MOCHI WARNING

Hey guys, if you are using Mochi ads, you might want to look into your game's analytic and ad reports.

Color Collector(shameless GB advertising), the game I just got sponsored, has mochi ads, my sponsor's logo, and a link to this site.
I was checking the analytic reports, and 2 chinese sites, 4399.com and 3839.com, had the most views. However, when I looked in the ads report, they didn't account for ANY of the revenue coming in from ads, so I took a look at their sites and found my game:

http://4399.com/flash/37584_4.htm
http://www.3839.com/f5_37947

These versions of my game have never been publicly released with my consent, and appear to have been modified, because I never built a file like that one.

I have sent Mochi an email, which supposively will be responded to within 24 hours, so when I hear back, I'll let you guys know. Meanwhile, I thought I'd warn you guys, and you might want to check and see if this has been done to you.

-Eliyahu

Lol I got 5700 and @DavidN got 4700, haha I got higher score!

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Originally Posted by dragonguy

Lol I got 5700 and @DavidN got 4700, haha I got higher score!

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That's not relevant to this conversation. What is important is that Mochi somehow let their affiliates modify my game without my permission, and if they did it to me, it could've happened to anyone else. If they removed the ads, they could've removed the analytics in a different version, and perhaps the game would've made a ton of money, but I'll never know.

Just giving you all the heads up, be cautious.

It happens all the time - Chinese sites modify your game to take out the ads and then post the games on their sites ad-free. This is why mochi has struck a deal with Chinese sites to allow the games to retain their ads. Try using that?

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Originally Posted by RickyRombo

It happens all the time - Chinese sites modify your game to take out the ads and then post the games on their sites ad-free. This is why mochi has struck a deal with Chinese sites to allow the games to retain their ads. Try using that?

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Why should I do that? I simply do not want them hosting my game the way are now, which sounds very illegal. Can someone verify the legality of it, anyone who knows law?
I don't see how modifying someone's work and eliminating the signs of whoever created it is legal. They have no right to claim my game as their own.

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Originally Posted by Eliyahu

Why should I do that?

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It may cause them to promote your game including ads?

I know it's illegal and should be stopped, but unless you can find some international police or local Chinese police you're pretty much out of luck I think.

I can do that later, but it is not my responsibility to make a game for their site. I make my own games, if they want to host my game, that's fine, but they aren't above the law. I contacted Mochi, we will see how they respond, and if they can't help, I'll do what I can with these sites myself.

EDIT: also, keep in mind that these sites aren't the only ones to blame. Mochi gave them an old version of the game, it has a button that I took out for the final version. That being said, Mochi had to have given them one of the actual files, not the Live Updates one that points to the latest version.

You could create a black list with these domains and end your game once they're detected as hosts. I remember some years ago CT created a "Make my game" extension. Maybe CT can port it, so we could quickly make an alternative game mode for blacklisted sites ;)

We already had topics about sitelocks here and there, if you want some technical info.

Thank you, those would help for sitelocking, and blacklisting some sites, but the problem is that these Chinese sites already have my game. They took it out of Live Updates, and it's out of my control. I can't do anything now, they have remote versions of my game.

Hi Eliyahu. Sad indeed, but you can go after the originater (Mochi), but you will be unable to do anything outside the US. In my old job I got tired of chasing ghosts (useless quests to snag the little hefers). That is the reason I went to a sitting job for forensics.

Marv the old goat.

Another person learns the lesson that intellectual property rights aren't equal throughout the world.

Best of luck to you - but personally I'd advise you ignore it, because I doubt you will achieve much, nor do I think advertising in China gives you any sizable income anyway.

Perhaps this might be useful.

