Good Friday evening everyone.
the last day or so on the forum has become a bit crazy, with the
release of a new game plus our actions towards the developer of said
game. This morning I brought this forward to the staff list so we as a
team could discuss it. though I fully support the actions of my fellow
staff members, I was also bothered by the fact that while doing our
due diligence to keep the forum a safe place, we were straying into
territory that was hurting the community as a whole.
Let me step back for a moment and apologize that this post contains
so many I's and me's. Upon agreement from the staff, I was tasked with
writing this update for all of you. Please understand that though I am
writing in the first person, I speak for the staff as a single unit,
and that I've been given the go-ahead to write this. No overrides lol.
one of the major concerns about rule 3 has been where it pertains to
audio games. I will just be blunt and say it, as it has been said in
other posts. An extremely high number of the existing games in our
database use assets which they were not authorized to be using. I am
not about to start writing an exhaustive list, as some of the possible
games could/would spark arguments. Suffice it to say that rule 3, as
it is being enforced towards game assets, would decrease the number of
games on a major scale. I've seen comments on this, both publicly and
privately, from concerned forum members regarding their favorite games
and what would be done with them.
As a team, we have decided to relax our stance on game assets so
long as all of the following is true.
1. the assets in question are not directly lifted from another audio
game. This is not easy to enforce, and we will not be checking every
game. However, if a game is using custom recorded sounds such as
custom sound effects, speech, etc, it will probably be looked in to
and we will most likely talk to the developer about how to fix this.
Keep in mind that most games use publicly available libraries. We're
not going to go combing through every game. that's just not realistic.
2. Where possible, we encourage developers to please obfuscate their
data with encryption. As a developer, I realize this concept isn't
always easy, so we're not making this mandatory, but we would still
like to see developer's attempt to secure their assets whenever
possible.
3. The project in question is not accepting payment, whether that be
donations, or the game being shareware.
4. The game or project isn't designed to do things like offer users
the ability to obtain copyrighted material. The example I gave on the
list for laughs was that the secret level in Super Liam 2 where you
can stream episodes of 13 reasons why from a torrent site would most
likely not be allowed. BTW. that level doesn't actually exist. Hate
to spoil the fun.
I’m hoping this post answers questions for everyone, and that we can
get back to gaming.
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