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I published a game on itch.io, and now it's on a Russian piracy site. Not so sure how to proceed

A topic by Vahin Sharma created Feb 17, 2022 Views: 3,185 Replies: 14
Viewing posts 1 to 9
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Recently, I was taking a look at my games for finding bugs on itch.io at https://vsgame.itch.io/ and I found two of my games on a Russian piracy website (https://gamexworld.com/rusifikator/64491-rusifikator-dlya-o-cursor-my-cursor-2.html and https://gamexworld.com/rusifikator/59080-rusifikator-dlya-impossible-pong-vahin-sharma.html). The installers of my games have a declaration or license page which declares that all rights are reserved. These are my games https://vsgame.itch.io/o-cursor-my-cursor-2 https://vsgame.itch.io/impossible-pong/

I am not sure how to proceed with it and would like some suggestions about it. 

Moderator

I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. AAA studios with millions in budget can’t solve this, so there’s not much indie devs with limited budget can do.

Plus the projects you mentioned seem to be free in your profile, doesn’t sound like you are losing money anyway.

Not to mention there are sites out there pretending to have pirated versions of a game, but when the user clicks download, they get some malicious file instead. Can’t tell if that’s the case on the link you mentioned, but I’d suggest to not download anything from that site.

Your time is better spend improving yourself and your projects, than chasing pirates.

Oh okay, thanks for your advice

Moderator

I don't know what to suggest except for sending a takedown request, and a pirate site will probably ignore it. If you had money, maybe you could sue, but that's probably not an option. Sorry to hear it happened to you, people don't even have any reason to do that with free games, except to hurt you.

Oh ok

I'm kinda curious to know how you even found those. But, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Like mods said, you're not losing money and if it's the fear of ownership being contested that's bothering you, I don't think it's too hard to prove you're the original creator if that ever came into question.

I was searching my games on google then I found those. Also thanks for helping

I don't think you need to worry about it. There is no escape from piracy. Moreover, it says that this is just the Russian language for the game and it must be placed in the game folder. 

Oh, thanks for the info

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the best way to combat is by announcing where the games  can be found in the intro, the pirates can not change anything  in the game because that is too much work.

That's a good idea, thanks

Deleted 192 days ago
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Ah I see, was it on the same site as I mentioned?

Yup same site

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Don't lose your time, trying to explain something to Russians. Don't expect anything. Some recent events confirm my advice :/

More seriously, I read an article a few years ago about books and copyrights in Russia. Many authors from France, USA and many other countries are just surprised to know that their books are sold and shared in Russia without any respect for their authors. They don't receive any money for their works and no one can do anything against these violations of commercial rules. For all firms and foreign creators, Russia is just a basket of crabs. You have no visibility about your work. That's all ++

Если я оскорбил кого-то, извините меня. Просто я хотел рассказать нашему другу реальность таких вещей. Бесполезно ему обжаловать.

Good luck getting any pirated build taken down, but one thing I've tried to do is make sure the app or game has links to the proper download site built in, so no one can claim they didn't know.

I got so irritated at my updates on Google Play showing up immediately on Aptoide (the only thing more irritating was people telling me I should be happy about it) that I put the following text at the top of my app description, and pirates generally don't bother removing it when they copy the whole app page (Aptoide has a "feature" for copying google play pages, but omitting the original developer identification), so I do get some mild amusement at seeing it when I google for my game.

*** The paid version of this app is infrequently updated, due to the users who immediately distribute it to pirate sites like Aptoide every time I release an update. If you don't want to pay for it, please download the free HyperBowl app on Google Play. ***
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