The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 6.0 is now available. This release represents a year of development effort and over 8,300 individual changes. It contains a large number of improvements that are listed in the release notes below. The areas of major changes are: - Core modules in PE format. - Vulkan backend for WineD3D. - DirectShow and Media Foundation support. - Text console redesign. This release is dedicated to the memory of Ken Thomases, who passed away just before Christmas at the age of 51. Ken was an incredibly brilliant developer, and the mastermind behind the macOS support in Wine. We all miss his skills, his patience, and his dark sense of humor. The source is available from the following locations: https://dl.winehq.org/wine/source/6.0/wine-6.0.tar.xz http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/wine/source/6.0/wine-6.0.tar.xz Binary packages for various distributions will be available from: https://www.winehq.org/download You will find documentation on https://www.winehq.org/documentation You can also get the current source directly from the git repository. Check https://www.winehq.org/git for details. Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list. ---------------------------------------------------------------- What's new in Wine 6.0 ====================== *** PE modules - The core DLLs, including NTDLL, KERNEL32, GDI32, USER32, etc. are built in PE format. This should help a number of copy protection schemes that check that the DLL files on disk match the in-memory contents. - There is a new mechanism to associate a Unix library with a PE module, to make it possible to call Unix libraries from PE for the functions that can't be handled with Win32 APIs. These libraries are found by replacing the PE module file extension with .so, for instance ntdll.dll -> ntdll.so. They have to be located next to the PE file on disk. - Winelib modules no longer link against libwine.so, or require it at run-time. This is a backwards incompatible change, meaning that modules built with Wine 6.0 won't run on older Wine versions. - The libwine library is no longer used, but it's still provided to support running Winelib modules built against older versions. It is deprecated however, and will be removed in a future Wine release. Applications that explicitly call libwine functions will need to be changed to call equivalent Win32 or Unix APIs instead. As a consequence, the wine/library.h header has also been removed. - PE modules can be built with their debug information split to a separate file, to reduce the size of the files installed into the Wine prefix. *** Direct3D - An experimental Vulkan renderer for WineD3D is implemented. This requires the vkd3d-shader library in order to translate Direct3D shaders to SPIR-V shaders. In this release, shader support in the Vulkan renderer is limited to shader model 4 and 5 shaders. In practice, that limits its usefulness to Direct3D 10 and 11 applications. The Vulkan renderer can be enabled by setting the Direct3D "renderer" registry setting to "vulkan". - The following Direct3D 11 features are implemented: - Per render-target ("independent") blend states. - Dual-source blending. - Multi-sample anti-aliasing sample masks. - Several more capability queries. - Support for Direct3D 9 alpha-to-coverage multi-sampling is implemented. - When the EXT_framebuffer_multisample_blit_scaled OpenGL extension is available, scaled multi-sample resolve operations can happen as a single operation. - When the ARB_buffer_storage OpenGL extension is available, it will be used to allocate OpenGL buffer objects. This can result in minor performance improvements with some application and driver combinations. - The Direct3D graphics card database recognizes more graphics cards, and the reported driver versions have been updated. - New or modified HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D registry keys: - "renderer" (REG_SZ) The backend API to target. This existing setting has an additional valid value in this release: "vulkan". Possible values are now "gl" (default) for OpenGL, "gdi" or "no3d" for GDI, and "vulkan" for Vulkan. - "csmt" (REG_DWORD) Enable or disable multi-threaded command stream features. This existing setting has an additional valid bit-field value in this release. Valid bit-fields in this release are: - 0x1 Enable the multi-threaded command stream feature. - 0x2 Enable serialization between multiple command streams in the same application. This feature is primarily useful for applications using multiple Direct3D instances from different threads, in combination with OpenGL drivers that do not properly support multi-threaded access themselves. As of this release, this is known to affect Microsoft Office 2013 and later versions in combination with the Mesa-based Nouveau driver. Note that this setting is a bit-field; in order to enable both features above, set this to 0x3. - Removed HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D registry key: - "DirectDrawRenderer" This setting was previously deprecated in favor of the "renderer" setting, and has been removed in this release. *** D3DX - Drawing text using the ID3DXFont interface is implemented. - The ID3D12ShaderReflection shader reflection interface is implemented. - The D3DX10GetImageInfoFromMemory() and related image information query functions are implemented. *** Graphics - Drawing arcs, ellipses and rounded rectangles using the Direct2D API is implemented. - The standard sRGB color profile is installed into the prefix, for applications that expect to load it directly. - The Null display driver can be used as a proper display driver, for cases when a user interface is not needed. - WindowsCodecs supports decoding images in DDS (DirectDraw Surface) and JPEG-XR formats, as well as encoding images to GIF format. - The Vulkan driver creates the JSON manifest and registry entry used by the official Vulkan loader. - The Vulkan driver supports up to version 1.2.162 of the Vulkan spec. - There are a number of improvements in GdiPlus, including support for widening lines, more hatch styles, and more record types in metafiles. *** Audio / video - The Media Foundation framework is more complete, including: - Initial Media Session implementation for state changes and data flow. - Initial Streaming Audio Renderer (SAR) pipeline component implementation. - Initial Video Renderer implementation, a pipeline component hosting EVR mixer and presenter. - Initial Topology Loader implementation. - Various fixes for the Source Reader. - Initial Media Engine implementation. - Asynchronous queues functionality is moved to rtworkq.dll. - The AMStream (ActiveMovie Multimedia Streaming) library is more fully implemented, including support for streaming and sample management. - The Video Mixing Renderer supports the following features: - Windowless and renderless mode. - Automatic stretching and resizing of the video to match the window size. - Hardware-accelerated color space conversion of YUV formats, if supported by the underlying Direct3D implementation. - Preservation of video aspect ratio via letterboxing. - The Video Mixing Renderer is used as the default video renderer if supported by the underlying Direct3D implementation, replacing the GDI video renderer. - The DirectShow File Writer filter is implemented. - The DirectX Media Object (DMO) Wrapper filter is implemented. DMOs can be automatically enumerated and plugged into the filter graph. - The video capture filter supports reporting more information about video formats, including supported sizes and frame rates. - More Media Detector APIs are implemented. - The GStreamer wrapper filter supports video and audio format conversion within the GStreamer pipeline. This obviates the need for extra transform filters, and accordingly the GStreamer-based YUV to ARGB converter, audio converter, and mp3 decoder have been removed. Any video can be output in any of several RGB and YUV formats, allowing for better performance in some cases. - The Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) contains an initial default mixer and presenter implementation using DXVA2 API. - The XACT3 (Cross-platform Audio Creation) engine library and interfaces are implemented through FAudio. *** Text and fonts - Text console support is reimplemented, using the architecture of recent Windows versions, which is closer to the Unix way of doing things. In particular: - Pseudo consoles are implemented (equivalent to Unix pseudo TTYs). - All console handling is done in the ConHost process. WineConsole is now only a thin wrapper around ConHost. - ConHost handles VT escape sequences, meaning that the Unix Curses library is no longer needed. - Default shaping features are enabled for all scripts in DirectWrite. All types of GSUB/GPOS lookups are supported. - In DirectWrite, CMAP data is read directly from the font without global cache or a need to create