In response to SilkWizard
Sorry. It's more than spending 18$ to promote it. You're paying 18$ to even get players when this wasn't even used for like 10 years.
In response to Flame Sage
I can pop stiffies for something too, doesn't justify it.

It wasn't needed prior to... whenever they started, it isn't needed now.

The tools may as well not be free because you will never get more than one, or two players if even without even being able to be seen on the search engine.
In response to Moonlight Memento
You guys are acting like it's some Heruclean effort to promote your own game. Perhaps it's because the anime community's mindset on byond is to do as little actual work as possible, but you guys are really making a big deal over nothing.
To clarify, non-Member games can be listed. If something very high-quality is brought to the moderators' attension, there's no reason it can't be listed. Member-owned games are the ones made most visible to the moderators.

The justification is this: Before the change was implemented, we had thousands of useless entries that were dead or not maintained, and many of the new ones were rips. Tom observed that the better games on our site have come from Members almost without exception. Therefore, limiting this to Members but allowing for the occasional non-Member game to be listed gave us a way to drastically reduce spam.
In response to Techgamer
Because everyone has access to communities in which the game(s) can be promoted, right? Oh yeah, no, they don't.

Non-anime guilds are dead for instance.

It's essentially pointless to have tools to create a multiplayer game for free if essentially the only way to get players is going to be spending 18$.
In response to Saucepan Man
Saucepan Man wrote:
I dont dispute that it will probably have a beneficial effect. Slightly.

The beneficial effect on our rip population has been enormous and cannot be understated.

But why should good people like myself suffer as a result of the carpet bombing of idiots.
In the same sentence it was said that there will be scrutiny on the entries, anyway.

Do you imagine such scrutiny would be plausible amidst said carpet bombing? I assure you it would not.

We knew this would have an effect on a small handful of good developers, but like I said, most good developers either are or were members, which under our current setup means they're immune to the negative impact. And as you said yourself, you can't really figure out a better way to contain rips; neither could we. There are trade-offs no matter how you go about it.
In response to Saucepan Man
Saucepan Man wrote:
Im not personally complainging. Im arguing against it in principle. Especially the fact that the statement was being shady about why they truly are/have changing/changed it.

There was nothing shady about the statement, and I resent the implication. We did not expect that this restriction would be a driver of new or renewed memberships. The entire point was to put the brakes on the flood of absolute crap, knowing that anyone who had invested even minimally in the site had an incentive to make a better game as we have seen repeatedly.
In response to Lummox JR
The problem being, what if there is good developers outside of members? They're forced to spend 18$ now just for a CHANCE to get noticed.
In response to Moonlight Memento
If the game is good enough it'll get noticed without being listed and probably end up listed anyways.
In response to Lummox JR
Ah I see, I was unaware thate there was still a process. Amidst my babbling, you will see that such a provision was what I wanted to see.

As I also said somwhere here, I've been on a soapbox about a few things lately (Judge William Adams, Coke murdering people in columbia), and I guess I had some soapbox-momentum? hence my overreaction and my chomping at the bit when people started being just as much a dick as I about it.

My apologies for any offense I mayu have caused.
In response to Nadrew
It'll get noticed how?
In response to Moonlight Memento
The person can post about it on the forum and if it's good people will notice it.
In response to Nadrew
ITT: Only top of the line games. If it isn't a 10/10 in every category, pay 18$ or go away.

The sad truth is, a lot of games posted on the forums don't get noticed. In fact I've rarely seen any that do.
In response to Nadrew
Nadrew wrote:
The person can post about it on the forum and if it's good people will notice it.

Any game, even without hub, can be posted on forums. Therefore non-members get nothing but a tool (and lets admit it, not best one either).
In response to Zaoshi
That's funny. Except members actually get a way for their game to be found, considering the extraordinarily small amount of players that will frequent the Creations section.
In response to Moonlight Memento
The Hub moderators do frequent the Creations forum, and do tend to try out non-member creations -- if there's something there to try out. People can also post to outright ask for a moderator to check out their game, which is a pretty effective method of doing it as long as they're not too excessively persistent about it.

There are indeed ways for non-members to get their games listed, the ability to add it directly to the list was made a member perk for a reason, to keep the list from being littered with thousands of half-finished or junk entries. It's not to put member games ahead of non-member games, it's to keep the moderators from being overwhelmed with things that don't even deserve to be on the list.
In response to Nadrew
It's not to put member games ahead of non-member games

Unfortunately, the outcome turns out to it, though.
Aside from rips, who's to judge what's a "good game"? I can say Call of Duty is a terrible game, but it sells well and is popular, for instance. A lot of people may think it sucks, but there's apparently more people to think it's good.
In response to Moonlight Memento
As with any moderated system, the determination of what's "good" and what isn't falls heavily on the moderator reviewing the material. There are standards set that games must follow but there's also a lot of grey area that the moderators have to sift through to give all games their fair share of consideration.

The Hub is a service, not a right. As such limitations are put into place to prevent the service from being abused. Unfortunately, like anything else preventing abuse of something generally means limiting the non-abusive activity at the same time.

It shouldn't be up to BYOND to advertise your game for you, getting the Hub is just an added bonus that BYOND provides you. Getting your Hub entry listed is a further benefit, being able to get your entry easily added to the review list is a further benefit. While it may be harder for a non-member to get their material reviewed it is far from impossible. There's a pretty solid chance that if your game is worth listing it'll end up listed, regardless of your membership status. (and making a good game is a pretty good way of enticing someone to gift you a membership)

Game authors should rely less on BYOND holding their hand through all steps of the game's life and start dealing with those things themselves. If you can't figure out how to successfully market your game within BYOND without being listed, then you'll probably have a pretty hard time trying to market your game outside of BYOND; where having your game listed means nothing.

There has to be a line drawn at how much BYOND will provide to you for free, the items that are and are not provided as paid-member benefits are always in flux, but the practice of limiting the ability to submit your game directly to people who have paid has already proven to be effective in doing what was needed to make the flow of game reviews manageable to the moderators without greatly limiting the amount of quality games that get submitted.

It really takes a lot less effort than you seem to realize to get a quality game noticed. A quick forum post or even paging a moderator you know is usually more than enough to get their notice. I myself am always keeping track of the Creations forum looking out for good things to add to the hub listing -- created by a member or not. On more than one occasion I've also reviewed a game solely because the author contacted very politely and asked nicely for me to take a look at their game.

If every non-member could submit any random thing we'd probably be far less likely to come across the quality items while digging through the sea of non-quality items. This is what caused previous iterations of the Hub review system to fail, there was simply no limit on what could be submitted.
In response to Nadrew
There's a pretty solid chance that if your game is worth listing it'll end up listed, regardless of your membership status. (and making a good game is a pretty good way of enticing someone to gift you a membership)

What defines something as "worth listing"? It being in the scope of interest of the moderators?

then you'll probably have a pretty hard time trying to market your game outside of BYOND; where having your game listed means nothing.

Because people are very successful when they market their BYOND games outside of BYOND.

Overall, the post screams "if [x] happpens", "when [x] happens". Nothing definitive. Oh yeah, and "if [x] is good". Forgot about that.

It isn't a good way to go about it at all.
In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
Because people are very successful when they market their BYOND games outside of BYOND.

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