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Post by emergencyoverride on Mar 3, 2014 15:10:44 GMT -9
Hey guys, dont pledge on this kickstarter. They are trying to use Inked adventures tiles in their crowdfunding campaign and Billiam has stated that they do not have his permission to use them and has asked them to remove any references to his work and so far they haven't.
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Post by dungeonmistress on Mar 3, 2014 15:47:33 GMT -9
I'll pass the word among my friends and players.
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Post by emergencyoverride on Mar 3, 2014 16:32:38 GMT -9
They came back in the comments on the kickstarter that they are replacing the inked adventure tiles with pathfinder tiles, but the graphic hasn't changed yet.
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Post by glennwilliams on Mar 3, 2014 16:34:55 GMT -9
That they would do it is enough for me.
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 3, 2014 17:03:47 GMT -9
I wonder if they have permission from Paizo. Did you report them to Kickstarter?
Under project risks and challenges they should put, "Creating original work."
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Post by emergencyoverride on Mar 3, 2014 18:09:26 GMT -9
I tried to, but when you click the link to report under the ip infringement button it sends you to the copyrights page, which states that the actual ip holder has to file the complaint by email. I went back and told Billiam on his facebook page about that part.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 3, 2014 18:42:37 GMT -9
They've replaced the graphics and the description now and it appears that their plan involves purchasing pre-printed tiles in bulk and bundling them with their product. I assume that's what their original plan was with the Inked Adventures stuff too as I seem to recall him having pre-printed stuff available.
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Post by emergencyoverride on Mar 3, 2014 19:29:44 GMT -9
Yeah they sent me a follow up email:
Micheal, update: we removed all references of Inked Adventures. We are still big fans of Inked Adventures' work and it's too bad we could not include them in the exclusive bundle. We also re-worded our campaign so that folks understand it is a bundle and not a game that is to be sold online or in stores. We simply wanted to offer our adventure module (originally written 14 years ago and revised later for D&D versions) in a reinvented stand-alone fashion with 40% new content exclusively on Kickstarter while we develop our digital game. At least they took care of the issue when called on it. It's still sad that they did not get their duck's in a row with the individual publishers before going live with the kickstarter. Its just bad business.
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Post by mahotsukai on Mar 4, 2014 9:30:51 GMT -9
Things seem to have moved on Link now says:
Special Edition Sorcery Role Playing Game - Tabletop is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable.
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 4, 2014 9:53:58 GMT -9
Things seem to have moved on Link now says: Special Edition Sorcery Role Playing Game - Tabletop is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable. Perhaps Paizo didn't care for their property to be part of someone else's Kickstarter either.
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Post by dungeonmistress on Mar 4, 2014 11:04:03 GMT -9
Wow! If only they had asked first...
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 4, 2014 11:15:44 GMT -9
Looks like the creators have officially cancelled it now, which I'm certain must have stung a little for them considering how quickly they passed their original goal.
I actually feel a little sorry for them now because it seems that they weren't acting maliciously, just foolishly.
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Post by dungeonmistress on Mar 4, 2014 11:27:15 GMT -9
It's a lesson learned, I suppose. Hopefully, they will be a little more thoughtful next time. And I hope there will be a next time.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 4, 2014 17:02:20 GMT -9
I actually feel a little sorry for them now because it seems that they weren't acting maliciously, just foolishly. I don't feel bad for them. It's just a lesson learned - but only a bump. If they're serious, they can try again - after actually looking into what it takes. There are stories like this every single day on Kickstarter, no big deal. I'm glad that we mobilized quickly before any real damage was done.
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Post by WackyAnne on Mar 5, 2014 4:39:07 GMT -9
I actually feel a little sorry for them now because it seems that they weren't acting maliciously, just foolishly. I don't feel bad for them. It's just a lesson learned - but only a bump. If they're serious, they can try again - after actually looking into what it takes. There are stories like this every single day on Kickstarter, no big deal. I'm glad that we mobilized quickly before any real damage was done. I agree completely - I can't feel sorry for them because if they've not done that most basic part of research, how can they expect to be publishers themselves? And what other essential aspects of their campaign have they overlooked? You see similar IP appropriations all over the internet and small businesses. Why people don't understand that they must have either created the content themselves, or licensed it from the original creator/current licensor, or they have no right to sell it as part of their product? And the recent HeroQuest 25th Anniversary Edition is a very interesting example of this. While the promotors had the license to sell a (Spanish?) version in Spain, they did not have the rights to produce a new version and sell it to all the world. They got called on it, got locked out of Kickstarter, but successful restarted on a Spanish crowd funding site. I can't imagine that will end well for the thousands of people who foolishly and overoptimistically spent 100s of $/€ on that game. (While there are thousands of brilliant t-shirts out there with clever twists on popular IPs, those are generally another kettle of fish...)