FreeType objects, for improved performance. - The font initialization in GDI32 avoids loading fonts through FreeType when possible, for faster startup times. The font registry cache is also more efficient. - The Uniscribe support in the USP10 library is moved into GDI32, as per recent Windows versions. - An initial version of the Webdings font is implemented, with only a few glyphs at this point. *** Input devices - Raw input devices and messages are implemented, and used by DirectInput instead of less efficient low-level hooks. - An initial USB kernel driver is implemented, based on the LibUSB library, to provide access to USB devices. - Mouse position history is implemented, for games that want more precise mouse positions. - SDL controller mappings can be set through the 'SDL_GAMECONTROLLERCONFIG' environment variable. - Plug & Play device notifications are implemented. *** Desktop integration - Display settings are retrieved through XRandR 1.4 if available. This also provides support for multiple display orientations. - There is a consistent view of the graphics adapters across the X11, OpenGL and Vulkan APIs. - The desktop work area layout is supported on multi-monitor setups using the _GTK_WORKAREAS property. *** Internationalization - Unicode character tables are based on version 13.0.0 of the Unicode Standard. - Unicode normalization is fully standard-compliant, including support for Hangul, supplementary character planes, and IDN normalization. - Codepage and other Unicode tables are stored in external NLS files compatible with Windows. This makes it possible to test with the native files to track down character mapping issues. - Codepage mapping tables are generated from Microsoft's Open Specification data for better compatibility. - Unicode linguistic case mappings for languages like Turkish are implemented. - Codepage 708 (Arabic ASMO) is supported. *** Kernel - Windows version compatibility mode is implemented, to only report the newest Windows versions to applications that have declared that they support them. - INI file mappings are implemented, to redirect .ini file entries to registry keys. - Many more NT kernel objects and functions are implemented, to support anti-cheat systems that load kernel drivers. - A NetIO.sys kernel driver is implemented, to support copy protection drivers that want to access the network. - AVX registers are supported in register contexts and exception handling on x86 platforms. - The Kernel User Shared Data block contains up-to-date timestamps, to avoid system calls when retrieving the current time counter. *** C Runtime - The C runtime import libraries provide the necessary runtime support so that PE modules no longer depend on the MinGW runtime. - The Wine modules are all built against the new UCRT runtime. - Winegcc uses the new UCRT runtime by default, unless an older C runtime library is explicitly imported. - The C runtime supports Windows locales that use the UTF-8 codepage. - A number of C runtime math functions are implemented internally based on code from the Musl C library, to avoid depending on the system math library. - Floating point formatting is reimplemented in the C runtime to avoid depending on the system printf function. *** Internet and networking - The Gecko engine is updated to version 2.47.2. - The WebSocket API is implemented. - JScript and VBScript report the correct location for errors in scripts. - There are various improvements to the LDAP and Active Directory Service support. - There is an initial implementation of the NDIS network driver. - The OLE data link dialog supports configuring the ODBC data connection. *** Cryptography - The BCrypt library supports additional algorithms, including DSA keys and the 3DES cipher. - The DSSENH (Digital Signatures) Cryptographic Provider is implemented, and enabled by default. *** Alternative platforms - Support for exception handling and stack unwinding on ARM platforms (both 32-bit and 64-bit) should be on par with the x86 architectures. - There is initial support for ARM64 on macOS, for the new Apple Silicon. - Support for the obsolete 32-bit PowerPC architecture is removed. It had been broken for some time already. - Case-insensitive filesystem optimizations are enabled on FreeBSD. *** Builtin applications - WineCfg supports querying and modifying the configured Windows version through the command line with a new /v option. - The Shell Folders configuration in WineCfg also supports the Downloads and Templates folders. - The removable drive autodetection has been removed in WineCfg, now that the dbus dynamic device support is stable. - The FSUTIL tool supports a 'hardlink' command to create hard links. - The FIND tool supports searching multiple files, in addition to standard input. - The WHOAMI tool is implemented to display the current username. *** Development tools - Winegcc supports generating PDB files when building PE DLLs, for compatibility with Windows debuggers. - DbgHelp supports GNU-style debug information also in PE files. - Winegcc can generate an import library directly when building a DLL, with the '-Wl,--out-implib' option. - The various build tools also look for include and library files in paths relative to the tool binary, to allow relocatable Winelib installations. - The Resource Compiler (wrc) and Message Compiler (wmc) use the external NLS files for codepage conversions. If necessary, the path to the external files can be specified with the '--nls-dir' option. - There are various improvements in the gdb proxy mode in WineDbg, including support for hardware watchpoints, and for loading symbols from PE modules. - The Message Compiler (wmc) handles the Unicode BOM to detect the input file format. - The Resource Compiler (wrc) has a '--utf8' option to specify UTF-8 input, as an alternative to putting #pragma codepage inside the file. - The IDL compiler (widl) supports a WinRT mode, and various constructs specific to that mode. - The IDL compiler (widl) supports custom attributes in type libraries. *** Build infrastructure - Makefiles are no longer recursive; a single Makefile is generated to build the entire tree, with correct dependencies between modules. - Automake-style silent build rules are supported. They are disabled by default, but can be enabled by passing the '--enable-silent-rules' option to configure. - The new LLVM-MinGW compiler is supported for PE cross-compilation. - Building with the Clang compiler in MSVC mode is supported. - A '-syscall' entry point flag is supported in spec files, to generate NT-style system call entry points. *** Miscellaneous - The Mono engine is updated to version 5.1.1, containing the open sourced parts of the WPF framework, and initial replacements for some of the closed source parts. - Most modules have been converted to use wide-character string constants like L"abc" instead of explicit arrays, for more readable code. - Many of the less common timezones (for various remote islands) are supported. - Listviews and image buttons are supported in MSI installers. - There is initial support for the Print Ticket API. *** New external dependencies - The LibUSB library is used to implement the USB driver. - The VkD3D-Shader library is used to translate Direct3D shaders to SPIR-V shaders for the WineD3D Vulkan renderer. - The Curses, GLU, and Zlib libraries are no longer used.Taken from https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-announce/2021-January/000510.html
On January 28th Robinhood disabled all transactions except for position-closing (selling) for a small set of stocks including Gamestop (GME). This was a new and exciting development in the ongoing saga of how a subreddit called Wallstreetbets (WSB) memed their way into contributing to a short squeeze and profiting from it (or at least the early adopters are likely to profit from it). Freezing stock purchases also generated significant outrage, quickly turning into a narrative of how Big Wallstreet will cheat to avoid losing money to the average Joe. This narrative is simple, appealing, and probably wrong, and the following is an attempt to explain why. submitted by ryooan to neoliberal [link] [comments] I'm not going to go over the full history here. Others have already done that with plenty of background information. If you want to read the full saga (not necessary to understand the rest of this post, but it is interesting) then check out these links: The obligatory Vox explainer. A background piece with an interesting explanation of how WSB could profit from this without many of them losing a bunch of money if they can coordinate effectively. A Wallstreetbets thread on GME if you've never visited the subreddit and want to immerse yourself in the full experience of crass GME memes and takes by people who have fully embraced the early 2000's non-PC habit of using intellectual disabilities and sexual orientation as insults. Anyway, check out those links if you want, or