Stolen Unity game on Google Play

Unity Engine
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1

I just found my Unity game(that I built in Unity) on the Google Play store in a different account! I am not sure how they did it but they have:

  • STOLEN my game APK from Google Play
  • replaced my bundle identifier and ads with theirs
  • added location permission, calendar, phone identity, etc (to a game!)
  • and published in their account!
    While none of these are red flags for Google Play!
    Note, it is not a clone, they did not code the game, they just took my APK (of a previous version, or they did not copy my latest update yet).

This is my game: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.saevio.fungoal
This is the copy: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.soccer.goal.football.fun.hinder

I have reported them to Google here (1):
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/contact/takedown
and here (2):
https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905
https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?product=googleplay&uraw=&hl=en

(1) I still did not get an answer (this is the third day) and from (2) this is the answer:

"With regard to the following URLs:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.soccer.goal.football.fun.hinder

It is unclear to us whether or not you are the authorized copyright agent for the content in question. Only the copyright owner or an authorized representative can file a DMCA Infringement Notice on his/her behalf. Please note that you could be liable for damages (including costs and attorneys’ fees) if you materially misrepresent that your rights have been infringed.
If you or your client is not the copyright owner for this content, we cannot process your notice. Please have the copyright owner file a DMCA notice with us. If you or your client is the copyright owner, please provide more detail explaining how this is the case.
Regards,
The Google Team"

Do you have any advice on what path I can take to at least take this copy down? Anyway I can convince Google that this is a serious issue and it needs their attention and they should make sure this does not happen?
Anyway I can protect my game in Unity to make it harder to copy so easily?

Thank you

2

Did you file a claim using the proper form?

https://support.google.com/legal/contact/lr_dmca?product=googleplay&uraw=&hl=en

3

Yes I did, this is the form I submitted (2) and the response from Google(I quoted above), is for this form.

4

hard to believe they haven’t taken it down… They will be liable for your losses in revenue if they dont take it down after you sworn under penalty of perjury that the ip belongs to you

1 Like
5

They probably cracked your java code, I doubt they hacked your scripts, since they were compiled into il2cpp library which is a binary code.

One suggestion how to avoid this, is from C# code use AndroidJava* API to get app’s package name then validate it, just don’t do something simple like:
packageName == "com.mycompany.product"
try to make a check more complex, since strings can be found and tweaked even in binary code.

Since if they didn’t change your package name, they couldn’t have re-released your game.

I’ll ask around internally, how we can better deal with this.

P.S Not sure if it helps you, but in https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en&id=com.soccer.goal.football.fun.hinder decompiled apk file, there is globalgamemanagers which contains ‘saevio’ string inside, proving that it’s your app.

6

Thank you Tomas1856!

Yes, that is a good suggestion, I will probably do something like that in the future. It would have been awesome if something like that existed in Unity (given the circumstances) or better yet, something that will protect us developers from having our games copied, on the Google Play market.

Yes, I found my name “Saevio” in their APK as well. Even more, when you look with Visual Studio APK analyzer you can see the exact same level asset files with the exact same sizes!
They seem to have copied an earlier version of my game (1.03), when the game had 20 levels. I have attached some screenshots for comparison (com.saevio.fungoal is my game).

Still, no further answer from Google. I really wish someone there would take the time to investigate this serious issue soon!

5886047--627254--assests_comparison1.png
5886047--627254--assests_comparison1.png2616×1942 265 KB
5886047--627257--assests_comparison2.png
5886047--627257--assests_comparison2.png2634×1868 316 KB
5886047--627260--dex_comparison3.png
5886047--627260--dex_comparison3.png2634×1873 270 KB

7

Guys, this is very scary. I have game that is close to finishing also.

What other advice do you guys have to prevent this? or atleast make it harder for someone to steal?

Will the Application.isGenuine help on this?

Is it better to put important strings through the Inspector rather than hardcoded, or is it just the same thing once all is compiled and built?

8

Sadly https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Application-genuine.html won’t help, as far as I can tell, it’s not working as expected.

Besides validating the package, I would also recommend printing
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Application-productName.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Application-comanyName.html

to log, while it doesn’t protect from anything, I think checking the log and seeing your company name would work as additional proof during dispute.

Finally, there was this plugin https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/GooglePlayLicenseVerification which can help enforce the licensing of your application, haven’t tried it myself.

9

It sucks…

I just read an article the other day were UBIsoft had to sue google and apple to get a clone taken down after getting the same response from both that you received.

You may be able to reach out to UBIsoft and see if someone there could point you in a direction. The other option is to directly sue the offending company in court.

10

Where are “Application.productName” and “Application.companyName” stored in the APK? Can’t they just be changed like the application identifier?

I just remembered that on February 10, 2020 when I tried to log in to my Unity account it said “Your organization has been locked”, to my very big surprise. I had to appeal and convince Unity that I am doing nothing wrong.

Looking at my stolen game they first published it on their account on February 21, 2020, according to AppAnnie.

Is it possible that my Unity account being locked has anything to do with them stealing my game? Anyway to check?

11

Yes it sucks, big time!

For Ubisoft it seems they cloned their game, in my case they stole the APK, which is much worse! Maybe we should contact Ubisoft as well.
We did contact dmca.com to help us send a Copyright Infringement Notice to Google to take the stolen game down.
We would love to sue the offending company in court, but all we have is their email address from Google Play, until Google gives us their details.

12

It’s packed in Unity resource files, it can be changed, but it would be quite hard to do it.

13

This post is a little old and focused on desktop but seems relevant and probably still some useful tips:

14

Note: I you use il2cpp, there’s no managed assemblies in your game resources, it’s all compiled into binary code, which makes it almost impossible to tweak without the original C# source code.