<a href=”
www.facebook.com/apps/applicat…>Hammerfall RPG is a Facebook game. You may have heard of it. You may have not, but by the end of this article I hope you won’t forget it. It boasts over 233,000 (that’s two-hundred-thirty-three-thousand, just to emphasize) monthly active players. With an average rating of 4.6 stars out of 5, as rated by more than 4000 players, it’s got a fairly good name for itself.
The premise is simple. You create a fantasy character and play your way through various quests, meeting goals and leveling up your character as you go. You’re also supposed to build a “guild” out of your Facebook friends and the more people you convince to join, the bigger your guild, the farther you progress into the game. Since it’s the online equivalent of a pen and paper RPG there aren’t 3D graphics or anything. Just small pictures displayed with each quest or with characters and items that you encounter. Like this:
www.insidesocialgames.com/wp-c…And they are beautiful graphics. Beautifully stolen graphics.
deviantArt, meet Hammerfall RPG, the latest in a long series of small gaming applications and forums online that are out to make a quick buck off of our hard work—without our knowledge or permission. There are over a thousand images used on their site. I know. I’ve looked through most of them (and I’ll get to that in a moment). Of those thousand nearly half were pulled from deviantARTists. Some were probably googled, and I saw more than a few iStockphoto or other stock photos in there, but there were a large number that came from deviantART.
Unfortunately, because you have to play though the game to get to some of those images, it would be difficult to locate them the normal way.
Luckily for us, however, art thieves aren’t particularly known for their brilliance. Hammerfall hosts their images in a (public!) Photobucket account. We all remember Photobucket, right?
(If you don’t, no worries. Here’s a quick summary: Photobucket has one of the WORST copyright policies on the web. Images hosted in public Photobucket accounts are automatically available as prints, stickers, on coffee mugs and other products, without the artist’s permission, knowledge, and without any money going back to the artist—or the person who unknowingly posted the artist’s image in their Photobucket account. Here’s a quick video on how this works: www.plagiarismtoday.com/2008/0… few months back we tried to get Photobucket to change their practices, and they basically blew us off.
The bright side? Photobucket has a great DMCA policy. If you find your images hosted there without your permission, all you have to do is file a DMCA through email, and the image will be removed. More on this and how it applies in a minute.)
Since Hammerfall developers were too cheap to host the stolen images on their own servers, that actually makes it easier for us to get our work removed. Rather than having to try to get the developer to remove the images, we can nicely ask Photobucket to take them down. And they will.
With the help of several other deviantARTists and TinEye.com we’ve managed to track down many of the original images and the artists who did them. This was a long and tedious process because not only were the images stolen and then hosted on Photobucket, each image was also resized into 8 to 10 different versions (ranging from very tiny to medium large). All of the artists affected will be noted, but if you want to know who was affected you can find them listed here:
mercuralis.deviantart.com/jour…Unfortunately there were a lot of images that we couldn’t recognize, and that TinEye didn’t turn up any matches for. Most of them were photographs. If you have the time, go through the albums and look to see if you can identify any of the images. Please double check it against the list of already identified images before noting someone, and post a link on the journal entry so we can update the list.
The account hosting the images is here:
s652.photobucket.com/albums/uu…There is a long list of album numbers on the left. Each of these albums is one image that has been resized several times. Clicking on one of the numbered albums will open a subfolder that lists the various sizes. You have to click on one of the subfolders to view the image. If you want to see how this work, click here:
homepage.mac.com/mercuralis/Mi…Like I said: tedious.
(and much thanks to
LouisaGallie MeredithDillman and
faerywitch for helping me go through all of those images)
If you are one of the affected artists, it’s a simple matter to get your work removed. All you have to do is send an email to Photobucket’s abuse department. This email should read as follows (bolded text must be included word for word):
To: abuse@photobucket.com
Subject: DMCA notice of copyright infringement
The following images belong to me, and are being used here without permission:
Title of Image
Original image in my gallery: [insert link to image in your dA gallery or website]
Infringing Image on Photobucket: [insert “direct” link to the image URL. This is listed in the drop down box under the image on PB]
I hereby state that I have a good faith belief that the disputed use of the copyrighted material is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law (e.g., as a fair use).
