

Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay - kotakufanb
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/12/ed-mcmillen-ubuntu-store-sold-super-meat-boy-for-a-year-without-permission-has-yet-to-pay-team-meat/

======
jacquesm
Pirates is way too heavy a term here. Canonical is large enough and the issue
muddy enough that I don't think this is a warranted accusation. They're also
shooting themselves in the foot, instead of coming to some kind of amicable
arrangement they've now accused canonical of a serious crime which will lead
to a response to that accusation rather than to a solution that would have
been beneficial to all parties.

If you deal with a company that is much larger than yours that made a mistake
or did something you don't agree with publicity is a means of last resort, not
your first avenue for redress. And if you truly believe canonical pirated your
game then you should sue them.

This is an excellent reminder why I prefer open source to closed source,
projects like Arch and Debian would never suffer from this.

~~~
chris_wot
??? I'd hardly call "sold someone else's game without permission or royalties
for a year" a "mistake".

~~~
citricsquid
seems to be more complex than that, they (Team Meat) wanted SMB in the store
but never signed contracts, but canonical put it in the store anyway, so it
isn't as if they just saw the game and decided they wanted it... it was a deal
being discussed that wasn't completed. Negligent, but not malicious...

<http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406960226210700795>

~~~
raverbashing
If the deal is not done then you DON'T put it in the Ubuntu Store, period

Sign the papers first

Of course, since Canonical did that, they should try an amicable solution.

~~~
shardling
No, it's still more complicated than that.

From Ed's posts, it was originally placed in the store as a promotion related
to a Humble Indie Bundle.

<http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406960226210700795>

~~~
raverbashing
I had read this, it seems to all depend on what that "blanket statement" was

~~~
makomk
For context, this is the Humble Indie Bundle's announcement that all HIB5
games, including Super Meat Boy, would be available for download from the
Ubuntu Software Center for HIB owners:
[http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/24981005928/humble-
indie-b...](http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/24981005928/humble-indie-bundle-
v-games-in-the-ubuntu-software)

------
fingerprinter
<http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406960226210700795>

dpitkin from canonical: "Hi, I just looked into it and the check to Tommy and
Edmund from Canonical is in process for the 77 copies of Super Meat Boy. We
have been working together since November to get it resolved, no piracy here
just some miscommunication. David Pitkin Canonical"

edmund: "they got it from the HIB, HIB gives all the linux builds to Ubuntu
during the promotion and does a blanket statment to all involved, we said we
were interested in putting smb in the store but never heard back and never got
a contract or exchanged information (hence why we were never paid) they never
contacted us back after that and we simply never knew it was in their store."

So, which is it? Have canonical and edmund been communicating to fix since
November? Or has this literally NEVER (edmund's statement) happened?

Given the HIB involvement, I'm very inclined to think that a massive
miscommunication happened and that, frankly, edmund is just massively whining
and whinging. Listen, I get it, he might be frustrated, but Edmund spoke in
absolutes and we know how often absolutes are correct.

Either way, "pirating" is the wrong word. It's obvious there was no malice
from Canonical. And I honestly don't know what Edmund was trying to
achieve...he just looks bad in this whole exchange.

~~~
Fargren
Edmund didn't use the word piracy. That was just some editorializing by the
Kotaku reporter and has since been removed.

I think what Edmund wants is to rant a bit about how Canonical says he
"declined to make their game available" when it was Canonical who didn't
accept the game in the first place. It makes it look as though he has a
problem with Ubuntu, which he doesn't.

Honestly, he just ranted about it on his formspring. He didn't make a press
release or press charges. He's understandably annoyed that they made him look
bad to save face and that they didn't pay him some money they should have.

------
dpitkin
Hi, I just looked into it and the check to Tommy and Edmund from Canonical is
in process for the 77 copies of Super Meat Boy. We have been working together
since November to get it resolved, no piracy here just some miscommunication.

David Pitkin Canonical

~~~
kayoone
77 copies in a year? The same game sold 20.000 copies on Launchday on the
Xbox360. Seems like Linux gaming still has a long way to go. Steam isnt doing
it for direct profit reasons either, they just want to push the software
platform of their new console!

But dont get me wrong, i like the direction, its just that linux gaming is
totally irrelevant from a market perspective.

~~~
shardling
It was put in the store _way_ after its initial release on most platforms. And
I'm pretty sure anyone who got it in the humble bundle got a direct download.

Trying to infer something about the state of Linux gaming from this single
statistic is just kinda silly.

~~~
kayoone
I did directly compare it to another closed plattform store, which is Xbox
Live Arcade. When a very successfull game sold 77 copies in a year when the
same game sold 1 million copies (on xbox alone) in a timeframe of similar
length (0.0077%) that still says something. I am very certain that SMB still
sells alot more than 77 copies on XBLA per day!

Of course you cant compare the Ubuntu Store with something like XBLA but
still, its helps bringing stuff into perspective.