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 5, 2014 12:19:17 GMT -9
I think they thought it would be alright because they were buying existing prints of tiles and giving them away as part of their pack. This is not quite IP theft because the original content producers are still getting paid in full for their stuff. I think they imagined it was like buying a bunch of candy and cheap items and putting them in a gift hamper. This sort of thing happens all the time and is not really a problem... you don't go and ask Nestle's permission to use their chocolate bars unless you think it's possible to get a discount by using only Nestle products in the hamper.
I think their real screw-up was in not making their intentions clear to the world in general and Billiam Babble in specific.
I'm not taking their side here, I just think there's an important lesson to be learned from their mistake, and maybe there's even an opportunity to do something here. We don't want to discourage people from discovering the stuff we sell... we want our stuff to spread as far and wide as possible! We do want that to happen in the right way though. We should think about befriending virtually every game designer, miniatures designer and rpg module publisher we can.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 5, 2014 14:26:48 GMT -9
bravesirkevin - The mistake was larger than you posit (and was still a mistake when they changed up for Paizo tiles): They don't get to pass off some re-packaged items as part of your product advertising - they didn't have permission or a license to do that. The right to use a product name, a company name, and a product image are subject to trademark and copyright international laws - period. Just imagine this product bundle: Official Disney's Mickey MouseTM Doll, Edible Panties, and an Authentic Indiana JonesTM whip being (re)sold by ExoticKickStarters Inc. It doesn't matter if you purchase these products separately, you do not have any right to use the name of the company, character, product for repackaging without explicit permission. They were 100% off base here - no excuses. Disney and Lucasfilm's lawyers would shut you down in nanosecond - and make you feel some real pain in the pocketbook for related damages. I've seen them in action up close. TTI is lucky that the people who's IP they abused aren't lawyers and are more likely to feel guilty/helpful than to rightfully enforce their legal rights.
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Post by bravesirkevin on Mar 5, 2014 14:53:05 GMT -9
You're absolutely right. I just try and live my life by Hanlon's Razor (ie. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.")
Malicious people have malicious intentions. Stupid people generally have good intentions (or at least they think that their intentions are honorable in some way). Malicious people will be malicious as long as they can get away with it. Stupid people will be stupid only until they are educated, and thereafter their good intentions might actually lead to some good. While we should stamp out malice wherever we find it, we should also take care not to handle the stupid with the same tactic. We owe it to ourselves and humanity in general to educate good-intentioned but naive people, as that enables them to actually achieve some good.
The way I see it, we should, as a community, encourage people to work with us to create these kinds of product offerings, but we should do it cleverly so that everyone benefits and no one does stupid things like this in the future. The dreamer in me imagines all sorts of possibilities.
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Post by dungeonmistress on Mar 5, 2014 15:35:17 GMT -9
Looks like a perfect application for Aaron's Anti-Stupid Pills.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 5, 2014 15:58:12 GMT -9
You're absolutely right. I just try and live my life by Hanlon's Razor (ie. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.") One of my father's favorite sayings, and I agree. (And I hope no one saw me attributing malice to the stupidity in play here.) Though, how many times did they make the same exact mistake in a row? After awhile, you just gotta shout at them "Hey! Are you even listening?"
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Post by cowboyleland on Mar 5, 2014 18:57:18 GMT -9
My favourite paraphrase of Hanlon's Razor: "It's probably numbskullery, not skullduggery." I read it years ago in a newspaper article. I don't know who the author was or even if it was original to them.
