Oh all the websites I have been to that associate with game making and development, BYOND is the only one with rampant and blatant stealing going on.
Admittedly, not every website I've been to has been totally innocent. Most commonly people steal graphical resources from commercial games in these websites, music is second most common. But actually stealing someone elses work is highly uncommon, and when someone does do this, they're lambasted for it and then expelled from the community.
Examples would include every RPG Maker community ever.
By default, all older versions of RPG Maker (and I am pretty sure XP as well) allow anyone to open up RPG Maker games, and edit them. Effectively, you have to give people your source code to let them play the game.
Stealing each others games is pretty much unheard of in these communities.
Game Maker is similar. Years ago a decompiler was released that let people decompile any Game Maker game, take any resources, edit the game and recompile it in anyway they wanted (and I think it still works).
Despite this, stealing of games and even graphics was never a big issue. And it still is not.
Hell, it's not uncommon for people to give out their source codes, even on popular games (Spelunky for example). These are hardly ever used to steal work, only to improve it when the developer abandons it, or for educational purposes.
I'm not going to get into a debate about rips and what not, but the fact of the matter is, a large part of BYOND is full of thieving bastards.
Seriously guys, this is why BYOND will never be taken seriously anywhere, and will never reach the success of the two previously mentioned programs (despite being vastly superior to one of those programs in almost every single way).
Isn't it about time you people grew up a bit? You're like that jerk kid in the playground, who'd knock peoples Pokemon cards out of peoples hands, then scream "SCRAMBLE" (or you're like the vultures who dives on the ground after the poor guys cards).
No one likes you, and no ones ever going to want to play with you while you act like this.
ID:95987
 May 26 2010, 1:16 pm
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We're going to crackdown on this. It really is easier said than done because we don't have the manpower to police every game. As such, removing rips may involve restricting some of the previously free privileges on BYOND, such as assuming new hub entries are not-rips (as opposed to requiring approval ahead of time). We're working that out.
I agree it's a huge problem and that is both my fault for not taking a tougher stance and the community's for taking advantage of it. Years ago when we first introduced BYOND our community was much more mature and accommodating and that's where my lenience first came from-- from a naive trust that it would continue to stay this way. Thanks for noting BYOND as being superior to those programs, though! | |
That's because Game Maker games an RPG Maker games don't have huge online communities playing these multiplayer projects together.
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Tom has been a hero by being as helpful as I could have expected him to be by the way, and hes doing it while making a really awesome update.
Also, in my opinion BYOND has infinitely more potential than gamemaker and I havent heard of the other. I dont care for Gamemaker, I found it boring and unintuitive compared to BYOND. Also, for everybody following this topic, some of the proposals Tom has in conjunction with new BYOND features incomming will be just create an incredible amount of developer assurance and feelings of safety. | |
SuperAntx wrote:
That's because Game Maker games an RPG Maker games don't have huge online communities playing these multiplayer projects together. What does that have to do with anything? Whether a game is multiplayer or not, how does that effect how often people will steal it? Also, Spelunky has a pretty large community. Probably larger than any BYOND game, significantly so. It is open source, and yet people are not stealing it and claiming it as their own work. I'd go as far as to say there is a significant amount of Game Maker and RPG Maker games that have bigger communities and player bases than the majority of BYOND games (if not BYOND it's self). Again, they're not stolen and traded like Pokemon cards. | |
"You're like that jerk kid in the playground, who'd knock peoples Pokemon cards out of peoples hands, then scream "SCRAMBLE""
I lol'd at this reference. I remember when people use to do that, good times... The community is filled with a lot of people who don't even understand that there is a full-fledged community. Tons of kids who want to own a game because it's fun, because they like to feel that they're in charge of something. I have a cousin who would very much like to have a ripped source code to create his own game. I think we have the wrong idea of these people. They're not immature by any means, but they just don't understand that there's a whole community of people who feel this is wrong. They don't understand that they're actually stealing from someone. The majority of BYOND players don't get involved with the community and normally stick to one game, which they idealize and upon learning they can make their own game they soon learn it's much easier to actually have the source of the game. I notice frequently people try to advertise their creations that happen to be rips every now and then, a lot of them completely unaware what a rip even is or even not caring because they don't understand the idea of someone stealing. As my cousin would tell me: "What's the big deal?" To fixing the problem I think we need to make people understand what exactly is the big deal... Idk, just kinda rambling. >_> | |
No your absolutely right, there is a really bad attitude that is specific to BYOND only that I think everybody who wants things to improve need to unite against in being tolerating of IP theft.
