Kypetzl

Willy

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Kypetzl
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panicattheopticon
@panicattheopticon
JillCrungus
@JillCrungus

"Kastra" and "Sargus" - A strange case of plagiarism by proxy

Does he know?

Following on somewhat from my post about Mod Literacy Disparity.

I was browsing through the recent mods on Lethal Company's ThunderStore page when this mod happened to catch my eye.

A Thunderstore mod listing. The mod is titled "Sargus" and the description reads "Adds an inhabited planet with a culture resembling that of Earth in the 20st century."

I saw the thumbnail and couldn't help but feel that it looked familiar. I wasn't sure what it was at that moment in time but the moment I saw the first screenshot I immediately recognised it and ended up going down a rabbit hole.

Buckle up. This is gonna be a long one.

panicattheopticon
@panicattheopticon

as the original designer / creator of darkrp and a source mapper / archivist myself, this is wild and really important

thanks for doing this investigation, i’ve spent years on hometown with many friends and it’s great that someone is ensuring continuity of records is maintained and corrected.

in fact, this has sort of happened to me: when i made darkrp i didn’t think much of it, via permutations, lost continuity, and a lack of oral history there’s at least two or three other people credited as the creator that arent me and i’ve had to produce evidence multiple times to get gmod history people to believe me. (darkrp has a messy history of forking and refactoring code base wise, which is mostly how this got lost. the original was made in 2006-2007 as soon as lua got introduced and my co creator and I got to work making a better version of underseeg’s rp script on rp_lakeside)

we have several DISTINCT versions of the rp map we used that I made with a few other folks that are, as far as i can tell, lost to time unless they’re laying on a hard drive somewhere

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in reply to @JillCrungus's post:

JillCrungus
@JillCrungus

One of the main reasons I was somewhat on the fence about this post is definitely because I don't really want to appear completely merciless, at least not towards Exid. They've repeatedly done wrong here but I don't know who they are or what they're like and so it's possible their actions are entirely done due to ignorance over anything else.

The same definitely can't be said about Richard Mandel, who makes his attitude extremely clear and who continued to do what he does despite apparently having artists raise their issues with him.

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vodselbt
@vodselbt

Interesting stuff, thanks for investing. But I do have this feeling that I’m having trouble articulating. It’s like, I just suspect this is a sort of thing that has always happened in games that are so widely moddable. It’s plagiarism, and bad that no credit is being given, but it also just feels ridiculous to talk about creative common and copyright law when it comes to this kind of creative cultural production. I’m also entirely anti-copyright law, which is a big contributor to my bias here, but I would suspect that others who have played with mods or even created them could also feel a bit skeeved out by someone brining up copyright in discussions about mods.

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JillCrungus
@JillCrungus

It's definitely not a unique situation but I do think that the somewhat roundabout nature in this case made it interesting.

Also, while I generally agree that copyright sucks when it comes to the works owned by corporations, that does not extend to independent artists whose rights should always be respected. That's what applies here and those are also the cases when CC is usually relevant. I've noticed that people seem to have an easier time following code licenses than they do asset licenses but it's really no different. At minimum, if the asset you want to use isn't or is unlikely to be covered under a license that allows the use, you should be giving credit and making the source clear. If an independent creator has explicitly expressed that they don't want you or others using said assets or if they state this after the fact you should respect that too I think.

(There's always exceptions I think but we're already deep in the realm of personal opinion I think. Point is I think it's strange if the notion of crediting and respecting the wishes of an independent creator in regards to usage of their assets bothers you)

I think regardless of if the content being stolen belongs to an independent creator or not, you should be at least mentioning the original origin of an asset no matter what. It's incredibly slimy to be passing any asset off as your own even if it's just through omission (but in this case I think some of what's being done creeps just slightly over the line and is no longer a case of it being implied through omission.)

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KaydeArcane
@KaydeArcane

this is a wild trip of a read, damn. I can only hope that whoever this person is learns their lesson soon and stops doing this

also, I can say with 99.9% confidence that the bikini bottom moon is just a port of the hub world of battle for bikini bottom - I've got that game's map layout burned into my brain from playing it so much as a kid so it was instant recognition. the giveaways are the position of Sandy's treedome across from the retirement home building and the taxi sign arches on the paths leading towards jellyfish fields and downtown bikini bottom.

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