All Stolen Copies Removed, but Apple Won’t Ban the Thieves
Hey everyone,
We finally have some progress in our battle against the stolen versions of Diapers, Please! - as of now, all unauthorized copies have been removed from the App Store. I hope there will be no more of them. However, the fight is not over.
Despite our repeated requests, Apple refuses to ban the accounts of the individuals who stole and sold our game for profit. One of these thieves earned an estimated $60,000 by reselling our free jam game, yet Apple is allowing them to keep the money. And they share money with him, because of App Store 30% fee.
We’ve officially requested:
- A full refund for all buyers of the stolen versions.
- A permanent ban of the infringing developer accounts.
So far, Apple has only confirmed the removals but has not taken action on these critical issues. We will continue pushing for a fair resolution. Thanks again to everyone who has supported us through this - your messages, reports, and shared outrage have helped get us this far. The fight isn’t over yet!
Diapers, Please!
Help parents find their real children.
| Status | Prototype |
| Author | VoltekPlay |
| Genre | Puzzle, Simulation, Strategy |
| Tags | Atmospheric, Cute, Immersive, Management, Meaningful Choices, Multiple Endings, Mystery, Narrative |
| Languages | English, Russian |
| Accessibility | Subtitles |
More posts
- One video with full story of our game theft2 days ago
- Appstore Release3 days ago
- Big News - Our Steam Page is Now Live!23 days ago
- Our Game Was Stolen - and the Fight Continues25 days ago
- Our Game Was Stolen - Here’s What’s Happening27 days ago
Comments
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You guys should hire a lawyer, one that specializes in IP Law, Apple won't refund the buyers of the stolen copies because they're not the direct beneficiaries of the money the copiers earned. You'd have better results at receiving monetary damages from the IP infringement if you sued the developers who published the game on the apple store than continuing talks with Apple. Their legal team knows they don't have any obligation to do a full refund unless its proven at court that they're liable for it. A permanent ban is doable but on the long run, the perpetrators can just make new accounts. So that just looks like a cost ineffective request to Apple since if they set a precedent they'll have to use resources to ban developer accounts that uploads copies or copy cats of your game and then other devs can use this case to make those request as well.
Full support to you guys in practicing your rights but you've got to be efficient and smarter about this.
Thanks for your support!
We consulted a couple of lawyers already, and here what we have:
We can go to court and we would win. The problem is that we will never find a person, who is responsible for that, because Apple don't check developers documents, and it's very easy to register Apple account with fake ID (I checked it myself yesterday when I submitted their form, they don't ask any documents at all, also my old friend who is working at Apple now and helping me with that case told me the same).
So, we will spent big amount of money for the lawyer, sue and so on. We will win. But no one will pay us compensation and no one will cover our legal service spendings. And as a result, thief will run with 60k$, and we will lose 5-10k+$ more for legal service in the UK (which is very expensive). If you have another opinion on that, I would like to hear it.
If you really want to go after them no matter the cost, you can ask for a habeas data through the court to track down the IP address of the perpetrators, the habeas data would be able to compel Apple and providing the IP address of the devs at the time they registered and uploaded the game, if the ISP is within the UK another Habeas Data would work but not even that is a guarantee that you'll get what you want. At the end of the day, you'll just have to accept the loss and end it at Apple removing the copied games or pursue this to the bitter end. If the perpetrators are outside the UK the expenses would rack up and won't be worth the presumed 60k$ at the same time the damages you'd receive may not even add up much unless you can make the perpetrators pay for your litigation fees.
I guess you are right, we can't count those 60k$ as a money stolen from us, its more like "lost profits", and 30% of those money is Apple fee. I keep trying to force apple at least shutdown thiefs account, and I already accepted that someone just earned profit from our work without permission or any right to do so.
I'm sorry that your options aren't favorable. Your game is really fun too. I wish you a successful steam release to wash this bitterness away.