Further discussion of the developing situation with Jason

#101

Thousands of raging Japanese, Korean and Chinese players (and a dozen Western players)~
Ensuing lawsuit~
Rethinking what public domain actually means~
Christoffer getting lots of flack~
Jason painted as a hypocrite~
No desktop updates for months~
A new dev releasing another version, but this time with proper wording to have Jason’s approval~

Man, this is scary, but also exciting!

Edit: think of what’ll happen to the people that bought the game but also want refunds due to servers being down? Ugh scaryyy

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#102

Thank you, that briefed a lot up for me.

Jason please don’t punish the players and hurt the mobile adaption. DD please work hard to credit Jason’s hard work in future ventures.

#103

@Christoffer
あなたがジェイソン氏の気持ちを理解出来ないとしても、それが現実に存在していることを受け入れてください。
現実にジェイソン氏に起きている問題を解決しようと試みてください。
自分の利益だけを考えないでください

Even if you can not understand Mr. Jason’s feelings, please accept that it exists in reality. Please try to solve the problem that actually happens to Mr. Jason. Do not think about your own profit only

1 Like
#104

Anyone who thinks Jason is a white knight in all of this needs to go to the pc forums and see post #114 on page 5 where Jason posted the text of the take-down requests he sent. He never mentions in them that he gave up all copyrights, and was in an existing agreement with DD until a few days ago(ish?), and that a third party made some mistakes. He makes it sound like he never approved any of it and DD are total scumballs who are straight up stealing from him. He admits in that very post (not the take-down message part, but after) that he has cherry-picked the timeline so that he doesn’t ‘need to’ mention those things because he’s ‘just talking about this moment’. I have no idea why he posted that, it’s very damning in my eyes and I think would be in a court, if it came to it. I don’t agree with a lot of Jason’s design decisions for the game, but I respected his principles. But those take-down messages show that all his talk about honesty and such apparently only apply when convenient to him.

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#105

This has been going on for more than four days, and I have more pressing matters to attend to (family, GDC talk, more OHOL updates). So, at this point, I guess I give up.

I have withdrawn my dispute submissions from Apple, Google, and TapTap.

I feel like a great deal of damage has already been done to my legacy and reputation as a designer, and an unfathomable amount of additional damage will be done in the future, if the current course with the mobile adaptation isn’t altered. I can imagine a situation in the future where OHOL becomes widely known, but the vast majority of people in the world mistakenly believe that the mobile version is the original version, and that DualDecade alone authored it, or that I am part of DualDecade, and that I approved the changes that they have made. If that comes to pass, that situation will haunt me for the rest of my life. We’re pretty close to that already, at least in China and Japan.

One Hour One Life is the biggest project that I’ve ever worked on, and the one that I’m most proud of, and also the most personal. My pen-and-ink drawings, my watercolor backgrounds, my characters, my voice making all the sounds, and my soul poured into the piano music, which I improvised in one take, directly from the heart. A love letter to the world and to humanity, from where I sit at age 41, half-way through my life, as my three boys transform into men right before my eyes, and as I pass from being the main character in my own story to a supporting role in the stories of other people.

You can all understand how terrible it is for anyone out there who plays and enjoys the game to not understand where the game came from, or think that other people made it, or think that I put Santa Claus in it.

That said, I don’t think copyright is the right tool to prevent such harms. The truth does not expire after limited terms. The truth doesn’t change or become irrelevant 70 years after the death of the author. The truth doesn’t need copyright. The truth just needs people who are willing to tell it.

The truth now, for whoever is willing to tell it, is that the mobile version has gone from “unofficial and not specifically approved” to “specifically unapproved and directly against my wishes as the original creator,” only because of the way that its presentation has misled people in the past, and will continue to mislead people in the future, in its current form.

Hopefully, Christoffer, you will be willing to correct this, and prevent additional harm to my legacy, in a way that you can live with.

I’ve given you four years of my life and creative output, allowed you to build a successful commercial product using that output, and asked for nothing in return. Nothing but the truth. That’s on you now.

But as for me, I’m out.

10 Likes
#106

You seem to be contradicting yourself. What do you actually want ?
A. For dd to change name of game , and every other content so it doesn’t seem to look like the main game on computer .
B. For dd to write unofficial and then not change any content and be as near as you but unofficial. So no one will blame to for the peace lily and so on. And mention you .
You seem to be angry because of the change of content and the marketing in China not mention your name . But in other way , you say you want to have nothing to do with the mobile version . You seem to want A and B at the same time and it is not possible. Do you want your name to be mentioned or not as the original creator of the main game in computer?

