Deep Blue Apps / Marketplace?
ookami007
Member Posts: 581
@DeepBlueApps - Is DeepBlueApps / DeepBlueMarketplace gone? I get an under construction message from deepbluemarket.com and a domain registered page from deepblueapps.com
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Read first paragraph. There are some legal issue regarding gamesalad logo. They are going to remove all gamesalad references from site.
Interesting @creativeapps . That wasn't there before... just a message saying the domain had been registered.
So... are we no longer supposed to use the words "GameSalad" in anything? Does this mean no more tutorials that show the logo?
http://www.deepblueapps.com/ pretty unbelievable all things considered..
I have to say, heavy handed copyright/trademark abuse is a good way to suck the enthusiasm right out of people. That leaves a VERY soar and bitter taste in my mouth from GS.... oh wait.. can I say GS?
BS will suffice
Edit: I decided I was being a bit unfair on Darren and there's no point contributing more than necessary to this situation, especially negativity. I've thus removed my comments.
I suspect that if you aren't trying to turn a profit from your use of their trademarks, you'll have no issues. A trademark can be eroded by unauthorised use, and there aren't that many companies that will allow you to use their trademarks to make money. Even if someone found a way to make an unofficial app store for non-jailbroken phones, you can be absolutely sure Apple will not let their logo near it. Hell, I can't even find an Apple news site using Apple's logo. Why? Because they don't have any right to use it. This isn't uncommon, it isn't unfair, it isn't unreasonable. This isn't GameSalad telling people nobody can use their logo, it's them telling a for-profit website that they can't use their logo to sell competing services. That's really not all that heavy-handed.
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I'm glad I switched my opening to my logo now..lol this is why I stay far away from selling things and such. The only things I would value selling are things I've spent massive amounts of hours on, like multiplayer. I couldn't even calculate the amount of hours I put into it and I'm pretty much the only one working on it and trying to help debug it. There is a limit to anyone's generosity including me. I am always willing to help out the community but since I do it for free, it will always be on my terms.
In light of this, I myself might keep my distance from things. I'm going to have to think about my limited relationship to gamesalad outside of being a user. I believe I fulfilled my pay it forward belief. I should say my contact with third parties and the GS staff have been very minimalistic over the years. I like it that way. I've never asked for anything from gamesalad ever other than a stable product to use and I pay for my own subscription et... This makes me learly of what would happen to me once I became of no use to them either..hmmm
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GS is going against the flow of what every other game toolkit is doing.
Makes us wonder if it is worth while betting our time and effort learning and using it.
I don't think providing quality templates and tools is harming GS I would argue our 100 free templates and tools along with 2 top 20 hits have enhanced GS, It's reputation and user base.
I disagree I've provided years of free help on the forums answering lots of questions from new comers.
We've contributed to many totb comps along with running many of our own competitions.
I could also argue your free tutorials here and on GSHelper are only here to help you get forum presence and in return paid client work.
I would say so!
Good luck with the site update! Hope you are back online soon. I've bought a couple of their tools that I think help in areas the GS Creator is lacking.
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Edit: I decided I was being a bit unfair on Darren and there's no point contributing more than necessary to this situation, especially negativity. I've thus removed my comments.
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It was only because of templates by DBA and T-Shirt Booth that I looked into GS as a tool to make games. Back when I started DBA/T-Shirt put out quality/affordable templates that allowed me to learn the basics and led to me paying for GS Pro for a couple of years, something I wouldn't have done with out those two. So, I hardly see how DBA has harmed the GS brand, for me they are one of the only reasons I ever used GS.
Darren and Wayne were some of the first people along with tshirtbooth to push the capabilities of gs and get people motivated to take it seriously.
I'd venture to say that they have brought many paying customers to gamesalad through exposure of their templates.
I think it's fair to say that although they do expect profit from their work that they have indeed pushed the community forward with their free and paid content, and many people are greatful to them.
It's a shame about the logo issue, but honestly removing a logo doesn't hurt the marketability of the products they provide, and they will most likely be up and running soon.
Devoting a lot of time to a sdk is a gamble and costs time. For many adults with families time=money, and it shouldn't be a surprise they would want compensation. Up until the last month both marketplaces were on equal footing and it just happened to be gshelper that was selected as official.
I think in this community it takes all kinds to move things forward and no animosity, elitism or hate should be cast to either side.
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Before this thread gets out of hand, let me take a few minutes to expand on my reasoning for dealing with DeepBlueApps this way. Here's a spoiler: It's not because we don't want quality templates and free lessons for our customers.
There's a long history between DeepBlueApps and GameSalad.
