Copied from BYOND Features forum by Airjoe

This *may* help with an issue regarding my game (and simular games). Since Fangames often include (by their nature) copyrighted material, mainly including images and sounds. This makes them obviously open the the whims of those copyright holders to have them taken down whenever they wish.

Something that might be of use to those games is the ability to create a self-installing resource package.

Instead of having a resource file on a website somewhere, that BYOND downloads when u connect to a game. It could have an external "optional" resource package. A fangame could include a set of 'blank' icons by default of things they felt could be a problem (example, characters or avatars). A player could then be informed that they could download additional images elsewhere in the form of this resource package.

They would download, and run the exe which would replace (or add additional? not sure if BYOND could do that but replace would work much easier i guess) basic icon files with the full things.

The bonus of this is that;

1. Hosting is a tad easier to handle. You dont have to hotlink! Your host wont get annoyed at incoming connections from external sources!! Additionally, if a person REMOVES the game from their PC they can keep the RSC package and re-use it. They dont have to connect and redownload everything again using precious bandwidth.

2. If the copyright holders take issue, they wont be as likley to demand the entire game removed. Just the offending image package...

3. It makes it less likley to be the target of action in the first place, since the game itself wouldnt hold much. They would log in and not find much there, unless they actively went looking for it. Assuming they dont delve much deeper than that (and it seems they dont).