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If anything the major rips rips (I mean major by the ones in the first few pages)
should be deleted and have the user banned. | |
The Magic Man wrote:
What does that have to do with anything? Whether a game is multiplayer or not, how does that effect how often people will steal it? It's the community aspect. As Dan had mentioned, the dude ripped his game because he wanted attention. It's the same reason why most anime games have more administrators than players. | |
I think Zack101 makes a really great point about a lot of the influx coming from kids who want to make a game and not knowing where to start-- the ease of immediate game creation is, after all, one of the big things that distinguishes us from those other programs.
Heck, we could even keep those around if the original author is willing.. I just think they need to be under the umbrella of the original game so that we don't have zillions of clones floating around. Someone made a suggestion a while back of organizing those games under the original hub entry (as "homages"), which would in turn get it more traffic instead of competing with it. | |
Zack101 is probably correct to some degree. A lot of the people making rips are more like the people who run in after someone shouts "SCRAMBLE".
They probably don't know, or even think how it effects the original owner. It is for them free stuff, which they can use to make their game which they always wanted to. But there is a serious issue with the people who do the initial ripping. These are the jerks who knock the cards out of your hand and scream "SCRAMBLE". You cannot say these people are anything other than malicious. They are actively deceiving people to gain trust, stealing and distributing work. The majority of these people, even after being told it is wrong, having links/hubs deleted still try to distribute this stolen work. Although I was addressing the general attitude and behavior of BYOND, I was addressing this specific group of people more than the ones who just use rips. | |
Tom wrote:
Someone made a suggestion a while back of organizing those games under the original hub entry (as "homages"), which would in turn get it more traffic instead of competing with it. ^ THIS! ^ I don't see how blatantly "deleting" their games will help really, as many are immature and have the "Whats the big deal?" mentality this would just develop a-lot of angry individuals and much trolling and rage filled post. (No, even if they don't host the best contribution their presence is still desired in a developing environment/community as BYOND.) Letting them host their "homages" would be a fine idea, although this might take away from the original game itself as people prefer the easier route of things so this could work negatively as well. | |
Allowing Homages will both improve the situation slightly by giving credit back to the original game owner while at the same time doing probably exponentially more damage by legitimizing the act of source code trading and game rips.
I'm all for people who choose to make their project open source have this sort of treatment.. but I dont see that solution working in a positive way at all, it would make the owners of rips act with impunity. | |
The problem is not rips. The problem is a bunch of young kids who don't know anything about game design or programming. There's nothing inherently wrong with rips, there's something wrong with writing crappy games, then letting the source code to those crappy games get released, only to be further butchered.
If SilkWizard released the code to NEStalgia or Proelium or anyone else with any other awesome original game right now, there'd be nothing wrong with the rips. They wouldn't be popular, they wouldn't be seen, they wouldn't be anything- because you can't take an awesome game that's made well and give it to a bunch of 12 year olds and expect anything decent to come out, especially nothing that will surpass the original. Take a game like Zeta or GoA? Then you have a problem. | |
Airjoe's comment +1
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I think byond was just unlucky in that it ended up attracting the younger block of anime fans (a community that as a whole is already extremely self-entitled), and the whole rip culture started off of those early anime games that has pretty much tainted BYOND to this day. Where as RPG maker had the benefit of not being multiplayer (and it did have a lot terrible anime games), and game maker had the benefit of starting off as a learning tool for students, and eventually got bought up by a company.
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Way to comment delete.
Edit: Then the root comment "hence one of the idiots" should have been deleted. | |
I deleted the comments because this was an interesting topic and a few idiots had to ruin it.
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Airjoe wrote:
Take a game like Zeta or GoA? Then you have a problem. Zeta was awesome. Practically the foundation of BYOND. It's the rips that ruined the good name. | |
You know what the kicker is? The guy who distributes my source talked to me yesterday. He says hes my bigget fan, hes the same guy who sent me messages on youtube all the time under the name "MasterdanJR" to tell me how much he likes my game. The whole thing was done in some rediculous attempt to either a) Get attention from me or what explicitly said was to b)Get attention from everybody else.
Something will be done about this, soon.