Benchmark: Video Games Now Realistic Enough For Racing Games To Factor Into Racing Certs

from the real-talk dept

Normally, when we talk about any issue involving how realistic video games are becoming as an art form, those stories revolve around either the decrying of realistic violence within the games or occasionally governments attempting to use realistic game footage to pimp their own fictional military capabilities. But, while those stories often come off as silly, those examples and their like are not the only benchmarks for just how realistic gaming is becoming. Other examples involve games reaching a realism level high enough to open the door to real-life application.

Serving as a recent example of this is the latest from racing game giant Gran Turismo, which has achieved enough realism to earn it a partnership with Formula One Racing as a sort of proving ground for racers to get their license with the professional racing organization.

A new partnership with the FIA means that in-game progress can now count toward a racing license with the association. The partnership with the FIA somewhat mirrors the GT Academy, which allows some of the best Gran Turismoplayers to compete for the opportunity to drive a real race car.

Through the FIA partnership, game racers will be tracked on their ability and their "race track etiquette", which I assume is a way to ensure that drivers are performing not only well, but in a manner that would be safe for real-world drivers around them. In addition, there will be a sub-section of the game specifically designed in partnership with the FIA, where drivers can compete with one another and have their skills and driving behavior analyzed.

This isn't just a cool benchmark in gaming realism, either. It provides a nice example of how this kind of realism can benefit an industry like the racing industry in very real ways, both in terms of safety and cost.

Considering the astronomical costs of pursuing a career in motorsports, being able to knock certain aspects of it out in a video game—without the cost of wrecks, mechanical issues, parts and just buying a car—could open the opportunity for a wider array of competitors. Purchasing a gaming setup fit to race isn't cheap, but it's far cheaper than running real races.

Believe me, the moment that Major League Baseball teams start looking to the management of video game teams as a proving ground for hiring general managers and coaches, I'll have a whole new career path on my hands. More seriously, this type of thing won't eliminate the need for real-world racing experience to qualify for a license, but it likely will have a nice weeding-out effect for potential drivers.

Filed Under: certificates, racing, reality, video games, virtual reality

Apple, Arbiters Of Art, Say Game About Surviving The Gaza Strip Isn't A Game, Even Though It Is

from the art-thou-kidding? dept

Search for stories about Apple's App Store in the Techdirt archives and you will quickly notice a theme. That theme is that Apple routinely appoints itself as the arbiter of artistic quality and morality when it comes to content within the app store, particularly gaming content, and that its application of these standards swings like some kind of absurd pendulum. Ban a game over here for telling a bible story that includes violence against children, but allow the actual bible to be sold as well. React to the South Carolina massacre by pulling down games about the Civil War because they include images of the Confederate flag. Reject a wargaming simulation, then approve it, and nobody knows how the company might decide to react tomorrow. You often hear that stability breeds a good ground for business, whereas Apple runs its App Store like some kind of experiment in chaos.

And in order to apply its standards in a way that apparently makes the folks at Apple feel all warm and fuzzy inside, it occasionally has to truly lower its explanations to absurd levels of outright lying. For instance, Apple recently disallowed a game about surviving on the Gaza Strip in its store, claiming it wasn't a game at all, but a news publication, even though the briefest review of the app reveals that it's obviously a game.

A game about the Palestine/Israel conflict, Liyla and The Shadows of War, has proved too political for Apple. The technology giant ordered the developer, Rasheed Abueideh, to remove Liyla from the games section of its iTunes app store, claiming it isn't a game and should sit in the news section.

The real question is, is Liyla and The Shadows of War a game? I played it last night, as Liyla is available from Google Play. It's a short platformer with a powerful message and stunning graphics.

The writer goes on from there to describe the plot, the inclusion of reactions to real life events, the graphical elements of the game, and the, well, gameplay. Because it's a game. You have to play to get either a win or lose scenario, there are choices to be made, puzzles to be solved, and stages to complete. It's a platformer, like Mario Bros..

