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Piracy inside of Itch.io itself! How to handle?

A topic by Myarin created Aug 19, 2023 Views: 1,642 Replies: 12

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WARNING! This post talks about +18 content

Hi, I'm a moderator of a subreddit +18 games community and our biggest problem right now is in fact piracy. Google is being a jerk and when you search for the name of a game it shows 5 piracy sites before showing the actual shop to get the game.

This causes a huge impact to developers, also anoys players that fully pay for their games as mentioned on this post https://itch.io/t/1326030/reporting-piracy.

So as measure, most subreddit communities started to only accept links from legit sites. But recently on Itch.io, a lot of pirated games are starting to pop up.

For example those two users:

They grab an engine to port games to mobile, port a pirated copy of the game and claim to be the author of the pirated games. Even asking for money and it's not even their games!

I already reported the first user a month ago but I see that he just keep posting pirated games and no one stops him. How Itch.io handles those situations? What's the correct way to handle piracy here?

Cuz right now, if I go to https://itch.io/games/newest/tag-adult I don't even started scrolling and PUM! Pirated game! https://centtesjahrhabest.itch.io/deport-this-dick

Original source: https://www.dlsite.com/pro-touch/work/=/product_id/VJ013564.html

And I don't like the idea of this place becoming a piracy site, this is a great community and I like the vibes between Devs on every Game Jam.

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leafoPinned ReplyAdmin1 year ago (1 edit) (+3)

Piracy is not allowed on itch.io and will result in permanent suspension. We take these cases serious and actively monitor content and reports to the best of our ability.

Please continue to report games, and please provide evidence in your reports if you have it. Minimal reports along the lines of “This game is stolen, take it down” are generally not enough for us to go from unless there are other signals in our system. Sometimes a report may not be able to be processed immediately if we are in touch with the uploading account to collect more information.

Unfortunately people create reports of various levels of quality and honesty, so a single report on a page is not enough to get a game taken down unless the evidence is clear.

The best way to ensure a report is processed immediately for a piece of content you believe to be stolen is to involve the original creator.

Thanks

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Myarin1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks, in that case I will try to bring all the evidence that I can on future reports!

It's true that on the mentioned reports I only provided link to original source and to their twitter where he admits pirating those games.

So to reduce moderation time, on future reports I'll provide more direct links (for example, link to the tweets where he mentions that games are pirated) and clear evidence (like the fact that says to be the author, but those games are made from unrelated different authors).

In case that helps with the moderation process of those reports 👍🏼

Also, thanks for taking care of this community, you guys are awesome!

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redonihunter1 year ago(+1)

Suggestion: Have a hint to provide links to original source.

If missing links are, what is keeping the games up, why should the person reporting think of that. Currently if you click the nearest option as to what piracy could be, there only comes a notice to copyright holder how to file a dmcs takedown.

Or if they assume it is malware and click spam button, as there is no scam button, there is not hint at all, what to provide. Or in other words, if I see a stolen game description, how could I know the difference between a bootleg or a malware vehicle. I remember that guy that uploaded a scam every friggin weekend with stolen description. I hope he stopped; at least I have not seen his attempts in months.

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No Time To PlayModerator1 year ago

Please report any pirated game you find, using the little link in the footer of each page. Thank you.

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Myarin1 year ago

That's what I did with the first user a month ago.

2023-07-24 19:17:12 | Confirmation ID: R-67647

Original message:

This game is pirated, this is the original author of the game:
https://www.dlsite.com/maniax/work/=/product_id/RJ01041897.html

He didn't even mentioned the original author of the game on his post, actually claims that he's the dev of the game.
Not only that, I checked his profile and he posted several pirated games.

But I see that no action was taken and the user just keep posting pirated games with no problem. On the second report I also linked to his twitter since on his twitter that user mentions that he's pirating those games with no filter.

So I wanted to ask if I'm doing something wrong or those cases should be treated on a different way than the report link on the bottom 😥

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No Time To PlayModerator1 year ago(+1)

For widespread piracy that's not limited to one project, you can also contact support the usual way.