don't, how we got to where we are isn't all that important for explaining why Robinhood shut down certain trades on January 28th. Disclaimer: I am not an expert on any of this. There's a good chance I've made mistakes in the following explanation. I'm just a guy who wasn't satisfied by the simple narrative and stayed up 4 hours past his bedtime on Thursday night and spent most of his free time since trying to better understand this stuff and writing it up to share what I've learned. If you see anything that you know to be wrong please comment with correct information! What differentiates this post: There have already been a few other good posts (see links below) on why Robinhood shutting down transactions was not some corrupt conspiracy. But this post is a post for masochists who want to know what's going on in more detail and who want to dig into the technical background and data. If that's you, read on! Links to other good posts: https://www.reddit.com/neoliberal/comments/l7bo3the_game_stop_situation_is_not_a_conspiracy_an/ https://www.reddit.com/neoliberal/comments/l7bdcv/what_actually_happened_today_hint_there_probably/ https://www.reddit.com/neoliberal/comments/l81tif/why_did_robinhood_stop_allowing_their_customers/ https://www.reddit.com/badeconomics/comments/l7gi70/financial_econ_101_or_link_this_in_bad_reddit/ How a Stock Market Transaction WorksTo really understand why the popular narrative about Robinhood is likely to be wrong, we need to better understand how a stock market transaction works. When you buy a stock, you fork over your money and receive in return shares of a stock. The company that provides the user interface or the human that you call up to arrange this transaction is called a broker. That's what Robinhood is. You tell your broker you want to buy X shares of stock Y, you give them the money and they arrange for those shares to be purchased and documented as being owned by you.But if you're going through Robinhood, and the person that is selling you the shares goes through TD Ameritrade (another broker), Robinhood and TD Ameritrade don't actually talk to each other to complete the transaction. A number of intermediaries may be involved and this can be crazy complicated. Here is a brief explanation of some of the key players: Broker: The broker interacts with traders. Brokers show traders what the current prices are, takes orders, and handles the traders’ money. Clearing BrokeEntity/House: These entities handle the logistics of the trade. When a broker interacts with a trader they are basically a conduit for alerting the broader market that someone wants to make a trade of X stock at Y price. The clearing entity is in charge of organizing and documenting things, basically making sure that each side of the transaction transmits the appropriate funds and documenting everything as to who now owns what. Often brokers and clearing entities are combined. Robinhood was originally just a broker (they refer to that as being an "introducing broker") but has since expanded to also do clearing. Market Maker: A market maker is an entity that has an inventory of certain shares and sells and buys those shares. The purpose of a market maker is to add liquidity. Instead of trying to connect one trader who wants to buy a stock with another trader who wants to sell that stock, brokers can just go to a market maker who they know is holding a stock. The market maker might sell a stock, depleting some of its supply, and then the next instant buy more of that stock to replenish its supply. It's basically a vehicle for faster transactions, and it makes its money by skimming a bit off the bid-ask spread. In other words, it might list a stock for sale at $100, and also list that it's willing to purchase a stock for $99.95. The 5 cent spread on each stock traded goes to the market maker. The reason spreads remain small is people would rather go through the market maker that skims the least off the top. Yay competition! Exchange: This is like the NASDAQ. The NASDAQ acts as a kind of system enabling the exchange of information and making trades more efficient. This one is confusing to me, but it sounds like an exchange like the NASDAQ brings together market makers and I assume offers them some kind of service and features that makes trading easier. However, it also sounds like market makers don't necessarily have to go through an exchange and can operate without an exchange. Before we get to the last piece I'll talk about here, keep in mind that all of the above becomes horribly mangled and complicated in reality, because from what I can tell just about any of these entities above can all be under one roof, or subsidiaries of other companies, or any number of different arrangements. The stock market is complicated! This should be your first warning when people try to push simple narratives. Extremely complicated stuff often doesn't fit within a simple story where there are heroes and villains and everyone is out to get the little guy. The NSCC: NSCC stands for National Securities Clearing Corporation. It is a subsidiary of the DTCC, which stands for the Depository Trust and Clearing Organization. The DTCC is a private company. Each day billions and billions of trades happen. Instead of swapping equities back and forth and all over the place for every single transaction, the NSCC tracks all of these trades, sums them up and at the end of the day says "Company X, you owe company Y $1 billion, company Y, you owe Company X this many shares of each of these securities." The NSCC also handles these transactions, so the money being exchanged by these companies flows through the NSCC. And it does that for every company trading on the stock market. They all go through the NSCC, and the NSCC minimizes the amount of times money and equities have to change hands. There is one private company in the US that tracks and manages all of the trading information to make sure everyone gets paid, everyone gets their shares, and everything happens at the right price. I'm sure the details are complex but I assume brokers that are also clearing entities would be told by the NSCC how much they owe the market makers they exchanged with each day, and vice-versa. It kind of blew my mind that there's essentially just one main company out there that serves as the central hub of all stock transactions and makes sure the markets work. As you can imagine, resting the entire stock market on one company means that company is going to be heavily regulated to be sure that it can never fail and bring the whole market down with it. We'll get into what regulations are at play soon, but the NSCC is likely the key component in the Robinhood trading freeze. Claims of CorruptionOkay so we're going to take a brief detour into the reason people are outraged that Robinhood shut down trading. As broken out in this Twitter thread there once was a trader named Gabe Plotkin, he worked at a company called SAC Capital but they got fined for insider trading (not sure how this is relevant to the story other than to get your mind to make the association Plotkin = shady) and he left to start his own company. His new company was called Melvin Capital.Plotkin's new company did a bunch of shorting, including on Gamestop. His shorts blew up this week with all the Wallstreetbets stuff, putting his firm in bankruptcy danger. But then Melvin got a $3 billion investment from SAC founder Steve Cohen and a Citadel hedge fund manager named Ken Griffin (the tweet thread says bailed out, apparently insinuating that these guys bought a stake in Plotkin's struggling company just to personally help him out, but make of that what you will). Citadel is a market maker. Robinhood uses Citadel as one of its market makers, and Citadel pays Robinhood fees for the trades Robinhood brings them. So Citadel pays Robinhood, Citadel recently bought Melvin capital, which had (and might still have?) a large short position on GME. Therefore the theory is that Citadel stands to lose a lot of money if the short squeeze continues, and since Robinhood gets fees from Citadel there's a big conflict of interest there, the implication being that Robinhood might have restricted purchases of GME in order to drive the price down and prevent Citadel from losing a lot of money via its recent purchase of Melvin. I didn't fact check any of the above, I'm just presenting the information as I understand it for your knowledge. Make of it what you will, but that's the reason for the outrage. I assume many of the people outraged about it don't even know those details and just think that Robinhood is a big investing company so is probably just trying to save Wallstreet a bunch of money by shutting down trading and stamping out WSB's big short squeeze. Also, I want to make it clear that this post isn't saying we should completely dismiss the possibility of corruption. It should be fully investigated to make sure