It's not your computer, though. If they want to host your game and do you a favour, you're doing a good job at discouraging them from doing so. Assuming I came into some good money and started getting some hosting arrangements going, I can say flat out that I wouldn't host a game that allowed a game developer free reign over the game on my server, as this would give them the ability to crash my server, disrupt my computer, or do various other things that I wouldn't like.

The knife cuts both ways -- there can be good hosts and bad developers out there. I'm not specifically saying that you are, but what if you hire someone on your staff who acts nice but occasionally goes on fits of destruction, and flatly denies it any time someone accuses him of it? Who are you going to trust, some lowly "host" or one of your trusted "staff"?

Leftley wrote:

Tiberath wrote:

This decision is up to the programmer themselves. What's wrong with that look on the topic? Let the programmer decide.

And indeed, the programmer--Lummox--did decide. Congratulations, you got exactly what you wanted!

You know what I mean. And I think that his action conflicts with the rule "BYOND staff do not police your games" where in fact, in doing that, he is. See, I can deliberately not see the point your making as well.

How does adding the ability for a host to ensure his server is safe from denial of service or flagrant offences to his belief structure at all mean the BYOND staff is policing your game? It means the host is policing your game. If you don't like that, that's your prerogative -- but don't go scapegoating someone who isn't involved. Hosts technically have all of these security measures anyway... I could add in rules to prevent your IP address from connecting to my server on the TCP/IP level, so exposing this functionality to the host isn't a big step.

The reason I would never host a game by a developer who wanted more control over the game than myself is because I have no means of verifying that the game is actually safe to host. I have no guarantees that a game won't throw my computer into an infinite loop. I have no guarantees that a game won't arbitrarily overwrite files in my root file system. I have no guarantees that a developer won't try to do something that denies me access to my own computer, or actually maliciously damages my computer... and you aren't exactly doing a good job convincing me you wouldn't. ;-)

If you can get people hosting your game with all of the inherent security risk that entails, I'm happy, but I think better host control over who has access to his computer is definitely a step in the right direction.

Note that I said control over who has access to the computer. Actual control over the game environment itself doesn't necessarily have to be opened up to the host, but at the same time, if you trust them enough to host your game without your explicit consent, you implicitly trust them enough to officiate it on your behalf as well. If you can trust someone to host a game but not officiate a game (or vice versa) your levels of trust are quite quirky. =)

So we come back to the original question: why is Squeegy allowed to download your game in the first place? If you assume everyone can be trusted, it'll blow up in your face. The idea is to control the problem at the source... make a vaccine, not a cure. =)

To refute that: I'm happily single right now. I've been without a girlfriend since September (though we mostly stopped seeing each other in July, it wasn't until September that I hunted down my closure ;-)) There are very few women who meet my exacting standards, but I'm not about to go around picking up random girls because I'm lonely (which I am, obviously, or I wouldn't have even brought this up in the first place). Just because you need something doesn't mean you should lower your expectations... as true in love as it is everywhere else. =)

I beg to differ, I have gone into his server, bonked him with my moderator stick and he has sat up and been good. Don't get me wrong, I believe every host has the ability to be a good one, they just need someone to punch them in the arm and put them back in line when they step out.

This is why, the developer needs to retain the ability to enter the game, and bonk the host. Put it this way, the developer knows the game inside and out. He knows how it's played, what the rules and most likely what the bugs are. In a sense, the programmer is "the one" because the programmer sees the code. The host, is the agent smith of the whole ordeal. The misunderstood character who just wants a hug. The host, thinks he has all the power to defeat the programmer. With his firewalls and his Dream Daemon. But all it takes is one little "http://www.tibbius.com/shutdown.php?s=1&ip=[ip]" for them to realise that no matter what they do, I'm in charge.

--

Please, you don't need a girlfriend and/or love to cure being lonely. The simple combination of an N64, soft-drink, late night and Mario Kart can easily fix the want and need for companionship. If you want to fix it more, add a mate to that combination. Your standards and expectations in that field have absolutely nothing to do with anything outside that field =P
I should know, I've been there. And now, I'm happily living with a very attractive and intelligent woman. But I still have my N64 on the floor over there <.<

Tiberath wrote:

It's their server? It's my game. I made the game, I put hours upon hours of effort, time and possibly money into this, there is no way I am going to allow someone to deny me the right to play it publicly because I wouldn't make them or their friend a moderator.

I'd like to state for the record that I'm semi-neutral here: I only relayed what information I knew about the new DreamDaemon. As a developer, I do believe that I should have some control over what hosts can and can't do with my game. While I do believe that developers shouldn't interfere with hosts if they've publically put their game up for download, I don't think that games with a limited set of hosts shouldn't get the same power.

Take Developer A, who gave the hosting files for his game to Host B and C whom he trusted not to abuse. All of the sudden, Host B starts to abuse. Because of the changes to DreamDaemon, Developer A is incapable of preventing Host B from hosting. All he can do now is change hub_password, which will not only cripple Host C but also allow Host B to continue hosting.
But if you have Developer D, who released his game into the public, you don't say he'd have that much control. If Host B would start abusing with Developer D's game, Developer D should not prevent him/her from hosting. After all, Developer D gave his game to the public.

I just think that with this new system, there's going to be a lot of problems with creators & hosts who have a relationship like Developer A has. It gives the hosts power over the developer: "if you don't do this, I'll continue hosting your game and steal players from your other servers with cheap promises."

Alathon wrote:

Find a solid host and your problem goes away.

