Some disheartening news has emerged – Desktop Dungeons has been cloned as an iPhone app. Desktop Dungeons is the brainchild of South African indie developer Rodain Joubert and is currently under development at QCF Design.
The developers are in no way involved in this clone and are not receiving any money from its sale. QCF Design is still in the process of developing their full retail release of Desktop Dungeons.
Danny Day of QCF Design has blogged about his dismay in a post titled ‘Getting cloned and not looking like a douchebag.’
“Yes, Desktop Dungeons is being cloned on the iPhone. No, I won’t link to the clone. Yes, the cloner has contacted us. Yes, we’ve contacted lawyers. No, I won’t be writing about how the negotiation/legal thing is going… Yet,” writes Day.
“So what do you? Do you pull out the Zen attitude, say “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”, wax lyrical about the benefits of secondary marketing through positive comparison to an inferior competitor and steadfastly ignore it? Do you lawyer up, file patents, nail down your copyright claims and come out guns blazing? Do you rely on the indie community and pull a name-and-shame campaign in order to get at least some form of resolution?” he continued.
Day leaves us with an overview of the dilemma this has caused for their company, quoted below:
“What I do hope is that QCF survives this and we can advise future South African indies should similar things happen to them… In terms of dealing with right now, we have a couple of options:
1. The Unity build is playable, but we’re nowhere near done with graphics and sound. We could theoretically put new features on hold and slam out an iPhone version that matches the Desktop Dungeons freeware. We’d probably charge $1 – $2 on that, at least compete with the clone and help not go bankrupt.
2. Stick it out, see what happens with the clone and keep working on features for the full while we get the new content in. We’re at least a few months from release of Desktop Dungeons: The Full Version so we’d probably be seriously risking running out of money towards the end.
We’re really not sure which path to take. To be honest, we’re starting to care more about work that would benefit both paths – if something would only benefit the full, it’s hard to get motivated to do it right now. We need some advice from our players: What do you all want, an iPhone version NOW with a delayed full version or no iPhone release right now and a bigger, prettier full game sooner?”
Of course, games are cloned all the time, and QCF Design indicated that they were under no illusions that this would not happen to them – although it doesn’t mitigate the sting for the small local independent game developer.
For now, the clarion call for those who wish to support the local indie development scene, and the hard working indie scene in general, should be to steer away from the iPhone clone of Desktop Dungeons and await the full release of the original title from QCF Design.
Desktop Dungeons has been entered into the 13th Annual Indie Games Festival competition, so keep your eyes peeled to see how this local favourite performs up against its international counterparts.
Discuss the cloning of Desktop Dungeons on the MyGaming forum.
Loading ...