nothing shady is happening behind the scenes. The point of this post is that this theory seems a little half-baked, and that there’s a much better theory available. NSCC CollateralBack to the NSCC and why it's the key component of all of this. The fate of the US financial market basically rests on its shoulders. So how do we make sure it never goes under? Lots of regulation. The NSCC is required by law to collect a bunch of collateral from the companies it facilitates trades for. That way if the market were to collapse and take down a few of the big market makers or brokers, any outstanding transactions don't completely bring down the NSCC with it, they have some collateral to offset those losses. (Side note: I believe the NSCC also has a means of getting a direct government money infusion in the event of a market collapse so that it can stay afloat and keep processing trades. I don't know the details of this, just wanted to mention it so people rest easier knowing that the sole private company keeping the market afloat isn't only relying on collateral).You might wonder how much risk there really is for the NSCC. Don't these transactions happen instantaneously through the magic of computers and the internet? Sort of, but not really. While trades execute immediately, they don't actually settle for another two days. This is known as T+2 (In the days of physical stock certificates and paper money it used to take 5 days, or T+5, but computers and internet have sped up the process.). If you buy a stock, you don't officially become the owner until two days later once the NSCC settles the transaction. Many brokers show the money in your account immediately after a sale, but you may have noticed or heard about delays in making multiple trades, such as not being able to sell a stock, use the proceeds to buy another, and then sell that one. Brokers often allow you to make a trade using unsettled funds for stocks, but they don't let you stack up a bunch of transactions, they require you to wait for settlement to actually occur so that everything is official and so you do a bunch of stuff with money that isn’t really yours yet. Because these large payments between entities flow through the NSCC it creates a lot of risk for the NSCC. If there were to be a market crash or a sudden bankruptcy of a large trading firm, the NSCC would be exposed to the risk of a collapsed firm missing its payments for trades that have been executed but just not settled yet due to that two day period. I don't know the exact details of how this works, but essentially it sounds like the NSCC would be on the hook for those payments and still have to complete the transaction and pay the firm that the money was supposed to go to. That's why the government requires that companies post collateral each day with the NSCC based on factors like amount of money owed, volatility, and shifts in market price. After the financial crisis a lot of scrutiny came upon the financial system and Dodd-Frank was passed, which created more oversight and regulation for the financial industry. As part of that, the NSCC was designated as one of eight Systemically Important Financial Market Utilities (SIMFUs) and was required to work under the oversight of the Federal Reserve and the SEC to establish requirements to ensure that it couldn't collapse, such as requiring collateral. The SIMFU designation was something I had no idea existed, so I just wanted to mention that and link to the wikipedia page on it in case anyone else was interested. Calculating CollateralThe latest rules that the NSCC has created and SEC has approved (under procedure XV here) set forth certain measures to use in calculating how much collateral has to be posted by each firm settling trades with the NSCC. As far as I can tell and based on the original Twitter thread I found this information in (see the end of the post for the credit and link) the collateral is a portion of the outstanding money owed by a firm at the end of the day. For example, if after summing everything up the NSCC determines that Robinhood owes $1 billion to other firms and will receive $0.5 billion from other firms, the collateral will be a portion of the net $0.5 billion they owe. Here's a brief summary of the estimates and steps that go into finding the required collateral, more details on each of these will follow:1.) Take the highest of two different measures of value-at-risk. Value-at-risk is a measure of how much money you could lose in a certain time period. According to the NSCC proposed rules to the SEC this usually comprises the largest part of the collateral. PDF download of proposed rules is here. 2.) If a single position or stock makes up more than 30 percent of the entire balance owed, the collateral must be a percentage of that balance based on certain historical data, with a minimum of 10% of the size of that position. 3.) A percentage of the difference between the long and short positions in the balance plus the lower balance of the long and short positions multiplied by an even smaller percentage. 4.) The mark-to-market value, which is basically the difference between the initial value of the shares when the trades were executed and any change in market value since then. So if on the first day Robinhood owed $500 billion to the NSCC to be paid out to other companies, but the next day (T+1) the market value of those shares increased by $10 billion my understanding is that Robinhood would have to add $10 billion to their collateral. 5.) Any additional collateral the NSCC demands based on volatility of certain positions. I’m just speculating on this but this seems to be an increase the NSCC can apply if it assesses that there’s widespread exposure to volatility. In other words, the previous four collateral calculations are based on risk exposure from a single firm, but NSCC also would want to look at risk from all of the firms that owe money to the NSCC. Don’t take that as gospel though, the source documents are hard to follow. The total required value of the collateral is the max of item #1 through #3, plus #4 and #5. So #1 through #3 aren't additive, you just take the worst of them. And there are more than this too, but these are the main five we'll go over now because that's enough complexity and these seem to be the big factors. The others have to do with things like previously unpaid balances, and the ones I have listed here seem to be the biggest factors in calculating required collateral. To make this less vague I want to give an idea of how these numbers might change as share volatility increases. We'll start with value-at-risk. The value-at-risk essentially looks at the historical volatility and estimates how much you're at risk of losing in a single period. For the purposes of what we're looking at the period is one day. The idea is you normalize the data from a certain time period of daily changes in portfolio price, and then using a normal distribution you see what the 99th percent confidence interval of maximum loss would be. Say Robinhood has a balance owed with the NSCC of $500 billion, they might come up with a number like $50 million, which would mean in a single day they could be around 99% confident that their balance owed wouldn't end up increasing or decreasing by more than $50 million. But those are fake numbers, so let's estimate some real ones. There are two measures in their rules they use for estimating this. One measure is an evenly weighted volatility function over a period of at least 253 days. That means they look back over the last 253 days or longer and the change in price each day is equally weighted when estimating the mean and standard deviation. The other measure is called an exponentially weighted moving average (EMWA), where they look back a certain number of days but each subsequent day into the past is weighted a little bit less, so that more recent days receive the most weight in your volatility estimate. Now I want to be clear before I start describing the process that my statistics knowledge is weak, so be aware that I’m following explanations I found online for how to do these things. If anyone notices an error in what I’m doing or in my terminology please correct me. If your stats knowledge is also weak just be aware that this is a case of the blind leading the blind, so don’t assume I know what I’m doing! My strategy for the value-at-risk was to estimate the value-at-risk of a single share of GME and use that as the basis for estimating the value-at-risk to Robinhood and across the stock market. To estimate these values I downloaded the last 5 years of GME data and ran numbers on the share price at daily close. First I calculated the daily return and applied the natural log to each return. From what I’ve read this is common in the finance world and has some benefits, and it’s generally assumed that the resulting returns are normally distributed. From there for the