I think it has to do with recent new fans. Genkai appears to be newer, so I'd expect the fans to be more recent as well, pushing it up. The other one is a bit older, even though it has more fans.

SS13 is at the top because I guess it gets a steady stream of new fans, even though it's very old.

It's not like some mod is trying (or able) to promote these games, and I don't think the hub knows if a game is a rip. If a rip is higher than an original game, it's because of recent fans, or something simple like that.

That would require time and resources to investigate what is and isn't a rip, we moved away from doing that on purpose some time ago -- it simply wasn't worth the effort it took.

Doing better based on what though? That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Of course. It's not even the fact that it's my opinion though. I was under the impression the original games would be top-listed, or at the very least listed above the copies. An older post from Tom (reference):

I think rips are a problem in principle, but trying to monitor them is a burden and a waste of time (since, honestly, most rips have some changes and then it becomes a judgement call by the mod to decide what is "original" and what is "stolen"). My feeling is that if people want to make these things, let them, but hopefully we can automate the indexing so that they aren't so promoted. Since most rips don't have very many fans, using that in our metric, as well as some heuristics to look at game tags, seems to work OK.

And I wholeheartedly agree. But when you see blatant copies listed above the game we all know is the original, that is where I become confused.

Edit: See how BLN is at the top after being made under a new hub? Perfect example.

Nadrew wrote:

That would require time and resources to investigate what is and isn't a rip, we moved away from doing that on purpose some time ago -- it simply wasn't worth the effort it took.

Pretty much this. Moderators that dealt with hubs spent a lot of their time arguing with users regarding whether or not the game was a rip. This eventually led to pissed off players spamming the moderators, and the hub creators contacting support to complain.

I suspect the discerning of what is/isn't a rip wasn't a big cost on the moderators that handled it, at the time. It's more as Lige alludes to in his last post, the associated back and forth you have with members of the game's community and developers as a consequence of the decision.

BYOND had put itself moderatively in a strange place, by that system. You have a fairly young community with plenty of time, and expectation of being able to appeal or bully down decisions from the moderators who were responsible for processing these things. If a person did not like your decision, they tried to go around you (which didn't work) or above you to Tom (which didn't work either).

BYOND ultimately needed to do a cost/benefit on that, as a policy. The number of new games is not too grand, the benefits to top listing similarly is not too grand for the games holding those positions, certainly versus other means of marketing. Yet the community friction and volunteer cost were disproportionately quite high.

If the games listings were more coveted and had a much greater traffic impact, then the conclusion might be different. But then I hope, the mechanisms of listing and featuring would also have been different, by the same token.

I can understand the well intended concern here, that BYOND highlights it's best, new original titles etc to outside viewers and inside alike.

It's just as it happens, the 'outside viewer' pool of people that actually come to the site of their own accord and land on that page is pretty small. Normally you have to reach out to them on other sites, as you've hinted at, Kaio.

We're just going to remove the games page in an update later this year. Maybe that will encourage people to try to get their audience outside of BYOND.. or not. Either way, it's not fair to leave the judgement as to what constitutes a good or bad game or a rip or original up to the moderators here.