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Myarin1 year ago

Cool, thanks! ^-^

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redonihunter1 year ago(+2)

It takes a while and you might be mislead to thinking nothing was done, depending on how you monitor the reported games. You will never get an answer to your reports. And they might stay quite a while in your watchlist if you put them into a collection.

But itch does not enough in regard to piracy.

All tickets below reported over a month ago. All still downloadable. All provided with source of original paid work. Oh, they are quarantined, but you can still download them - which is what I meant with not enough. If the game can still be downloaded, you can still advertise them on message boards, discord and so on. And judging from the file sizes of the downloads, some might even be tampered and contain malware.

This thread adresses this very problem with the direct links advertising. Thanks for pointing that out. Maybe itch does not think about that possibility, because they only quarantine some of the games. And you only notice that, when you click the download button.

R-59558 . A paid game from DL-Site

R-59580, also DL-Site.

R-59602, the account has 3 pirated games on their profile. For one the original is on itch, no less.

R-59560, on steam.

Tbf, most games I reported are gone. And I think I reported one game that might or might not have been put here by the author, so not being too hasty is prudent. There are lots of creators putting a free version on itch, after all. But I doubt one can find creators selling on dl-site doing that very often.

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redonihunter1 year ago

Seems someone had a closer look at the tickets ;-)

That is, closer than the person originally reviewing them. All gone now.

Maybe I reported them wrong? Unauthorizded uploads did not came to mind first, so I always assumed that it was a vehicel for malware. There is just so much really free stuff on itch and so many other sites that do host inofficial stuff, why bother putting it on itch in the first place , as it will be removed.

Only one in my collection of 30 reported titles now is R-59565, I did not provide a link to the original work in the ticket. But it was the same uploader as one of the others, but with a different account.

And of course my newest addition from today, R-69710. A certain style is common among many of those uploads, almost like a fingerprint. Let's hope they keep at it, as it makes it easier to spot.

But the newest addition is already two weeks up and has 7 ratings, good ones even. Seems like not everyone notices something fishy going on. And why should they. So many free or pay what you want games here.

But seriously, why bother with uploading on itch? In the way it is done. There are better ways that I do not want to discuss, but the way it is done as described in this thread, I cannot wrap my head around it, why they try to do it on itch. That is why I always assume, that it actually is malware, that fell through the detection. Not all malware can be detected, especially spyware.

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redonihunter1 year ago(+1)

Itch is a legit site, but content on itch is not curated. For direct links, this is a huge problem. They keep their own browse and search "clean", as games can dissappear for various reasons that have nothing to do with malware, piracy or legality. For that matter, even the creator can publish in a way that it can not be searched.

It is necessary that people report games. Scammers even misuse this fact by putting the game page behind some password, so the button is not available. That is usually done for the try my game on discord scam.

So, sadly, the fact alone that something is linked to an itch account counts for nothing. For that matter, many legit devs have their itch site up, but the actual download is on third party file hosters. Is is an indie heavy site, and that reads: amateurs ;-)

---

Oh, and after looking at your examples ... you might actually talk about some different kind of infringement. The tickets I mentioned dealt with a more straight forward type, like your third example.

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DerketoGames1 year ago

I reported a similar question and the Guys from support delisted my games with the generic message "The nature of your content does not align with our quality guidelines and is no longer eligible for indexing in our discovery system" "instead of doing anything to address the issues, I belive that the curators don't mind or they are doble-agents from these sites (F95zone is an example).

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redonihunter1 year ago

Google is being a jerk and when you search for the name of a game

Yes!

My newest report, R-69710 (not wanting to discuss links to the stuff), when I search game and the exact title, the FIRST result is the one on itch. (That was not google, btw, google did a tiny bit better on this one. But google did not show up the original work on dl-site, while my search site did - on page 2 ;-). The title has very generic words...

The game is up for 13 days on itch, has 7 ratings and is obviously (to the experienced eye) fishy. But obviously no one reported it to even warrant quarantine.

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