Jtgibson wrote:

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.

Last I recall, a security fix had the programmer no longer able to access any directory outside of the games natural folder on the hosts hard drive. If that really is the case, your security issue response just flies out the window right there. I'm not sure though, I -think- I read that in an update somewhere.

Tiberath wrote:

Last I recall, a security fix had the programmer no longer able to access any directory outside of the games natural folder on the hosts hard drive. If that really is the case, your security issue response just flies out the window right there. I'm not sure though, I -think- I read that in an update somewhere.

(Man, you replied to the whole post just for that one line? ;-))

The security fix allowed someone to overwrite directories when the game was hosted in Safe mode -- which was of course nasty. However, developers have always been able to have access to the root filesystem if the game is hosted in Trusted mode, and many games can deliberately stop working if they don't have access to Trusted mode. For a gullible host, it's deadly.

Even in Safe mode, however, you still have the ability to lock up the other person's computer by throwing the game into an infinite loop, which with a little infinite stack recursion can be prevented from tripping BYOND's infinite loop detection. You can also destroy files in the binary's directory... admittedly not that risky, but it's at least a lot more power than I'm comfortable with (imagine the outcry that would happen if Valve decided that they would be able to remotely delete files in Half-Life's directory).


Dark-Millenia wrote:

If the developer owns the game they have the full right to terminate your hosting ability and or suspend you from game play. As for the other stuff you mentioned the developers usualy take precautions to make sure that doesnt happen ,

As I've been trying to say numerous times, however, does the developer really own the game after they give copies away? I would say no. Say a well-respected board game company made a card game and freely distributed the rules. The board game company can't arbitrarily decide who has the right to possess those rules, and certainly doesn't have enforcement powers of taking away those rule cards from anyone who they dislike. They can issue mandatory recalls (though this has to apply to *all* owners of the product, not just the ones they dislike), and can issue cease and desist orders for anyone attempting to distribute or otherwise violate the board game company's copyright. Otherwise, the game belongs to the person who obtained it.

I can't arbitrarily go up to someone and say "Hey, you're using s_admin, but I don't like you, so you're going to have to stop using it, or so help me Science I'll get a lawyer and sue you for all twenty five dollars in your bank account!" I don't have the legal power because I distributed it to them in the first place. However, I certainly have the right to stop anyone who tries to post a direct knock-off of s_admin under their own name, as that's a violation of my copyright.

Note that for the most part, EULAs are rarely enforceable. Usually, EULAs are more declarations of how companies will enforce copyright and patents moreso than they are actually legally binding, particularly because there is no record of someone notarising their acceptance of the EULA.

Ok, I'm tired of using metaphors, here's a real world example:

When Strai published his "Hentai Hill" game on the hub, the BYOND staff decided to take it down a) because it reflected poorly on BYOND as a whole, and b) to protect the younger of those among the BYOND player-base.

It's the same with being able to control your hosts, just on a smaller scale.

Although, as previously stated, the developer will decide for themselves. Personally, I suggest leaving yourself the ability to control your own game in a worst case scenario. You don't need to flaunt or even use that ability, but it should be there.

Yeah, exactly. It's one thing if BYOND prevents him from hosting entirely, which they never did. They don't have that ability. They did deny him all direct access to the BYOND Hub, including its pager and authentication service -- what a BYOND ban does -- but didn't otherwise interfere in any way with his ability to use Dream Maker or provide his game for the perverts players that might have played it, provided he advertised it on his own and didn't try to use BYOND's website or location reporting features to make his creation known.*

Microsoft would do the same thing if someone posted how to make pornographic games on MSDN -- they'd cut off their MSDN access, but wouldn't try to issue a seizure order for their copy of Visual Studio. Even with their fancy high-paid lawyers there stands a pretty good chance that a halfway-decent defence attorney could counter-suit.


* Sadly, very few BYOND users these days even consider the possibility of advertising outside of BYOND, even though a goodly chunk of our current player base came directly from various advertised games (e.g., DB Epic Online brought in a huge swarm off of MPOGD, as did DBZ Spar). These days, it's all by viral referals ("Hey, join this poorly-developed game because I'm playing it and you don't want to be left out")... I do wonder what caused the change in thinking...

I don't think you should have the right to stop someone from running a program on their computer just because you had a hissy fit over them not allowing you to use up their bandwidth connecting to their computer. =P

wot

Hiding them is fine, you just shouldn't be able to force your way onto someone else's server, regardless of the game they are hosting. If you want to set up a special server that requires access to it or the hub password is automatically not given, thus hiding them, than so be it. As long as it is the game reaching out and requesting information, not opening itself up to you, the developer, to do whatever in. Honestly, I don't care if you have admin powers in a server that is not your own, but the host should still have the power to ban you, at least from a BYOND Key ban perspective(I wouldn't necessarily expect you to write a ban system that let you get banned).

Also, I'm not sure if the hub password can be changed after compiling, or during runtime.