Tuesday 25 October 2011

What happens next

So far, all my other leads I have been pursuing for more information have not replied. This includes Evony itself, along with the judges involved in the legal preceedings, as well as a few others. This is why I havent made a new post in almost a week.

Today I got another mail from GM-Leah, saying "In my opinion, Call of Roma wont shut down". Leah has posted this same message on several threads in the CoR forums about this issue, so this seems to be the standard developer response.

As such, it has become increasingly clear that the developers are going to completely ignore the court order. If the developers were going to listen to the court, then the game would have been taken down several weeks ago. As it is still up and running, it looks like it will continue to be avaliable for many more weeks, if not then months to come. While this is too late for the portals that have had to close the game down, as they have some respect for the law, the CallOfRoma.com servers will most likely be avaliable for the forseeable future.

So 'panic over', as it were. I will update this if new information comes to the surface, but if nothing new occurs then this will probably just stay as it is indefinately.

Thanks to everyone who has responded to this blog, and feel free to contact me either here, ingame or through the forum if you have any questions at all.

Wednesday 19 October 2011

The Court Decision

This morning I received a copy of the final decision letter made by the court handling the case (The United States District Court for the Northern California District, Oakland Division). Here are the important bits:

"Counterclaimant Evony, LLC, is a developer and operator of video game software, including an internet browser-based multiplayer real-time simulation strategy game known as Evony®, available at www.evony.com (“Evony Game”). Evony LLC is the owner of all exclusive and substantial rights and privileges in U.S. Copyright Registration No. X0007175070, which comprises the computer code of the Evony Game. 

Counterdefendant Heroic Era (“Heroic”), a foreign corporation with its principal place of business in China, launched an internet browser-based multiplayer real-time city-building simulation strategy game named Caesary (“Caesary Game”) through the online gaming network known as Kongregate, located at www.kongregate.com/games/caesary/caesary. Evony LLC alleges that the Caesary Game has the same look and feel and uses the same code as the Evony Game.


On June 3, 2010, Heroic filed the instant action in this Court against Evony, LLC, and Regan Mercantile, LLC’s (collectively “Evony”) seeking a declaratory judgment that its Caesary Game does not infringe Evony’s copyrights. In turn, Evony filed counterclaims against Heroic for copyright infringement, and misappropriation of copyright. The Court subsequently struck Heroic’s Complaint and dismissed the action against Evony with prejudice. The dismissal of the Complaint was pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(b)(2)(A) and was based on Heroic’s discovery abuse. As a result, only Evony’s counterclaims remain pending in this action.


Evony subsequently filed a motion for default judgment on its counterclaims. In its motion, Evony seeks $226,839.75 in actual damages and $1,500,000.00 in statutory damages, plus $311,252.71 in attorneys’ fees and $36,417.16 in costs. In addition, Evony seeks an injunction preventing Heroic from using, selling or distributing the source code for the Caesary Game. The Court referred the motion to Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman (“the Magistrate”) for preparation of a report and recommendation, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B). Herioc failed to oppose either motion or appear at the motion hearing.


On May 5, 2011, the Magistrate issued a written decision analyzing the various requests submitted by Evony. The Magistrate concluded that Evony had substantiated its request for $226,839.75 in actual damages, but found that Evony was entitled to recover only $150,000 in statutory damages based on a single act of willful infringement. Concluding that Evony was not entitled to recover both actual and statutory damages, the Magistrate recommended awarding $226,839.75 in actual damages, as the greater of the two amounts. With regard to attorneys’ fees and costs, the Magistrate recommended awarding the amounts sought by Evony. Finally, the Magistrate recommended granting the requested injunctive relief to enjoin Heroic’s use of its Evony’s source code and otherwise infringing on its copyrights. Heroic has not objected to the Magistrate’s report and recommendation."

So that clears up the whole issue about who was suing who. Heroic Era never actually 'sued' Evony, but instead sought premptive clarification that their game did not breach copyright law - probably in response to off the record threats by Evony. This was rejected, and for whatever reason Heroic Era never turned up to the trial, presumably because they thought they had no chance at all. The $1.8 million was what Evony wanted but was not granted. The final court order is this (and I did not miss out article 5, there was no article 5 in the legal docket):


"IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT:

1. The Magistrate’s report and recommendation is ACCEPTED and shall become the Order of this Court. Evony’s motion for default judgment is, therefore, GRANTED.


2. A judgment shall be entered in favor of Evony on its counterclaims against Heroic Era in the amount of $608,213.37, consisting of:
a. $226,839.75 in actual damages;
b. $311,252.71 in attorneys’ fees; and
c. $70,120.91 in costs.


