So, I've been on byond for a couple of years now, roughly 5, and I've always enjoyed the games that can be found on here. Granted they are usually of NES quality, they have been fun nonetheless. Recently it has come to my attention that DoS/DDoS is a frequent problem in the community when multiple games are competing with each other. Example being Naruto GOA being taken down multiple times so a GOA rip can be advertised and played. Considering now that it takes money to get a hub on byond, why is there no protection for legitimate games?
What exactly am I paying $24 a year for? The tools are already free, I don't believe a hub and an avatar is worth $24 a year. There should be more benefits than being more susceptible to DoS/DDoS attacks. You don't need to know the IP of a server to connect to it. There are hundreds of ways you can link your game without using the IP address, so why does it show up every time when connecting to the server, have the server in your bookmarks, have the server selected in your pager, and etc? This is just asking for DoS/DDoS.
I find it's strange that there have been increased attacks on servers and there has rarely been anything done about it. It's quite scary that a community based on networking games are so wide open to attacks just because a player didn't follow the rules in the game and has a hissyfit and takes down a server.
You're paying $24 a year to keep BYOND from falling out of existence.
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To support the developers that so graciously gave you the tools to develop a game for free.
Also, get away from the script kiddies that make up most of BYOND's anime category and you won't have any problems with 'DoSing' - Something I'm yet to see done with an actual good game. | |
Anyone who is capable of launching a DoS should have no problem finding the IP their machine connects to, so any obfuscation we'd put in on that side would be futile. I'm not sure what measures we can put in to the servers to protect against this sort of thing, unfortunately. DoS/DDoS is a serious offense and should be reported at the ISP-level. We have had at least one user get in trouble for this.
We will be changing up the Member benefits very soon. I will make a post on it when our new stuff is ready. | |
Thank you for your reply, Tom.
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@Tom:
Would it be possible to mask the server IP with, to say, with the dollowing format; "byond://hubname:port" I don't know to what point this is feasible, just suggesting. | |
Because I have some cash atm I renewed my Membership, but after reading recent post I'm a bit uncertain why I renewed it in terms of what I'd get. xD
But even if there wasn't any benefits I wanted to give to Byond because first of all it's an incredible free 2d game engine that's moving forward. Plus I've had some great times on games created by people because the engine is free. I'd like to see that happening for years to come. :) | |
As Tom said, it's easy to get the list of outgoing/incoming connections (and their IPs) on your machine. Even if BYOND obfuscated the IP as it is listed on the hub (which I thought it already did, ie "byond://BYOND.world.1205781845" for Eternia), at some point the BYOND software has to connect to the game server's IP, and there's no way to hide that.
Anyways, DoS attacks are not unique to BYOND. Any server is susceptible to them. | |
First: I don't know what is Dos/DDos or whatever you are talking about.
Second, Third, etc.: Don't tell me you wouldn't donate the creator of this wonderful website?! I think it is fair. BYOND is pretty much what kids of this generation wish when they play their Playstation3, make a game. Now they just need a computer and don't need a whole studio. I think that BYOND still needs money to survive. I must admit when i wanted to get a BYOND member before it was only because i was able to change my "CSS". Now it's to advertise my game in the front page. It looks unfair but it's fair. Normally those tool would cost at least 30$ but i think we should all be thankfull to BYOND. | |
Not only that, you also get to suggest what you'd want in, and not forrget about how many assistance you get when it comes to a problem with the BYOND Software itself.
28$ a year is clrearly cheap, and people should not bitch about it. Edit: Yeah my bad, it is 24$ and not 28$. | |
@Fushimi
Isn't it twenty-four dollars? @The Monster Atlas I would say that 24$ is worth it for a year. | |
There's nothing you can do to prevent someone that's even remotely tech savvy from getting the IP of your server short of throwing in a middle man to hide it, then they'll just attack the middle man as well. It's all as simple as dumping a list of all of your connections, filtering out all going to localhost and then knowing what services you're currently using.
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$24 dollars is a shirt I rather go out and buy that.
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$24 dollars goes to my college tuition, unless Teka would like to forward me a membership, I don't see myself having membership status till 2013.
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If you don't have food for yourself, you shouldn't be spending your money on internet either.
What are you doing here if you don't even have a house to maintaing or anything to get on your mouth? Not saying they don't have the right to, or anything like that, but if they complain about it, because they are poor, I don't see why they waste the few money they have on such a things. I am 18, and never had a computer till I was 12, I got a computer witch could barely run a single program, and I mostlikely could play the old pinbal that came with it. I ever bitched about it, and neither do I now. Yesterday I payed an extra 2$ for the membership I have, because I pretty much spend that money on BYOND and keep it free. Tom is giving the tools for free, putting the work for free. As the only benefits for him are the traffic to the website that clicks adds (How much, 0.5%??), and the memberships. That's why I pretty much accept that memberships are a need for him, and for us. | |
The bills were paid before I ran low on food. The issue isn't that I don't have food curently, it's that I don't have money enough to get much more, let alone to spend on something so, how do I put this? Useless?
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BYOND doesn't expect people to contribute their money if they're not financially able to, it's more of an 'if you can support us, please do' type deal. Perks are just added on top of what's already meant to be a gesture of support -- Tom is already reworking what benefits Membership provides; the thing with Hub entries was mostly experimental and needs some refining.
Takes time to figure out what is and isn't working out when it comes to things like paid perks, no system that provides them ever figures out the ideal balance of what is and isn't worthwhile right off the bat. Just takes some reworking and eventually things will settle into a nice place where people get an equal sense of helping out BYOND and getting a fair amount in return. Without leaving the people who can't manage to acquire Membership too far out in the cold. | |
Sad thing about this is it does and has alienated the community base. How many people did byond use to have, how many did it have when it was still growing?
I think closing off some of the main features of byond Killed the growth rate of the community. I know it certainly extinguished my interest when I found out about the byond membership thing (by the fact that I was locked out of my own hub page that I wanted to completely change). All I can say is that it needs to be done right, you are using a Live Community as a Testbed for your "experiments" and the results can be poisonous to said community. Essentially all you did was separate the haves from the have not's. I understand the financial situation, it has been this way on byond for many many years, but perhaps it is about time to try a different path. After all, you attract more flies with honey then salt. | |
Agreed.