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Post by BilliamBabble Inked Adventures on Mar 6, 2014 2:37:35 GMT -9
Thanks for the support here. I thought I'd better come on and explain what was happening behind the scenes, because these people seem to be legit guys, mainly a misrepresentation, but it's also about the fact that for now I'm keeping my life and Inked Adventures totally free of Kickstarters and all crowd funding - which is a personal choice but political enough for me not to see my brand and products associated in any way with crowd funding. IP theft seems like a harsh way to describe it but, initially, it fit the bill, I'll explain ... Order of events: I received an email from iSorcery.net asking for video footage to help in a promo for goal-stretching in the already successful kickstarter. I babble a response - I thought it was a type of trick, like being a winner of a fake competition. Further confusion, whilst they explain what they needed to show their backers - I needed context... On their website and near the top of the kickstarter page was my Inked Adventures 'basic pack' cover graphic. On the kickstarter page itself - which has already been running for sometime and has met it it's 1K target, but was promoting stretch goals, they described their company has having teamed up with other tabletop and RPG companies to produce this special package. I paraphrase, but it implied that I was a partner in planning the project. Further down was one of my Inked Adventures promo mock-ups and a description of my tiles. In summary, the project was effectively bundling together an RPG rulebook, counters, character sheets and my tiles. At some point amidst the next set of emails I fill out a Copyright Dispute form on kickstarter. iSorcery explain that they were selling the PDFs but it wasn't clear to me how it would work - but essentially it would be one purchase per pledger through the OBS sites, which is reasonable I guess, but they weren't specific about this (third party sites, RPGNow DTRPG OBS not named). They were offering backers printed tiles, I was not linked in with that. I currently don't sell any 25/30mm pre-print tiles, I have turned down two other companies who wanted exclusive rights to sell pre-printed Inked Adventures tiles. I'm also sometimes hesitant about them being bound to a single system or being part of a total tabletop/RPG game system (I don't mind bundling, like with Grey Matter Games, where it's still clear that the PDF is from my store/stock). In an email they explained that due to number of orders to date that my substantial payment would be guaranteed, so we were all winners, so to speak, and that their own profits were minimal - after all, this was just a promotional sideline for their PDA game (herein lies the rub, they were coders perhaps? Less experience with pen and paper publishing?) There was an offer to take my tiles out, along with references to IA - and to take down banner graphics - but I had no way of knowing that I wasn't being stalled. They didn't understand why they couldn't just print tiles for backers - in fact I started to doubt myself for a moment. All this on top of the fact that I'm often uncomfortable the endless promotion of Kickstarters and I had read that customers might sometimes have less rights for refund after payment, meant that I'd been really outspoken in the past on this, favoring existing POD systems for Pen and paper RPGs, and had also turned down numerous kickstarter participations (etc.) - So it was made worse by the fact that I hadn't been asked (not sent any detailed plans or contracts) and that the KS was now at a stage where orders destined to go to print. They explained that they were big fans of my work, but that they would take the graphics off. They then replaced my tiles with Paizo GM tiles (wow, suddenly very flattered) - I thought this was the PDFs - which would also be problematic when it comes to making printed copies for backers - but later they made it clear that they would be buying packs from a local shop. By this time my friends were rallying (destroy the monster! burn the windmill!) - just about the same time that the company was offering olive branches of website banner exchanges and so forth. Then Kickstarter enacted it's Disputed Copyright procedure - BAM - no follow up or checking, blast doors come down, just hid the project! I was hoping that Kickstarter might actually ask me to clarify a bit more first (the form was very basic). I think this was a step too far for iSorcery, who's tasty PDA game promotion now had a sour taste, so they then cancelled the kickstarter. At this moment I was sending an email to kickstarter .com explaining "it's okay, everything fine now..." which I think led to the KS project becoming unhidden again but now it was no longer active. Definitely not "skullduggery" but a lot of time and energy lost when earlier correspondences and some clear terms and conditions would have been better. The funny thing is, I'm actually warming the kickstarters a little now... I tempted to add extra blerb to all product descriptions, but "for personal use only" plus "contact me" has always covered most "common sense" situations. I'm destined to die poor ...
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Post by sarahconner on Mar 6, 2014 7:26:16 GMT -9
Hi all, forgive me for intruding on your conversation. I found this thread from another posting I saw somewhere and just wanted to jump in and explain that BilliamBabble nailed it.
My name is Sarah Conner and I am responsible for this whole mess, mostly. I work on the dev team – we create software games and have worked through publishers and for other companies. We have no experience in the game board or inked world and are simply trying to self-publish a new video game that we are currently developing.
Weeks ago I was asked by our team leader to get our “ducks in a row” regarding the suppliers for the parts for the tabletop RPG. You see the game itself is really the 125-page adventure module we created. We just thought that if we add some physical components to our very cool adventures we could offer a nice bundle and generate some buzz for the upcoming video game. This is all at cost, really. For each pledge we were to purchase from each supplier the total amount needed to fulfill each order. A third party was going to box and ship out. It sounded really simple at first.
Well, although I did contact the other suppliers and two other tile providers I totally forgot to contact Inked Adventures when that was ALL of the team’s first choice to begin with. Well, a friend that was working on the website and images for the campaign had assumed everything was a go and clicked “activate”.
Too late. In two days we already had around 40 orders and fulfilled our $1,000 goal which was needed to have enough funds to cover the upfront printing fee (the rest was built-in per pledge). At this time we were scrambling to try to reach out to board game news sites and I completely lost track of my Inked agenda (to contact BilliamBabble). Again, to build some buzz in the community (because we could not get a single reply or call back from “video” game news sites about our upcoming game that claim to support independent developers) I figured that Inked would be fine with the bundle since we would order the exact number of pledges for their product—even for each we were to print. The other providers were delighted and offered videos and other content we were putting together but we wanted some from Inked as well.