So, why the ban and the lies to support it? Well, one can understand that the Middle East conflict and the ongoing crisis between the Palestinians and the Israelis is among the most touchy of subjects. For a company that wants to keep its brand and its App Store squeaky clean, at least in its own mind, one can imagine that this kind of thing is something Apple wouldn't want to touch. But, misguided as this already is, it becomes all the more so when it can't even bother to stay consistent on the matter. The App Store has available for purchase, for instance, Israeli Heroes, which appears to be an Angry Birds clone in which you lob missiles at bombs that reside under a crescent moon and oh my god, I think I'm about to have an embolism, because come on.

As always, in the midst of this nonsense, the game is available for Android devices, because that garden has no wall around it.

For once, the phrase 'relax, it's just a game' seems apt. Apple take note. Liyla and The Shadows of War is available for Android on Google Play – it's free, it's short and it's definitely a game worth playing.

We've said it before, but we'll say it again: it'd be best if Apple would get out of the art critique business. They're not very good at it.

Filed Under: app store, censorship, games, gaza strip, itunes, video games, walled garden
Companies: apple

Advice To Immediately Trademark Kickstarter Projects Rests On Crowdfunding Not Being Commerce

from the hmmm dept

Because we talk a great deal about trademark law here at Techdirt, it occasionally leads us writers down interesting reading paths. One such path I recently traveled led me to a Gamasutra community post written by attorney Stephen McArthur, a lawyer who has built something of a specialty in video game industry law. The theme of the post is that anyone crowdfunding the production of a video game, via Kickstarter for example, should be registering the trademarks for their game during or before the crowdfunding process, rather than waiting until the production is funded successfully. Putting aside the heavy importance McArthur places on trademark registration, his argument is more of a PSA on the procedural timelines and what he considers to be a misunderstanding about both when common law trademark kicks in and when certain aspects of the trademark-ability of a product or service are initiated. For example:

Many of our clients fund and market their games using crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Fig. They almost always have the same misconception: once they successfully fund a game on Kickstarter, then they would have superior rights to someone who comes along later and begins using the game title. This is based on the otherwise correct understanding that trademark law gives protection over a product name (here, a game title) to anyone who either (1) uses the name in commerce, or (2) files an application to register it as a trademark, even on an intent-to-use basis up to three years before any actual use.

Unfortunately, putting a game title on Kickstarter and successfully funding the project does not count as using the game title in commerce and thus gives you zero rights to the name. The law for what counts as “use in commerce” was not written with crowdfunding in mind, and this is simply another example of law not being caught up with technology.

Under his premise, McArthur's suggestions seem sound. But is the premise correct that crowdfunding campaigns do not count as commerce? This certainly doesn't seem to be settled law in the way one might infer from the post. 15 U.S. Code § 1127 defines "user in commerce" thusly:

The term “use in commerce” means the bona fide use of a mark in the ordinary course of trade, and not made merely to reserve a right in a mark. For purposes of this chapter, a mark shall be deemed to be in use in commerce—

(1) on goods when—

(A) it is placed in any manner on the goods or their containers or the displays associated therewith or on the tags or labels affixed thereto, or if the nature of the goods makes such placement impracticable, then on documents associated with the goods or their sale, and

(B) the goods are sold or transported in commerce, and

(2) on services when it is used or displayed in the sale or advertising of services and the services are rendered in commerce, or the services are rendered in more than one State or in the United States and a foreign country and the person rendering the services is engaged in commerce in connection with the services.

The problem with the above statute is, as McArthur rightly notes, it was constructed without such a thing as internet crowdfunding in mind. That said, the intention of the law seems fairly easy to translate. The idea is that someone looking to put forth a product or service should be protected by trademark law once the business of the enterprise has begun and is public. Raising money from individual investors for a video game that hasn't been publicly announced wouldn't qualify, but what if you're raising money directly from the end customers, or a subsection of the end customers, as part of the business model? If the crowdsource campaign contributors are indeed the end customers of a product or service, how is their payment via Kickstarter not a commercial exchange?

It certainly seems like it should be, doesn't it? After all, simply reversing the order of production and payment doesn't change the nature of the commerce in which both sides are engaged. And if that's indeed the case, then common law trademark rights ought to apply to Kickstarter projects once the fundraising has begun, rather than being delayed until the product or service, video games in this case, are being sold elsewhere or once they have been shipped/delivered.

