THE "NEW" RM2K3 ENGINE

I honestly didn't know all of this was that serious. Was there a riot or something that went down that I missed?

putting my side down this time as: i don't want a part in it, stop dragging me into thiiissss

author=Liberty
And no, it is not a victimless crime. Money is being diverted from the creators of the product by people who want it for free instead. Just because some people buy it and then use the pirated version doesn't mean all will and EB is still missing out on the money that they should have made waaaay back but didn't. Don't kid yourself in to thinking this isn't a crime that hurts people.

Just because it benefits you doesn't mean it's right.

As a person who has legally purchased the newer 2k3, I still think that having to purchase it now is bullshit. Technically yeah it was always illegal, but now because Degica has it oh shit, we're hurting a transnational corporation, what a victimizing crime, indeed!

I think if Enterbrain/Degica want people to buy the new engine, oh maybe just make it AS GOOD AS THE FIRST ONE!?

Which from what I've seen the large outcry has been mostly in response to the denial of legal use of completely financially harmless mods which they could have supported (but didn't and blatantly chose not to) only so they could bring a better version which, oh contraire, wasn't actually as good!

If Notch makes Minecraft but Infiniminer was better and Notch now declares infiniminer an illegal download, this is the sort of shit we're talking about. Different since the corporations holding right to those programs are different, but that smacks some real gross.

I will never support Degica or EB's standpoint on defying the community on this when for the most part the reason it's even happening is entirely their fault.

No surprise people are a just little annoyed that a program that had been free in the west for years now legally demands a price after 10 years, despite modding it which is not supported at all (nor legal in the slightest) in the new copy because some leprous ignoramus' at Degica couldn't be bothered supporting the community making the original better.

You reap what you sow, and if there's any phrase the collectively describes Degica it's those exact words.
I'd like to state I have no problems with people buying the program, as much of a lefty as I am, I bought it myself, and I can show you the digital docket if you won't take my word for it.

What I do not approve of is people acting like just because some people don't want to buy an equivalent to new netgear drivers that some transnational corporation is being severely victimized. There are far more noble things to white knight on the planet than companies so obsessed with cash they're openly C&D'ing projects made with a program before their time because they want you to buy a program they've made now which in the opinions of many isn't even as good as it's original.

And from your own mouth Liberty, you blatantly acknowledge that.

author=Liberty
If you're wanting to use them commercially you absolutely need a legal license or you open yourself up to not only a C&D order, but the possibility of being sued. But if you're just using for a free project it should be safe to use them.

Instead of doing what even money hungry corporations like Bethesda (who tried to sue Notch for using the title 'Scrolls' for a game) do, which is to allow community modding at no charge or penalty, yet this poor little Degica IS OPENLY FIRING LEGAL PUNISHMENTS on people only interested in BETTERING A PROGRAM.

That is what you're defending!. A company so seemingly innocent its regime for lawsuits over modding are already placing it below CHUCKLEFISH, an indie company that constantly takes works from it's fanbase with no credit and borderline plagiarizes on work their fan artists create and then accosts them on reddit like manchildren when they are called out.

Yeah... even a company that low has better modding standards, than Degica. Because alike with Bethesda, you can mod freely, are encouraged to do so and (only applicable for Chucklefish) with only a small chance of your work being creditlessly added to the core game.

I hope this way of laying it out represents why I'm going out of my way to explain this rather than doing my usual thing of ignoring disputes like this. You're better than that.

people trying to moralize piracy is always really tiresome tbh

like, there's never any substance or thrust to the argument besides 'I feel that paying for this is inconvenient, and feel that stealing it shouldn't be strongly stigmatized'

which, hey, I don't know what your circumstances are! do what you gotta do.

but please don't whip up a bunch of false equivalencies in the process to make the act of theft into some ideological high ground, either. you're doing it because you don't want to pay, not because you're a brave and shining warrior of fiscal freedom.

I'm not going to tell you that you shouldn't steal (because, again, I can't account for your reasons), but trying to flip it around so that 'no, actually people expecting to be paid for their work is bullshit and unjust' is boring and fake and I think we can all do better.

the big thing for me is that when people get to moralizing, they create excuses that can just as easily be used to avoid paying individual artists (and other financially vulnerable people without the padding a company has) for their work -- and I know this because I've seen that exact thing happen way too often! 'it's unjust for this single person to charge money for her game because I don't like it' and so on.

stealing because your means don't allow you to pay is one thing, but unless a company's done something that deserves a boycott (and if you're really looking for that, then I have news for you about Sony and Nintendo's product workflow, conflict minerals, and FOXCONN) then making an ideology out of it is useless.

It's a certain etiquette of business, though. People often get confused on what a business as a 'legal right' to do, and what a business should do to maintain customer goodwill and impression. Transparency and a sense of fairness towards the consumer goes a long way, because there's enough competition out there to make customers and shareholders go 'fuck that' and spend their dollars somewhere else.

