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 :)

  • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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."

    • Cavemanfreak@programming.devEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      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! 🙂

  • subOrange@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.

    • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      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.

  • frank@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Aw man, stoked to hear it! What a lovely resolution. Looking forward to your game coming out, been seeing it for a little while now and it looks right up my alley

    • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Thank you! And sorry it’s taking me so long to polish it but I want to avoid bugs and have been playtesting with Steam’s playtest tool to get as much feedback as I can!

  • Whitebrow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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

  • VitoRobles@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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!

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    You didn’t come up with the name and you’re mad someone else also didn’t come up with the same name?

    • Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      No, I’m not okay that they didn’t check Steam first to see if there is a game with the same name, as having same titled projects doesn’t benefit any of us.

  • Erusset@slrpnk.netEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    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.