The only real problem with fangames is that they're a nuisance to deal with. You have to track down who ripped what and blah blah blah. You never have that problem with non-fangames (or at least to my knowledge) because it's generally immature people making fangames who don't want to TRY to make games.

If you remove fangames from the listing, you solve a lot of headache on both sides. People won't make fangames if they know that they can't be listed, and Admins won't have to worry about tracking down who ripped what. Not to mention the obvious legality issue going away.

Calus CoRPS wrote:

Lugia319 wrote:

The only real problem with fangames is that they're a nuisance to deal with.

They really are.

First of all, you have to have knowledge of the legitimate fan games out there. If you do not, then it'll be impossible to tell if Fan Game B is a rip of Fan Game C or a continuation of Fan Game A. It blows my mind!

Which brings up the next point: a transfer in ownership. So many of these game owners quit, give out their code to a select few, and then return. It's impossible to figure out who is telling the truth.

Don't forget games using other non-BYOND game graphics. The rule states that all games using graphics without the permission of the author should be rejected. Yet, it seems like this only applies to non-fangames.


For the longest time I have avoided touching fan games in the slush pile. Lately, I have tried helping out and I utterly regret it. I do not have much knowledge of the current legitimate fan games out there. There is so much transferring of ownership, liars, rips, and so on. It just isn't worth dealing with.

If there were minimum quality standards for being listed on the hub, almost all of these games would be thrown out for lack of quality. It'd take three seconds to make the call instead of going through everything you described.

I would just like to state for the record that each of you who went on to type a lengthy reply debating the legality of fan games on the BYOND Hub should take a look in the mirror and be ashamed of yourselves.

This whole debate can be summed up with just one question: Who cares?

Obviously it's not the IP holders, since they're not filing DMCA complaints en-masse. (And even if they were, BYOND would give no contest.)

The only people who care about whether or not fan games are listed (front page or behind the scenes) are you guys. And it's starting to get tiresome watching the same debate over and over.

Tom ought to be doing something else rather than arguing with a bunch of whiny know-it-alls about technicalities about whether or not to list fan games on a platform that isn't even widely known yet (hint: such as making the bug/feature tracker a part of every BYOND Hub!), and the rest of you should be working on developing games and trying to make this community a better place instead of picking fights.

And one last thing: If you want to sort all BYOND games by quality then you're going to have a longer debate about the order in which games should be ranked. Technically speaking Space Station 13 is the most popular game on BYOND, but you don't hear many members of this community giving it a lot of praise anymore.

The most important factors to consider here is that Tom & Lummox JR need to spend time developing BYOND instead of arguing about pointless trivia like this (while ignoring some stuff like easy-to-implement features that may of have been added and tested in the time needed to post their collective responses!) and that the developers of this community need to produce quality games.

It has to start somewhere, and this place isn't going to magically reinvent itself with the removal of fan games.

Lugia319 wrote:

I think the main problem people have with fangames being listed is consistency.

I don't think so, and I will now elaborate on this.

Some fangames get to be listed because they don't use content from BYOND games, but they do use content from games such as Dragonball Z: Legacy of Goku. This is a violation of the listing guidelines.

This is not a problem with consistency, but rather a game using materials from a proprietary game outside of BYOND which would definitely violate someone's copyright.

There is also the case of tracking rips (a very prominent feature of fangames). It's a real hassle on the listing admin's part to figure out who ripped what or who sold what to who and why their game is still up. An easy solution is to just wipe fangames from the listing. That's not to say that they can't be made, just that they can't be listed.

Wiping fan games from the listing is a no-no since that's just another step in the wrong direction. Managing which hub entries get listed and which ones don't is nice, but that feature should be taken in moderation.

I think that while there should be a few guidelines towards getting a game featured and rules set in place for listed games to prevent obvious copyright issues (such as taking artwork from proprietary games developed outside of BYOND) there is no need to police everything.