We did reach out to Inked to ask for any supporting material and/or videos (if they had anything handy) to we can continue to promote. The other providers had already started sending us material. We were told we could use Paizo stock images unmodified and of course we needed to specify we are not a reseller which we did. And we also contacted a lawyer to help us with the legal stuff to ensure we were not crossing any other lines (such as with Inked).
We learned a huge lesson here and also have a lot of bad publicity as well. As a matter of fact one of our graphics designers dropped out of our project based on principle which we understand.
Bottom line… it sucks as an independent developer. We do have an offer on the table to work under a publisher which basically means we’ll make next to nothing per copy of the video game after distribution, paying the graphics folks and of course the HUGE chunk required by the publisher.
So what happened with the tabletop RPG? Well as we told BilliamBabble it turned out to be more trouble than it’s worth to us. We canceled the campaign. We have someone that is privately funding to put the finishing touches on the adventure module so we can offer it as a free download in hopes that the community can see the great potential we have in our game and possibly give us a shot on the video side.
So as you all likely have experienced we put in hours upon hours of development to offer for free so that gamers can see our potential and maybe give our game a shot. Turns out as BilliamBabble so eloquently stated, “I’m destined to die poor…” We too feel the same way. For us, we have talent, we just can't seem to catch a break.
On a side note it seems as if there are more if us out here, that is to say independent designers, coders, bloggers, etc., than the big brand game folks. We should band together and put a product out that will make history. I mean I’ve worked for large firms before (and small ones but with big money backers) and I get paid scratch for long hours, unpaid overtime and weekend work, crazy deadlines, and also never get recognition. The c-level folks are the ones all the fans scream for as they walk up on the stage, etc.
Sucks. Okay, sorry, I’m rambling now.
Bottom line, and most importantly, we apologize (me especially) to the community for insulting you all by appearing to support IP theft or cyber pirates, to Inked Adventures for assuming you would support us and also failing to get our ducks in a row first, and (if we keep spiraling downward) to the gaming world for possibly never seeing our true passion of a game with some really unique elements, iSorcery, on the market.
Take care all. BTW Inked Adventures is still our favorite for tile sets and maps. If anything good comes from this mess, maybe it's that Inked Adventures will get more press and more orders.
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Post by oldschooldm on Mar 6, 2014 10:12:06 GMT -9
Thanks for sharing the details - the summary provides some closure to this issue.
Best of luck on your future ventures! (To all involved!)
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Post by migibb on Mar 6, 2014 10:49:49 GMT -9
Sarah - thanks for taking the time out to explain the situation for us.
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Post by Rhannon on Mar 6, 2014 12:08:00 GMT -9
I apologize. I have a bit of trouble with the English language. So I don't know if I understood correctly.
If I have understood correctly:
1 - "BilliamBabble Inked Adventures" has lost at least a few tens of sales ( including downloadable content and PoD tiles. because RPGNow/OBS can also print them )
2 - "sarahconner" team lost time, personnel, good advertising ... ( resources in short )
A very bad day for independent producers. I'm sorry.
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Post by BilliamBabble Inked Adventures on Mar 6, 2014 12:21:17 GMT -9
Thanks for posting, Sarah. (See what I mean, thems nice guys!) -Sorry you lost your designer as well. (Rhannon - some of my tiles are very awkward to set up for print-on-demand - the Basic Pack is modular/irregular in dimensions, so I've never provided that option on the OBS sites. As publisher, only I get to decide if my store sells printed editions. My only printed product to date are cards through GameCrafter, but that will change at some point.)
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Post by squirmydad on Mar 13, 2014 4:31:55 GMT -9
Thanks for all of the information and explanations from both of you, apology accepted. I truly wish you best of luck in your endeavor and would be happy to support your enterprise by spreading the word through my different social media outlets and perhaps, if you dare venture into another KS campaign, offering some digital downloads of One Monk paper miniatures as a pledge bonus prize. Best of luck.
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Post by aaron on Mar 13, 2014 5:41:59 GMT -9
I think we can take this as a lesson for sure ! but accidents are the dirt that legends grow out of.
Sarah wether you ment to or not you just got the attention of some ridiculously talented individuals ( many of whom are good both in print and on computers ) with years and years of experience who are Most of them looking to form relationships with someone like you. Your on this forum which can put you center stage and you have the mic ... why don't you try again? only this time were all watching. No one has to die poor. I'm tired of it and I will be poor no longer ... than is absolutely necessary LOL so you took a hit and you learned a valuable lesson, time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on. I'm ready to see what you do next!
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