equivalently weighed method I took the standard deviation on a rolling basis over the past 253 days. According to the NSCC submittal to the SEC, they use a 99% confidence interval to estimate the largest amount that the share price could drop or rise in a single day, based on the data in the historical sample. Or in other words they’re trying to estimate a single-day drop or increase in value that only has a 1% chance of being exceeded. Once you have the standard deviation you use the assumed normal distribution to find the value-at-risk. The Z score represents the number of standard deviations to the left and right of the mean that results in your confidence interval. As shown in the image below, for a 99% confidence interval the Z score is 1.96. For 99% the Z score is 2.576. Normal Distribution Showing Z Scores for 95% Confidence Interval Computing the value-at-risk for the EMWA is a little more complicated. Instead of describing it here follow this link if you want an explanation. But at the end of the day you’re still computing the standard deviation and multiplying it by the Z score, you just compute your standard deviation so that each previous day is weighted as X% of the day after it. I assumed 95% as the decay factor based on the linked article. So today is weighted at 5%, the previous day is 5%*0.95 = 4.75%, the day before that would be 4.51%, and so on. Below is a plot of results showing the value-at-risk as a percent of the GME share price each day and the GME share price. As you can see, the EMWA generally sticks close to the equivalently weighted method, but fluctuates around it. That fluctuation is because the EMWA is going to be weighing recent price movements a lot higher. So we can see that it makes sense to use the worst case of the EMWA and equivalently weighted value-at-risk, since the EMWA captures recent highs and lows in volatility while the equivalently weighted measures your longer term volatility. GME Value at Risk as Percent of Share Price Since 2018 You can also see from the chart that what’s happened recently with GME is pretty crazy. The EMWA value-at-risk is close to 80% of the share price! That means if the share price were $100, the 99% confidence interval means it could drop or increase as much as $80 in one day. Previously the EMWA measure had peaked closer to 30% in the last few years, so we’re in pretty uncharted territory for this stock. Below is the same chart but focused on after October 2020 so we can see the recent movement better. As you can see, the equivalently weighted value-at-risk is at about 30%. GME Value at Risk as Percent of Share Price Since October 2020 That just tells us the value-at-risk for one share. To estimate value at risk for the whole stock market I took the percent value-at-risk times the share price times the volume traded. You can see the result in the image below. I had to show the vertical axes in log-scale because the recent change is just massive. Assuming my method isn’t completely wrong, the stock market as a whole had a value-at-risk peaking at $23 billion on January 27th in just GME stock. That’s some pretty huge volatility. Dollar Value at Risk for Single and All Shares of GME Since 2018 Here's the same chart but figured on October 2020 onward. Dollar Value at Risk for Single and All Shares of GME Since October 2020 Robinhood’s value-at-risk is going to be less than that. Their value-at-risk from GME is going to be based on how many shares their users bought and the net Robinhood owed money on each day. So the dollar total for them is going to be quite a bit less than $23 billion. This is difficult to estimate, since from what I can tell brokers don’t really publish their daily volume in each stock. As a back-of-the-envelope, very very rough guess, I’ll start with just roughly assuming 1% of the trades of GME were through Robinhood, and 75% of that was purchases of GME and 25% was selling GME. Doing the math on that would mean that on January 27th Robinhood would be estimated to have $115 million in value-at-risk from just GME alone. As a second method of estimating I’ll look at what data we do have from Robinhood. In June Robinhood said they had 4.3 million daily average revenue trades (DARTs). That doesn’t really tell us a lot though, because it looks to me like that’s just trades and doesn’t indicate how many shares were traded. That means it’s time to make more arbitrary assumptions! First I’ll assume that average remained the same during the recent craze. I’ll just guess that since Robinhood is billed as for the little guy that the average is 5 shares per trade. And I’ll also assume that in recent days at the height of the craziness that GME accounted for 10% of the trades on Robinhood, and 75% of those were buys. Reasonable? I have no idea, but hopefully. On January 27th the single-share value-at-risk for GME was $250. And total GME shares traded was 93 million. Based on the assumptions, I’m coming up with 2.15 million trades of GME from Robinhood, and a total of $268 million at risk for Robinhood. So with those two guess-timates it looks like on the worst day, January 27th, the value-at-risk for Robinhood for GME alone could have ranged from somewhere around $100 million to maybe as high as $300 million. And that’s just for GME. The NSCC requires Robinhood to account for value-at-risk of its entire portfolio, all stock purchases net of sales. So the value-at-risk is likely to be even higher than what I’m showing here. As a final sanity check on this, the NSCC had about $10 billion in its clearing funds as of September 30th, 2020 and about $15 billion as of June 30, 2020. According to our chart, in September and June of 2020 the total value of GME at risk across the entire stock market was about $10 million dollars, or about 0.1 percent of the clearing funds. According to this article, on January 28th the NSCC clearing fund value jumped from $26 billion to $33.5 billion. I’m estimating that GME itself might have accounted for $10 or $20 billion of that. Based on that I’m guessing my estimate of GME’s contribution is probably on the high side. There are other volatile stocks out there besides GME, so for it to be making up over half of the clearing funds seems a bit extreme. That said, we’re at least somewhat in the ballpark, since the clearing fund went from $10-$15 billion in summer and fall to about $25-$30 billion now, so it does seem that GME and other volatile stocks are pushing up the clearing fund by quite a bit. Bringing that back to our list, what I’ve estimated is that the NSCC might be requiring in the ballpark of $100 to $300 million from Robinhood as collateral for item #1. The rest of the list items I’m not going as in-depth on. For item #2, we have to estimate what the collateral would be if GME was more than 30% of Robinhood’s outstanding portfolio at the end of the day. Let’s say they hit exactly 30%, what would that look like? Let’s use our previous ballpark estimate of 4.35 million trades per day at 5 shares per trade. We’ll also assume GME is around the average price for a stock so we don’t have to weight for stock price. And finally we’ll say GME is at about $300 in share price. Doing that I come up with 6.5 million shares of GME purchased by Robinhood on net, with 10% of that value being $196 million. I’m going to skip over item #3, I don’t have a good way to estimate that and they don’t define the percentages. We'll just hope items #1 and #2 are larger, which seems like a reasonable assumption. Where we’re at so far is that we need to take the max of items #1-3. Item #1 was $100 to $300 million, item #2 was $196 million. So we’re still in that $100 to $300 million range. Item #4 is the mark-to-market adjustment. If we were to stick with our item #2 estimate of 6.5 million shares traded in a day, and pick $100 as how much the stock price jumped in a day (not too far off what it’s been doing recently), then we’d be looking at adding on an additional $650 million in collateral. That’s pretty massive, but also we’re basing that number on the item #2 estimate which assumed that 30% of Robinhood’s trading was GME, which may not be accurate. So the mark-to-market estimate could be a lot lower than that. Finally, item #5 encompasses several add-ons that NSCC seems to be allowed to demand, which I’m assuming are based on overall risk from all of the entities that owe them money. The rules document I linked previously allows them to require a “special charge” in the event of volatility or liquidity issues, and they can also add something called a market liquidity adjustment which again seems based on volatility and risk. So where we’re at after all of this is potentially somewhere between $100 million and $950 million in collateral, plus whatever extra the NSCC can demand based on item #5. Likely somewhere toward the middle or higher end of that range, or more. Again, I want to make it clear that I have no idea