As I noted, there is little certainty about this either way, as best as my research has turned up, meaning it will likely take court cases and rulings before anyone actually knows if crowdfunding counts as a use in commerce. Additionally, while we've been in the past loathe to see too much codifying of specifics done in trademark law, perhaps this is an exception. After all, if crowdfunding is going to be a normal way of doing business, as it seems increasingly to be, perhaps it's time the law caught up to the technology.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, stephen mcarthur, trademark, use in commerce, video games

Game Developer Forced To Change Game's Name Because 'Wasteland' Is A Trademark, Apparently

from the wasted dept

Several years ago, we wrote about InXile, a game studio that rode Kickstarter success to producing Wasteland 2. The theme of the post was about how open and awesome InXile had been to its backers and other Kickstarter projects, bringing a gracious attitude to the former and promising to use some of the game's proceeds to pay it forward to the latter. These actions built a nice reputation for InXile, somewhat unique in gaming circles, by engaging with fans and customers alike, while also acknowledging the rest of the industry. In short, InXile was human and awesome.

Yet, since then, InXile has occasionally acted aggressively in enforcing the trademark it has on the term "Wasteland" for the gaming industry. First, in 2013, it forced a smalll gaming studio to change the name of a game it had originally called Wasteland Kings to Nuclear Throne after InXile contacted them. And, now, InXile has gone a step further and fired off a cease and desist letter to a single developer attempting to produce his own shooter game, which he had entitled Alien Wasteland.

Otherwise, an important thing you may have noticed is that the title of the game has changed from The Alien Wasteland to Action Alien. The reason behind this is simple ; a developer from inXile Entertainment, the company which released the RPG Wasteland 2 has contacted me claiming that titling my game "The Alien Wasteland" was an an infringement to their trademark "Wasteland".

Because both games have almost nothing in common and no case of confusion was ever reported for almost two years since my game was first announced, I have been calmly explaining through long emails why we should have no worries about this. But I finally ended up receiving a cease and desist letter from their lawyer asking to either stop using "wasteland" or to prepare facing legal actions against me. Since I don't have the time nor the strength to deal with legal actions from this developer and its lawyers, or even taking the risk of having my game to be took down from Steam, I decided to change the title to solve this issue.

The new name for the title will be Action Alien. Which...meh. And that sucks, because the two games don't share any similarities. And, while we shouldn't simply excuse InXile's actions as a matter of the necessities of trademark law -- more on that in a moment -- the majority of the blame, as usual, should rest with the USPTO's approval of a trademark that simply doesn't do the job of being a source-identifier.

Go into all the technicalities if you like, but nobody in gaming circles sees the word "wasteland", particularly when combined with other title words, and immediately identifies it with any particular studio. Hell, I'd wage money that if you actually took a survey and told gamers to respond with the first gaming-related thing they could think of when they heard the word "wasteland", the majority of respondants would say "Fallout". And with good reason: Fallout was a spiritual successor to the original Wasteland game. Giving this kind of control over a word like this to be wielded throughout a gaming industry bursting with post-apocalyptic settings tells us a great deal about how well the USPTO understands the gaming industry, which is to say it doesn't it all. If we're still going to go about pretending that trademark law has something to do with protecting customers, then the approval process for specific industries needs to be tightened up.

But the USPTO shouldn't be the only ones in the crosshairs, here. Too many gaming sites are entirely too willing to swallow pleas by trademark bullies about the requirements of trademark law, such as Kotaku.

“We always look for amicable win-win solutions in these cases,” said Beekers of inXile, “where we seek to protect our mark as any prudent business would do, while also helping the other party promote their game and provide a bigger reach than he otherwise would get, so that both parties benefit. In fact, that offer still stands now.”

It’s hard to tell if the inXile folks are being more aggressive than necessary or simply reacting to the absurd lengths US law demands of companies, if they want to keep control over their trademarks.