1 Like
#107

Triad:

To address your concern, I was in the very difficult position of trying to use a copyright dispute form to issue a take-down request that was not specifically copyright related. But what other recourse did I have? There’s no other way to issue a take-down request. So I’m left filling out a form that asks me to describe the work that is being used in an unauthorized way.

You can see the forms here yourself:

https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/appstorenotices/#/contacts?lang=en

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?product=googleplay&uraw=&hl=en

The other option, which I didn’t consider at the time, was a Trademark dispute, but that form is an equally poor fit:

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_trademark?product=googleplay&uraw=

I really felt stuck at that point. Christoffer obviously wasn’t budging. Even him knowing that the take-down requests had been sent didn’t make him budge. I guess he was really willing to die on that hill, and take his whole project with him, or maybe he had some other plan.

I don’t know what an alternative way to fill out the forms would have been. I suppose I could have explained the entire situation in all of its gory detail. Maybe I should have done that.

As for why I posted them (if they are so damning): I posted them in the interest of transparency.

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#108

:sweat: Now, we are dead . Really dead . No more game to play haha… :sob: why must this end up like this .

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#109

welll looks like our parents are getting divorced.

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#110

Even with Jason taking a step back I do hope you have the decency to fix this situation and atleast come up with some sort of name change.

At the moment if I knew nothing about the game and logged into the app store I would see “One hour one life for mobile, by dual decade”. It is clear as day where the confusion is coming from. How are you supossed to know that its an unofficial port from reading that. Don’t tell me that nobody on your team is up to date with the attention span of most common users when reading description.(They simply don’t unless they have a compelling reason)

It’s not about the money to him, It’s not about the annoying bug reports. He seems genuinely hurt that allot of people believe that his handcrafted work was made by you! Just pointing it out because I’m not sure wether you are not seeing that or activily dancing around it.

Any way Jason has tried everything in his power(maybe even more than he should have) to save what he sees as his legacy. Like I said before if you hold the love for jason that you say you do you will honor his request, Otherwise it seems it were just just empty word. Nobody would want to hurt the person they love.

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#111

Christoffer is not doing anything

#112

@Jord1990 The short answer is yes. We will pick up the ball. We will hold other feature work until we have made real progress in that regard. Some of the things we’ll do should be free of controversy. Some are trickier to figure out correctly. If Jason wants to give feedback, he’s welcome to, but if he doesn’t, maybe his lieutenants will help? You seem like you care, for example.
We will need a day or so though. This has been an ordeal.

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#113

I’m not a lieutenant of Jason in this matter. I’ve said it in the past and will say it again, I have absolutly 0 insider information. I’m just another bystander that has been looking at the trainwreck unfold.

I’m just giving my own 2 cents of what I think is morally right. All of my opinions are unapproved by Jason himself. But yes my statements do support Jason, as a matter of fact allot of people who voiced their opinion here agreed that Jason did have a point and that they didnt know mobile was being made by different people.

Anyway I guess I will sit back and see where this goes. It is a mess for everyone involved.

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#114

It’s been quite an ordeal, but also inevitable that it has come to this. Especially when dealing with two forces: law and morality. From a wider point of view, it appears that the law won, and that to me is slightly disheartening. Human decency and legacy mean nothing in face of laws, IP only works in favour of capital. Or that’s how I read this situation.

Other than damaging Jason’s reputation, the next thing that was damaged was the goodwill of the English-speaking community. We were in the sidelines of this and generally supported Jason’s intentions. Honestly, I’m feeling a little bitter towards the mobile devs with this conclusion. But well, time will heal so no worry, right?

Oh, I doubt the Asian communities are too aware of this kerfuffle, so there might be some solace wherever they are.

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#115

good luck with your gdc talk :slightly_smiling_face: im looking forward to see it on youtube. in which catagorie are you starring in? i hope you will talk about one hour one life :slightly_smiling_face:! cheers and have fun on stage!

#117

There’s even confused people in the OHOL PC trailer.

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#118

To be fair though anyone asking for a game to be changed to free doesnt understand things like who made a game or how much work goes into creating it and maintaining a server.

#119

But they’re talking about the mobile version in the comments of the PC trailer, so they more than likely have no clue that this is an unofficial port of the game.

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#120

What i meant was they wouldnt know the difreance even if it was slapped across their face. I know that there are competent people who havnt noticed the pc games and mobile games arnt made by the same person.

My point was that any player asking for the price to be free shouldnt be taken into acount because they woudnt even understand what is wrong with Jason not being credited.

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#121

From 5 dollars to free? And you’re assuming that’s an adult? It’s most likely a child. This is exactly the reason a splash screen is not enough clarification and it should be blatantly obvious to anyone that this is an unofficial adaptation of the PC game.

1 Like