what I’m talking about and am just trying to get a ballpark estimate. I may be making mistakes. Overall I’m just trying to give an idea of what factors are in play and hopefully give an idea of how much the recent volatility can affect the required collateral. But honestly this rough estimate doesn’t seem too far off. According to Robinhood their collateral requirement increased 10-fold due to the recent weeks’ events, which they describe in this short (and much too late to stem the outrage) article summarizing why they halted trading on some stocks. And according to this article Robinhood had to draw on up to $1.5 billion in credit to be able to get trading going again. So we’re definitely talking about a huge amount of collateral, and that makes it sound like what I’ve estimated here isn’t that far off all things considered. One important thing to note is that NSCC only handles regular trades from my understanding. There’s another clearing firm called Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) that's used for options. Robinhood likely had additional collateral commitments at OCC for options purchases in addition to what NSCC was requiring on regular GME share purchases. The OCC collateral might be large as well, and it’s possible I could be overestimating the NSCC collateral requirement and that the OCC collateral was more significant. I did all of my value-at-risk calculations and plotting in this google sheet, feel free to check it out. If you see any errors please let me know. Where That Leaves UsRobinhood had to put up a ton of cash as collateral. Just a huge amount. And they weren’t the only ones that had to pause trading due to collateral issues. E-trade, Webull, and several others also restricted trading. And the estimates I’ve provided here, if accurate, serve to quantify to some extent just how large the collateral required is. The alternate theories implying corruption or foul play seem unsupported and implausible when you actually dig in and see what happened with volatility and collateral requirements last week. Again, this should probably all be investigated to make sure there wasn’t any favoritism or alternative motives in the trading halt and increased collateral requirements, but based on all this information it seems that what happened was an unusual but completely legal and ethical situation.I started looking into this knowing nothing at all about what actually happens when you purchase a stock and now I feel like I have an okay grasp on it. If you read this far I hope it helped you as well. As a final thought, it worries me how quickly people will jump to assuming malice and corruption in every new turn of events. If the news can be interpreted in a way that makes their perceived enemies look bad people will fully adopt that interpretation without question. This is dangerous and creates outrage and conflict for no reason, so I ask everyone reading this to be an influence in the other direction. Try to avoid taking a strong opinion until you’ve made an effort to better understand all the factors at play and be skeptical when everyone else is jumping to conclusions. TL;DRHa, just kidding! You don't get one of these, this is a complicated issue and trying to reduce it to a simple narrative has caused the country to turn against each other looking for a culprit. Simple narratives based on a shallow understanding of complex issues are bad and are reducing social trust, strive to understand how the world works, it's a fascinating place!Additional SourcesA lot of credit goes to this Twitter thread, it was the first source I found that explained that there was more going on and provided enough detail to explain why. I basically built on this and expanded it with more background and information. If you're on Twitter go give this person a like and a follow for being a voice of reason and digging into the details.Just about every concept or entity I discussed in this post has a useful page on Investopedia that you can look at for more information or to verify what I said here. I've probably scanned through about 100 Investopedia pages to try to get a better understanding of these things so I'm not going to flood this post with links, but if you want more information just search for a term on there. |
My name is Maxim and I’m an independent game developer ( indie dev ). That means that I create a lot of games on my own, and so far self-publish them without the help of bigger firms. All of my income comes from the games I create - it’s my livelihood. submitted by Kendja to Worldbox [link] [comments] This is my story on how a game I’ve been working on for over 8 years has been nearly stolen from me without my knowledge. And how I’m not the only one. When you spit out your coffeeThe story begins with me working on the latest WorldBox update - the community has been waiting for it for a few months already. Boats are all the rage, and everybody is going wild with anticipation. When a message hits me on the community discord."Somebody copied the game - it looks just like yours". You don't think much of it. There are many copy-cats out there of successful titles. If a new indie is trying to have their shot at a different populous type of game - have a go at it! It's harder than you think - but no problems there. "They called it worldbox in the app id". Aham, why would somebody do that? You assume negligence over maliciousness at first. Believe in the good of the people. "And they filed a trademark for WorldBox". Ok. The boats update will have to wait now for a bit longer. PreludeI've been working on WorldBox since 2012, with the first prototype released on newgrounds and kongregate. In between other games, I continued work on it, and finally released a mobile version in 2018. It grew a lovely and highly active community since then - and I've kept it updated as much as possible.With millions of downloads it is definitely my most successful game so far, and that’s thanks to a very active fan base which I’m very grateful to have. Growing a community for a single developer is not easy - it can be quite challenging. A lot of work behind the scenes is involved - and next to the reddit and discord I also attend game conferences from time to time for this purpose. The conferenceWorldbox at DevGamm conference in Minsk in 2019 One of which was DevGamm in November 2019. It was a big trip, which me and my brother took - and apart from an exploding laptop charger it was very positive. Or so we thought. It's really cool to see people play the game in front of your eyes. You see them explore and discover new powers - you hear invaluable feedback. You connect with really cool people! At least most of them. For other people attending dev conferences is about discovering new games, new developers - or just plain and simple hanging out with like-minded people. And then there are others. Let's say, the wolves in sheep clothes. Or in this case "the only 🕴️ suit at an indie game conference". They approach you - see the buzz your game is making, and involve you in a friendly chat. They speak highly of their own business skills. They present solutions to company formations, taxation, business models. They talk about "how to be successful in the game business". They are already very successful and proud of their own "product" - run and developed by a company of 30+ people. It sounds impressive of course. The offerThen they say that they like your "product", and want to buy it right away. For some very big amount, right now.Now let's take a step back - it's not the first time it happened. You politely listen, make internal notes and evaluate the offer later on. And that's what you're here for, right? Expand the community, expand the business horizons. Stay friendly, create new connections. You evaluate behavior - are they passionate gamers? Or rather cold business people. Do they understand the joy that games can bring, or do they see them solely as products that make money? I’m sure you can guess what I was thinking. You check out their game - it looks like a copy of a popular game you know. It seems to make a lot of money as well. It’s in the top #5-#9 on the Apple Appstore in the "Adventures" category - that's a lot of $! Enough to run a company of 30+ people and then some. The main hook seems to be a free trial for 3 days, after which you pay $9.99 per week(!) to play the game. Something smelled sus. The answerSo as with many other people who offered to buy the game - you politely decline. It's not the right time. Not only did I not feel like this was the right partner for me at that point - but I also felt like I haven't achieved the full vision of the game yet. Selling would focus too much on making money. Changing the code so other developers would understand it, etc. I want to focus on making it fun. Take my time to polish it. Bring updates to existing players.They asked again 3-4 more times, over the messages