I hereby state that the information in this Notice is accurate and, under penalty of perjury, that I am the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of the copyright or of an exclusive right under the copyright that is allegedly infringed.
Your name
Your full mailing address
Your phone number
Your email address
Normally you would file one DMCA for all of the related images, however we want this account suspended for being a repeat offender. More than 280 infringed images OUGHT to count as a repeat offense. In order for us to make an impact with Photobucket, it would be better if a separate DMCA was filed for
each infringed image. That means if they resized it ten times and have it posted ten times, file ten different DMCAs.
Our hope is that by filing so many against a single account, Photobucket will be forced to take action against that account.
For those of you who are not directly affected, now isn’t the time to wipe your brow and say “whew… glad it wasn’t me” because the truth is, the next time it COULD be you.
As artists we face many social stigmas. That we don’t do “real” work. That art isn’t somehow a real career field, or valuable. We’re faced with ignorance and apathy at every turn. Especially when it comes to certain misconceptions about copyright.
We’ve all heard it, and many of us have said it—usually in a resigned, world-weary tone—that putting your work online is like asking for it to be stolen. But we also know that that’s not true. Putting your work online involves risks, yes, but we give up no rights by doing so, and the law remains firmly on our side when it comes to copyrights.
YOU, and only you (unless you sell your rights to an image) have the right to:
- post your work wherever you like
- choose who else can post it
- make money from it
- resize it, recolor it, add glitter to it, or change it in any way
Now I know we’d all love it if someone could invent a way to make it impossible for images to be stolen. Heck, I’d be thrilled as hell if I woke up tomorrow morning and there was a note in my dA news saying that the deviantART developers had come up with a foolproof way of protecting our work. Sadly, I know that art thieves are some of the biggest fools and it’s impossible to stop them from stealing images so long as things like screenshots are around.
Not all of the images stolen by Hammerfall were popular images—so just because you don’t think it’s worth stealing doesn’t mean someone else will think the same. Please, artists, put your full names clearly on your images. Put copyright notices on them. Watermark them if you want… but don’t devalue your work by refusing to at least TRY to protect it.
We need to let companies like Hammerfall know that they cannot use online galleries like deviantART as their own personal free supply of clipart. We need to let Facebook know that we are serious about dealing with art thieves and we want them to take some responsibility when it comes to banning game developers that use stolen art.
We are not going to sit down and shut up and keep taking kicks from people who don’t respect our rights or us.
In a day or two, the DMCA notices will hopefully start hitting Photobucket, which is going to result in a LOT of broken links in Hammerfall’s game. It’s going to make a lot of their players very upset when they realize that the professional game that they’ve become used to playing is really just anther slimy developer trying to make a quick buck off of other people’s work.
If you are a Facebook member, consider leaving Hammerfall RPG a review, letting them know your feelings on this situation. If their reviews drop, it’s going to affect them in a real way.
With the help of Jonathan Bailey at <a href=”
www.plagiarismtoday.com/”>PlagarismToday.com we’re also going to be drafting a letter to Facebook, letting them know about this situation and how we feel about it. Hopefully they’ll step up and take some action against unscrupulous game developers. If not, we can at least give them some bad press to worry about. We’re also planning on filing a report against the game, showing a list of all the artists whose work was taken, and citing them for breach of Developer TOS Section 5.
Admittedly it’s not much, but it’s a step toward getting some respect from the online community. And as a bonus we get to make some art thieves VERY unhappy.
That makes my day just a little bit brighter. How about yours?
Hammerfall RPG on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/apps/applicat…Screenshot of Images in Hammerfall:
www.insidesocialgames.com/wp-c…homepage.mac.com/mercuralis/Mi…homepage.mac.com/mercuralis/Mi…List of affected artists:
mercuralis.deviantart.com/jour…Photobucket Abuse :
photobucket.com/copyright/A collection featuring all the identfied artwork we've found on Hammerfall, updated as new artists are found:
mercuralis.deviantart.com/favo… It appears that Mr. Kimball and associates got wise to what we were doing within only a few minutes of the original news article being posted. The Photobucket account has been locked down. Lucky for us we know how to get to all the images anyway. I'm slowly going to be updating the Identified artist's list with the full set of links. This takes much longer than linking to the album, but since all we need are the direct links to the images to report them, it's worth the effort. If you've recieved a notice already, I'll be updating your links first.
