How my fellow developer stole my Steam game from me | Hacker News Reader

How my fellow developer stole my Steam game from me

medium.com

69 pointssergiotapia11 comments

"I made all the RTS buildings, tanks, some enemies, terrain textures and so on. Maxwolf never paid me anything.

Since I never got paid I asked Maxwolf to help me finish my game SickBrick."

Well, there's one of the problems (Ignoring the misdeeds of the other person and Steam's inability to resolve this scenario). If you're in a situation where this person won't fulfill an existing agreement, don't start another agreement with the person. If they won't fulfill the one, you have no idea if they'll fulfill any of the other agreements.

He's a broke <20 years old and lives in Croatia. Stripe was created to solve the payment problem because it's HUGE and doubly difficult outside north America and on a tiny budget. His first "real" game.

Sure, you're right but something like this happened to you or someone you know and you learned that lesson. He learned it , hindsight is 20/20 cut the guy some slack. It's not like the other dev was the first developer to let a deadline slip

I'm not saying he's completely fault, but if you go back for seconds and you get the same thing you got the first time, getting shafted, you were basically asking for it.

If someone dicks you over, cut them out of your life. It can be difficult, painful, and possibly the hardest thing you've ever done, but if you don't do it you'll have even more regrets later on when they take advantage of you again and again.

You're broke, you're desperate, you've only got this one contact, and you figure, hey, what's the worst that could happen? Well, now you know. Now you're still broke and even more angry than before.

That being said, if he's got a legal leg to stand on he should lawyer up and go after this guy.

My comment wasn't intended to push the blame onto them.

And that is why the first rule of business is not to trust anyone. If you do trust, verify that you have are in a position to take action if things start going south.

That's a fine "realist" perspective but it hardly absolve anyone being a crappy person, and seems a bit victim-blamey. Besides, this guy had a signed contract and it didn't help.

Hindsight is 20/20, etc but a few things don't add up:

1. You agreed to do some work for him, didn't get paid for anything yet still continue to work with him (and considered him a friend)?

2. Article says you gave the distributor 10% of sales but contract only says 5?

3. Going along with a 50/50 split off Steam sales with no written contract and you are doing a majority of the work?

4. Continuing to partner with him after he steals your assets to release in his name?

You need to see a lawyer.

will probably cost more than he has and he will get from it, plus a lot of nerves

Not necessarily. You don't need to pay a lawyer too much to send a strongly worded letter, and that can be enough to scare a low grade scammer into paying back half of his earnings.

So we need a way to sign games on steam (or any other publisher) that will act as a proof of authenticity?

I would not be surprised to see the concept of multi-signing crop up soon.

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