and calls, over the following months. You stay polite, stay in touch. But they... behind the scenes... are already preparing how to take advantage of what you created. Connecting the dots"Maxim, somebody filed a trademark for WorldBox"You check out the company, it doesn't ring a bell. It was just registered a few months ago. You look up the business owners - they also don't ring a bell. You cross-check other companies they are involved in... bingo. They are in other companies owned by the "🕴️suit". You even find his email address mentioned in the formation documents. Main culprit: found. Then you check their other products... a minecraft mod for which you pay $9.99 per week. Rings a bell? Mhm. Business model: match. Then you check their website, their privacy policy - same structure as the other few companies you already connected to the 🕴️suit. They even have the same mistakes in the shared privacy policies - copy/paste errors. Marketing materials: match. So while they were still "negotiating" with you, they already created a new company in February with the purpose of launching a competing copy-cat game. And steal your trademark from under your nose. Does that sound like trust-worthy business partners? You could say I dodged a bullet there… Their main money makerIf we look at their "product" which he was very proud about - let's analyze it. It's called "Raft Survival : Ocean Nomad". The surprising thing about it is that it uses the name "Raft" in the title. But it's not affiliated with the popular Steam game "Raft" that was launched in 2017.How come? How come a copycat can use the name of the original game? You guessed it... trademarks. Around the time the first Raft steam trailer was released, somebody filed for a trademark for the name "Raft". Used exclusively for mobile games. Most likely the main developers didn't notice it - I mean who checks these things constantly? They were focusing on the desktop version - it takes all your attention. And who filed for the trademark? None other than our dear Mr. 🕴️Suit : https://uspto.report/TM/87605582 We found a pattern. They look out for interesting and simple game ideas to copy, and then they blindside the ( often inexperienced ) indie developers by making a publishing a very simple copy-cat version, and then quietly filing a trademark for that name. That way they can use the wording in advertisements, on the app stores, etc. They could even take down the original games based on this! So they are taking advantage of a good name you build up with your sweat and tears, and they’ll just blatantly use it to destroy the joy of gamers who expected to play your game. Instead they get a really bad copy and are tricked out of their money. https://preview.redd.it/ukaaffuy58x51.png?width=946&format=png&auto=webp&s=113bbc4b9787ead6d18dd2e9a3a5a454b7fc9638 What’s the copy game about?It’s a simple version of WorldBox. All sprites are either similar, or changed from the original game. Some sprites are even stolen from MineCraft ( owned by Microsoft ). The game itself has the name “worldbox” in the id, which is a clear trademark infringement. ( Trademarks don’t have to be registered for them to be valid. ) It also links to facebook, vk ( russian facebook ), and other social media pages which have “worldbox” in the name, or “worldbox_god_simulator” in the url. E.g. the VK.ru page is called “WorldBox God Simulator” : All of them seem to have been deleted in the past few days. But the game remains up. Some comparisons : ( Left is the original, right is the copy ) https://preview.redd.it/bokckdrz58x51.png?width=438&format=png&auto=webp&s=b970b8da06e4dd187825c2c4eca505abf2e5b0f8 https://preview.redd.it/duo3t0u068x51.png?width=439&format=png&auto=webp&s=48c15e7914369872aac158b749343fbeb18e232f https://preview.redd.it/00qqoiu168x51.png?width=457&format=png&auto=webp&s=4efe39e92c2217294448853ad0fbfc4f12557856 https://preview.redd.it/9yp366d368x51.png?width=454&format=png&auto=webp&s=d68df28bfc434680e9897310094411ae25656a65 At the launch of the game it was filled with a lot of 5 star reviews. These were very simple, with messages like “Good application, very good for first download”. https://preview.redd.it/s9yqqpp468x51.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=82791c5a6fc37b958c91970d9527e48005698b10 Which many people thought to be fakes used to artificially increase ratings. The Worldbox community also found out about the trademarks as well, and started discussing it on reddit, and a few youtubers even made videos with the hashtag #saveWorldbox to show their support. They also left hundreds of reviews to the product from STAVRIO LTD, which received “interesting” replies considering the whole situation : https://preview.redd.it/1zesuk1668x51.png?width=496&format=png&auto=webp&s=4e4d51dd06f51f5b95344cf444ef94a1660a538a Too bad reviews only sting a little. This is still happeningSince I was first informed about this they filed even more trademarks for WorldBox. In the EU, in Australia, Canada, S.Korea and other countries. There are many filed trademarks pending in many jurisdictions.They are also filing for even more trademarks in other jurisdictions for the “Raft” trademark - at the same time. Community responseIt was great to see how the community dug up all of this, and went decidedly against the copycat. While I couldn’t talk with people - since I’m talking with lawyers currently - people took things into their own hands. They did research, they even examined the copy’s game assets. They rated the game based on their feelings. https://preview.redd.it/akq3p5o768x51.png?width=1360&format=png&auto=webp&s=3d6de49df400614dbe29160f7e1a5168561021af And it has been important. It still is. With over 5 trademarks being filed by the copycats the future is uncertain. The community based #saveworldbox was the right reaction - I'm really proud of the community here for having found these things out and started a process against it! It seems so far these guys have been getting away with it because nobody really cared that they are behaving unethically. For me the battle is far from over and I appreciate all of the support we can get. Be it videos or posts, or spreading awareness. It’s not ok to attempt to steal somebody’s hard work like this. My goalsWhat is my goal in all of this?
https://preview.redd.it/aaksa0u868x51.png?width=700&format=png&auto=webp&s=73fb717e2605893261865bf90e61752188e33165 Hopefully get the app stores to put a stop to these malicious actors, and stop their bad business practices. These apps are deceiving to app store customers and leave everybody with a bad experience. Next stepsIn our case I’ve sat down with my lawyers, and we have started a process to protect WorldBox. It’s time intensive, and my biggest worry is that it affects future updates. But I trust in the talented lawyer teams to create a case against these firms and to protect WorldBox at all costs.That involves a lot of things, even speaking to people who were previously involved with these firms, etc. It’s going to take some time. This post is also a big warning to other aspiring indie devs, and what to watch out for. This has been a very time consuming October, and already now the next patch has been delayed due to this - for this I have to apologize to the community. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to finishing boats, sigh. Appendix: A web of companiesWho are all these people and companies? ( all this is information is public knowledge, that you can research yourself )The main firm ( JustMoby ) is owned by 🕴️ Alexander Novikov. That was the man I met at the games conference. His business card mentions that he’s an “investor”.Another owner of JustMoby is 🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov - he is also in the company registry one of the owners of STAVRIO LTD. The company behind the worldbox copycat. And finally 🇧🇾 Eugene Kluchinski is also an owner of most of the firms. He’s listed on LinkedIn as CEO of JustMoby LTD. Companies house attributes him a majority of shares in terms of voting rights. Most of the firms have one of these 3 people directly involved. They have a lot of shell companies registered - most of the firms seem to have a holding firm in 🇪🇪 Estonia, and a LTD in the 🇬🇧 UK. Some are listed at the same address as STAVRIO LTD. https://preview.redd.it/9gukmxnb68x51.