PROTECTING YOUR PROJECT FROM THIEVES.

author=amerk

author=LockeZ
Apparently this is an unpopular opinion though, and most people are just here for the makerscore, and don't care about games other than their own. Sigh. I know I can't do much about it, but I don't like that attitude at all, and I think it's killing the community. Things like Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter make people suddenly able to imagine themselves on stage at a digital rock concert, and they'll do anything to get there.

Sadly, I must agree with this, since I've seen it in almost all the communities. When I first got involved with RM, the only three games I heard being commercial were Eternal Eden, Deadly Sin, and Dawn's Light. I barely heard about the Amaranth website, and so I wasn't aware of some of the other titles.

Most communities were all for shareware, and we all played each others' games and gave feedback.

Not so much anymore. While there are still other smaller communities around, RMN and VXAN feel like the last two great communities with a decent amount of members where the focus is not so much on commercialism, although the support is seldom there anymore.

I won't say whether or not I agree with your stance on the legality of code, but I will say there was once a time when the communities were at their prime, ready to help, assist, and share with everybody, and nobody cared so much out of making a quick buck as they were with just being part of a community doing something they loved.

Back on topic:

To the OP, encryption is almost pointless for freeware games. In the majority of the cases, we probably don't have anything worth stealing anyways.

Most of the people who are likely going to play our games aren't going to be professional developers themselves. That means most of our potential audience are either amateur developers or casual players not interested in game development.

Of those amateur developers who do steal, most of them will never be able to finish anything anyways.

And has been noted, there are tools readily available to easily decrypt, making the effort needed to put into encrypting your material not worthwhile.

There is also one other con, but this is the sort of con you would need to weigh for yourself. The fact is that most non-commercial RM games are buggy and unbalanced. I can't count the times I've quit playing a game because of a glitch, or because it was balanced so poorly. If the game is decrypted, I can easily fix those things myself (assuming I have the required editor).

Sure, I could do the same for the decrypted game by reporting it to the developer so they can fix the issue or issues, but why bother? The time it would take for me to contact them, have them upload a new version and hope they understand what was wrong, and then for me to download it again and playtest it to make sure it was fixed, not to mention remembering to transfer my save file over from the old version and hope that it still works in the new version -- it's not worth the bother for me.

I'm in it for the makerscore.

author=bulmabriefs144

author=amerk
There is also one other con, but this is the sort of con you would need to weigh for yourself. The fact is that most non-commercial RM games are buggy and unbalanced. I can't count the times I've quit playing a game because of a glitch, or because it was balanced so poorly. If the game is decrypted, I can easily fix those things myself (assuming I have the required editor).

Sure, I could do the same for the decrypted game by reporting it to the developer so they can fix the issue or issues, but why bother? The time it would take for me to contact them, have them upload a new version and hope they understand what was wrong, and then for me to download it again and playtest it to make sure it was fixed, not to mention remembering to transfer my save file over from the old version and hope that it still works in the new version -- it's not worth the bother for me.

Not to mention, if the person is the type to worry about their "awesome" game being hacked/stolen, they not only won't open it up to editing, they'll go into denial mode about any actual bugs.

Or you could, you know, act like a reasonable person and tell the developer about any bugs you encounter. Yeah, it would be stupid to release the game without having playtesters go through it, but that doesn't mean that every player should be an ass and neglect the opportunity to report bugs that may have been missed.

I don't think everyone who encrypts a game is worrying about how "awesome" they are. If they specifically went out of their way to encrypt it they're probably trying to be a little more professional about things. That's just my guess of course, but I find it hard to believe that everyone who encrypts stuff is a haughty jerk who doesn't care about player experience.

EDIT: What I'm saying is that it's idiotic to assume this about people, or act this way in a development community.

author=bulmabriefs144
insanity

This is why I often wonder "Wow, do I really want to identify as a member of an amateur game making community?".

There are no words. I'm just done.

So, lemme get this straight.

Because I don't care about people "stealing" my game, because I don't bother to defend it, because I think that people who hog game stuff are just kidding themselves, that makes me entitled? Or is it maybe that if your game is actually worth anything, no matter how much you try to shut yourself out, someone will break through the decryption (there is no such thing as a failsafe) and hack your game? Understanding this, doesn't make me entitled. It probably makes me a realist.

