Some time back, there was some discussion on these forums about some content that appeared on the Game Thoughts website (www.gamethoughts.com) which was apparently taken from the Dexterity website with few, and in some places, no modifications. I will not deny that it was taken from Dexterity's website, because it was. The short of it is, that this was wrong. I would like to explain to you what happened though, because there is another side to the story that you are probably not aware of.

Several months ago, we had our website redesigned by a friend of mine who had been a multimedia designer for a number of years. He and I went over what I was looking for, sent back and forth some design ideas, and then after deciding on one of them, I gave him the go ahead to put together the entire framework for the site. He had asked about the Developers FAQ section content and what he should use.

At the time, I was extremely busy and working on a number of projects. Since I wanted him to continue working on it, I did what I thought would be a time saving measure, did some quick copy pasting into an email, and sent him a bunch of stuff that was copied from Dexterity.com. I told him where it came from, and to not spend too much time on it. Just get the framework in place, and I would change the content later on.

When implementation time came along, I was still busy, and I had him go through the site one more time for broken links, grammar checking, spell checking, and page formatting in different browsers. Anyone who's done this can attest that certifying web pages on multiple browsers takes a bit of time and I wanted the project over and done with. I was more concerned with that sort of stuff than I was with the actual content, and not realizing that I hadn't changed the Developers FAQ section, I had him push the entire site into production.

I keep a pretty keen watch on our website server logs to see where our traffic is coming from and which sites are giving us the most exposure, along with exposure from new sites. When I saw several dozen hits from Dexterity.com's site over the course of a couple of hours, I was rather interested and decided to check it out. I was a bit surprised (not to mention horrified) to say the least when I realized that the discussion centered on content on our site which was copied from Dexterity.com. I took immediate steps to change the copied pages, without waiting for notification from anyone. For those of you who were involved in the discussion, you probably noticed that the page was changed within hours of the start of the discussion.

To be perfectly honest, in the back of my mind I did know the pages were on our production website. I checked my lengthy 'TODO' list that I keep in a text file, and it was clearly written 'Change content of Developers FAQ section'. I'd simply not gotten around to it at implementation, and it later slipped my mind.

The content was never meant to make it to production. As much as I would like to forget that it ever happened, I do accept the responsibility for it. It was my job to check everything for any sort of errors, code or content, and it was my fault that it didn't get done. The point is, I'm sorry. We did not intend to rip off content from Dexterity's website and I'm extremely sorry that things ended up going as far as they did.

We do not wish to be looked upon as a rogue entity or a disreputable company in the indie gaming community because I do not feel that we are. We do our best to treat people the way that we would like to be treated; with fairness, honesty, and respect. I hope that the developers who frequent the Dexterity.com forums and the Dexterity Staff can accept our sincerest apologies and I can assure you that something like this would never happen again. Perhaps in the future, each of you will view both Game Thoughts and myself personally in a much better light.

Kind Regards,

Mike Taber
Game Thoughts
www.gamethoughts.com

Hi Mike,

It's nice to encounter someone with the courage to accept responsibility for a mistake without trying to blame it on someone else. I certainly don't hold any grudge against you, and I'm glad you were able to remedy the problem so quickly.

And of course... welcome to our forums!

Well said, Mike.

A friend of mine used to work for a fairly major advertising firm. He was working late one Friday, trying to get a set of print ads out before the weekend and just go home. Everyone had been working long hard hours.

He kept trying to proofread this one ad, and it just didn't make any sense. He said he blinked and looked at it again, and realized, to his horror, that this final proof of the ad hadn't had the actual text inserted! Instead, the nonsense Latin phrases they used as text filler for sizing the ads had been left in place. He had come very close to just letting that go by and having this ad be printed in many industry magazines.

It meant a long weekend for him and several others, but they managed to fix it -- they were all shaking in their boots at what could have happened.

So you see, you're not alone. :)

And welcome to these forums, as Steve said. This is a good place for indies (thanks Steve!).

Hi, this was very intresting that as soon as I read this thread, and Steve Z's thread on "Download submission service" that I followed a link to www.aggressivegames and found duplicate text on their vendor pages which pretty much resembles what www.retro64.com has.

I'm not sure who wrote what first. I also notice that pretty much everyones vendor page is very similar.

This only occured to me because I'm currently setting up my own website and wasn't sure what to write in some specific sections of my website. Some times it's just hard to reword certain concepts you want to get across.

http://www.aggressivegames.com/vendor/vendor.html
http://www.retro64.com/vendors.asp

Well, I really appreciate the understanding that all of you have shown thus far, especially Steve. I had sent a private letter of apology to him directly before making this post and he suggested that I make a public apology on his forums, which I'm glad that I did. I was quite surprised when he told me that he'd never received an apology before. As he said himself, everyone makes mistakes, and it's not easy to admit them. I'm glad that I did, and I'm pleased to know that this one is behind us and we can move forward as a company with no ill feelings.

I'd be happy to contribute my experiences in the future, be it here or elsewhere and help people reach their goals. In any case, thanks for the welcome. I'm sure I'll stick around and make a few more posts here and there.