It's not as hard as Kotaku makes it sound. After all, if we're going to approach this not only from a legal standpoint, but also a moral judgement standpoint, then InXile as all kinds of options when it comes to how it polices its trademarks. It could, for instance, not send threat letters to other studios making games with titles that don't cause any customer confusion. It could at least attempt to work out some kind of cheap trademark licensing arrangement so that it wouldn't have to stand in the way of a simple gamemaker trying to get his product to the market. Or, hey, here's a thought: it could return to being the human and awesome company it pantomimed for its Kickstarter campaign and choose to not trademark an overly broad, fairly common term so often used in the gaming market. Were it to be the believer in the gaming industry it once claimed, that would seem to be the logical choice.

Filed Under: games, trademark, video games, wasteland
Companies: inxile

Ex-Game Maker Atari To Argue To The US PTO That Only It Can Make 'Haunted House' Games

from the huh? dept

We noted several years ago that Atari, once the king of the video game industry, has since devolved into a zombie company built only for intellectual property trolling. Copyright, trademark, or patents: Atari will use all of them to try to milk the modern gaming industry for cash. In fact, in past public statements, Atari has made it clear that it has no interest in producing any new games, instead relying on its remaining staff to license its trademarks and port a few decades-old games over to the mobile market. Quite a fall for the once giant of the industry.

And that fall will now include going in front of the PTO's Appeal Board to explain why Atari and Atari alone should be allowed to title a game using the phrase "Haunted House." Why? Well, because it made a game called Haunted House in the early 80's, you see.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has set oral arguments for Atari’s claim against developer Hazy Dreams of Infinity over its use of “Haunted House” in the game Haunted House Tycoon. Atari and defendant Andrew Greenberg, Hazy Dreams founder, present oral arguments on Thursday. In 2011, Atari filed a “notice of opposition” against the Hazy Dreams in an effort to prevent the developer from launching the game, which is still in development. The classic-gaming publisher’s stance is that it owns that trademark in the gaming industry after releasing Haunted House in 1982 for the Atari 2600 console — although Atari did not file for that mark until 2010.

So Atari is going to bully a current game maker over a generic term it once used on a game it made over three decades ago, but didn't trademark until 2010. It's hard to think of an example that better shows how trademark law is abused today, deviating from its intended purpose and spirit. There's no customer confusion here to worry about. Nobody is going to mistake Atari's block graphics for the modern Haunted House Tycoon title. This is simply a bullying tactic, likely to generate licensing revenue. That's what Atari is now, after all.

Greenberg, of course, isn't pleased.

“Trying to claim no one else can use the words ‘Haunted’ and ‘House’ is especially ridiculous, considering games have been using the term ‘Haunted House” in titles ever since Magnavox released a game by that name for the Odyssey in 1972,” he said in a statement. “Atari has a horrible reputation for attacking independent game developers, including recently going after TxK developer Jeff Minter,” the Hazy Dreams of Infinity president said.

That's true, of course, but the folks running Atari these days don't care about that reputation. It isn't the public that is making them money, after all.

All of this comes as Atari has lost much of its original identity. The company, which has shifted from owner to owner over time, filed for bankruptcy in 2013. It emerged later that year under the ownership of venture capitalist Frederic Chesnais, who says that company is now 10 people primarily responsible for managing its past assets.

Ten people working for a company designed to troll actual makers of gaming content, potentially successfully blocking the release of a game because it carries a fairly generic phrase in its title? Yeah, we've gotten so far away from the original purpose of trademark at this point that it's basically unrecognizable.

Filed Under: appeals, games, haunted house, pto, trademark, video games
Companies: atari

The Ultimate In CwF: How Lovers Of Stardew Valley Fought Piracy By Buying The Game For Pirates

from the yarrr dept

Our advocating for the Connecting with Fans and giving them a Reason to Buy equation (CwF+RtB) being a solution to piracy has become something of a mantra for us here at Techdirt. And we've seen an absolute ton of success stories of people implementing some version of it. But, really, if you want a recent story of a creator going about this in a way that appears to hit every single note just about perfectly, you need only look toward the latest PC gaming hit: Stardew Valley.

