The game in question is Clicker Heroes (a pretty popular idle/incremental game), and the post is by the CEO of Playsaurus.
From the thread:
> It looks like we can't challenge it. After reading the comments and doing a bit more research, it appears that China's trademark/IP laws are completely different from any Western countries, and Apple just has to do what they say.
>It sucks but that's how it is. If you make a game, unless you have ridiculous resources to spend on registering properly in China in advance, you just have to accept China to be a loss. Someone there will steal it.
This situation could have occurred in many other countries - the difference is probably that the competitor is content to just sell in China, under a Chinese name, whereas products sold anywhere else would need to use the English name.
Edit: Apple taking down the game worldwide is unusual though.
A Google search seems to reveal that they were targeted by a patent troll in 2018 as well. Seems this company can’t get any slack from life.
I would strongly hesitate to blaming the victim. You can easily make the case that they had poor business ops. But this shouldn’t have happened to them.
And all the same, I have a hard time empathizing with the anti-China rhetoric. Zynga’s Pincus has been quoted by multiple sources as saying along the lines of: “copy them until you get their results.” Gaming is pretty brutal in that regard, but no one complained when Samsung or LG copied Apple’s designs. There’s a lot of selective bias and double standards here.
Although I could fault China’s tech industry for other things, it’s really hard to stand up for the US in the broader context given the hypocrisy with which we apply our ideals.
The issue is China's predatory trademark system forced them to abandon the Chinese name of the game worldwide, which affects their sales in other Chinese-speaking markets like the sovereign countries of Taiwan (ROC), Malaysia, etc.
This is the kind of stuff that makes me feel the trade conflict between the US and China is overdue. The world’s two biggest economies operating on such a different standards of IP was bound to lead to conflict eventually.
It is very overdue and close to reaching a flashpoint. The markets have been getting slammed recently over trade war rumbles. Not sure how it will all end, but China really needs to fall in line with the RoW and adopt sane standards for intellectual property. This cannot go on.
It is overdue but it's being prosecuted under a flawed understanding of almost all aspects of the situation and inane and unfocused policy. You tackle China first while building an economic coalition of interests with shared goals. A sane and competent person would focus on one task at a time and not undercut the strategic interests required to achieve that task, achieving perhaps effectively nothing.
I agree. I don't think I actually have an issue with the trade war, but I have lots wrong with how the current administration is going about it, and I don't have any faith in their ability to extract a positive outcome from China.
I read your comment once thinking it said something, but I couldn't remember what. So then I read it again, and again, then suddenly realized you didn't actually say anything at all. You could replace the single word "China" with just about anything and it would carry the same semantic weight.
> It is overdue but it's being prosecuted under a flawed understanding of almost all aspects of the situation and inane and unfocused policy.
What is the understanding, who understands it, and why is their understanding flawed? What is the policy? Why is the policy inane and unfocused? What is the correct understanding and what would be the substantive and focused policy?
> You tackle China first while building an economic coalition of interests with shared goals.
Which aspect of China should be tackled--just IP or something else? Who should be part of the coalition? Or do you mean with other nations? Which goals are shared? Why are those the goals? How are those goals different from the goals held by those who have a flawed understanding, or do they share the same goals?
> A sane and competent person would focus on one task at a time and not undercut the strategic interests required to achieve that task, achieving perhaps effectively nothing.
Who is insane and incompetent person to which you seek to draw a contrast? What is it about their position that leads to the evaluation they are mentally deranged or incompetent? What are the multiple tasks they are focused on? Which one particular task should they focus on? Why is it necessary to focus on one task? Are they the correct tasks? What are the strategic interests? Who holds those strategic interests? Are they they the correct strategic interests? Why are they undercutting those strategic interests? How do those strategy-level issues affect the implementation-level tasks? What would be achieved if their tasks and strategies were aligned?
This is my biggest complaint with Trump's tactics as well. If he didn't view EVERYTHING as a zero sum game, he and whatever coalition he could assemble would be much more credible when it comes to tariffs and threats. It's a shame that TPP wasn't passed because it would've really helped here.
>If he didn't view EVERYTHING as a zero sum game, he and whatever coalition he could assemble would be much more credible when it comes to tariffs and threats.
Thank fuck he does, quite frankly. We all dodged a bullet there.
There could've been a targeted dispute over IP. But instead what has happened is that a range of tariffs are involved which has resulted in Trump just giving $16 billion to farmers. Some of whom are now planting crops with no intention to sell but purely to get money from the US government.
To everyone who has an iPhone: not only can Apple decide what you can and can't run on your device, but any random Chinese company now also gets to decide what software you get to run on the device you dramatically overpaid for to "own".
Wait, I'm confused. Why did Apple take the game down worldwide instead of only in China? They only "violated" Chinese copyright law, but they're punished for it globally?
No inside info here, but my guess is this is a nuanced situation that broke Apple’s internal review process. This situation is thoroughly off script, requires a political and legal understanding of multiple countries trademark frameworks, with potential penalties for not complying quickly. They probably just messed up and someone internally will try to bring it back online outside of China now that this is getting wider coverage.
Per [1] my understanding is that they took down the game worldwide, but that the action will only affect Chinese-speaking markets since the English name was not trademarked in China.
Perhaps if they had trademarked the Chinese name in the US (assuming this is possible) they could fight this. Or maybe they would have to fight it in every sovereign country, e.g. Taiwan (ROC), Malaysia, etc.
