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When listening to user feedback resulted in a DMCA takedown

And how it prompted us to add an Acceptable Use Policy to Feature Upvote

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Who would have thought that being open to user feedback could result in a legal dispute? 

The video game Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic had a nasty experience recently when a player made suggestions to improve the game:

The player had written a guide on a way to play the game more realistically. While the developers had already been working on a game mode that did just that, they agreed to add him to the game’s credits as a goodwill gesture given his prominence in the community.

Somehow this goodwill gesture backfired and the player started making unreasonable demands:

Matters have now escalated to the point where the game itself has been taken off Steam due to a DMCA request, and the player is “now claiming that they own the rights to the [realistic] game mode”.

They listened to feedback and use it to improve their game. And the result was that their video game was taken off steam via a DMCA request!

Fortunately this has all been resolved, and Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic is now available again.

This drama scared some other video game companies who also incorporate user feedback into making their game better. Roughly 10% of our customers are games companies, who use Feature Upvote to gather and manage player feedback, so this was also alarming to us.

So we decided it was time to add an Acceptable Use Policy to Feature Upvote. Your contributors need to agree to this policy when adding suggestions to your feedback board.

The Acceptable Use Policy makes some things very clear to contributors when they add suggestions to your feedback board. And, importantly in light of the story above, it states clearly that you, as the board owner, have the right to use the suggestion, without attribution or compensation:

You grant the account owner a royalty free, non-exclusive, non-assignable, worldwide license to use your Content for the purposes of improving the account owner’s products and services and their business generally. You agree that you are not entitled to compensation or attribution in relation to any such use made of your Content.

Because most people don’t take time to read the things they are agreeing to online, we’ve summarised the policy into a short summary that your contributors will hopefully at least glance at:

This new Acceptable Use Policy already shows on all Feature Upvote boards that are in English. It’ll appear over the next couple of weeks for boards in other languages, as the translations get done.