That said, I am not entitled. No one in Heaven or Earth gives me the right to steal stuff (that's the definition of entitled mentality, not "I need this or that" but "I deserve it"). That said, if I want to make a grossly copyrighted youtube video, I fully acknowledge I'm doing a very wicked wicked thing, and do it anyway. Not because I have the right, but because I lack things like conscience and sanity.

So let's be real here. You are not part of a team of professional game developers. You do not work for Square or Enix or Bioware. You are not getting stolen from, because you are not making money, and because so far as I know you have no unique code anyway. Not to mention stealing implies (duh) you don't have it anymore, which is not the case. You can cry foul, but I am certainly not going to steal from you. But this does not mean other people won't try.

I will however laugh the entire time, at you making drama about it, if it does happen.

I'm all for defending the property of others, but what I'm seeing is people just asking you how your code works. If it were me, I'd answer their question, and any others they might have, knowing that the game won't be identical to mine, and shrug it off. So this is just you showing your bum to people who want help.

bulma, just stop. You're not mentally fit for this sort of discussion. Don't be the next obsorber. Unless you want to get a warning eventually, just stop.

EDIT: And don't be like this guy: http://rpgmaker.net/users/Snodgrass/posts/?p=4

author=Pizza
Or you could, you know, act like a reasonable person and tell the developer about any bugs you encounter.

This is a fair enough point, but also depends on how far into the game I am and how invested into the game I am. I have played plenty that were great concepts in theory but horribly bugged, and because I really appreciated the game I bit the bullet and reported it and did the waiting game for it to be fixed. Likewise, I've been a beta tester on my share of games, and while I could have easily fixed bugs for myself, that did nothing for the immediate download others would have access to, so in that situation I went ahead and reported them as well.

However, if the bugs happen early on in an encrypted game and I find myself not fully invested into the game, I simply delete it from my computer and move on. People can cry all they want about how it's our duty to help the developer, and I'll agree only as far as the developer is willing to help themselves. With the 1500+ games available, it's not worth my time to stop playing a single game, chase down the developer to fix said game, and then wait for a new version when I could have easily fixed it myself (had the game not been encrypted), especially when I'm not even sure how much I enjoy the game.

Back to my initial point though, encrypting a game out of fear of content being stolen is ludicrous. Many of us prefer unencrypted games to tweak balance issues or glitches so we don't have to suddenly stop our immersion into that game to play the waiting game. The majority of us aren't going to steal your content. The few that would will most likely never finish anything. And most RM games don't have anything worth stealing to begin with.

@amerk: Fair enough. I was going to deliberate more on what I meant in my original reply but I had to go meet up with a friend. All I was saying is that on a website centered around (or at least, partly centered around) development and the honing of skills, when we play a game we at least owe it to the creator to point out whatever made us stop playing, or what we liked/didn't like, or whatever.

It is of course a matter of personal preference in the end though. If you think the developer isn't going to listen based on how they dealt with other reports, then it's fair if you feel like not saying anything.

I guess I just don't agree with the mindset that fixing the game should be the player's job, both as a player and a developer. I'm just past seeing that as an option at this stage in my "career". Like... I get it, yeah. I've used god mode to skip stuff in actual professional games before. But I just feel like there's a moral code or something. Like, when a work reaches a certain level of professionalism, you should treat it as such, and since you have an active opportunity to get involved, you should.

author=CAHRULL
And regarding the subject of the thread - Encrypt your games if you want to. Don't do it if you don't want to. If someone wanted to steal your graphics that badly, they could just press the print screen key and cut the tiles up in their image editor of choice. And these "villainous agents who infiltrate RPG Maker games to steal their graphical assets and make a fortune on the indie game black market"...well, I'm not entirely convinced that this is even a real problem. Or that such a thing has ever happened. I mean, if you've made original graphics and have a documented history of game updates and screenshots on this site, wouldn't it be fairly simple to point to the fact that you are the original creator and that they were stolen from you?

I completely agree with you. Just make a physical presence, and your game will be easily recognized as yours.