But why don't they remove the Chinese localization like that person is saying and get it re-activated? Is that not possible?
This is a post from the developer which doesn't make sense if it's impossible:
> We can re-name it in China, yeah. With a ton of effort changing all of the artwork we created with the old name. But renaming "Clicker Heroes" (which we already trademarked) in the U.S. and EU would be senseless
They’ve set the precedent that a Chinese trademark has worldwide effect. This move could come back to bite Apple if a Chinese company ever does the same thing to them directly.
In the end Apple has the money to fight that, and they'll make more money falling in line with Chinese law, even if it hurts small developers...especially since they draw so much growth from that region. The US is on the back burner.
1. It is way easier to steal something and resell it convincingly, than it is to prove original ownership convincingly. This tilts the market in favor of thieves, as they need to do none of the investment and still reap maybe half or more of the total potential income.
2. Apple pulling something from a store should affect only a fraction of a normal market; instead, it affects literally everyone.
3. Gatekeepers such as Apple win regardless of who sells an app. If a developer complains and Apple has millions of alternative developers/apps, why would they even listen? The motivation is simply nonexistent.
These problems would all be nullified by abolishing the concept of a single gatekeeper store.
If you can easily steal something but there is no easy place to publish it to get stolen revenue from “nearly everyone”, the value of the theft is reduced. (Imagine if you had to find a way to propagate your stolen app to 100 stores. Would it be worth it?)
If you can convince one storefront to accept your stolen app as legitimate but you still have to convince a bunch of other stores, the value of the theft is again reduced.
If each store has a relatively smaller chunk of the total market, none of them would want to become known as that store where crappy apps make it into the list so they would be more motivated to curate a decent catalog.
What law? Aren't they primarily an American company? Does this mean that they will give up customer information to the Chinese government if required by law there?
They have a trademark in the EU and US according to the reddit thread. The problem is their app was removed internationally instead of just in China, and they are having trouble appealing it.
I use an apple mobile; is there any way* to download the Playsaurus game Clicker Heroes? I know it has, at least at times, been possible to install an app via, say, a web browser like firefox where that app would not appear in-store. I am not sure whether such a thing is possible anymore but would like to support the game and its developer/s.
You're talking about sideloading, that requires the game's IPA file and signing with Cydia Impactor (or building it yourself from source in Xcode). Unless you join Apple Dev Program for $99/yr you can only sign five apps for up to seven days each (same if you are developing your own apps).
> Unless you join Apple Dev Program for $99/yr you can only sign five apps for up to seven days each (same if you are developing your own apps).
That is, unless you use a gray market enterprise certificate, which is probably what the GP is thinking of. It has gotten significantly harder to do this in recent months, particularly after it came out that Facebook was engaging in the practice...
But is it worldwide under just the Chinese name "点击英雄" or also the English name "Clicker Heroes"? The only relevant reply I saw was not definitive on this:
> We can re-name it in China, yeah. With a ton of effort changing all of the artwork we created with the old name. But renaming "Clicker Heroes" (which we already trademarked) in the U.S. and EU would be senseless
Initially I thought it was the latter but now I think it is the former (only the Chinese name affected).
>'The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) defines a trademark as a "word, phrase, symbol, or design, or a combination thereof," used to identify and distinguish a company's goods. A service mark is essentially the same thing but pertains to services rather than goods. Your mark (either trademark or service mark) is legally protected through common law once it goes into commercial use, but sometimes it makes sense to register your mark.'
Wait, they targeted China, released in China, made money in China, but didn't register trademarks in China? I'm sorry, when in Rome.... If they were going so heavy into China, they should have researched Chinese trademark law. Why does the naive entrepreneur get to play the victim here? Yeah, China has bad optics, but this situation was avoidable. The buck should always stop with the entrepreneur, no?
edit: As I've written below: Right in the reddit post, he writes they were marketing it as 点击英雄 in 2014 on a Chinese website. It does look like they were targeting China. There is nothing on that post to indicate otherwise. If I am missing something, let me know. I'm going based off of what I read in the Reddit post.
What is likely happening here is that a peon at Apple is acting as a finite state machine in a faulty process without thinking. Marketing it as 点击英雄 would make that easy. Hopefully, Apple gets this right for the rest of the world and reverses their decision, but I mean... it's marketed as 点击英雄! In China! On a Chinese website!
They didn't target China at all. They were resigned to the fact that it would be immediately cloned in that market so they never bothered.
The details are readily available in the linked thread but the gist of it is that most of the world operates on a "first to use" basis to prove trademark ownership while China uses a "first to file" basis.
Apple is tacitly saying that the Chinese system takes precedence. Even in the US. It's absurd.
Right in the reddit post, he writes they were marketing it as 点击英雄 in 2014 on a Chinese website. It does look like they were targeting China. There is nothing on that post to indicate otherwise. It does not sound like they were resigned to the fact that it would be immediately cloned. If I am missing something, let me know. I'm going based off of what I read in the Reddit post.
From the thread:
> It looks like we can't challenge it. After reading the comments and doing a bit more research, it appears that China's trademark/IP laws are completely different from any Western countries, and Apple just has to do what they say.
>It sucks but that's how it is. If you make a game, unless you have ridiculous resources to spend on registering properly in China in advance, you just have to accept China to be a loss. Someone there will steal it.
reply