The Goatse meme as a lesson: Sqword developer teaches a lesson to websites that wanted to make money on the game
One of the creators of the free game Sqword, Josh Simmons, has been quite inventive in his attack on websites that have decided to make money on his development without permission, writes PC Gamer.
Sqword is a game in which users try to make words. The principle is that the longer the word, the more points the participant gets. The game was freely available on sqword.com.
However, it turned out that Sqword attracted interest not only from players but also from several portals with the aim of monetization. The game was placed on websites using iFrame along with their own ads to generate revenue.
According to 404, Josh Simmons learned about the situation and took action. He decided to use the popular but slightly shocking meme Goatse, which will be displayed if Sqword is tried to be placed on a website using iFrame.
“The mature and responsible thing to do would have been to add a content security policy to the page”, the developer said. “I am not mature so instead what I decided to do was render the early 2000s internet shock image Goatse with a nice message superimposed over it in place of the app if Sqword detects that it is in an iFrame.”
This meme is so famous that it needs no description. But in case anyone has forgotten what it’s about, they should be brave enough to search for it in a search engine. The extent of the developer’s revenge will become clear.
Josh Simmons says that this image ended up appearing on at least 8 domains that he does not own. And, according to him, this is one of his greatest achievements as a developer. He called his action a lesson for others.