Video Game News and Miscellany

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Tinwhistler said:
If Blizzard has an indemnify clause (ie "seller agrees that he has the right to sell source and indemnifies blizzard...blah blah legalese"), it may fall on the employee's back anyway. It would have been stupid of them not to have such a clause in any contract. With such a clause, they no longer have unclean hands, but instead can say "hey, we thought it was legit..the guy swore it was"
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Which, again, doesn't preclude them from paying damages. They sought the source code to undermine the bots but didn't go after the company they knew was selling it, but rather the guy who made it. Not only could Blizzard not sue the guy who made it (because he had no rights to it and it wasn't illegal to make anyway), but they knowingly did an end run round the company by not going after THEM first. I don't see how a judge isn't going to look at that and tell them they aren't covered under the indemnity clause because they clearly knew who to target to get the code and his association with the company selling it.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

AshburnerX said:
Which, again, doesn't preclude them from paying damages. They sought the source code to undermine the bots but didn't go after the company they knew was selling it, but rather the guy who made it. Not only could Blizzard not sue the guy who made it (because he had no rights to it and it wasn't illegal to make anyway), but they knowingly did an end run round the company by not going after THEM first. I don't see how a judge isn't going to look at that and tell them they aren't covered under the indemnity clause because they clearly knew who to target to get the code and his association with the company selling it.
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End run or not, it totally revolves around ownership of copyright and perception thereof. It doesn't matter who was selling the bot software. What matters is who had the right to sell the source code. How the source code was going to be used, and why Blizzard wanted it, and the fact that it caused harm to the other company is kind of irrelevant if they can wiggle free of the source code theft claims.

If the guy who wrote the code wrote it work-for-hire, then the company owns it. If Blizzard knew this, then yes, they acted in bad faith by getting the code from the guy who wrote it. But work-for-hire is defined very narrowly. A lot of people who think they're getting the copyrights because of work-for-hire rules are actually mistaken.

If the guy was an independent contractor, legally, he owns the code, and the company would have to have executed some document giving them rights. If they were exclusive rights, and Blizzard knew it, then again, they've got an uphill fight. But in most cases, companies don't realize that independent contractors own the rights to the code they write, even if they are given an implied license to use it.

If the guy wrote the code first and then later sold it to the company, his ownership of the code is clear. Now it all depends on how that contract was written up, and if he sold his copyrights. And the copyright assignment language in the document has to be in a very specific format, or it's not valid. See the SCO Group lawsuits around unix.

If he merely licensed them, then again, it depends on which copyrights he licensed and if it was exclusive. And if Blizzard knew about it. If the guy executed an exclusive license but told Blizzard he didn't, again it's on him, not Blizzard.

So it's not that cut and dried. If Blizzard has an indemnity clause, it's entirely reasonable for the judge to say "Well, the guy swore he owned the rights to sell that code, and it was reasonable for you to assume he did. Since he indemnified you against lawsuits, it's all on him." That's what indemnity clauses are for.

Here's an example: I wrote some software as a contractor back in 2000. The company who hired me would occasionally hire me again to update it over the next 10 years or so. Then they decided to hire a consulting company to update it for Windows 7, and asked me for the source code. I quoted them a price that they didn't like, and they made noise about suing because they "owned" it. But they didn't. I did. They just had an implied license to use the executables. When I pointed that out, and sent them the specific copyright clauses, I stopped hearing from them. They could still have sued, but I would likely have won.

Here's another copyright example, I made a music CD with my band in Dallas. I never executed any copyright documents with the band. While we were together, they sold CDs and everyone got a cut. When I moved to Virginia, I wasn't with the band any more, so I took the CD and removed every tune where I didn't personally play. Every tune that was left (meaning every one I did play on), I had full and equal copyright on--I could legally sell it. And so I packaged them up with a few other tunes that I made with other bands (from Houston), and sold it on Amazon as "Gregory Mahan and Friends". Totally legal, because of the way the copyright is handled on collaborative works that don't have a specific copyright assignment or document executed.

If the band had cared, they might have been mad about it and wanted to sue because I used 80% of the "band cd" to make my own. But it wouldn't have mattered, because of the way copyright law works.

Now, granted, I'm speaking from a US point of view, since that's what I'm most familiar with. I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I do have a lot of experience dealing with copyright issues due to my own personal and work history.

This case is in Germany. German law is bound to have differences. But Blizzard has beat this company many times in court in Germany already, and I assume that Blizzard's legal team is probably more well versed in the law than a bunch of bot-writing guys, even if they've formed a small company. I'm guessing that they made sure all their t's were crossed--they'd have been dumb not to.

http://www.shakelaw.com/blog/indemnity-clauses-understanding-basics/
Let’s say you are a freelance software developer and you agree to indemnify your client against copyright claims related to the code you are writing for them. After the client deploys the software, they get sued by another company claiming that the software is a copy of theirs. Per the indemnity clause, you would be obligated to cover your client’s costs in defending against this lawsuit, and you would be responsible for your client’s damages if they were found liable to the third party.
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edit: (sorry to keep adding to this..hehe). While copyright laws are different from country to country, Germany is one of the signatories of the Berne Convention, which means that their copyright laws do work at least similarly to our own.
 
