I've been robbed.

I’m not sure whether to feel abused or proud. I’ve just stumbled across someone who took my work and is passing it off as their own.

Back in 1998, I came across a JavaScript-powered Memory game written by Martin Staflund. The basic mechanics of the game worked fine, but there was a lot of nifty features that I wanted. So I took the code and started adding features, cleaning up code, and making it generally more customizable. Web promotion guru Jim Wilson asked me if he could use the game on his site and let his readers copy it for their sites and quite a few people ended up using it.

I’d nearly forgotten about that game until today when someone asked me for a copy of it. Curious to see who was using it, I did a few Google searches for various parts of the code and turned up a couple of sites that use it. One of those sites in particular caught my eye.

BigBad is a Web development company with a section of their site called “WebToys” that has games and fun stuff:

While WebToys are fun, they are created to convey the innovative technical proficiency that is behind the projects that we do. Further, WebToys demonstrate the collaboration between developers and designers that happens behind the scenes. Also, we like to build fun things.

You guessed it, one of those WebToys is my Memory game. It’s not that I mind them using the code — that’s why I created it. What I’m unhappy about is that they are passing the work off as their own to show potential clients the quality of “their” work.

Looking at the source code of the game, it even still has a comment inserted by Internet Explorer when they saved the page from JimWorld to their computer: “saved from url=(0038)http://jimworld.com/memory/memory.html”

I’m willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt. Elsewhere on their site, the code is credited to “Tim Seit, Applications Developer, BigBad.” Perhaps Mr. Seit didn’t tell his employers that he didn’t actually write any of that code. BigBad may be blissfully unaware of this mis-step.

In that case, BigBad, if you’re reading this and need some high-quality application development, let me know. I’m sure we can work together.

Update: It seems I’m not the only one who has been ripped off. BigBad’s A Better Mousetrap was developed by Karl Meissner and the code still contains his copyright, but clicking the About link on the game indicates that BigBad built it.

A Better Mousetrap was designed by Brian Short, Senior Technologist, BigBad, and Melanie Hannon, Designer, BigBad, using client-side Javascript, and server-side Active Server Pages.

The Line It Up slider puzzle was originally built by Port80. BigBad removed the original copyright, but a quick Google for some of the code contents turns up a site that also uses the slider but was decent enough to keep the copyright.

And just in case the page disappears, just remember that Google tends to remember such things. And even though the Wayback Machine doesn’t have a copy of the page, it might later.