DeepBlueApps is a competitor to our marketplace... this means each template that's sold on his marketplace doesn't generate money for us. I'm all for competition. It makes us better. The problem comes in when DeepBlueApps uses our forums -- that we pay for -- to build his competing business.
We've got rules on forum behavior that limit this kind of advertisement. Yet, DeepBlueApps finds a way to wriggle around them time and again. He's been banned, warned, talked to, asked, etc. Yet he persists in trying to get free advertising from our forums. He's building his business at our expense in that one way. Not to mention undermining our marketplace as well. It's a double whammy. Should we pay for his advertising? Heck no!
To put this in perspective for you... imagine you shipped a game that was popular. You were making money and trying to grow your customer base. In this imaginary game, you've got in app purchases for gold. While this gold can be purchased, it can also be earned over time and traded between users. That gold is used to buy sweet items. Life is good. Now, imagine that one of your competitors comes to your customer forums and starts advertising gold at a cheaper price than you sell it. And your customers start going to them instead of you. Imagine how you'd react to that. I'm guessing you'd put a stop to it if you could.
The last CEO didn't make marketplace a priority. It was left on autopilot. I don't feel the same way. We don't have internal expertise (or staff) to run marketplace as it should be run. So I killed our internal marketplace and we're partnering with http://gshelper.com as the official marketplace for us. Before I chose GSHelper, I did my homework. DeepBlueApps' marketplace was also looked at. I chose to pass on their marketplace as an option here for two reasons: DBA's history of being difficult to work with, and his marketplace also serves a competitor engine.
I've had conversations with DeepBlueApps about this situation. He's been obstinate and inflammatory. I mentioned to him that I'd like him to remove his use of our branding materials on his website -- I don't want him to use our logos in a way that will confuse customers. DBA's marketplace is not an official marketplace for GameSalad and it shouldn't look like one. He told me he'd get it taken care of. He didn't. So I had to resort to sending a cease and desist letter to him. Silly, but true.
After the letter was sent to DeepBlueApps, I offered him a compromise. I told him that I would permit him to advertise his competing marketplace in any courses he produces for http://learn.gamesalad.com. He seemed open to this idea at first but has since turned his nose up at it.
DeepBlueApps has fantastic content. If he wants to sell it to our customers then he can feel free to continue putting his content up on the official marketplace. If he wants to advertise his marketplace on our site, he's free to do so as part of any courses he puts together for the GameSalad Academy. What we won't do, however, is permit advertising at our expense that undermines our business... and we'll do what we legally can to protect our rights here.
It's all just very silly and it sucks that it's come to this. I'd love to work with DeepBlueApps and see him make lots of money off of the coming deluge of customers. Perhaps he'll change his mind?
We'll see...
Actually, it while was I was learning corona sdk that I found the Deep Blue site and saw that they had templates for something called GameSalad... and here I am.
Yup, you never know when the company who owns the SDK will do a bonehead move and start going after people who are actually promoting their product. I've seen other SDKs and even game companies do the same thing - it NEVER gets them anything but bad will and bad karma.
Im not from english speaking country so sorry for my grammar. I really like Gamesalad very much and have been using for about two years. when I first start out, is not that easy even from watching tutorial video or ask on the forum so I try to find some template and learn from it but all the template I found that time is only Mac version (I use window) luckily I found site DBA and learn from so many their great free template, without DBA I probably did not keep using Gamesalad (and tell many of my friends about this great software) until now. I think no matter how they do, provide free template, paid template, tool, advert in forum etc... DBA have made Gamesalad popular for many new users and support them to learn at the beginning, we never can deny this. A helpful site running for 5 years since the beginning, and suddenly close down because.... Just like that, gone !...
@ookami007 I'm glad you found us through DeepBlueApps' site. It's great to see that! It turns out, however, that you're the exception and not the rule.
When looking at the data we receive essentially zero traffic from their site. In the past year, we've received 112 referral sessions from their site. That's about 0.0000003% of our traffic for the same period. It's inconsequential traffic for us.
Not trying to be rude or anything, but the traffic balance here is seemingly one-sided. I'm open to contrary data, though!
@tttdev8@gmail.com I agree 100% that DBA's free templates and tutorials have been a great resource for all GameSalad users. I invite him to put those up for everyone on the GameSalad Academy!
As an internet marketer, I can tell you... there are hard leads and soft leads. A hard lead is a direct link. Someone clicks on a link and gets right to you. It's clean and easily measurable.
A soft lead is one that comes BECAUSE of a site, but not through a direct link. To give you an example, if a newspaper runs an article about one of my businesses... I may get no direct links FROM them, but I do get business BECAUSE of them. Same thing with blog articles and press releases. Sometimes you get a direct link, sometimes not.