Mochi Media Acquired By Shanda Games For $80 Million. (Jan 11 2010)

Shanda is China’s largest operator of online games, with nearly 10 million active accounts.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/mochi-media-acquired-by-shanda-games/

I am not quite sure if they owned the 2 mentioned sites... and that might be in the terms and conditions or anything.
:(

Alright :( It's not so much the money that bothers me, it's that they got rid of my sponsor's logo, who paid for that in my game, and that they'd do this without consent.
Most likely I won't get anywhere, but might as well try. What do I have to lose?

I guess the best would be to avoid these things in the future. :(
Sitelock all unreleased SWFs for sponsor viewing. I am assuming that decompiling swf created with MMF2 would not give them a fla or a nice .as files to alter away but just in case, you can use Obfuscator tools/ swf protector / swf protection for the swf generated by MMF2.

These tools takes your swf files and encrypt it into another swf file :D. So if they try to decompile your swf, not only your codes are not correctly viewable, some of them hides your swf assets images and sound too as well.

One of the methods employed by SWF protections can be read here -> http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/protect-your-flash-files-from-decompilers-by-using-encryption/

To put it in summary it simply takes your orignal SWF , turns it into binary (that's where all the images and sound assets gets into one chunk) and encrypt it into a new SWF :D

If you are into Actionscript, you can actually do it with Flash Develop (FREE) and the Flex SDK (FREE)

Will this be in the next Flash Update? (hint hint...) :D
Just suggesting :D

Btw, Mochi now offers chinese translation service and one site which will legally carry (and show paid ads for) their games is 4399.com. I'd expect there's a chance to solve this, because they have a partnership now.

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Originally Posted by turtle

To put it in summary it simply takes your orignal SWF , turns it into binary (that's where all the images and sound assets gets into one chunk)

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That's how MMF2 SWFs look inside already.

Eliyahu, don't worry about it. It's terribly frustrating, I know, but there isn't anything you can do about it, it's the same with piracy. It's little consolation, but even if your ads were still attached, you'd have make 2 cents from them, China is very much locked up to successful advertising still. Sucks it has to happen to you, but perhaps Mochi can sort something out for you. Let us know.

It happens to others, I can personaly live with it. I'm more worried about scores flooding than unpaid ads. Just look at the hiscores table for one of my game that some chinese players seem to appreciate:
http://oliverpearl.com/en/webgames/treasures.php

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Originally Posted by Olivier

It happens to others, I can personaly live with it. I'm more worried about scores flooding than unpaid ads. Just look at the hiscores table for one of my game that some chinese players seem to appreciate:
http://oliverpearl.com/en/webgames/treasures.php

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Oh dear, I imagine they are not all from the same player then? An edited version of the swf that sends highscores only with one name?

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Originally Posted by Eliyahu

That's not relevant to this conversation. What is important is that Mochi somehow let their affiliates modify my game without my permission, and if they did it to me, it could've happened to anyone else. If they removed the ads, they could've removed the analytics in a different version, and perhaps the game would've made a ton of money, but I'll never know.

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Your right, now is not the time for fun even though your game is awesome, now is the time to band together and sign a petition against these evil copiers, you diserve all the revenue because colour collector is your intellectual property!

Olivier, that's awful! You can block players in your high score table, I don't know if it does that on a name or IP level, but you could always try blocking one of those.
Anyway, here's the response I got:

Hi Eliyahu,

I'm sorry to hear that your game was stolen. We're currently trying to work with various Chinese sites to prevent things like this happening. Sadly there is really nothing you can do other than writing to the websites and asking to have them taken down.

Sorry,
Mochi Support

I'm not really worried any money lost, it's more just the fact that they are doing this. But you all are right, so I'll just leave it. I doubt that contacting these sites will do anything. But in future games I am going to put hidden flags in my game that tell me if it was ever released, because I'm fairly certain the Mochi distributed a version of my game that was not set up for distribution. :( It's a shame we have to do things like this, you'd think that people have a sense of a common decency, but apparently not.

EDIT: and dragonguy, I have no idea if you're trying to use sarcasm, but I really don't care about the revenue. I just wanted people on here to be aware of what was happening.

