That said, "protecting" games has been a problem, almost literally forever. On the one hand you want folks to benefit from there work, on the other hand sometimes a 'derivative' is a much much better game. So do you cut off that like we've done with software patents? Or not?
Despite this argument's merit in general, it's a complete digression in this particular case. They didn't just heavily copy his game, but then turned around and named it similarly, registered a trademark, then turned that trademark against him. At what point do we stop pretending these people are anything but thieves?
Watching an app be successful and then watching the copy-cats swoop in to feed on your success as Apple (or Google) do nothing is very difficult to deal with.
Honestly I can't believe you (and other) developers are surprised when this happens.
My company's web site was copy and pasted wholesale by a competitor, and we had to threaten legal action against them in order to get them to replace it. (Probably with someone else's.)
Be careful though. That successful app could very well likely be a copy-cat itself. Success does not mean originality.
I won't deny King's douchiness in the trademark case, which will no doubt hurt Mr. Ransom and Runsome Games, but this is not like the Scamperghost case (and nowhere does Mr. Ransom imply that it is -- he's just calling out King on its evil scheme of attempting to quash a pre-existing trademark).
Time to look for some blue ocean, I guess.
I get that they're responding to the incentives. Which is also fucked up. But I can hate the player and the game.
I've experienced countless hotlinkings, rippings, clones, insults, DoS attacks and cybersquattings as a former Flash game developer. Luckily, I have not been involved in any trademark issues, but it is happening also on the web, isn't it?
I was just referencing the ideas in this book (with which I have no affiliation): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy
How does this work? Can one buy a trademark in order to pre-empt someone else's trademark which pre-empts another of your own?
Then they go off and bring this guy down, make their money, and you get the satisfaction of knowing that your trademark is safe.
That sucks.
As a favor, I went ahead and gave them a shit review.
If I had more time, I might link farm their brand name all over the place.
The best formula for making it in the appstore is to copy other peoples work. This has been apparent for quite some time now.
It seems to me that as developers we need a similar site where people can start objecting to overly broad trademarks, especially single word ones which are targeted at web service and application name related trademark classes.
There are probably much fewer trademarks issued that patents, and they are easily searchable online, eg the UK Trademark Journal is at http://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-tmj/tm-journals/2014-006/index.html .
A trademark is also much easier to object to than a patent ( http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/tm/t-other/t-object/t-afterpub/t... ).
It would be a great weekend project for someone to create a web app which does some of this. You could even charge businesses a fee to monitor words that may affect their businesses.
I hope this post brings about enough social pressure to ensure that the right thing, whatever that means, happens.
"Here's a model that we've had trouble with. Maybe you'll be able to figure it out better. Many markets get down to two or three big competitors—or five or six. And in some of those markets, nobody makes any money to speak of. But in others, everybody does very well.
Over the years, we've tried to figure out why the competition in some markets gets sort of rational from the investor's point of view so that the shareholders do well, and in other markets, there's destructive competition that destroys shareholder wealth.
If it's a pure commodity like airline seats, you can understand why no one makes any money. As we sit here, just think of what airlines have given to the world—safe travel, greater experience, time with your loved ones, you name it. Yet, the net amount of money that's been made by the shareholders of airlines since Kitty Hawk, is now a negative figure—a substantial negative figure. Competition was so intense that, once it was unleashed by deregulation, it ravaged shareholder wealth in the airline business.
Yet, in other fields—like cereals, for example—almost all the big boys make out. If you're some kind of a medium grade cereal maker, you might make 15% on your capital. And if you're really good, you might make 40%. But why are cereals so profitable—despite the fact that it looks to me like they're competing like crazy with promotions, coupons and everything else? I don't fully understand it.
Obviously, there's a brand identity factor in cereals that doesn't exist in airlines. That must be the main factor that accounts for it.
And maybe the cereal makers by and large have learned to be less crazy about fighting for market share—because if you get even one person who's hell-bent on gaining market share.... For example, if I were Kellogg and I decided that I had to have 60% of the market, I think I could take most of the profit out of cereals. I'd ruin Kellogg in the process. But I think I could do it.
In some businesses, the participants behave like a demented Kellogg. In other businesses, they don't. Unfortunately, I do not have a perfect model for predicting how that's going to happen.
For example, if you look around at bottler markets, you'll find many markets where bottlers of Pepsi and Coke both make a lot of money and many others where they destroy most of the profitability of the two franchises. That must get down to the peculiarities of individual adjustment to market capitalism. I think you'd have to know the people involved to fully understand what was happening."
-Charlie Munger http://ycombinator.com/munger.html
With consumables (which includes things like cereal), you decide which brand to purchase, and you use or consume it. Then, the next time you need it, you must decide again which to buy and have virtually no downside to purchasing a different brand (no lock-in from the previous purchase).
With one-time-ever purchases (which I think includes subscriptions or recurring purchases where there is a barrier to switching, including games where you have saved progress through levels and rack up points or a high-score), you decide once and then stick with it. I think that's where competition can easily pivot from healthy for a business to merciless.
Then there are things like airline seats which are technically commodities, but not entirely. With airline seats, there are barriers to information (such as being able to use e.g. Kayak to compare prices, but having Spirit excluded from Kayak within the US means you must know to also check Spirit's site), and there are MVP and rewards programs and airline miles, etc, and there is also quality and ammenities, and the fact that you never know how much a ticket with luggage and a snack is going to cost until you go through the entire checkout process (and who has time to do that for all options). So, airline seats seem like they should be commodities, but they really aren't.
Soft drink distributors are an interesting case- they sell the same thing, with the same brand, in different markets- apparently some are profitable and others aren't. I would guess it has to do with price sensitivity of the customers in a given market- some markets may not prefer one beverage over another as strongly as other markets, whereas they may be much more price sensitive.
thinking this way: in the mind of the consumer tasty-ohs are not cheerios, though they are a replacement, but a seat on Southwest is the same thing as a seat on Delta. some people care, most don't. Airlines have not been able to successfully differentiate their products, so they operate in a commodity market, same as petrol or supermarkets.
But when a seat costs $300, and people only purchase maybe once a year (or several years), then the airlines are less likely able to get away with charging $400.
In other words, two of the factors in this equation are how often the item is purchased, and how expensive it is (compared to the benefits).
May swift karmic justice fall upon them soon.
Seems that King and Zynga have been called out a few times recently.
So are they hoping that they can clone a game just enough and hope people buy it because of their name versus some indie dev you may not have heard of?
Well, don't just limit it to big companies. Small companies, even startups just copy away. And it's not just games, but apps in general.
Even the "wildcard" game piece is almost identical.
