以下是RK老师的声明英文原文~
Some months ago, Yoka Games invited Dr. Knizia to act as a judge in the World Original Design Contest. As Dr. Knizia is always willing to support the culture of games, he agreed to participate. After the public announcement of the contest, Dr. Knizia received multiple warnings from his business partners about Yoka’s reputation for copying games without a license.
Irrespective of any legal judgements, it is open for everyone to see that Yoka copied the acclaimed card game Bang. Furthermore, Dr. Knizia discovered that Yoka also copied his own game Lost Cities under the title Little Kingdom.
After becoming aware of these facts, Dr. Knizia requested that Yoka needs to align the discrepancy of what Yoka says and what Yoka does – in respect of Bang, Lost Cities and other copied games.
Yoka admitted that they have been using the rules of Lost Cities for years without a license, stating: “we would like to pay you for the rules according to the sales of Little Kingdom”. But Yoka also insisted: “since we have made innovations, adjusted product positioning and redesigned the graphics, it would be reasonable for us to consider rules royalty as gratitude instead of production license agreement.”
Dr. Knizia strongly condemns Yoka`s attitude towards intellectual property rights. The acceptance of such a ‘gratitude’ payment would have signified the acceptance of Yoka’s ownership of the intellectual property in the game Little Kingdom / Lost Cities, which is one of Dr. Knizia’s most successful games.
Dr. Knizia is truly shocked about Yoka’s attitude that merely ‘redesigning the graphics’ of Lost Cities makes Little Kingdom Yoka’s own game. Copy is not innovation! Copy could not be revealed more clearly than in Yoka’s own words!
Dr. Knizia has the highest respect for the Chinese people. Dr. Knizia is impressed by the economic advances China has made over the last decades, soon to become the world’s largest economy. This is due to numerous hard-working businesses in China who bring prosperity to this nation with a great history. Indeed, Dr. Knizia feels honoured that his co-operation with many trustworthy business partners in China allows him to possibly make a small contribution himself to this prosperity.
It is Dr. Knizia’s opinion that Yoka does not further China’s reputation in the world. Dr. Knizia fears that Yoka’s actions undermine and harm the long-term success of many honest and hard-working publishers in China.
In this situation, it is of course unthinkable for Dr. Knizia to do any business with Yoka, or to act as a judge in the contest. – And we believe that all three other judges have now also withdrawn from the contest.
Yoka’s objective for the contest is: “We will solicit original board game designs from all over the world.” Realising Yoka’s attitude, Dr. Knizia is now very concerned that Yoka may copy the original designs from the participants by merely applying Yoka’s own graphics to these yet unpublished intellectual properties. Accepting a seemingly harmless ‘gratitude’ payment could inadvertently lose less experienced designers all rights in their designs.