People may think that business can easily go 'lol oh well' at the prospect of angry fans and potential lost customers, but it's a really, really big deal to keep your customers happy, even if that means foregoing occasionally what you have a legal right to do. Bigger businesses have gone bankrupt for smaller instances who thought otherwise.

The ability of a customer to go 'fuck you I'll spend my money on the competition instead and tell everyone I know how shitty you are' is the biggest tip in the scales in business and a good company knows when to fold and lose out on potential dollars to keep their flow going on a macro scale.

Bethesda made a smart move by rescinding on that whole thing, because it was going to end up costing them a lot of fucking money and PR.

Yeah, that quote is basically me answering on behalf of the site ideals and common sense.

While RMN doesn't exactly care as long as you're not distributing the resources and engine on the site, if you're going commercial you have to own it or you do open yourself up to legal issues and the owners of the software not only have ways to check for it, but are cracking down on people using RM2k3 for commercial ventures without legally owning the engine - part of the sale license is actually getting proof to them. It's in their EULA, as explained by quite a few people in the past.

I was pointing out that that is a thing that could happen, but that frankly, if it's a free-ware game more than likely no-one here is going to care too much.

Personally I feel that if someone is going to use the RTP they should purchase it (since it's not for sale in any way by itself, the only way to get a legal license is by purchasing the whole thing and $20 or less for a complete resource pack is very, very cheap) but as I said, that's personal opinion and it does differ from the site rules on the subject. There's a reason we made a distinct choice to keep Tsuk3.

author=BizarreMonkey
I have actually legally bought every RPGmaker thing I own, and again, I can prove that. I am going to respond to a couple good points made.

author=Liberty
To be fair to Bethesda... it their fucking resources and game. If they want to claim ownership on their shit they've a right to do so. You know, because it's their fucking copyright and all that jazz. I mean, yeah, people made the mods but they made them using Bethesda's game as base, using their graphics and engine. That's like taking an artists work and saying 'I changed the colours so now it's mine'. Nope.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but would legalizing mods that are just free addons really be considered theft? Think how barren things like Firefox and Minecraft or any of the 800 games that allow deep modding would be if it weren't for a community effort.

I wasn't talking about the recent politics of Bethesda, with them and Valve trying to push paid community modding. I was talking about in general.

Now the Bethesda comparison isn't solid, there's a lot of legal tribulations when the commercializing of games using these mods comes into play, but by supporting them Degica would hardly be losing out since for the most part they just enhance the capaabilities of the engine, and just about every other game-oriented software publishing firm has support for addons. Unity, Unreal and CryEngine are just the ones I can think of right now.

author=Liberty
The only thing I don't like about their turn-about is that they didn't say it from the get-go. Not that they needed to, if you think about it. The resources/engine was always theirs and thus, anything made with it is, basically, their copyright too. People are acting like it's some sudden fucking thing to claim what is yours as yours when it's been part of the law for years apon years.

I'm not even really annoyed that they released it 10 years later and expect you to pay for it now, it's that they are openly disservicing you if you want to be legitimate and still use some of those old mods.

And that people are honestly defending that. I personally could care less on my end because I use VXAce, so it's not like I'm even pushing this for my own agenda, besides the fact that I already own the legal copy. My goal isn't to advocate piracy even... I did that once and payed a dear price for it.

That quote by the way was pulled from here: http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/17752/?post=641637#post641637

Unless you can use Tsukuru with the mods and commercially distribute projects with it if you've bought the newer engine, but I doubt that's the case! (Again, not even in my interests because I'm a visionary developer. Not to sound pretentious, that's just a definition which means I want others to be able to see what I see, and share my ideas without a cost, not that I'm some prophet of being gods gift to games, that'd be silly!)

If it is let me know, because it'll shut my whole argument down.

I paid for the legal version. I still haven't used it more than a few times. Precisely because aside from some minor battle fixes, it turne out to be a major disappointment, since the mods were basically off-limits and while it was better than the original, it felt limited without that. If you are paying for something, it had better be better than something that someone got for nothing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28economics%29

Let's use the same example they used. Drinking water. You could conceivably get drinking water relatively cheaply, because it's a necessity. However, if you charge more than a few bucks, naturally there much be improvements, either to the size, the purity, the container, or the mineral content.

People have acted like I'm whining because it isn't everything I had wanted. No, it's really like this. If you are charging a price on what was a free item, the only way you can get away without making improvements is by stigmatizing use of the free item. Once people realize that's bullcrap, the fact remains that actual improvements to the product must be made to continue charging for it. The battle system and color coding were some improvements, but I still think there's more to be done.

