This game has been reported before, but I thought I would report it again so something can be done about it persistently being visible.
http://www.byond.com/games/Lizard_Sphere_X/1
It's Dragon Universe, a Dragonball fan game that accepts real money for in-game perks. This violates international intellectual property law and is one of the games that has already gotten BYOND a C&D by the Dragonball IP holder. It had changed things to comply, but several months ago, it quietly changed those things back to the Dragonball IP without notifying BYOND's admins. Therefore, it should be once again delisted and made inaccessible from BYOND's website and the BYOND program's active/popular list. I would even recommend removing its hub.
Fan games that do not accept real money, even donations, are overlooked by the copyright holders, as they are harmless and only generate interest in their IP.
Here are a couple of other games that also accept real money for in-game perks:
Dragon Ball Finale: http://www.byond.com/games/Kawkawawka/unknown
Dragon Ball Generations: http://www.byond.com/games/Sweep/DBGenerations
Ryuujin wrote:
Dragon Ball Finale: http://www.byond.com/games/Kawkawawka/unknown That hub isn't even set to visible, so there's literally nothing I can do about it. Even if it were listed, the most I could do is leave it as Pending ( which is default status for newly submitted hubs ). Dragon Ball Generations: http://www.byond.com/games/Sweep/DBGenerations That hub is already set to Rejected, which is an old status we no longer support. Think of it as Pending, except it doesn't appear on the hub owners member page. Super Saiyan X wrote: BYOND does not police what happens in-game anymore. As far as I know, as long as the hub does not mention anything that violates copyright. With that said, this is how we handle hubs now. | |
From BYOND's own Terms of Service:
--- 2. CONDUCT User content uploaded to or displayed on the website can be filtered or removed at the discretion of the BYOND staff. Items that warrant such action include, but are not limited to: pornographic, racist, or otherwise vulgar content; content that is intended to incite or attack a particular user or group; content that causes a significant use of bandwidth for purposes that don't benefit the BYOND community in some manner acceptable to the BYOND Staff; content that breaks any laws or contracts. Content violations as well as inappropriate conduct in other areas of the BYOND system, such as creating pager spam or harassing other users, may warrant termination of the BYOND account. BYOND Staff reserves the sole right to determine what conduct is inappropriate. -- If this is inaccurate, then please update the Terms of Service to reflect the new paradigm. | |
You'll note that it specifically states:
"User content uploaded to or displayed on the website..." I don't see a donation button on their hub, so they aren't strictly-speaking breaking that rule. I'm not a part of the BYOND staff, but speaking as a community member, anything that happens off the website is between the game's owner and the other party. I don't see why BYOND should use what limited manpower it has getting in the middle of it. | |
Ryuujin wrote:
From BYOND's own Terms of Service: Looks accurate to me. We don't police in-game content, so going based off of hub content only two of the hubs you mentioned should be filtered or removed ... which they are. | |
All you have to do is make it to the character creation screen to realize that it's still a Dragonball game. Add the fact that there's an in-game store to the mix and it's a recipe for another cease and desist.
It shouldn't be listed. | |
Balzack wrote:
All you have to do is make it to the character creation screen to realize that it's still a Dragonball game. Add the fact that there's an in-game store to the mix and it's a recipe for another cease and desist. Again, we don't police in-game content anymore. It shouldn't be listed. It was just delisted due to another user spotting content on the hub that goes against our policy. But I expect another post to be made soon or for this one to continue on when/if they remove the content in question. | |
I think it should perhaps be clarified that fan-games can be listed on the front page as long as they don't identify that they're a fan-game on their hub? That seems to be the general notion that I'm getting from this thread, at least.
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There's a difference between policing hubs for rips or quality control and turning a blind eye to people who are overtly using the site to break the law.
People who make money off of an IP that they don't own are committing theft, and they are scum. I don't see the point in protecting them when the hard work of so many other people who aren't doing that sort of crap is at stake. I sincerely hope that this ostrich approach to hub management doesn't end up biting anyone in the ass later on. | |
I'm with Balzack on this. I can understand the difficulty in policing every single game that's live, but it shouldn't be all that time consuming to check out which projects BYOND is advertising on their front page and whether or not they're breaking the law.
I also think it would be a good idea to establish whether or not BYOND is going to advertise fan-games on its front page. From what I remember, the change was made to put original projects in the spotlight and encourage their development. If fan-game owners can now just remove any copyright infringement from their hub, and be listed for it, I assume they'll do just that if they're aware of this policy - because the free exposure is certainly worth it. | |
Balzack wrote:
There's a difference between policing hubs for rips or quality control and turning a blind eye to people who are overtly using the site to break the law. All I can say is if you don't like our current listing policy, Contact Support. | |
Keep in mind that soon, when the web client is available, games will be hosted from the hub page and at that point any infringing content will be quite public and hence reviewable. The current policy is simply to avoid the nuisance of having to review games, where content is constantly changing. It has nothing to do with promotion of questionable material as the web traffic is pretty much negligible in the grand scheme of things (our audience is almost entirely on the pager). Again, if the web client is successful, I expect this to change.
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Awesome. Fun times ahead!
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Derp
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So basically we can make and host fan games and they can get advertised and we can accept money under the table, and BYOND can know that there accepting money, im pretty sure your asking for trouble but meh don't affect me lol
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LILMESSI18 wrote:
So basically we can make and host fan games and they can get advertised and we can accept money under the table, and BYOND can know that there accepting money, im pretty sure your asking for trouble but meh don't affect me lol It's got nothing to do with BYOND apart from the fact it's toolkit has been used.. BYOND is a toolkit you can make whatever you want with it.. Allowing a donation button on the HUB would land BYOND in trouble for certain games, which is why it's not allowed in the first place.. | |
Yes but its advertised on the site as in Python has a toolkit online but what you make with it isn't on there site (there's even a link to the game on byond site). and all you have to do is google games and they show up so making it not show up on the sites search is quite useless, i've never even used the sites search for anything.
anyone can come here and see this topic and see that byond knows that there accepting money and continue to leave it on there site. | |
There is a donation button on this hub, and in the comments the hub owner pretty much says that since other games are doing it, they're doing it to.
http://www.byond.com/games/Yusuke11/NarutoFatalDreams | |
I dunno, but I do know DU was just recently re-listed.