Ripping off Kotaku

Snowcone

I almost feel bad for posting this and unleashing the masses, but there is a new site about to launch called DETAKU. It is replacing OnAxis or something. Look familiar to anyone?

http://digimonworldonline.com/wp/

They even ripped off The Night Note. For shame....

Houk

What the hell? This has to be a joke, or an ARG, or some kind of weird shit. It can't be real.

Snowcone

Houk wrote: »

What the hell? This has to be a joke, or an ARG, or some kind of weird shit. It can't be real.

Nope. It's real. The guys posted over on GamesPress asking for comments. I told them to get an original layout and stop ripping off Kotaku. He was posting asking for help with IE vs Firefox CSS/layout issues.

SkyGheNe

Houk wrote: »

What the hell? This has to be a joke, or an ARG, or some kind of weird shit. It can't be real.

Unfortunately, it's fiction that has to stay true to some form of reality. Reality, on the other hand, has a way of coming up with the most insane shit you've ever seen.

I also find it very amusing that it is a digimonworld link. Either way, I'm sure it won't last so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Lewisham

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

scrivenerjones

yeah that website sure does look like that other website

Snowcone

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

FireWeasel

Snowcone wrote: »

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

I think you're onto something there. Just let me register www.SnarkBarGames.com and my plan will be COMPLETE!

SkyGheNe

Snowcone wrote: »

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

It seems to me like a poor attempt at adopting a similar framework and using it to develop your own ideas. The site layout, information, and tone are noticeably taken from Kotaku, and while using the framework as a springboard for your own ideas wouldn't be necessarily awful, the author of the site copies it instead of synthesizing it with his own ideas.

For instance, Google became the household search engine over time. Is it revolutionary? Not so much, they definitely borrowed some of the framework from other search engines at the time, but managed to network with other companies and expand in such a way that made it a dominant figure for internet searching.

Snowcone

FireWeasel wrote: »

Snowcone wrote: »

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

I think you're onto something there. Just let me register www.SnarkBarGames.com and my plan will be COMPLETE!

LMAO. I hear imitation is the highest form of flattery. I suspect though that you'd be wasting your time. The audience of a place like Kotaku is well... let's just say they have more readers than we do.

Orogogus

Snowcone wrote: »

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

Baidu is the leading search engine in China, deriving most of its revenues from its pay per click advertising model.

Snowcone

Orogogus wrote: »

Snowcone wrote: »

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

Baidu is the leading search engine in China, deriving most of its revenues from its pay per click advertising model.

China is another world with it's censorship etc. In that case, I could see why an aspiring business person would rip off google and cater to the local/govt demands for business.

Lucky Cynic

scrivenerjones wrote: »

yeah that website sure does look like that other website

This.

Lork

scrivenerjones wrote: »

yeah that website sure does look like that other website

I think the bigger issue here is that somebody actually likes Kotaku enough to copy it. I for one find this highly disturbing and hope it's not real.

SkyGheNe

Orogogus wrote: »

Snowcone wrote: »

Lewisham wrote: »

And this is noteworthy... how? It's Yet Another Game News Site That You'll Never Read Or Care About Because It's Written By No-one Interesting And Does Nothing New At All.

Oh it's not noteworthy. It was just too rich to pass up posting. I mean, what could a person legitimately expect to gain from doing a total rip job on one of the more popular sites out there. This is like ripping off Yahoo's layout and ideas and launching Wahoo.

Baidu is the leading search engine in China, deriving most of its revenues from its pay per click advertising model.

I guess they had never heard that 10-15% of Google's advertising revenue through pay per click advertising is due to click fraud. It might actually be higher, but those were the numbers last time I checked.

Stupornaut

Hopefully they won't carry over the obsession with calling female breasts "jubblies".

redfenix

so, does that mean they'll post shock images on the main page?

FaceballMcDougal

All I know is Kotaku is probably the worst looking site I go to frequently... I typically read it through Google Reader but when I click through I always close the page a soon as possible.

So why would you want to copy it?

Echo

Seeing as the entire site is now an Error 403 I guess we're done here.