gustavo Canine Games,” a Brazilian Youtube let’s play content creator.
The real culprit appears to be GCG’s network owner, Illustrated Sound Music. Illustrated Sound Music is going off the deep end and claiming ownership of video game footage, something that it definitely does not own. As a result, users are having videos of their own Let’s Plays flagged as identical and having the videos automatically copyright claimed. Which again, ISM definitely does not own the copyright to.
Gustavo Canine Games has posted an apology to his Facebook page and notes that his lawyer has gotten involved.
“I got in contact with the network they claim to be solving.. off my lawyer against the network, I’m being accused by the world for something I didn’t do ;; honestly I don’t know if I’ll keep this channel for much fear, it’s being hell”
Illustrated Sound Music themselves have also apologized, blaming the copyright sweep on videos being enabled for content ID matching that absolutely should not have been enabled. They have promised to release the claims in the next 24-48 hours.
To everyone wondering about the Illustrated Sound Music Content ID debacle, I got a response from the MCN itself. Apparently it was a bug and they are going to release the claims within 24-48 hours. Here’s the email in question. pic.twitter.com/FJNm8LdKU2
— Neronium (@Roxas1359) December 3, 2019
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Affected Youtubers are encouraged to dispute any copyright claim and not to wait in the hopes that ISM eventually gets around to releasing the claims.
Source: Facebook
[NM] Deep Silver Disables Stolen Steam Keys
Metro: Exodus publisher Deep Silver released a statement earlier this week that they will be disabling Steam keys that were flagged as stolen and resold by an unauthorized reseller. The keys were allegedly taken from the factory where the physical keys were printed.
These keys have been obtained illegally from the factory where physical key printing had taken place prior to the announcement of exclusivity with Epic Games, due to the criminal nature of these keys, all unlicensed keys have been deactivated and activation / download of Metro Exodus without the executable file is no longer possible. In addition, the software will be removed from the Steam library of any players using an unauthorised code. The keys being sold on this platform are stolen goods, and are therefore illegal.
The announcement notes that the only authorized key sellers were Humble Store and Razer. Those affected are recommended to contact the seller for a refund, or possibly the cardholder to reverse the transaction.
Source: Steam
[Column] Bluehole Studio Doesn’t Have A Moral (or Legal) Leg To Stand On
Bluehole Studios this week decided to release a press release stating that it is considering “further action” against Epic Games over the Battle Royale mode recently added to Fortnite. According to the release, Bluehole is concerned over similarities between the two games, and how Epic uses Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds in conversations with the community and press in comparison to Fortnite.
“We’ve had an ongoing relationship with Epic Games throughout PUBG’s development as they are the creators of UE4, the engine we licensed for the game. After listening to the growing feedback from our community and reviewing the gameplay for ourselves, we are concerned that Fortnite may be replicating the experience for which PUBG is known.”
As someone who has been following actual cases for years, I’ll give this as simply as I know how: Bluehole Studio doesn’t have a leg to stand on, either legally in court or morally in the court of public opinion. And since PUBG is running on Epic’s Unreal Engine, any action taken by the former against the latter would accomplish little more than a self-inflicted gunshot to the leg, just ask Silicon Knights how that worked out.
So let’s take this piece by piece.
1. (Legal) Bluehole Studios Doesn’t Own The Mechanic
You can’t copyright game mechanics, it is not within the purview of United States and UK law, and the EU has not weighed in on the matter yet. It is, however, possible to protect your game mechanics through trademark, however the process is extremely time and resource intensive, and I can say by simply pulling up a list of patents owned by Bluehole (a list of one) that they do not own the patent for a Battle Royale game mechanic. In short, Bluehole Studios has no legal standing because they don’t own the concept. Neither does Brendan Greene.
For legal precedent, we can look at exactly the kind of company devious enough to patent a game mechanic, and of course I am talking about Namco Ltd. Back in the 90’s, Namco patented the concept of having a mini-game that can be played during a game’s loading screen. The patent didn’t actually have the chance to be legitimized in court, as Namco never used it to sue another developer, and it expired in 2015. There are heavy doubts as to whether or not Namco would have won such a lawsuit, but the threat was enough to keep some developers from taking the risk.
Namco’s patent very likely would have failed because patent law stipulates that your patented item can’t have existed, and there are verifiable records of games with mini-game loading screens existing before Namco patented the idea in Ridge Racer. Likewise, the existence of numerous Battle Royale style games ensures that, even if Bluehole decided to head over to the patent office and absorb that cost, that they would ultimately fail in their attempt at ownership.
2. (Moral) That Time Bluehole Tried to Steal Lineage III
Out of the two parties involved in this dispute, incidentally Bluehole is the one most acquainted with criminal theft, a matter that MMO Fallout covered heavily back in its infancy. Back in 2009, civil and criminal charges were brought against multiple Bluehole Studios employees alleging that they had stolen trade secrets and assets while employed at NCSoft and used those assets in creating the action MMO Tera. Six employees were found guilty, with jail sentences being handed out as part of the criminal proceedings, however Bluehole as a corporate entity was found to not be guilty. Those employees, as you might expect, haven’t been working at Bluehole since then.