Case in point, myself. I saw GameSalad templates... so what did I do? I googled GameSalad and found your site and I've become a pro member so you DIRECTLY profited from DeepBlue. Who knows how many others came to you BECAUSE of DeepBlue without coming FROM DeepBlue.
Statistics are pretty... but remember the old colloquialism :
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics
@CodeWizard: Im not taking side of anyone, i just share my opinion. I talked with Darren and his team quite often through email, they are very nice and open.
I dont know you much, but you are CEO and still put time to answer personally in this topic not doing someing that other company normally do such as not open for answer and just close all the thread, or sending someone else to answer this for you... Im not sure how nice person you are but at least you also seems open to disscussion and thats very great.
I just hope you and DBA team can discuss in this topic, or in prviate through pm or go out to club drink beer and talk this through, whichever the result... I hope is best for you and DBA !
By the way, not to change the topic or anything but your old marketplace is very clumbsy.... I myself a lot of time want to sell my template through it but give up because dont know how, with that marketplace not to be honest but even with or without DBA, not many member will find it intresting... Just my point of view.
Very true! It's very hard to pinpoint the exact traffic from all sources. But, if DBA were a significant source of traffic for us then I'd expect to see more than 0.0000003% come from them via measurable sources.
The missing data here are the analytics from DBA's site. How much traffic do they get that doesn't come from GameSalad? If that number is large then there's a stronger argument in favor of potential soft lead traffic. I don't have that data so I can't speculate.
In any case, the point remains that DBA's been building a competing marketplace and using our forums for free advertisement. He's been unwilling to work with us on this. So, here we are.
I certainly wouldn't characterize this as "ham-fisted copyright enforcement." It's protecting our logos from misuse in a competing product. It's perfectly normal for businesses to do this -- and necessary if we hope to protect our logos from future infringement by competitors. Slapping our logo and branding on your competing commercial site isn't "fair use." It's borderline stealing.
All that being said, this kind of action takes place all the time. You generally don't hear about it though simply because the folks involved don't turn legal disputes into public spectacle.
A good personal example of this was a game I built and published at my last company called "Squabble." This real-time competitive word game was doing well in the app stores. Then, one day, we got hit with a cease and desist from Hasbro. They claimed that we infringed on their Scrabble copyright and that our game looked similar to theirs. So we changed the name to "Jangle" and lost all of our launch momentum. Sucks for sure but it happens way more than you might think!
Yeah, our old marketplace wasn't good. And it wasn't gonna get much better. That's one of the reasons I killed it.
Not be rude, but those doing the hamfisted beat downs normally don't call it that. Now... onto your ham-fisted MISUSE...
You just stated, that you are "protecting your logos from misuse in a competing product"
Your PRODUCT is a game development engine. It's NOT a marketplace. You HAPPEN to have ENDORSED a marketplace, however one might (successfully) arguing that you are now using your monopoly to shut down competition. This illegal in both the US and the EU and can be reported to the FTC or the EC. Microsoft and Apple have tried this before and BOTH were slapped down hard. There are MANY, MANY other examples... including Google who is currently dealing with these type of illegal practices by promoting their own products over others.
You logo, which is shown as being a registered trademark (the R symbol next to it). Trademark law includes free use provisions for even commercial uses... that's why you will see a car logo in a car magazine reviewing that car. They don't need permission because it's considered free use. It's also the reason you can use a logo of say... a mattress company... when you advertise their mattress, etc.
It's not stealing - PERIOD. No and's, if's or but's. At MOST, it is infringement and that's IF he's not fair use, which one would argue it isn't since he is not selling a game engine and in this case, there really is no brand confusion - the "idiot in a hurry test" is usually used in trials to know whether it is and I don't think that even an idiot in a hurry would think that DeepBlueApps is GameSalad.
The fact is, I call it ham-fisted misuse because if it went to court, you would likely lose, but since most people can't afford the lawyer costs do to battle, these ham-fisted techniques work to stifle competition - even when the competition is legal.
A good example of that is your own example, your game WASN'T scrabble and functioned DIFFERENT than scrabble and since copyright only applies to the EXPRESSION of an idea, not the idea itself, you WOULD have prevailed in court. However, you don't have the money to go head to head with a big company with a protracted legal battle, so you were forced to change your game title.
So the cycle is complete... the abused has become the abuser.
We'll have to agree to disagree on this point. We do have an official marketplace -- now run via partnership -- but, in the past, run by us. And it is part of our product offering.
Okay, this is getting crazy. A monopoly?
Really? We've asked DeepBlueApps to stop using our logo and branding materials on his competing marketplace.
We didn't demand that he take all references to GameSalad from his site -- just that he stop using our logos and branding materials on his competing marketplace.