------
evmar
I tried for nearly a year to get Google Chrome into the Ubuntu store. Each
time I asked about it I got answers like "the relevant person is on vacation",
"we'll get back to you", "sorry, forgot to respond". I eventually gave up.
While I remain cranky about it I try to believe they are just not well
organized and it wasn't anything malicious, which I hope is also the
explanation here too.

~~~
fingerprinter
Well, I highly doubt that, to be honest.

It's pretty simple and known why Chrome is not in software center: Google.
They won't allow it. Chrome would have to go in the partner repository, hence
needs collaboration with said partner. Think Skype.

~~~
simonk
The above poster is a Googler on the Chrome team so I'm guessing that he was
doing that work on behalf of Google.

------
jiggy2011
How does one apply for a job doing PR for canonical? I'm pretty sure even HN
people could do a better job.

------
SquareWheel
Please just link directly to the FormSpring rather than the blogified version.
It gives all the relevant info.

<http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406945771976419136>

~~~
shardling
No, it doesn't.

The "blogified" version also links to some related tweets that add some
important context.

Of course someone interested enough could cobble everything together
themselves, but the whole point of linking to a secondary source is to let
someone else do the synthesis.

~~~
frujka
Erm, it only quotes one tweet from the other dev that actually doesn't add
anything at all by saying that they still didn't get paid which was implied.

It also had (it's been silently rewritten) an outrageously sensationalist
title and lack context and follow up you have in the original source.

------
shardling
The word "pirates" does not seem to appear in the linked article.

------
huhtenberg
7 hours into the discussion and no link to "Indie Game The Movie" movie that
follows SMB devs for few months prior to the launch?

<http://www.indiegamethemovie.com>

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942884>

~~~
frujka
Available as part of the current humble bundle for another 10 days.

<https://www.humblebundle.com/>

------
ma2000
While watching the video/trailer for the most recent Humble Bundle, I was put
off by the games this time around.

The one mentioned in this article for example, looked like a basic Flash game.
So as an outsider to this indie gaming world, I can understand why they might
have superficially rejected it - it's probably a great game if you give it a
chance.

Just thought that someone should point this out because the comments have so
far been the opposite.

~~~
brador
I blame the THQ bundle. Seriously, all that awesome for just a $1 minimum.
After that all these previously amazing indie games just look like flash toys.

~~~
frujka
The THQ bundle was but an attempt to boost the stock value of the company by
showing people had interest in the games before filing for bankruptcy.

It was real real sub par in comparison of other bundles, it was crippled by
being windows only and steam only on linux, it had no bonus content and didn't
feature anything fresh. Also developers of those games mostly didn't see a
dime of this.

~~~
unimpressive
Bankruptcy? What does Humble Bundles financial situation look like?

~~~
jeremyarussell
Err, THQ is going bankrupt, not HI.

------
saosebastiao
This is typical of the behavior of companies that are trying desperately to
stay afloat.

~~~
lutusp
> This is typical of the type of behavior ...

This sentence was brought to you by the department of redundancy department.

~~~
saosebastiao
Lol...I should have caught that. Derpity derr.

------
Tichy
Too much drama. I'm sure this will be sorted out.

------
antidoh
They just run things on a net-365 basis is all.

------
chris_wot
Time to lawyer up!

~~~
frujka
Nope. <http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406960226210700795>

------
VMG
I thought piracy is cool now? Oh wait, it's only cool when the underdog does
it. Nevermind.

~~~
esrauch
In don't think the nuance here is about underdogs.

Most file sharing is not for profit. Most file sharing is some kid who
couldn't have possibly bought everything downloaded because it would have cost
more than his families entire salary. Does that make it right? No. But it's
more like street graffiti or petty theft from a convenience store. The
judicial system unfairly favors the big content companies in these situations
and people face several hundred thousand dollar penalties. The spirit of these
laws was to target people selling bootleg copies of DVDs on the street, not
the people who bought those DVDs. Megavideo should be facing these types of
penalties, not moms.

Megavideo was profiting from piracy so they are more culpable, but the
preemptive actions taken were also inappropriate given the crime. Despite it
being mostly used for piracy, people did have legitimate files on it and their
access was unexpectly lost due to the improper actions. Besides the collateral
damage, even guilty people should have a day in court before any punishment
occurs, I don't care what the crime is or how obvious some non-judge
individual thinks it is.

This case is someone profiting from unauthorized distribution. This is a case
where the unjust law is unlikely to be relevant; if the government
preemptively raided canonical I think you can safely assume there would be a
shit storm of support on canonical's side.

People don't simply react to the original crimes, they are reacting to all of
the other moves that happen after the crime comes to light. In this case there
is no draconian antipiracy in effect, no individuals committing petty crime so
they can watch HBO, instead there is the most visible open source software
violating intellectual property law in a way that is unlikely to have any
negative effect on the company besides one day of mildly bad PR.