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=226458685c611e03e0e33cee9a3837a40f7f4b1a Most of the estonian companies share the same registration email, have been filed with the same lawyer firm, but only differ in who the registered director is. It’s important to understand that a company registration doesn’t require people to be present in the office. So you can easily have a dev team in Russia under one company, and then you can just open up 10 different companies at some PO box in the UK or Estonia to publish them. So if Apple’s AppStore team decides to take down your app or account because too many customers had a bad experience and complained ( e.g. if they unknowingly get charged $9.99 per week for some copycat game ), then now they can ( although it’s against apple TOS ) move their app to some other firm you registered, and republish there under a slightly different name. And the cycle of fake reviews and scammed customers begins again. Let’s just say that a net of shell companies is normally not required if you look at the most successful game developers. And it reeks of very dubious business practices. Hostile work environment?Many ex-employees mentioned publicly that the company seems to prefer copyright infringements, dubious pricing practices and is used to having their accounts taken down from app-stores due to many policy violations. The reviews in Russian, but you can use google translate to understand it. To one of reviews A.Novikov replied directly.From the reviews we can see that the sad part seems to be that the development team seems to have talented and underpaid members; which seem to detest the owners/managers. But ultimately it’s the leadership - the owners - of these companies that count here. Tip of the ice-bergAfter reading the reviews from past employees, it becomes more clear why there is a big net of company registrations which re-publish the same apps. It seems they simply create more and more firms to re-publish the apps again and again; or to mitigate the risk when one of them gets taken down.Because for example Redbeet Interactive ( the makers of the original Raft game ) would sue them, then they just have to close a subsidiary. If we also would sue them successfully, they’d also just have to close a subsidiary. At least that’s most likely their thinking. But the main hustle would still be on - they’d just pop up a few more companies and publish clones there again. And keep continuing with their trial and error approach until one of them gets enough downloads / subscriptions. Unless Apple and Google step in and identify that all of them are connected, and take them down at the same time. Also it seems that they have established a practice where they automatically give their apps fake reviews over time. It’s interesting that neither Google Play nor the Appstore have detected this and flagged them for this. Redbeat Interactive developers aware of Ocean Nomad and has been dealing with them for a while now. Even received rude emails from Ocean Nomad team. A small selection of shell firmshttps://preview.redd.it/8tzqqvrc68x51.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=2dbfee1606768d5f8e729467bd2ff68e64eff8eb Please check a table with better formatting here # JustMobyJUSTMOBY LTD (UK) and JUSTMOBY OÜ (Estonia)🕴️ Alexander Novikov, 🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov, 🇧🇾 Eugene Kluchinski Main developer team, owned by 🕴️Aleksander Novikov Lists games that are listed by other companies. E.g. “Ocean Nomad - Raft Survival” ( TREASTONE ), https://vk.com/puzzleitru is the official page for https://puzzleit.ru which lists JUSTMOBY as the copyright holder. https://vk.com/justmoby.games - official vk group of justmoby The same VK admin as that group, has also created copycat “worldbox” pages on vk.ru which are linked from the copycat game. # STAVRIOSTAVRIO LTD (UK) and STAVRIO OÜ🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov, 🇪🇪 Zerar Goren, 🇧🇾 Eugene Kluchinski Main WorldBox copycat firm ( Google Play account ) Estonian firm lists 🕴️A.Novikov’s email address in registration papers. Play Store, AppStore # TREASTONETREASTONE LTD (UK) and TREADSTONE OÜ🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov, 🇱🇻 Anatolijs Belavskis, 🇧🇾 Eugene Kluchinski Raft copycat firm for the mobile versions Has 🕴️A.Novikov email in registered emails. Play Store, AppStore # MUSHTRIPMUSHTRIP LTD (UK) and MUSHTRIP s.r.o.🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov, 🇪🇪 Zerar Goren, 🇷🇺 Sergei Grishin Has a “SpeedTest” app where you pay $19.99 per month to check your internet speed… JustMoby tried to trademark “SpeedTest” in the EU unsuccessfully. Play Store, AppStore # SONAKAISONAKAI ( СОНАКАЙ ) and Adeco Systems🇷🇺 Andrey Zenchuk “CEO of Adeco Systems” ( LinkedIn ) works in “UniSoftGames”. They list on their website the name as JustMoby. Ex-employee reviews make it look like this was also the dev house. Possibly before JustMoby was formed. # UniSoftGamesUniSoftGames s.r.o🇷🇺 Aleksandr Matveev Raft copycat firm Steam release. Same games listed on the website as Treastone games.Also lists "Day 13 - Zombie Survival" which seems to have been taken down everywhere. Previously published by “PlayHotGames” for which the website doesn’t work any more. # FEONIFeoni LTD and Feoni Holding OÜ🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov, 🇺🇦 Liana Roi, 🇱🇻 Vladimirs TanukevicsOfficial email for the justmoby estonian firm points here. Also Feoni is listed as creator of Ocean Nomad facebook page Registered for “real estate activities Play Store # FurtabasFurtabas Ltd and Furtabas OÜ🇷🇺 Egor Agafonov , 🇧🇾 Eugene Kluchinski, 🇱🇻 Andris Zeimuls-Prizevoits Website Games are now published under “PuzzlAdventura” name. Play Store # DZHIGSO PAZLS OOO🇷🇺 DZHIGSO PAZLS, OOO( phonetic version of “Jigsaw Puzzles” / Джигсо Паззлс ) 🕴️ A.Novikov 90%, 🇷🇺 A.Novikova 10% Russian legal company for puzzleit.ru and other puzzle games. One of the real companies with office in Russia and internet known as JustMoby 10% owned by A.Novikova ( HR manager at JustMoby ) Also has 100 Doors Horror game on app store - same as MakSton Play Play Store, AppStore # Sweet Games BoxDenis Sonin, 🇱🇻 Sweet Games BoxLinked to 🇱🇻 “Feoni SIA” Publishes the Jigsaw Puzzles game on apple app store.Previously the games were published under “Sweet Games Box”. But that account doesn’t exist anymore. Now they are published by an individual account. AppStore, AmazonStore # VategueVategue OÜ🇧🇾 Eugene Kluchinski Registered around the same time as the other 3. Registered email points to 🕴️ A.Novikov Trademarks trolls be trollinghttps://preview.redd.it/wvevwm3e68x51.png?width=744&format=png&auto=webp&s=d42684c14821a8b8d5a5608bde0a9464faa573e4 Against WorldBox : ( search on https://www3.wipo.int/branddb/en/ and order by “App. Date” ) https://preview.redd.it/j4sqa7es78x51.png?width=807&format=png&auto=webp&s=025dd19c1d5918b7b8e67ad73e97e79360c69f52 Against RAFT : ( search on https://www3.wipo.int/branddb/en/ and order by “App. Date” ) https://preview.redd.it/6d8k99at78x51.png?width=829&format=png&auto=webp&s=a3962a8db24a09b75b372b83470bbc8d380794a3 Appendix: Comment from LawyerOur usual advice in such situations is to register trademarks once your app starts getting popular and register it in all main jurisdictions where most users or money come from. With a trademark it's easier to ban "clone games" and bring cases to courts, but if you register only the name of the game, this may not guarantee characters and gameplay won’t be copied and used, but under a different name.But it is possible and necessary to act by a combination of legal and non-legal methods. Track all activity of the clone app, find it in all app markets, all social networks and all marketing materials. Begin actively filing complaints asking you to remove controversial content with a link to your copyright. This can work, especially given the stringency of US copyright laws (specifically the DMCA). In the case of the Worldbox game, the similarity of the gameplay is obvious, I think, to everyone. Therefore, marketplaces are likely to side with the original game. In this case, a competitor registers trademarks to use the Worldbox name in the main jurisdictions. But in almost all countries there is an opposition and objection procedure, and by attaching proof of the originality of the application and the date of its creation, much ahead of the appearance of a new game, there is every chance to cancel these applications and register your own. By the way, the very fact that a competitor registers exactly the word Worldbox is already suspicious: why register the name of someone else's game when yours is called "God Simulator"? Alina Davletshina, senior associate at Versus.legal #saveworldboxThis post is exclusively to inform people about JUSTMOBY LTD, "ООО Джигсо Паззлс", puzzleit.ru, Treastone LTD, STAVRIO LTD, Adeco Systems, Gamesunisoft / Unisoft Games, FEONI LTD, MUSHTRIP LTD, FURTABAS LTD, JUSTMOBY OÜ, STAVRIO OÜ, TREASTONE OÜ, FURTABAS OÜ, VATEGUE OÜ, Feoni Holding OÜ companies and main people that behind them (Alexander Novikov, Egor Agafonov and Eugene Kluchinski).Please always stay polite, don’t use offensive language in comments, social media or any other correspondence. Thank you for being part of a great community of world builders! I do appreciate all the help I can get - all your posts and videos really make a difference. Thank you for your on-going support! |
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