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Cheesy1

Cheesy1

So apparently Konami used their lawyers to prevent Hideo Kojima from attending The Game Awards tonight to accept any trophies won by Phantom Pain under threat of breach of contract. So the show's producer, Geoff Keighley, goes on air to publicly out Konami's asshattery in front of the world:

 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Cheesy1 said:
So apparently Konami used their lawyers to prevent Hideo Kojima from attending The Game Awards tonight to accept any trophies won by Phantom Pain under threat of breach of contract. So the show's producer, Geoff Keighley, goes on air to publicly out Konami's asshattery in front of the world:

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Oh but Konami, I thought he was on vacation ...

So who accepted any awards? A Konami slot machine?
 
Dei

Dei

I'm starting to wonder if Reggie Fils-Aime is a robot, because no matter what he is talking about he always sounds the same. ;)
 
Frank

Frank

At the VGAs it was Keifer Sutherland who accepted the award, followed by Keighley calling out Konami and Stephanie Joosten singing Quiet's Theme as a tribute to Kojima.

Geoff Keighley was obviously not fucking happy about it.
 
Yoshimickster

Yoshimickster

ThatNickGuy said:
Psychonauts 2 is a thing that is happening.



I'd post this in the Kickstarter thread, but they're not going through Kickstarter for some reason.
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YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH! MOTHER FUCKING YES! I literally foamed at the mouth when I heard this was happening! Well, more like bubbled, but it FELT like foaming, so I stand by that use of the word literally! Fuck I gotta finish beating that game again, I just wish I could find that last fucking FIGMENT on Edgar's level! Also I hope they don't get rid of the figment hunt, that was SO tortuously fun.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Sword Coast Legends community pack 2 has fixed the biggest bitch I've had about this game--piss poor looting. Initially, it was "First come first served" which sucked with PUGs because people would dickishly run and grab everything as fast as they could.

Now, looting has different optional rules.

Loot Changes: We’ve added individual loot as an option! Now you can pick up and keep anything you find without feeling guilty about it. Players who prefer traditional D&D shared loot can play that way too. Players will now be able to choose which type of looting that they would like in their games. The new option of individual loot means that players will only see items that they themselves can pick up and will not see the option to loot items designated for other players. In multiplayer games, players will see which looting option has been chosen by the game host in the server browser.
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AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Frank said:
Eh, he had almost nothing to do with the game. The only tenuous connection is Card wanted to write novels based in the same universe.
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It occurs during the same period as the novel Empire by OSC, which he wrote under contract for Chair Entertainment along with the sequel, Hidden Empire. He may not have WROTE the game (Peter David did that), but it's clear elements of it are based on his writing. So again, if people have issue with Orson Scott Card and can't remove his politics from his works, there's your heads up.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Looking over the VGAs, this seems like a stupid award show. Most Anticipated Game? Really? I'm looking forward to No Man's Sky as well, but you're giving an award to a game that hasn't even been released yet based solely on hype.
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

Zero Esc said:
Looking over the VGAs, this seems like a stupid award show. Most Anticipated Game? Really? I'm looking forward to No Man's Sky as well, but you're giving an award to a game that hasn't even been released yet based solely on hype.
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You're talking about an award show that's run by the publishers, sponsors, and games media that's in bed with the publishers and sponsors. It's basically a big long commercial, what were you expecting?

Actually, come to think of it, that's every award show.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Ravenpoe said:
You're talking about an award show that's run by the publishers, sponsors, and games media that's in bed with the publishers and sponsors. It's basically a big long commercial, what were you expecting?

Actually, come to think of it, that's every award show.
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So what you're saying is, we should have a Nintendo award show for the best Nintendo games by Nintendo.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Ravenpoe said:
You're talking about an award show that's run by the publishers, sponsors, and games media that's in bed with the publishers and sponsors. It's basically a big long commercial, what were you expecting?

Actually, come to think of it, that's every award show.
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It's literally every awards show that isn't tied to the people who actually perform in the industry and then it's just politics. Even Roasts are about money.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Telltale announces new series for 2016: Batman.

While I'm no longer under the illusion of choice for their games, The Wolf Among Us still worked fine as playing out and working to solve a mystery, and if they do a Batman game in that same vein, I'll play it. I mean, I'd hope they do it as a mystery for the world's greatest detective.

(More work for Kevin Conroy, pretty please ... also, give the Joker a break.)
 
Cheesy1

Cheesy1

Yeah, it's got me kind of wary now. I understand that a combat update was going to happen, but I hope they're not going to just turn it into full-on third-person melee combat. I would have liked to have seen some materia use in action so I would know how that is being changed as well.
 
ThatNickGuy

ThatNickGuy

I don't necessarily MIND it, honestly. If it works, it works. I like a lot of what I'm seeing, like where they showed Cloud walking around Midgar.
 
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