3. Heroic Era and its officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, representatives, distributors, dealers, members, affiliates, successors and all persons active in concert or participation with him who receive actual notice of this order by personal service or otherwise, including but not limited to Feng Investment, Ltd., are RESTRAINED and ENJOINED, each and every one of them, from:


a. Selling, distributing, advertising, or displaying, directly or indirectly, the Caesary Game or the Caesary Game source code, any copy of the Caesary Game or Caesary Game source code, or any derivative works of the Caesary Game or Caesary Game source code;

b. Selling, distributing, advertising, or displaying, directly or indirectly, the Evony Game or the Evony Game source code, any copy of the Evony Game or Evony Game source code, or any derivative works of the Evony Game or Evony Game source code;


c. Selling, distributing, advertising, or displaying, directly or indirectly any product that contains, implements, or emulates the look and feel of the Evony Game or Evony Game source code.


4. Heroic Era and its officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, representatives, distributors, dealers, members, affiliates, and all persons active in concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this order by personal service or otherwise, including but not limited to Feng Investment, Ltd., are further ordered to shut down or disable access to the Caesary Game, including but not limited to www.caesary.net, http://caesary.aeriagames.com, http://caesary.lekool.com, and any related websites, forums, chat rooms, servers or other online media.



6. Heroic Era and its officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, representatives, distributors, dealers, members, affiliates, and all persons active in concert or participation with them who receive actual notice of this order by personal service or otherwise, including but not limited to Feng Investment, Ltd., are further ordered, pursuant to 17 U.S.C. § 503(b), to deliver up to Evony for destruction the following items, which are within their possession, custody or control, or that can be obtained by them through reasonable efforts, within seven (7) days of this Order:

a. All copies of the Evony Game, including any software or source code for the Evony Game; and



b. All copies of the Caesary Game, including any software or source code for the Caesary Game.

7. Heroic Era must, within seven (7) days of this Order, notify its officers, employees, agents, subsidiaries, representatives, distributors, dealers, members, affiliates, and all persons active in concert or participation with it in the copying, sale, advertising, distribution, publication and display of the Caesary Game of this Order and its directives.


8. Heroic Era must, within seven (7) days of this Order, produce to Evony documents showing an accounting of all revenues generated from the copying, sale, advertising, distribution, publication and display of the Caesary Game.


9. Heroic Era must, within seven (7) days of this Order, file with this Court a notice of compliance with this Order, signed by a representative of Heroic Era and its counsel. The Court will enter judgment consistent with this Order.


10. Within five (5) days of the date this Order is filed, Evony shall submit a Proposed Judgment which is consistent with this Order.


11. Pursuant to Civil Local Rule 72-1, Evony’s motion for sanctions is REFERRED to Magistrate Judge Bernard Zimmerman for the preparation of a report and recommendation. The October 4, 2011, hearing date on said motion is VACATED. If no objection has been filed in response to the report and recommendation within the applicable deadline, Evony shall notify the Court in writing that the report and recommendation has been issued and that no objections have been received. In addition, Evony shall accompany such notice with a proposed order accepting the report and recommendation.


IT IS SO ORDERED.
Dated: September 7, 2011"


So Evony are only going to get $600,000 - the devs dont have $600,000 to give them, from what Ive heard about the game income from portal admins. While this court decision was made on 7th September, it does not 'technically' come into effect until after the hearing, which was two weeks ago. As Heroic Era did not turn up to the trial, and Evony have felt safe to show this court order to the portals, it is safe to presume that Heroic Era did not turn up to the hearing, and so the game should no longer exist. The renaming attempt has failed dramatically, as that "emulates the look and feel of the Evony Game or Evony Game source code." But as the devs seem to be sticking their heads in the sand over this, my guess is that they will ignore this court order completely, and keep the game going as well as keeping whatever spare cash they may have had to pay off Evony.

If you want a copy of the pdf, mail me ingame or in the forum, or leave a comment with your email address - but most of the text is in this post, so there isnt any great need for it.

Tuesday 18 October 2011

CallOfRoma.com servers have breathing space, it seems

I have been speaking to various people at some of the portals that are being closed, and I have been able to find out a few more details about what is going on:

As was already known, the other portals such as Lekool and R2Games have taken down the game rather than incur the cost of a legal dispute, as Evony have threatened to sue the portals if they did not comply. It also seems that Evony want $1.8 million from Heroic Era (the parent company of .net), and that the game almost certainly has not even grossed anywhere near that much, let alone made enough unspent profit to be able to pay Evony off. It is not clear whether this is the demands made by the court or by Evony, I hope to have clarification on this soon.