Some brief background is in order. Stardew Valley is an indie game that combines a quaint and quirky farming mechanic, crafting mechanics and a social setting with non-player characters. It has cutesy graphics and is reportedly addictive at opiate levels. And, to the astonishment of many who have played the game, it was created by a single developer over a number of years. That creator, who goes by the Twitter handle @ConcernedApe, has built an ingratiating reputation for interacting with fans of the game, providing personal support and advice for players via Twitter, constantly updating the game and updating gamers with upcoming plans for the game, and generally being about as awesome in interacting with customers as a developer could possibly be. ConcernedApe's Twitter feed is littered with people's thanks and requests for help, much of which is directly acknowledged by ConcernedApe. In other words, this is as CwF-y as it gets. But do people feel that they also have a RtB?

With any PC game, one expects a certain amount of piracy. Gaming websites have noted that Stardew Valley certainly has been pirated, though they also remark on the particular levels of guilt and after-pirating purchasing that seems to be occurring with those who have. But, more recently, some gaming sites have also noticed several Reddit threads in which people are requesting help in pirating the game, and being greeted instead by fans who are purchasing and gifting the game to them instead.

And it goes on, and on, and on, and on. Several other Reddit threads picked up this theme as well, with grateful and happy Stardew Valley gamers essentially attempting to cancel out as much of the piracy of the game as they could by buying extra copies and sending them to the pirates who might or might not have ever bought the game themselves. That's not just RtB. It's Rtb+b+b+b.

And that's the true power of connecting with fans and providing them with both a solid product and a level of respect and congeniality that is far too lacking these days. Forget about having to worry or combat piracy as a creator; treat your fans well and they might just go ahead and do it for you. And in a way that puts a few more bucks in your pocket to boot. Perhaps this ape need not be so concerned.

Filed Under: cwf, piracy, stardew valley, video games

All Those Evil Violent Video Games Apparently Failed At Turning Kids Into Deviant Murder-Terrorists

from the oops dept

We all know that society is going straight down a hellish toilet bowl. We know this mostly because everyone says so. Violence is rampant, sex is carried out with all the care of discussing the weather, and generally we're squashing morality like it was a bug walking across the concrete. And we all know who the real culprits of all this immorality are: teenagers.

Fucking teenagers, amirite? This shitty little demographic of our future adult class is basically torpedoing the American dream, with its drugs and sex and school violence. Except, of course, none of that is true. We've made it a point here to talk about how misguided people seem to generally be about how our children behave and to point out how every generation seems to think the next generation sucks at everything. But did you know we have actual data on this as well?

The federal government asks thousands of teenagers dozens of questions about whether they are all right. Since 1991, it has sent something called the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey to more than 10,000 high school students every other year, to inquire about all sorts of bad behaviors that range from drug use to unprotected sex to fighting at school.

The overarching question this survey asks is basically: How much trouble are you getting into?

The answer, lately, has been, “Not that much at all” — especially when you compare today’s teens with their parents, who came of age in the early 1990s.

Vox has a useful tool that allows you to input your year of birth and get some basic survey results as to how youth today compared to the youth of your time. I put in 1982, the year I graced this universe with my presence, and got the following results.

You were 15 years old in 1997 and we’re sorry to say, chances are relatively high that you and your friends were up to no good. Here’s how you stack up against today’s high school students:

-In 1997, 36.4 percent of teenagers smoked. Now, 15.7 percent do. That’s a 57 percent decline.

-Teenagers today are 38 percent less likely to binge drink than you and your classmates were. In fact, they’re 16 percent less likely to have ever tried alcohol at all.

-47 percent fewer teen girls have babies now compared to you and your high school classmates. Teens today are also 22 percent less likely to have had sex before they turned 13.

Huh. Turns out we were the little shits and today's kids are better on lots of moral questions. It's almost like societal progress produces tangible results. But the really interesting part is in the wider table that compares all kinds of questions and results for today's youth with the youth of yesteryear.

I'd like to focus for a moment on a couple of these categories: physical fighting, consideration of suicide, carried a weapon to school, and carried a gun in the past 30 days. Those would be all the questions that would have anything to do with violence. And, if you graphed each one of them over the period of time the questions were asked, each one of them is trending downward or showed no trend at all. Which brings up the obvious question: where are all the violent children that violent video games and media are supposedly creating?