But as you can see, an attempt is made to do just that and it results in pointless debates such as this. Even if you'd open up the hub entries again and allow everything except for what I mentioned above to be listed nothing bad ought to happen. People might whine but they're already doing that now, and it's much more consistent if you don't discourage developers from making a fan game.

In fact, I think the overabundance of rips on the hub entry might convince people to develop good games to try to banish them, which would be more preferable than these debates.

Personally, I don't see why listing is such a big deal, but if you take a look at the slushpile, look at how many games are being rejected for ripped content. Why is that number so high? Because BYOND is not remaining a community of developers. It's becoming a community of maybe 100 developers (Probably being generous) and OVER NINE THOUSAND people who just want to copy someone else's game and stick their name on it. And I believe THAT is the issue that is being addressed.

This is not a community filled with developers. This is a community filled with elitist brats who think they're better than others because their code is somehow "better". This is a community filled with newbies who use other people's work because they don't know how to make something by themselves (and nobody is going to really help them since the oldbies want to force them to adhere to their standards of writing code so badly it's scaring people off).

The reason this community sucks so badly is not because of the hordes of people ripping games; it's because of the people that enable them to do so through inactivity, laziness and acting like tossers.

It's hard to attract serious game developers when your site is full of little kid fangames.

YouTube likely has a whole bunch of video's on it made by kids acting stupid (I wouldn't know as I don't frequent it myself), but AFAIK it's still being used for serious business.

The fact that BYOND is polluted with these copies of copies isn't the problem; the underlying problem to all of this is the lack of people willing to develop their own games, and the lack of progress BYOND has had before Lummox JR started picking up the pieces.

At least the people who are ripping games have a game and may be bringing in more people. IMHO you can't say that for most of the gurus here -- even the ones that do have a game don't have one which has a large player base.

In fact, the only developer who fits the profile of having a large fan base without having developed either a fan game or a copy of another game is Exadv1, and he has since left the community. We can only guess why he left, but I'm sure it has had something to do with the behavior of those around him.

In summary, what we need is this:

• Developers producing new games with BYOND, which can be used to showcase the usefulness of BYOND to potential members.
• Tom and Lummox JR to continue developing BYOND, and hopefully getting some of these silly "paper cut" issues resolved.

If either one of the above fails then I believe BYOND won't survive. It will continue to exist for a while but without an influx of new games promoting new developers and a robust system also promoting new developers eventually all that's going to be left are the "little games for fun" you can actually see right now.

And now that I have written such a lengthy post I shall look in the mirror myself and let everyone around me hear an audible sigh.

JBoer wrote:

the rest of you should be working on developing games and trying to make this community a better place instead of picking fights.

Not listing fan games would make the community a better place. Not only would it increase the quality of the average listed BYOND game, it'd free up a lot of people's time. The BYOND staff devotes a lot of time to problems caused by fan games and rips. Many changes to the site have been made to try to balance how fan games and original games get shown. People also spend time reviewing games to determine which ones aren't rips and should be listed.

The amount of time spent debating this issue is much less than the time spent dealing with this issue. If this discussion stopped, the staff's increased free time would be measured in minutes per month. If the site's support for fan games stopped, their free time would increase by much, much more.

JBoer wrote:

Forum_account wrote:

Not listing fan games would make the community a better place.

Negative. I suggest you go read my post if you want to find out why not.

The staff has spent lots of time making changes to the website to better deal with fan games. If they never had to do that they'd have had a lot more time to devote to other things. In the future, I'm sure they'll spend more time dealing with fan games too. I'm not claiming this would fix all problems but it would absolutely improve the community if the staff had more time to devote to real improvements.

Sweeping it under the rug isn't going to eliminate the problem; you have to face it and deal with it or it will get worse.

I'm not sure what you mean there. What do you mean by "you have to face it and deal with it"? Deal with what? How do you deal with it?

I'm hoping that you people will see reason here; there is no point arguing about any of this since there aren't even enough popular original games to populate the front page, let alone enough to warrant these kind of restrictions.

Fan games aren't shown on the front page, so it's already populated with original games that meet these restrictions.