As the devs clearly have no intention of forking over this large sum of money, I think it is safe to assume that the CallOfRoma.com servers are safe for now. Evony's options now are limited, and it will be weeks, if not months, of legal disputes before the servers can be forcibly shut down. It may not even be possible for Evony to shut down the servers. I am not an expert in international copyright law, but as far as I am aware there is no global copyright law that could be enforced upon China based Heroic Era. I am awaiting replies that will clarify this though.

From what I know though, I suspect that the .net servers still have lots of life left in them.

The Devs Response

I made a thread about all of this on the .net forums, but it was quickly deleted. I then got a mail from CaesaryLeah (my second in eight months of being a moderator there), saying "Hi, can you tell me where did you find that message?" I gave her links to the lekool and R2Games posts, and her reply was "What you are discussing is other companies' behaviour. It's nothing to do with us. In addition,about Call Of Roma's future update plans, you can check by official website."

This was posted in a few other threads that mentioned the shutdowns in the forum, so this seems to be the standard developer response. As far as I see it, this could mean one of two things:

1) The developers are trying to wring more money out of us before they get closed for good. This would explain the recent set of advertising for the promo packs.

2) The developers are confident that the court injunction does not affect them, either due to jurisdiction issues, or because they are just ignoring the legal action entirely.

The recent renaming of Caesary to Call Of Roma may suggest that the second option is true, and that the developers are trying to rebrand Caesary in an attempt to satisfy the legal action. However, as said by the R2Games administrator, "we understand that a simple name and logo change will not make the court order to remove the game go away." And he is right, a new name does not create intellectual property, so this is a temporary measure at best in my opinion.

It looks like players on the .net servers have a temporary stay of execution then.

Closed Portals

So far, Lekool, R2Games and MochiGames have both closed their Caesary servers down for good.

"I am sorry that we have to remove caesary.lekool.com due to some unfortunate legal reasons beyond our control.
We understand you have invested a lot of time and even money into this game, we are trying our best to work with developer to come up with an alternative solution for you."

- Lekool


"We regret to inform each of you that we are forced to remove and shut down our remaining Caesary server due to legal reasons. We anticipate all Caesary operations to shut down within the next 72 hours. Our Caesary payment system will be shut down by the end of the day."

- R2Games 

"At the moment, all we know is that Caesary is down due to some Unfortunate Legal Issues, meaning that Caesary may not be a game any longer, but there really hasn't been any news as far as the developers go, we are still sitting in the dark and waiting for some answers, but tomorrow is another day, and may be a better one for our dear Caesary crew."

- MochiGames

As far as I am aware, YooGames and CallOfRoma.com (aka caesary.net) are the only portals still up and running. I dont expect YooGames to last much longer, and it can only be a matter of time before the .net servers are closed for good too. As soon as I hear of more portals that are closed, I will let you all know ASAP.

The Legal Dispute

Hi all,

As you are all aware, Evony have finally won the legal battle with Heroic Era over Caesary.

"Evony won a lawsuit against the developer of Caesary, Heroic Era. As a publisher, we have been forced to remove the game from our website. We will not be relaunching the game under a new name, as we understand that a simple name and logo change will not make the court order to remove the game go away.


From our standpoint, we are very sad to remove this game. R2Games did not develop Caesary, and is not the subject of Evony's lawsuit. We are simply affected by its outcome."

- From R2Games

"For everyone here, I would like to say thank you all so much for your awesome support and love for the game! It is with great sadness and regret to announce that we are now forced to shut down Caesary/Call of Roma. We are not the developer for this game, we are only one of the publishers. We signed this game about 1 year ago with developer's claim that they have the rights. But with the recent updates on the legal case, the developer lost the case due to not able to obtain visa in time to defend themselves.  Today, we have been demanded by Evony to shut the game, otherwise, they may go after us."

- From Lekool

So far, it seems that Heroic Era are just going to let the issue go away, as there have been no announcements made about this at all. The fact that they did not even turn up to the court means that they either are accepting the decision, and are merely trying to wring more money out of us players before the inevitable end, or they are confident that the US court decision will not affect them in China. There are issues with jurisdiction of each court, and it may well be that they have a court order or injunction of some kind from a China-based court which overules the decision for the China-based company. We have no way of knowing.

What we do know is that there is a good chance of the game in its entirety being closed down for good.