Except that's the problem right there. Even if you find a host which appears to be pretty solid, in the future the host may get worse. Perhaps he always was an asshole but nobody really knew. If the host decides to become an evil factist dictator, there's nothing you can do about it -- even if you only gave the hosting files to that host with the agreement: agreements can't be defended!


Tiberath wrote:

Not by going to a webbrowser and typing something like: http://www.tibbius.com/games/admin/shutdown.php?action=kill &ip=[game_ip]&reason=Troublemaker&ban_host=1 &suggest_good_server=[AnotherIP] and whatever else I'd have to put in there.

Except the host can just use his firewall to block tibbius.com from connecting to his server, and perhaps your IP as well. The result? Your "shutdown" topic call will never be received, and the game will just remain active.


That's why I think there should be a built-in method to protect developers rather than hosts. Perhaps even a switch: the developer can set a variable at compile-time (perhaps world.developer_control) which is false by default. If it's true, DreamDaemon will warn the host before s/he is about to host that the developer wants to control who hosts their game. You could then use built-in functions (perhaps using the BYOND servers: the host can't block those without screwing up their own connection to the hub) to ban the host from hosting if you want to.

I'm just saying, give both a choice. If the developer releases the game to the public, by all means the variable should be false. But if the developer is giving the game to a single host, the developer at least has a guarantee that if his host screws up, he can't continue to ruin his reputation by hosting his game.

Jtgibson wrote:

If your public image is being destroyed because your game is being hosted by people who shouldn't be allowed to host it, you have only yourself to blame. Imagine instead if you were a weapon manufacturer. You sell your guns to anyone who wants them. Someone starts murdering people with one of your guns. Who is to blame? It's perfectly all right if you're manufacturing weapons, but if you have moral issues with people using them improperly (or personal issues with the protests that it's causing outside of your building), maybe you should be a little more careful with who you're giving them to.

But you agree you should be allowed to take the gun from them and refuse to sell to them in the future, don't you?

The discussion seems to be heading along two tangents:

1) Should hosts be allowed to ban developers from their server without the ability to override?
2) Should developers be able to selectively deny hosting rights to bad developers?

My question is, how exactly are these two questions related? If your system of preventing selected people from hosting relies on you logging onto the server hosted on their computer and making changes to a copy of the game located on their hard drive, I should not have to point out the security flaws you face. A decent host-blocking system pretty much requires remote access to begin with, so how is the new ban system really a problem?

DarkCampainger wrote:

Jtgibson wrote:

Jamesburrow wrote:

Possibly even banning the host from their own server.

See, this is where it goes from "strange" to "tacitly ludicrous". Using the Monopoly example again, say Parker Bros. doesn't like it that you've made a rule that anyone who wants to can bribe another player at any time using their money, because it's not built into the game. Parker Bros. further doesn't like it that you told Jimmy (a son of one of Parker Bros.' board members) down the street not to play because you felt his insistence on the rules "as they were written" made the game less fun. Parker Bros. comes into your house and kicks you out of your house.

I think that analogy is flawed. First off, according to the topic, they would only be able to take away the game itself, not your house. Second, it wouldn't be for something as silly as changing the rules. If someone wants to play you're game in a new (and possibly interesting) way, you should let them. However, once they pick up that board and start smashing it into other people's heads, I'd say it's time to take it away from them. Although this example is also moot because you paid for the game.

What I was specifically replying to, no. They were taking away the whole house. It's tacitly ludicrous to ban a host from something he is hosting, yet still try to use his system resources for the actual game.

Jtgibson wrote:

If your public image is being destroyed because your game is being hosted by people who shouldn't be allowed to host it, you have only yourself to blame. Imagine instead if you were a weapon manufacturer. You sell your guns to anyone who wants them. Someone starts murdering people with one of your guns. Who is to blame? It's perfectly all right if you're manufacturing weapons, but if you have moral issues with people using them improperly (or personal issues with the protests that it's causing outside of your building), maybe you should be a little more careful with who you're giving them to.

But you agree you should be allowed to take the gun from them and refuse to sell to them in the future, don't you?

I'm still convinced that giving developers that kind of power over other people's computers, even if they intend to "only take away the gun", is quite dangerous. Even in that case, no, the gun can't exactly be taken away from the criminal until the criminal is prosecuted for his behaviour, and that implies that there are laws against using guns the wrong way... and, as Leftley said, this bring up a circular reinforcement issue of developer control and reputation, when this can easily be nipped in the bud by disclaiming all responsibility for a host's actions.

All it takes is one bad developer who wants to seek revenge on a "bad host" and things start going awfully awry. For instance, what if a bad developer says a game absolutely must be hosted in Trusted mode (and deliberately breaks the game if it isn't), and uses this power to destroy system files of a bad host if the host does something the developer doesn't like? Not all of BYOND's developers are as savoury as Tiberath and I... the existence of literal thousands of rips proves it.


If you want a host to give your game a good image, you must control the host, not the game. The simplest way to do this is to prevent the host from obtaining the game in the first place -- vaccination against a problem. The more-difficult, and generally pointless way of doing this is preventing the host from hosting the game after he has already obtained a copy -- curing a problem. Any doctor worth his salt will tell you that it's always better to vaccinate instead of cure.

Developers complain at loud volume that their games are being misused by the public at large. I would say that this is because the developer is misusing their own game. If a developer wants to be protective of his creation, then he should be protective of his creation and set up a contractual hosting arrangement to ensure that his game is safe from meddling by people who aren't supposed to meddle. Opening up a game to the community at large and then complaining when the community at large turns it back against them is like giving guns to terrorists and then complaining about terrorism -- pure hypocrisy. That's the point I was making.