According to Mr. Kimball and his associates, (
www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid…) Hammerfall obtained permission to use all these images directly from the artists (which we know to be a lie), or got them through stock image sites or under creative commons licenses. If you are one of the artists whose work was lifted, please comment here and let us know how you feel about that statement.
In an effort to confuse us they're switching the images around so that images we'd previously confirmed as belonging to one artist are now linking to images by other artists. For example, earlier today I posted links to images they had posted by
now those same URLs are pointing to images by
... it's irritating, and it makes reporting the images at this stage difficult because you have to have the exact URL of your image on Photobucket in order for them to take it down for infringement.
We are working on a way of circumveting this but I think it's fairly clear at this point that Hammerfall is doing it's best to cover up and make it impossible for us to get our images taken out of their game. We're not done fighting this, not by a long shot. However for those artists who are waiting to know if their work has been taken, it's going to be a little longer before we can get you the links so you can file your DMCAs.
Okay guys, here's the situation. Mr. Kimball has begun moving the stolen work from the account we could get access to, into a new account. This one we are completely locked out of. We are now working to get screenshots from in the game by current players. If we can link those screenshots to artists who have not given permission for the work to be used, we can go to Facebook and file an abuse complaint against Hammerfall for violating the Developer Terms of Service.
So right now we're on hold, basically until we can get as many screenshots as possible. If you are a current player of the game, Hammerfall, and are as outraged by this as we are, we can use as many screenshots of ingame images as possible (such as the ones linked above). If you have screenshots, please email them to me at mercuralis@bynkii.com. If you can find ingame URLS for images, email them or note them to me here on dA. (please don't leave them in the comments in case they get buried before I see them).
Jonathan has posted an article about the situation on PlagiarismToday.com:
www.plagiarismtoday.com/2009/0…You can help us by Digging/Stumbling the article and getting the word out there about what's going on.
To Mr. Kimball himself I have this to say:You sir, never asked me for permission to use my work. I have screenshots proving that at least two of my images were used in your game. Had you approached me for permission to use that work it would have been denied. I only allow my work to be used for games when it is specifically commissioned and paid for for that purpose.
You claim that you bought it from a stock image house that has mysteriously disappeared. I call bullshit. If you had, you'd be able to give us the name of the place. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of the 78 images we were able to positively identify came from deviantART. And you're running scared. You're shifting images around in an attempt to keep us from having them removed. You're switching image accounts and running as much behind the scene damage control as you can...
But you can't stop people from playing your game. You can't stop them from screenshotting the images and sending the URLS. We can and WILL prove that you are the lying, slimy, bottom-dweller that we already know you are. And we will do what we can to get your game shut down.
If someone stole your game, I would think you'd just as rabidly defend it as I defend my work. If a larger company took it and made money on it, you can bet your slimy butt would be hurrying to the nearest lawyer to sue them for it.
If you truly honestly felt that you were being unfairly blamed for this situation, and that the images you had were your right to use, you'd open up your account and allow us to check. We cannot have images removed that don't belong to us, and will not. If you were unfairly taken advantage of by your imaginary "stock site" then you wouldn't hesitate in helping us to resolve the situation.
We will compile the evidence against you, and get your game shut down--unless you choose to cooperate. All we want is our work taken down.
It looks like we've reached a resolution of sorts you can read about it here: mercuralis.deviantart.com/jour…Then again, perhaps not:
www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid…Apparently Dennis isn't doing what he promised to do, and keeping track of the legality of the new images being uploaded. Tsk tsk. Only a few days into the new system and it's
already as bad as the previous one.
Here's my suggestion:
HIRE an Art Director. Someone whose job it is to contact artists and either commission images for the game, or ask for permission to use in game images. Someone who can be responsible for making sure every image used in the game is free and clear and not in questionable legality. That's how professional companies do it. That's how ethical companies do it.
This is just stupid and irresponsible.
Also, for those few who are ignorant and didn't believe us the first time around that we were telling the truth about copyright infringed images being used in the game, here you go:
