Nobody was talking about legal definitions. The law is pretty clear what constitutes theft and what is required to be protectable.
| |
A rip is what occurs when fat people bend over.
| |
If you're gonna play BYOND, then be prepared to deal with "rips".
In my opinion, a rip is someone else's source being taken by someone AND having them claim it is their own. I am working on an FFL and my server is not a rip. I'm not plaigarizing someone else's work. I'm paraphrasing, I guess you could call it. I'm changing it and working on new things. Meaning I'm giving Loud credit, but I'm also giving myself credit for what I've done to that patricular version. Shout-out to Loud :D | |
I define a rip as, downloaded code, which has been only edited a little bit and then clamed to be your own. That's my definition too. | |
So, to clarify, you don't consider the second game of the same genre to be a rip. If all it has in common is the genre and the basic things said genre is ment to have.
If so, this makes me happy to know most people agree with me. =P | |
Look at many popular games. World of Warcraft, for instance, is Everquest and many other popular MMOs put into a meltingpot and stirring in the Warcraft storyline. I've seen very few things in it that didn't come from elsewhere. They are the biggest game, and Blizzard nets over 50 million a month from it -alone-, and they haven't been sued yet.
Either way, almost everything under the whole topic of "ideas" is a rip in the first place. Everything you put into this game comes from experiences you have went through, and things you have seen elsewhere. Your driving down the street, and you see some kids in an alley throwing rocks at eachother while hiding behind stop signs and other obstacles. You decide to make a 'rock thrower' FPS. Are you not stealing their idea? Sure, but you'll get away with it. So criminal, thievery or not - it's dumb to say someone stole an idea from your game. A lot of the times an 'idea' is simply something you've done in the genre of your game before someone else - and that something is done hundreds of times elsewhere.