But still, there is a certain level of hypocrisy for a company with an established record of employees going to jail for stealing from another developer, to start pointing figures and making threats, over a mechanic that it doesn’t own, against other developers. Bluehole didn’t start the genre, even if it does have the most popular game in it as of present, and it doesn’t own the genre. If Bluehole does take the threat further, they open themselves up to a world of hurt from Epic’s legal team. Let’s not forget what happened to the last developer that tried to take Epic down in a frivolous lawsuit.
Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
League of Angels Using Assets Lifted From Final Fantasy XIV
League of Angels developer Youzu Interactive Co. Ltd (or whoever is responsible for their advertising) is directly stealing video and audio assets from Final Fantasy XIV for use in promotional materials. This revelation isn’t particularly new, it’s in a footnote on the game’s Wikipedia article. Follow the link in League of Angel’s advertising and it takes you to a Start Game page that will show either a direct rip of Final Fantasy XIV’s Heavensward trailer or the End of an Era trailer alongside the Answers song.
I reached out to both GT Arcade, whose website hosts the videos, and Square Enix, and haven’t received a response from either. I’m going to assume, given Square’s protective nature of its assets, that the usage has not been approved.
Youzu Interactive and GT Arcade are both headquartered in China.
Support Email: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
If I had a dollar for every email I receive from Jagex telling me that my account is under investigation for suspected gold farming, I could afford to buy the internet. Look at the release of any big name MMO, update, or expansion, and you are bound to see a surge of account theft. Since anti-virus programs have come such a long way over the years, thieves have turned to the next, and arguably more reliable method of stealing your information: Tricking you into voluntarily handing it over. After all, writing viruses is at least somewhat difficult and involves a delivery method and the potential that anti-virus software will quickly swoop in and render your work useless. I know what it’s like to be lazy, occasionally I just hold my hand out and hope that a cup of coffee will magically appear. So think of account phishing as the Keurig machine of account theft…or something.
One of the most common methods I have seen over the years is the “your account has been banned” email, where the player is notified that their account has been disabled for one reason or another, and they need to log in and submit an appeal or process something. While some will still attempt at installing a virus, most will take the safe route by simply creating an exact copy of the official site with a slightly misspelled URL. The user enters their login details and sends them straight to the thief. The idea in this case is to scare the user, and the hope is that they will throw out rational thought and log in without thinking.
As with all methods, this has evolved over the years to become more subtle and cunning. When service providers initiated a process of locking accounts that were suspected of being stolen, emails began targeting users with “your account may have been stolen. Please log in to confirm your ownership.” Others masquerade as beta invitations, or promotional emails, other times just harmless “hey check us out,” etc. The idea with most of these is that the player does not log into the game first to check the status of their account and reveal the scam, and some ban emails will actually state “do not attempt to log into your account via the game client or your appeal may be denied.”
With this in mind, your best bet is to assume that any email you receive is fake until proven otherwise. If you do receive a notice that your account has been banned, do not click on the link in the email under any circumstance. Either log in with the game client or log into the game’s official website to confirm. In the case of beta invitations, if possible always check the developer’s website first. Often times they will have instructions on how to accept the invitation that does not involve the email link, and may even have warnings posted about fake emails with screenshots of said forgeries.
As for “please log in to confirm your ownership,” I can say with 99% confidence that game developers don’t send these out. If your account has been stolen, sending an email (which has likely also been stolen) to ask you to log in with the same credentials that have been stolen is pointless, it’s like a police officer asking you to prove that your driver’s license isn’t fake and accepting that same license as proof.
SOE Hacked: Important Information
So the chickens have come home to roost, or however that saying goes. Earlier today, I talked about how Sony Online Entertainment had shut down its entire service following an investigation that may have changed their stance on SOE’s database being safe from the hack that took down the Playstation Network last month and resulted in everyone’s information spewed all over the net. Sony has issued a press release, and the news is not good:
Stolen information includes, to the extent you provided it to us, the following: name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password.
Customers outside the United States should be advised that we further discovered evidence that information from an outdated database from 2007 containing approximately 12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained – we will be notifying each of those customers promptly.
Sony originally believed that SOE was not compromised as part of the PSN hack, but investigations that concluded yesterday revealed that the system was indeed broken into by an unauthorized party. It is important to note that the main credit card database was not hacked, at least according to Sony. It may not be a bad idea to get a new card, however.
We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the attack and as a result, we have:
1) Temporarily turned off all SOE game services;
2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened; and
3) Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our network infrastructure to provide you with greater protection of your personal information.
If it makes you feel more comfortable, I suggest going to your bank/credit card issuer, and requesting a new card. You’ll have to live without the card for a week or so, but that’s a small price to pay if Sony’s database was stolen and they are able to get through the encryption. I’m not trying to cause undue fear with these articles, but any information regarding identity theft should be taken very seriously.
If you use your Sony password on other websites, I highly suggest you get a new regular password. SOE’s services remain offline.
MMO Fallout 