ID:110915
 
I didnt' find out that people were actually selling subscriptions to fan games until a week or two ago. This is not a joke. Your existence on BYOND endangers my own endeavors (if BYOND gets a site-wide C&D, I'm super screwed in the short term as well). This problem needs to be addressed.

I sent off an email this morning to find out who to contact at Namco Bandai about developers on BYOND who sell subscriptions to DBZ games. They got back to me inside of eleven minutes.



Something needs to be done. You need to stop selling subscriptions and taking "donations", or your games need to be removed from the hub outright.

The only thing that has kept me from taking this a step further is my concern for BYOND itself, and because I think that the powers that be can resolve this situation on their own before it becomes a big deal.

Edit: To be clear: I'm not calling that number right now. At this time, I'm simply trying to illustrate my point.
Pardon the language but...

Shit just got real.
I can't imagine BYOND being held responsible for the content that people post. They might be asked to help identify offending content and remove it, but I don't think they'd be expected to screen all content before it's allowed on the site. This can't be the first time someone posted copyrighted content on a site without permission and the owner asked for it to be removed.

I'm sure the IP holders are more likely to act if money is being made off the fan games, but there's no reason to limit yourself to reporting only games that have donations or subscriptions.
Forum_account wrote:
I can't imagine BYOND being held responsible for the content that people post. They might be asked to help identify offending content and remove it, but I don't think they'd be expected to screen all content before it's allowed on the site. This can't be the first time someone posted copyrighted content on a site without permission and the owner asked for t to be removed.

You're probably right, but you never know how much corporate lawyers will overreact to something like this. The last thing that I want is for BYOND to get dragged down (or distracted) by this.


LordAndrew wrote:
Shit just got real.

Indeed. The fact that they gave me a phone number and not an email address speaks volumes.


To be clear: I'm not calling that number right now. At this time, I'm simply trying to illustrate my point.
This is pretty amusing. :P

Whether or not BYOND is covered under the safe-harbour provisions of the DMCA (I assume US law applies - website's hosted in the US, isn't it?) is an interesting question, actually. Don't you need to lack a manual review process to qualify, or am I misremembering? (The idea being that a manual review process means that unlicensed stuff can be manually removed).

Tom should probably put up one of those "This is how you contact us if you want to do the DMCA thing" pages somewhere, actually, now that I think about it.
SilkWizard wrote:
To be clear: I'm not calling that number right now. At this time, I'm simply trying to illustrate my point.

Ah. Hopefully this message alone will be at least some sort of wake up call to those who do profit from material they do not own, and is honestly long overdue.
Im sorry, all i have to say is.
LOL.
This topic made me lmao literally. So let's cut the bull crap for a second shall we? It's obvious this post is directed at Falacy and the fact his game is more popular than yours even though its a DBZ game. Even though its true you can't make money off of anime games this is something you should contact Tom about this.

And really Silk? Enough of this facade and your fangame hate.

SilkWizard wrote:
I didnt' find out that people were actually selling subscriptions to fan games until a week or two ago. This is not a joke. Your existence on BYOND endangers my own endeavors (if BYOND gets a site-wide C&D, I'm super screwed in the short term as well). This problem needs to be addressed.

What you really mean is
~I've been trying to wipe out fangames and their players(especially falacy's) and I have found an opportunity to do so.

Enzuigiri wrote:
This topic made me lmao literally. So let's cut the bull crap for a second shall we? It's obvious this post is directed at Falacy and the fact his game is more popular than yours even though its a DBZ game. Even though its true you can't make money off of anime games this is something you should contact Tom about this.

And really Silk? Enough of this facade and your fangame hate.

SilkWizard wrote:
I didnt' find out that people were actually selling subscriptions to fan games until a week or two ago. This is not a joke. Your existence on BYOND endangers my own endeavors (if BYOND gets a site-wide C&D, I'm super screwed in the short term as well). This problem needs to be addressed.

What you really mean is
~I've been trying to wipe out fangames and there players(especially falacy's) and I have found an opportunity to do so.

If someone is selling a fangame they're massively in the wrong. I don't see any problem with reporting them to appropriate authorities (Tom first, then maybe the content owner), and I could hardly be accused of being a Silkwizard fanboy.
Enzuigiri wrote:
It's obvious this post is directed at Falacy and the fact his game is more popular than yours even though its a DBZ game.

I'm not worried about player counts (again, I didn't even really know who Falacy was until he started throwing a fit about NEStalgia's popularity a few weeks back). I recently tried his DBZ game, and it was very poorly made. He's not even in the same league as most of the original game developers on BYOND - he simply beats his insecure little chest louder than most.

What this is about is my legitimate interest in BYOND's future, and the fact that BYOND Fan Games who sell subscriptions endanger that future.

Falacy being so immature and unstable only matters because it makes him do stuff like openly brag about selling subscriptions for his DBZ game. That just gives the situation a much greater sense of urgency, as it's better that when the copyright holders inevitably find out about the sales, that they understand the situation clearly enough to divert their attention away from BYOND and towards the individual fan game developers.
Despite what you think, SilkWizard doesn't hate Fan Games. When are you people going to learn that? The point is that if you have a fan game, you can't sell it, have a subscription for it, and you most certainly shouldn't be taking "donations" in an attempt to side-step that.
Falacy doesn't have any respect for rules as far as games go. Wasn't he the guy behind Hentai Hill? And now he makes money off Dragon Ball games.

Enzuigiri wrote:
It's obvious this post is directed at Falacy and the fact his game is more popular than yours even though its a DBZ game.