All kinds of researchers, politicians, and television personalities have informed us of the horror that violent gaming is unleashing amongst our youth, and yet the data shows otherwise. To talk about curing an ill that doesn't actually exist isn't an exercise in morality; it's called snake-oil salesmanship. As the study says, the kids are alright, so we can finally stop the hand-wringing over entertainment now?

Filed Under: video games

Sony Finally Releases PS4 Remote Play For PC App That Isn't As Good As A Modder's App Is

from the modify-your-expectations dept

Late last year, we discussed how an application modder named Twisted had managed to push Sony, the megalith corporation, into producing a remote play PC application for its Playstation 4 console. Twisted had previously managed to crack open Sony's Android remote play application, originally designed to work only on Sony brand smartphones, so that any Android user could play the PS4 on the go. This, of course, made the PS4 product more useful and added a feature to potential console buyers that Sony had, for some reason, decided to restrict. Xperia phones, it should be noted, aren't exactly jumping off the shelves at stores, but Playstation 4 consoles certainly are. Then Twisted announced he was going to release a PC version of the app. Sony had not released any PC version of its remote play functionality. But shortly after Twisted's announcement, Sony too announced it would be releasing a remote play for PC application.

And with a PS4 update that was released on April 6th, Sony's remote play for PC is here. I've tried it out. And it's...okay? Strangely, it appears to do much of what Twisted's application does, but not everything. It's starts with the requirements:

-Windows 8.1
-Windows 10 or later
-OS X 10.10
-OS X 10.11

Whereas Twisted's app works just fine with Windows 7. I'm struggling to figure out why a guy could get it to work with the operating system that over a third of PC users are still using, but a giant company couldn't. Oh well.

But the biggest thing missing from Sony's PC application is what made Twisted's efforts so useful for those trying to do some gaming away from their console, especially when traveling or away from the home.

You can use one DualShock 4 as the controller for Remote Play, which needs to be connected to your PC / Mac via a USB cable.

"Can" should be read as "must." There doesn't appear to be any way to map controller buttons to the keyboard, no way to use your PCs mouse, and no overlay of the controller on the screen within the application. Twisted's apps have all of these options. Honestly, it's what makes gaming on the go so easy, in that you can use the touch screen of a phone or Windows tablet to play on the go.

Look, this release from Sony is a good thing. It opens up functionality that was possible but didn't exist officially before. But what's most striking about this release, to me, is that Sony's application didn't measure up to that produced by a single modder, not to mention that that same modder's efforts for Android users are still necessary because Sony hasn't realized that making an official smart phone remote play app would massively increase the value of its console overall. So, it's a step forward, but a small step.

Filed Under: modding, ps4, video games
Companies: sony

Bandai Namco Is Apparently Looking To Trademark The Term 'Finishing Move'

from the fatality dept

Okay, this really needs to stop happening. There has been a recent wave of those in some way involved in the video gaming business applying for trademarks on insanely common gaming terms and phrases. We saw this in recent examples, such as Sony's brazen attempt to trademark "let's play," a term for wildly popular online videos showing games in action. Tangentially, the Fine Brothers' attempt to transform "react videos" into a licensing revenue stream was met with heavy criticism, warranted or not. And now we have Bandai Namco trying to trademark the term "finishing move" in Japanese.

Specifically, Bandai Namco is trying to patent the Japanese term “Hissatsuwaza,” which translates to “finishing move.” While the term may not be used all that often in English, it is extremely common in Japanese video games, anime, and manga. Though the term seems very clear-cut, it doesn’t always mean that an opponent is “finished.” For example, current Street Fighter games have finishing moves that are flashy but don’t actually kill the opponent like, say, the finishing moves in Mortal Kombat do.

Gamers here in the United States will instantly be familiar with the term "finishing move", having heard its use in all manner of games for decades, from fighting games like Mortal Kombat, to games in other genres, and even as the term has bled into non-gaming vernacular. "Finish Him!" -- the phrase shouted at the culminating moment of a Mortal Kombat game -- is certainly well-known enough for even non-gamers to be familiar with it.

