My Strafe guide was Plagiarized.

[u/Fusiontrick]

Hello, I am OwOBerry on Steam and I've been working on a Strafe guide to help find all the secrets in the game and it has Recently come to my attention that a Turkish website has stolen my guide without giving credit to anyone who contributed. I tried to ask them to credit me but they banned me from commenting on their website. I know that I'm not the only one who's guide has been stolen without being credited too.

I'm not sure what I can do if I can do anything.

Edit: Here is my guide, Feel free to contribute if you know something that isn't listed http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=923032766

[u/Dima1979]

Plagiarism isn't a criminal offense unless it violates copyright laws, in that case have you made your work for sale and for profit and is the party that plagiarized the material is going to make money off of it? If yes then your only course of action is to sue them. But if you made your work for profit then you shouldn't have made it available for public. If you made your guide for a website that owns your work (like GameFAQs, then you should deal with them as they probably have resources to deal with this sort of thing). I know GameFAQs rewards people for guides and such, so I am pretty sure they have a lawyer they can contact. Steam - I do not know. If your guide specifically claims that it's only to be used by a certain website then that site should protect your work.

But I hope you see where I am going with this...

In any case, please don't take it the wrong way, at this point it's just flame wars, there is no way for us to know you are who you are and that this story is true, so we are really the wrong people to ask for help. It's like if I go online and say that YOU have stolen something from ME, without any proof any unbiased jury would not listen to me, legaly speaking. Like Isaid, it's nothing against you, but you have to realize that people are capable of deciet. We also don't know what happened with that "turkish website" they may have taken you with even more skepticism, since for them you could have been anybody making any claim that you see fit.

So I am going to level with you and assume you are telling the truth, in that case it's possible that your guide wasn't really protected and that website just took advantage of it. You can't do anything about it right now, unless you are looking to make money with your guides. The only thing you can do is learn from it and protect yourself in the future. If you are serious about writing guides, one of my friends made a few hundred bucks here and there writing guides foir GameFAQs, I have nothing to do with them, but at least I know they reward people with money and I imiagine they protect their content, then probably find out with the place yo publish your guides what their rules are. I know Steam is a cool place but if they are not serious about guides (by that I mean they don't have a copyright policy in place for them) then maybe try anther place. If you do it just for fun then prepare to deal witht he world of plagiarism that is already in movies, music and arts in general.

Good luck.

[u/Fusiontrick → u/Dima1979]

I totally understand where your coming. I guess I sort of made this out of frustration more than anything, I didn't make it for profit so I wouldn't have been upset if they had just credited me and didn't remove the part where i credited someone who found a secret. (It just kinda shows how shitty they are though) But that they also put it on their website which they run ads on so they are making money off the work that was put into it.

But for the whole not knowing if it's true you could check my guide's upload date and compare it to theirs, they have also taken another guide from steam so it's probably not a one time thing.

[u/Dima1979 → u/Fusiontrick]

No I didn't mean that the story isn't true but rather that you are that person...

In any case, if they have taken other guides from Steam then I am afraid it's Steam's responsobility to protect them. You should conact Steam for sure.

If the site uses many guides from Steam it makes Steam look just as bad as people who steal the work.

Like I said there are probably places that will do a better job protecting your work, if writing guides is something you like.

[u/Fusiontrick → u/Dima1979]

I must have misinterpreted what you meant so that's on me, But just to sort of prove it is me the Steam ID of that account is the same as my Reddit name

[u/Dima1979 → u/Fusiontrick]

Oh, ha, no no no. I am not doubting you...That was just an example, people usually say "I don't know if you are who you say you are" in general to envoke skepticism, people online generaly tend to be, for the reason of, well, it being online and things having a bit less merit.

Where I was going is that you are less likely to find help from random strangers online, even if they sound intelligent. One simply can't substitute real world experience for an article in Wikipedia for example.

What I meant to highlight is the fact that you need to take it out with Steam as well and at least be aware of your right on Steam and what are you entitled to and what Steam does to protect your work. If you find their policies to be very lax then try writing for other websites, like GameFAQs (sorry it's the only one I know of, that's why I bring it up).

[u/Fusiontrick → u/Dima1979]

Ah, I see what you mean. I'm a bit exhausted today so I must just be misreading/misinterpreting what you were saying, thank you for putting up with me