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A Duck 19 Apr, 2018 @ 8:25am
Game dev DMCAing competitors to have them off steam?
It appears a game dev is DMCAing farming games here to have them off the store. Farm Manager 2018, Farmer's Dynasty and perhaps even Farm Expert 2017 have all been issued false DMCA claims and taken off the store for the time being, with Farmer's Dynasty apparently being issued 3 DMCA claims, one for each time they were brought to the store again making the game unavailable since January for purchase.

If indeed this is true then we have a game dev using DMCAs to make sure its competitors are not for sale and this is a gross abuse of DMCA, perhaps one of the worst I've ever seen. I think this warrants some investigation.
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SirViolentDeath 19 Apr, 2018 @ 9:19am 
Been keeping an eye on this and so far there does not seem to be any information about what is going on, apart from what the Farmer's Dynasty dev said. Since the issue deals with DMCAs, this matter seems to have turned into a legal one, and it seems unlikely that the devs recieving DMCAs would name the person(s)/company who issued said DMCAs. I would just continue to keep an eye on this, and just wait and see.
#1
A Duck 19 Apr, 2018 @ 9:27am 
Both game devs do say it is a false DMCA claim. I don't think I've ever seen DMCA abuse of this kind, bring down games that compete with your own and in the case of FArmer's Dynasty the game has unavailable to purchase for almost 4 months now. There is a clear loss of income by having your game not for sale so I wonder if this is going to end in the courts. If the DMCAs are bogus then the devs at the very least can claim that they have lost sales while their game was unavailable.
#2
¥aeko 20 Apr, 2018 @ 5:46am 
I expected this to happen at some point, every game can be DMCAd by clicking on the flag at the right side of the store description.

What concerns me more is: every random person can DMCA anything, which is problematic since you might not be able to do anything against this.

I just looked it up, you dont even need a Steam Account to DMCA a game, simply put in some "information" and "proof" to get rid of a game for X amount of time. (probably the most effective during Sales, like summer/winter - if you really want to "hurt" someone)

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Regarding the farming games, i dont see any similarity in them that would make both a viable copyright claim. (if they both got claimed by the same person)

Different assets, different gameplay etc. (besides the fact that you cant DMCA for gameplay or an Idea)

Pretty much "scary stuff" in my opinion. (especially since valve seems to be pulling the game without asking.)
Last edited by ¥aeko; 20 Apr, 2018 @ 5:51am
#3
A Duck 20 Apr, 2018 @ 5:59am 
From what people and the devs are saying in the forums, the DMCAs are coming from the same developer. This reddit thread seems to have more info: https://www.reddit.com/r/tycoon/comments/8dfpf4/farm_manager_2018_removed_from_steam_due_to_fake/
#4
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Date Posted: 19 Apr, 2018 @ 8:25am
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