You fail to realize the only reason he has a player base is because he actually knows DM - the majority of Dragon Ball games are ran by 12 year olds that don't even know the language so there isn't much competition. Plus, Dragon Ball already had a fan-base. NEStalgia has to build it's fan-base from the ground up even though it is very similar to Dragon Quest.

Despite these advantages, NEStalgia at many times of the day have higher player counts than DBHU. I dare Falacy to try to submit his copyright infringing Dragon Ball games to one of the major gaming journalists and see if he gets the same positive response NEStalgia received. As a matter of fact, he could even attempt to send one of his more original titles like Gold Guardians or Celestial Chaos - I still doubt he'd average around 300 players like NEStalgia. It's obvious who has the better game here.
People who think Silk is targeting Falacy and Fan games because he hates them is a moot point even if he was. The fact that illegal activity is occurring from these areas, is enough for ANYONE to report them.

Though on that subject, if I were to use BYOND as a game engine, I probably would be just as concerned as Silk. Fan games are one thing, but to charge for them is such an escalating issue. If I was in Silk's shoes, I would have just called the number without hesitation (but I see his concern to not do so...I just don't think Byond will be held liable...but I'm not proficient in legal knowledge in this area). Don't blame Silk, blame the people who are charging for content they don't own.

Galactic Soldier wrote:
I knew plenty of anime games that operate under the table so they don't get caught. I don't think this pertains to Falacy, but for the most part he gets his subscriptions due to his fan games.

I've seen one in my time do this as well. I find it offending and have been urged to talk to my friend's dad that I grew up with in high school (been in the FBI for almost 20 years) about the legalities for awhile now, since they tend to deal with copyright violations. But this is a rising topic, so I might go ahead and ask him anyway (though he's almost always working so I can't always get ahold of him). I may even see if I can report this issue to investigate to him if I can (though I think they only operate on the owner's request, not sure).

I think in general that fan games should completely vanish from BYOND, all they do is cause trouble. Games like Finale by Dragonn, Bleach by Vcentg, and some other games have been known to sell in-game benefits. So if your game gets shut down because I reported you, you can openly blame me for thinking you are in the wrong as much as Silk does.

There's a difference between fan games and p2p fan games. Sometimes having a fan game is offensive itself to the owner of the IP, but not always. When actions like Silk's occur and he gets people shut down for doing this illegal activity, I think that's a big enough message to those who think they can "dirty deal", and more people like Silk get tempted to shut them down to prevent it. But from what has been seen on BYOND, it's almost like BYOND's community isn't mature enough to even handle a fan game. So I'm kind of on the fence on the subject "all fan games should be purged", but definitely paid ones need to be dealt with. I'm unsure of Falacy's situation, as I'm not legally trained/knowledgeable in this particular area.

I've heard some rumors about Dragonn selling his source, and was even posted on the BYOND forum at some times; I don't know where the threads that have this are now. VcentG sells several benefits such as shikai changes for $5.

Selling "SOURCE" vs. "Resources" is a total different situation. You own the source if you make it, fan game or not. You just don't own the fan game resources and cannot distribute them. This area I do know about, as I been in a couple open source "fan games" that used their own content (like NEStalgia), but they only allowed people to implement their "fan game content". Don't start mixing the two subjects up.
EmpirezTeam wrote:
It's obvious who has the better game here.

That's not the issue. Like I said, the d*** contest is moot even if it were true. Falacy's situation is an interesting subject I would like to be seen by the IP owners. I just think there's something shady (I even thought this for a couple years now when I first found out who falacy is and how he operates this) about he's handling subscriptions. If he's allowed to do so, I would like to know if I was wrong or not.
Mikau wrote:
Despite what you think, SilkWizard doesn't hate Fan Games. When are you people going to learn that? The point is that if you have a fan game, you can't sell it, have a subscription for it, and you most certainly shouldn't be taking "donations" in an attempt to side-step that.

SilkWizard has stated that it's lucky that fan-games can even exist here though. This is probably one of the biggest sources of confusion for many.
Neblim wrote:
EmpirezTeam wrote:
It's obvious who has the better game here.

That's not the issue. Like I said, the d*** contest is moot even if it were true. Falacy's situation is an interesting subject I would like to be seen by the IP owners. I just think there's something shady (I even thought this for a couple years now when I first found out who falacy is and how he operates this) about he's handling subscriptions. If he's allowed to do so, I would like to know if I was wrong or not.

My comment was for Falacy and his supporter Enzuigiri. Falacy thinks the only thing NEStalgia beats DBHU at is HUDs.
EmpirezTeam wrote:

My comment was for Falacy and his supporter Enzuigiri. Falacy thinks the only thing NEStalgia beats DBHU at is HUDs.

Well let's not try to taunt them to believe that's the issue, as it's obviously not. Even though their political views on this subject are completely out of whack.
Why are people making personal comments towards anyone? This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that Silk and Falacy are game developers. No matter how you attack either one with "player counts" or "programming skill" or pointing out jealousy between anyone, the real problem still exists. The problem being a possible threat towards BYOND's existence.
Here's a good prediction:

BYOND has taken decent measures to prevent public advertisement of such games with the recent site updates. It is a good prediction that, unless any anime-game owner does something blatantly stupid like advertise in the fashion Silk did, then the most that would happen to BYOND is more than likely the requirement to delete any anime reference of any kind (regarding specific brands).
Unfortunately, as I re-read that statement, I realized I hinted that the majority of anime game developers have some hint of intelligence. I may retract my statement - it was born with that assumption in place.
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