The point is that this trademark attempt comes so unbelievably late in the game that it's hard to view it as anything other than a money-grab achieved through the locking up of common language. Much of the commentary surrounding Bandai Namco's actions here surmise that the attempt is doomed to failure for all the reasons that led to Sony's failure. But this is trademark we're talking about, and with a foreign language thrown in to boot, so who knows?

I don’t see this happening, but if it does, we may see a bunch of games have to call their finishing moves something else. We also don’t know if this trademark extends to non-Japanese speaking countries, since the trademark is technically for “Hissatsuwaza.”

More interesting to me is what the attempt illustrates, which is that incumbent businesses aren't wielding trademark for its purpose, but are instead weaponizing it as either a money-maker or to stamp out competition.

Filed Under: finishing move, japan, trademark, video games
Companies: bandai namco

Conspiracy Theories Over Steam Game Suddenly Crashing Wrong; Just More Broken Anti-Piracy Code

from the crash-override dept

If you follow video game news as I do, you probably came across a fascinating and somewhat thrilling series of speculative stories revolving around a game called Spintires, which is being sold through the Steam platform. The driving game had been selling for some time, and selling fairly well, when all of the sudden it stopped working. Just like that, the game was crashing all over the place. Some sites, including this later-updated Gamasutra post, began digging into a wellspring of conspiracy theories about purposeful sabotage by the developer over money disputes with the publisher.

There may be something rotten in the state of Spintires, as the game's players have taken to Reddit and its official forum recently to complain about alleged "time bombs" hidden in the code by the game's developer that are rendering it unplayable.

The reason that a conspiracy theory like this found purchase rather than being laughed away was the rocky history between the developer of the game, Pavel Zagrebelnyy, with the game's publisher, Oovee Game Studios. Just a week before the crashing of the game began, Zagrebelnyy had been participating in interviews with sites and offering up less than flattering comments about Oovee.

"They owe me a s***load of money according to our contract," Pavel tells me in a new interview. "But I don't have any leverage because my judicial skills are zero. I haven't had a meaningful communication with Oovee for many months (maybe a year)."

Oovee, in the same post, acknowledges that it has been late in paying Zagrebelnyy, but promises that this will be corrected. A week later, the game of Zagrebelnyy's that Oovee published is suddenly broken and unplayable. At that point, Oovee released a statement, acknowledging that the crashes were a widespread issue and stating that those crashes were "date-related." The internet took that statement and ran with it, extrapolating it into a tale in which Zagrebelnyy had inserted time-bomb bits of code into the game that could be weaponized to cause it to crash on certain days or within certain date-ranges if he were so motivated, say by a lack of being paid by the publisher.

But that speculation and the conspiracy theory behind it then crashed upon comments from Zagrebelnyy and Oovee, which acknowledge to the theorists that, naaaah, it's just another case of anti-piracy efforts fucking things up for all the legitimate customers.

Zagrebelnyy gave the following response:

"Well, I dont understand who and why started the rumours of sabotaging - apparently they are based on reverse engineering Spintires code? Anyways, publisher (Oovee) have the source codes so they know (they should) I didn't sabotage Spintires - there is no such code! But there is in fact a time-related bug (a self-check uses time functions to see if game wasn't cracked by pirates) which was not fixed in time (because we have little to no communicating with Oovee.)"

And Oovee:

"We are aware of recent press speculation relating to sabotage of the spintires game by the lead developer Pavel. We wish to express our displeasure at this speculation and totally refute these and other recent allegations. It is a shame that some press are reporting this without talking to us, and even saying in some articles they are yet to talk to us. The situation on the bug is that we became aware of a major bug last week that caused the game to stop for some users."

And so another conspiracy theory falls, this times at the hands of faulty DRM. I'll put this here so nobody has to in the comments: never blame malice when incompetence is just as likely. Or maybe just blame DRM always and for everything. You're going to be right a decent amount of the time.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, crashes, drm, pavel zagrebelnyy, spintires, steam, video games
Companies: oovee game studios