Amazon AppStore WTF

Amazon just send me a notice:

Protecting intellectual property rights is important to us. Please provide documentation demonstrating that you have the right to use Spider Solitaire in title, description and images… The documentation must be either a confirmation letter from the intellectual property rights holder or a copy of the applicable license.

This is pure insanity. I don’t know what to do, it’s quite a shock. For another game I got the same message concerning using Spider Solitaire in description…

It might be due to the fact that the name is already copyrighted or something, cant just solitaire be ok?

This is specifically spider solitaire and the second one is a spiderette (a version of spider) - it’s hard to describe it without using the phrase “spider solitaire” and lack of “spider solitaire” in the title of spider solitaire means I will get ZERO downloads. I also checked and it is not trademarked in USA. I asked Amazon about it, they should respond after the weekend. Spider is just a generic name of a type of solitaire like Klondike Solitaire is a name of another.

Maybe some big company released their Spider Solitaire on Amazon AppStore and started this action or something… Or Amazon is testing some detecting of apps that use names of other apps and went overboard with it.

Well, at least they are much better than Google Play, they would have taken down the app and probably your account with it. If (when) they find out. (if you have the same app there)

There are hundreds of Spider Solitaires (named exactly like that or with some addition) everywhere, on Google Play, on Amazon AppStore, on websites and all solitaire packs have spider solitaire in their description, many include it in the title - it’s the most popular type of solitaire. I suppose it must be a mistake, otherwise - if for example Google Play will also decide to remove them - it will be a masacre.

It’s not about “if they found out” - I have certainly done nothing wrong. It’s as if someone went after games named Chess or Checkers.

There is a posibilty that Amazon wrote a bot that checks the description and title and searches for titles of other games that are on Amazon - and since there are a few Spider Solitaires on Amazon already it sends this automatic message. If that is the case they will probably qickly fix it because many developers will be affected because of common terms and game types.

Dude, remember when candy was a generic name too?

While waiting for Amazon to reply, I’d suggest you rename your gplay game for time being… maybe like “spider cards solitaire” or something… might be very damaging to your ranking though.

It could be like what you said, someone released their game and wants to screw everyone else.

Hope this gets resolved soon… good luck!

One of the apps was just approved (pending action disappeared), let’s see what will happen with the other one. They must’ve read my plea though.

DO NOT ASSUME they read your plea and ‘blessed’ your app.

The dept that approves apps is different from the one with the ban hammer…

Anyway, they informed me that they’ve received the information and are “reviewing” the case now in response to the ticket that I’ve started. Only one of those two apps still has the “pending action” note (the one with the name they don’t like in the title). We’ll see. :slight_smile: Also this is Amazon - not Google - I never heard of any ban hammer there, more likely they will just remove that one app.

Sorry to heat that Magnesus.
Any chance it is caused by the fact that Microsoft also offers a game with exactly the same title bundled in Windows?
Good luck

Very unlikely. I’m almost certain that it’s automated - when you update the game Amazon now checks if it uses in title/description names of other games that are in the AppStore. Since there are already some Spider Solitaires there (no surprise), it caused an alarm. My theory is that it is a new thing implemented after too many Flappy Bird clones, posibbly checking game names that have at least two words (so Solitaire won’t cause alarm, but Spider Solitare or Klondike Solitaire will). But I might be wrong and it might be because some company claimed Spider Solitaire for itself suddenly (but there is no new Spider Solitaire on Amazon - only the old ones like mine).

Microsoft’s Spider solitaire is just called Spider and Microsoft never did anything about the clones or even tried releasing that game outside Windows itself.

Now I receive a message (the same over and over) every few hours about another app - one that was supposed to be free app of the day soon (I might lose that opportunity because of that) - the app was already cleared and reviewed. They want me to send “a confirmation letter from the intellectual property rights holder or a copy of the applicable license” (I don’t even know what it is) of using even more generic name (as generic as chess or solitaire, you wouldn’t be able to get a copyright for that name even if you wanted). Maybe the reviewer of my apps on Amazon doesn’t like me for some reason or it’s a bot doing it all automatic.

I’ve contacted all people from Amazon I have e-mails of, and I’ll see what they will say.

edit: The game is now again live not “pending action” after my ton of e-mails. But no information or apology. The first one (the Spider Solitaire one) has still the update with “pending action” status, but old version is available.

The problem is now solved for all my games. I reached high enough and they apologized and fixed everything. :slight_smile: Topic can be closed now.