Hey, I just wanted to thank you for your overwhelming support here for my last post: I’m a dev who has been working on my game for 2 years and my game title got stolen on Steam and they plan to release before I do. What should I do?
Quick summary of the situation: I’ve been working on my game called The Milgram Experiment for a while now and last week I found out a game with the exact same title was recently added to Steam. I wasn’t sure what to do and never considered such a scenario because I always thought that Valve would just prevent you from using a name of a game that already exists. I got a lot of comments with people recommending me to contact Steam, to trademark the name worldwide or to even to try and contact the other dev.
Resolution: The other game has now officially changed its name to The Obedience Experiment.
How: The other dev actually saw my posts across social media and reached out to me and explained that it was a coincidence and he is very open to changing the name (since my game had the title for 2 years). Our talk was genuine and I felt there was no malice on his part. So it’s all good now!
Feel free to wishlist both games if you like what you see:
The Milgram Experiment on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2719670/The_Milgram_Experiment
The Obedience Experiment on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4777470/The_Obedience_Experiment/
Thanks for helping out a little indie dev and please tell me what do you think of both games? Which title is more catchy? Any feedback is more than welcome :)
What a positive spin!
Im so used to hearing stories about some slop company stealing game ideas and being the first to market, especially after flappy bird and 2048.
To hear it was a coincidence makes me happy and that you two came to a middle ground. That’s awesome and hoping the best of success for the two of you!
You need to have a bundle with both games in there called “The Milgram Obedience”
I’ll take a free bundle key for this contribution if it comes to fruition, thanks
You got it hah
You didn’t come up with the name and you’re mad someone else also didn’t come up with the same name?
So… three quick points as my coffee is waiting…
First one is congratulations and well done for an adult resolution to a problem. I don’t wanna get political, but I’ll just say we could use to see a lot more of this in our daily lives. In many areas. Especially important ones.
Secondly, the game looks cool as hell. I’m not sure if it’s my genre or not, but I might check it out anyway it’s compelling and it really draws you in from a curiosity perspective.
Thirdly, and I’m sure it’s just an oversight, but the description still lists your game name on his page.
Really thank you for your kind words! Yeah, always my first reaction is to assume the other person has good intentions. This dev was very young and probably this is his first game, so we talked it out and it’s all good! I will ask him to fix his description, he is a uni student and they are always distracted and underslept hah
Thirdly, and I’m sure it’s just an oversight, but the description still lists your game name on his page.
Free advertising!
I feel like this was a coordinated marketing stunt. This developer is known to collect popular memes and release them in a bundle as a new post in imgur. After the posts get popular on the site, weblinks to his button game were added in for advertisement. Based on this history, I don’t trust this story about the new game.
Edit: If you don’t believe me, do a websearch with
site:imgur.com https://store.steampowered.com/app/2336120/Do_Not_Press_The_Button_Or_Youll_Delete_The_Multiverse/This conspiracy theory appeals to my complete lack of trust for the world.
Making a whole other game to promote mine seems way to complicated instead of actually marketing it. I have the DM’s from the other dev I can show them to you if you want.
Doesn’t mean you didn’t organize this with a developer, which is free marketing for him too. At this point, there is nothing that you could do or provide to convince me. I’m sorry if I’m wrong, but after the previous games marketing style as described, I do not trust you.
Wonderful to see such a good resolution for this.
Yeah, I’m glad the other dev was understading!
Congrats to both of you. It’s nice of him to have changed the name of his game.
Yes, a really nice gesture!
Funnily enough, Steam doesn’t have a rule about exact same names, here is their response:
"Hey there,
Valve respects the intellectual property rights of others, and we ask that everyone using our internet sites and services do the same. Anyone who believes that their work has been reproduced in one of our internet sites or services in a way that constitutes copyright infringement may notify Valve’s copyright agent using the form below.
That said, you may want to talk to the other developer directly to work out a solution. We don’t have any rules against games sharing the same name, so there wouldn’t be any problems for us if you and the other developer decided to name your product similarly."
That sounds reasonable to me. Just think what would happen otherwise, if anyone could just spam out slop to take potential names hostages.
But good for you that you got it resolved! 🙂
Quick question, dev, and congrats on getting closer to launch.
But given that you are selecting the name “The Milgram Experiment” for your game, I wonder if you have reached to the family of Stanley Milgram or the Yale’s University in order to use this name in your game.
I am unaware of how the copyright laws work here.
I have reached to Yale - no response. Milgram’s family lawyer reached with me and was okay with it as long as I don’t use footage from the actual documentary.
Faith in humanity +1
Congrats on the resolution. You should let the other developer know he needs to update his description text as it still has the old title.
Oh yeah, I will and thank you!
Well done both!
Glad to hear this worked out!
Thank you! :)
Happy to hear you worked it out. Good luck with your game!
Thank you so much :)
I am pleasantly surprised. Thst rarely happens nowadays. Thank you.
Hey… I’m just as surprised hah