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Originally Posted by Olivier

It happens to others, I can personaly live with it. I'm more worried about scores flooding than unpaid ads. Just look at the hiscores table for one of my game that some chinese players seem to appreciate:
http://oliverpearl.com/en/webgames/treasures.php

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A: Awesome site
B: That's really got to be quite annoying!

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Originally Posted by RickyRombo

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Originally Posted by Olivier

It happens to others, I can personaly live with it. I'm more worried about scores flooding than unpaid ads. Just look at the hiscores table for one of my game that some chinese players seem to appreciate:
http://oliverpearl.com/en/webgames/treasures.php

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A: Awesome site
B: That's really got to be quite annoying!

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I agree. That's actually quite obnoxious. I'm still amazed that there are people out there that think they have the right to do this :(

Just as an observation -- I don't think this problem is mochi specific. It can happen to any SWF file you upload onto the internet.

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Originally Posted by Jeff

Just as an observation -- I don't think this problem is mochi specific. It can happen to any SWF file you upload onto the internet.

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But it is the Chinese sites that Mochi is affiliated with...sure it COULD happen, there isn't anything stopping anyone from taking the .swf's from sites like Gamebuilder. And I am not sure if Mochi is responsible for distributing an old version of my game, as I didn't leave hidden flags well enough, but it appears that the sites got my game out of Mochi distribution.

Have the swf call home with the get object. If the call is coming from a Chinese IP address, have it stop the game from running.

The problem is that they are editting these things out. They could remove it, then it'd work.

They would have to be looking for it... i don't know, make it look like an error. lol

Which values are typical for chinese sites?

You can find country IP address' via google search.

I'm thinking that you could set up your server (where you're calling home to via your game) to deny from IP's inside china.

Write the app in such a way that without the response from your sever, the game just goes bonkers. Since your server denies connection from China, the problem is solved.

Unless you WANT traffic from China, then you are stuck

You could also set up some triggers to determine if your game has been tampered with

All in all, I really don't think it's worth it. They're going to continue doing this. I'm a bit bothered by Mochi's response though. They make it sound like they are striking a deal with these sites just so these illegal things wouldn't happen, but they wouldn't be happening if Mochi didn't set up with them.

Hopefully this won't happen on a larger scale, I'm just thankful this was a small game.

Just give up, its pointless. Any security you put in there will likely be edited out.

Blatant out in the open piracy and intellectual property theft runs rampant over there, there's just nothing you can do.

And if your next game gets really popular, its probably going to happen again. You'll just have to write it off as an acceptable loss.

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Originally Posted by Jamie

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Originally Posted by turtle

To put it in summary it simply takes your orignal SWF , turns it into binary (that's where all the images and sound assets gets into one chunk)

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That's how MMF2 SWFs look inside already.

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Oh I didn't realised :D Should be ok then.

Thanks for the response :D

I'm a bit confused here, would someone be nice and tell me if

1) What they are doing is legal because they do it in China

or

2) It's illegal, but just difficult to stop them from doing it?

Thanks :)

It's illegal and I don't think you can't do anything about it.

Marv

But what I saw on that Chinese site leads me to believe that they got an old unreleased version from Mochi, and if that's true, couldn't I do something about it since Mochi has an office in the US? I would have to look, but it is probably against their agreement somewhere for them to do that.

Did you always have your game inside the mochi live updates system or did you have some versions outside of it?

You can sue anyone you want for anything, a lawyer will gladly take your money to file a suit.

I had several versions on FGL, through Mochi Live Updates, without distribution. And I had all the buttons, including the 4th button for Instructions.

My sponsor asked me to remove the Instructions button, so I did. After it was all final and done, I updated it with Mochi Live Updates, and enabled distribution. Considering these Chinese sites are the ones listed with Mochi, I don't think they got my game from anywhere else, and they shouldn't have ever even had the graphic for the Instructions button, or the idea that there was an Instructions button that ever existed.