We didn't demand that he stop selling GameSalad templates on his website -- just that he stop using our logos and branding materials on his competing marketplace.
We didn't demand that he shut his site down -- just that he stop using our logos and branding materials on his competing marketplace.
His public reaction to our reasonable demand -- that he stop using our logos and branding materials on his competing marketplace -- was his choice, not ours. I'd have been fine with him changing things over a reasonable timeframe (as we informally discussed) so long as he was actually changing things.
I'll disagree here too. A magazine using a car manufacturer's logo in their reviews is absolutely fair use. Using our logos and branding materials on a competing marketplace (which is part of our business and product offering) is not fair use by my reckoning.
Ouch, nasty!
Its a hard one ...
Tragic seeing it come to things like this though with people who have put so much into the community, made great tools that have been invaluable where GS has and still does have massive holes .. Even if the end result was for gains for themselves. By doing that template, advertising something in particular, making that tool, in the process many more people were helped where GS were not.
GS training material has been poor over its years, GS staff interaction has been poor over the years, massive forum contributors are being pushed away! Darren isn't no where near as active these days but after everything he has done, i'm not surprised after seeing how he has been treated at times!
Time will tell how it all pans out, one thing for sure, the CEO is putting his marker down and will live or die by the decisions!
Edit: I decided I was being a bit unfair on Darren and there's no point contributing more than necessary to this situation, especially negativity. I've thus removed my comments.
Contact me for custom work - Expert GS developer with 15 years of GS experience - Skype: armelline.support
Microsoft was sued and ultimately settle with the EU because they included Internet Explorer with their Operating System and set it as the default browser. They were required by part of the settlement to include other browsers and make it EASY to switch between them as the default browser... and then later this was applied to the default search engine.
They were forced to do this because they used their operating system monopoly to promote their own brand. They tried, unsuccessfully, to argue that Internet Explorer was part of their OS.
Please tell me how this is any different? It's not. Your PRODUCT is the game engine. I will not dispute this. As the maker and sole controller of the game engine, you are using that power to promote your own marketplace and to put the smackdown on another COMPETING marketplace. Your marketplace is NOT part of your product. A simple test proves this... I can access GSHelper.com and download templates without a membership to GameSalad - therefore, they are not one in the same. I can but things from GS... including templates... without ever owning GS.
It's true. Predatory monopolistic behavior. Google is about to be filed against in the EU for favoring their services in their OWN search engine.
rt.com/news/249733-eu-google-antitrust-case/
Again, Microsoft got hit the same way under Sections 1 & 2 of the Sherman act -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.
I'm sure Microsoft didn't consider bundling IE with Windows as anti-competitive either, but it was. I'm sure Google didn't consider showing their own products ahead of competitors' products on their own search engine anti-competitive either... but it was.
Anyway, I'm done talking on the subject. Obviously, you have your opinion and no amount of facts or actual case law will dissuade you.
I've been working on a uDemy course on GameSalad, but now I'm re-thinking it because what if YOU make a course... are you going to send me a cease and desist because I'm now "compete"?
You guys make it REALLY, REALLY hard to like GameSalad as a company.
@Armelline There will always be differences between users and always be contrasting opinions on the rules set.
There's many things here ... DBA put their templates on the official marketplace but GS did little to nothing to ever promote this! Therefore he had to do this himself to his site. He has provided statistics countless times which backs up his sales there vs his own.
'Darren has also been the direct cause of actions taken in the past that have pushed contributors away' - I've never known anyone to leave because of him and I won't ask you for names if you think otherwise but if we were to bet, I bet he's helped GS keep more than what he's lost!
I think it's no secret you have something against Darren as I've seen numerous comments from you now going against him, thats fine, like i said in my opening sentence ... There will always be differences between users
@ookami007 You seem to be working under a lot of misunderstandings. This isn't about GameSalad trying to be a monopoly. And how can they be a monopoly in something that you claim is not their actual business?
None of your comparisons are valid. And this case does not fall under fair use. If Darren wrote a blog entry about GameSalad on his site, that would be fair use, and the GS team wouldn't be able to do anything about it. This is not about that though, it's about using the GameSalad logo for advertising and promotion of his own products. Please find an example of a company that allows you to do this without prior agreement. Take Apple, for example:
https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/guidelinesfor3rdparties.html
Or to keep it relevant to game-making tools.
https://unity3d.com/public-relations/brand
Or perhaps a car logo, like you mention:
http://www.ford.com.au/about/use-of-logo
This is a pretty clear-cut issue.
Edit: I decided I was being a bit unfair on Darren and there's no point contributing more than necessary to this situation, especially negativity. I've thus removed my comments.
I'm hopeful that now with the new rules and situation, my reasons for grievance against him will evaporate.
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