Now, to address the issue of modding, this position is untenable so long as the mod is completely a separate program.

author=http://www.patentarcade.com/2005/08/case-lewis-galoob-v-nintendo-9th-cir.html
I. Background


Lewis Galoob Toys developed a device called the Game Genie, which allowed the player of a Nintendo Entertainment System game to alter up to three features of the game, such as a game character’s speed or strength, or the character’s number of lives. The Game Genie, which is inserted between a game cartridge and the Nintendo system, functions by replacing the value for a single data byte sent by the game cartridge to the Nintendo system. The Game Genie’s effects are temporary, having no affect on the data that is stored on the game cartridge.

Game Genies:

Nintendo brought suit against Galoob, alleging contributory infringement because the marketing, advertising, promoting, and selling the Game Genie contributed to the creation of infringing derivative works. The district court concluded that (1) “the audiovisual displays created by the Game Genie are not derivative works” and (2), even if the displays were derivative works, “the displays are a fair use.” Nintendo appealed.

II. Analysis

1. Derivative Works


The Ninth Circuit first looked at whether the audiovisual displays created by the Game Genie constituted derivative works. The court began by emphasizing that “a derivative work must incorporate a portion of a protect work in some concrete or permanent form.” The court determined that the derivative work does not have to be “fixed,” as required for copyright protection, but an independent work must be created.

The Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court that no independent work is created by the Game Genie. In making this determination the court made a distinction between products that “enhance” copyrighted works and products that “replace” copyrighted works. In this case, the Game Genie “enhances” the Nintendo game, but it does not “replace” the Nintendo game. The Game Genie, by itself, cannot produce an audiovisual display.

Additionally, the court distinguished this case between two prior cases. In Mirage Editions, Inc., v. Albuquerque A.R.T. Co., 856 F.3d 1341 (9th Cir. 1988), the Ninth Circuit held that ceramic tiles displaying art work taken from a commemorative book constituted derivative works. The ceramic tiles physically incorporated a protected work in a form that could be sold. In addition, the court distinguished Mirage by noting that “sales of the tiles supplanted purchasers’ demand for the underlying work.”

In Midway Manufacturing Co. v. Artic International, Inc., 704 F.2d 1009 (7th Cir. 1983), Artic sold computer chips that could be inserted into a Midway’s arcade game to speed up the rate of play. The Seventh Circuit held that the speeded-up version of Midway’s game constituted a derivative work. The Artic chip “substantially copied and replaced” the original Midway chip. The court also distinguished Midway by noting that the purchasers of the Artic chip benefited financially by selling an altered game to the public.

Therefore, because the Game Genie “does not contain or produce a Nintendo game’s output in some concrete or permanent form, nor . . . supplant demand for Nintendo game cartridges, the court held that the audiovisual displays created by the Game Genie do not constitute a derivative work.

2. Fair Use

The district court held that even if the audiovisual displays created by the Game Genie did constitute a derivative work, Galoob was not liable because the displays are fair use. The Ninth Circuit first made clear that “a party cannot authorize another party to infringe a copyright unless the authorized conduct would itself be unlawful.” Thus, if the use of the Game Genie is a fair use, Galoob cannot be liable for infringement.

The court recognized that the users of the Game Genie are engaged in a non-profit activity, and thus their use is presumptively fair. Nintendo was unable to overcome this presumption. First, relying on Sony Corp. of Am. v. Universal Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), the court recognized that “a party who distributes a copyrighted work cannot dictate how that work is to be enjoyed.” Thus, once users have paid for the Nintendo game, the Game Genie may be used to make the experience of Nintendo game play more enjoyable.

Focusing on the fourth fair use factor in 17 U.S.C. § 107(4), the court also concluded that Nintendo failed to show harm to the existing and future markets for its copyrighted games. Because the Game Genie is used for a noncommercial purpose, the future harm may not be presumed. The court relied on testimony of Galoob’s expert witness that there would be very little market interest for “junior or expert versions of existing Nintendo games” because the original version “already has been designed to appeal to the largest number of consumers,” and the consumer would feel “cheated or robbed” buying a new game that does not include new material. Additionally, Nintendo admitted to having no plans to market such games.

Therefore, the court held that a consumer’s use of the Game Genie in conjunction with a Nintendo game was a fair use.

The short version? Patches are not engines. And once DynRPG can be made to work without patching directly to the engine, there is no permanent material involved (that is, simply removing the patches removes the entire thing). So long as DynRPG can be made in such a way that it is (a) part of the engine itself, or (b) a completely external program that self-runs rather than needing to be patched, then it is legal to use. Given that Cherry is official creator of DynRPG, if he wanted to build this in, it would probably be infringing his rights, not the other way around, if Enterbrain was to tell him that this is not allowed.

Hey now! At least I'm pursuing a Master's in the subject (thanks, G.I. Bill)! I'd like to think it's something that's worth bearing on.