Régi RPCJS követő MegaBrutal (aki emlékeim szerint még valami játékot is akart csinálni a sorozatról) egy nagyon érdekes e-mailt írt nekem, a HEAT körüli mocsoksággal kapcsolatban. Mikor a HEAT: Episode 1-ről csináltam anno a videót, fogalmam sem volt arról, hogy a játék elvileg ingyenes, open source termékről van szó. Hála nektek ezek szép sorjában kiderültek, ahogyan az is, hogy a HEAT csak a jéghegy csúcsa. Sok más ilyen játék is ki lett dobva a piacra.

Dear Wouter,

I'm not sure if you know about it, but your game, Cube is available in stores with the name "Heat". I know the license allows anyone to release any game based on the Cube engine, but if I get it correctly, it forbids the reproduction of the game media. But Heat does contain your game's media, including even your maps (as far as I know). It really seems that their box release is just your plain Cube, renamed to Heat.

Did you really give license to this publisher to sell your game? Did you know about this release at all? Is it legal?

Here is the publisher's product page of Heat:
http://dmhu.eu/product/show/id/549

To see Heat in action, here is a review of it, made by a Hungarian critic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-0-vs98E5g

Best regards,
MegaBrutal

Thanks for letting us know.
This is indeed not legal, we didn't give anyone permission to publish the game media.
I am not sure what we can do, as we don't have the resources to go sue someone in hungary.
They are selling it for only 1 euro it appears.
Any idea where we can email the publishers?

Wouter

Dear Wouter,

Here is the text from the publisher's contact page (translated):

DIGITALMEDIA HUNGARY KFT.
Office & shop:
Budapest, Gönczy Pál utca 1.
Hungary, HU-1093
Open: Monday-Friday; 8:00-16:00 CET
Postal address:
Budapest, Pf.: 871.
Hungary, HU-1463
Telefon, fax, email
Tel.: +36 (1) 476-88-80
Fax.: +36 (1) 476-88-81
Email: info@dmhu.eu

Even though the publisher's page lists the game for ~1 Euro, it is actually sold for ~7-10 Euros in stores. This is one of the reasons why it upset many people - they expect far better quality for this price. On the top of that, the box of the game actually lies about the game's quality, so it sets players to have high expectations.

Though I've known that this game is open-source for years, I assumed the license also covers the game media, and so the release is legal, also I thought you must know about it already. I'm really sorry that it happened that you haven't been informed by anyone for years. "Heat" has been released in 2006, as far as I know. I wish I've looked into it earlier. Thanks to the "Rossz PC játékok sorozat" (from which the review I linked) that "Heat" has became known, and so it increased the likeliness that someone would finally notice the violation.

As for legal actions, I suggest you to ask the opinion of the Free Software Foundation, maybe they even have the power to enforce the license - though I'm afraid they only care about GNU GPL licenses, but maybe they could give you useful advice regardless.

I wish you good luck! Also I'm really curious of the outcome of this, I'd be thankful if you'd inform me, but I know it's none of my business after all. Either way, please tell me if I could help somehow (supplying information, translating from and to Hungarian and such).

Best regards,
MegaBrutal

Thanks for the information. I have sent them an email. Let's see.

Wouter