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WHAT EXACTLY IS AND ISN'T ALLOWED ON THIS SITE WHEN IT COMES TO RIPS IN OUR GAMES?
Posts
Antilurker77
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Antilurker77
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Closeauthor=benos
The gaming world was rocked today when a group of hackers revealed that the popular RPG Maker game series was actually vulnerable to security breaches. According to the hackers, the game's developers had failed to adequately protect the game's code, allowing them to easily decrypt the game's content. What's more, the hackers revealed that the game was actually using ripped assets from other popular games, including popular titles such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The news has sent shock waves throughout the gaming community, with many players now questioning the security of the RPG Maker series. Developers are now racing to patch the security flaws, but some gamers are already calling for a boycott of the series until the security issues are addressed.
IT'S OVER.
You got an AI to write this, didn't you?
author=Antilurker77author=benosYou got an AI to write this, didn't you?
The gaming world was rocked today when a group of hackers revealed that the popular RPG Maker game series was actually vulnerable to security breaches. According to the hackers, the game's developers had failed to adequately protect the game's code, allowing them to easily decrypt the game's content. What's more, the hackers revealed that the game was actually using ripped assets from other popular games, including popular titles such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The news has sent shock waves throughout the gaming community, with many players now questioning the security of the RPG Maker series. Developers are now racing to patch the security flaws, but some gamers are already calling for a boycott of the series until the security issues are addressed.
IT'S OVER.
Now that I think about it, that paragraph does sound like something an AI like ChatGPT would write.
So the basic answer is that the community started via piracy back in ye olde days when there was no english version of the engine. In a bid to get more resources and make their games akin to the ones we'd grown up being inspired by, it's no wonder that people ripped graphics - especially as there weren't many other graphics to make use of and those that did exist in the hey day of RM usually weren't complete sets but bits and pieces.
Over time the community created resources for use and shared them with each other for use, but there was a large number of fan games that used the resources from the games they were spawned from. And, again, there weren't really a whole lot of full set resource packs bar maybe Mack/Looseleaf, so people made use of the already-ripped (and added into a supplemental RTP) material to boost the amount of resources they had access to.
As the newer makers came out, a shift away from rips started to occur within most of the community, especially from the new sites that would come up to replace older ones and among those who started looking at RM as a serious game engine from which to make actual money.
When the official site came (RMW) they naturally had to pull away from rips as it just isn't legal to use the resources of other games for your own endeavors but this also led to a much bigger rise in custom resources and resource packs being made available legally - especially as it became a much bigger venture to sell to the community.
The biggest reason RMN allows rips, I think, is that we host a LOT of older games that started in the early years of RPG Making that used rips. If we were to say "No rips" we'd get people bitching about these old games like "but they can" and either have to remove every old game that uses rips from the site (um, no? we're about the only site you can find most of these games on nowdays) or create some sort of museum section.
We DO NOT allow people to steal from indie games because that's shitting where you eat. And yes, you can go "but stealing the resources from FF5 is wrong too" and you're not wrong, but most people in the community KNOW those old graphics and understand that you didn't make that shit yourself. They're much less likely to recognise a resource taken from, say, Elmo's Fun Playtime and thus they're more likely to equate that resource to your game (if later they play Elmo's Fun Playtime they'd think IT stole YOUR resources when it's the other way around). And that's just shitty behaviour and plain old not nice to thieve from each other. Steal from the rich, not your fellow poories.
It's also why we're very quick to make sure that commercial games don't have rips because we don't want no scuff with the law.
Also, if you don't credit you're an asshole. Always credit.
At the end of the day it's a case of we're old but we have some standards. Go use download Mack and Blue tiles or Teddy or whoever else instead. They're much better.
Over time the community created resources for use and shared them with each other for use, but there was a large number of fan games that used the resources from the games they were spawned from. And, again, there weren't really a whole lot of full set resource packs bar maybe Mack/Looseleaf, so people made use of the already-ripped (and added into a supplemental RTP) material to boost the amount of resources they had access to.
As the newer makers came out, a shift away from rips started to occur within most of the community, especially from the new sites that would come up to replace older ones and among those who started looking at RM as a serious game engine from which to make actual money.
When the official site came (RMW) they naturally had to pull away from rips as it just isn't legal to use the resources of other games for your own endeavors but this also led to a much bigger rise in custom resources and resource packs being made available legally - especially as it became a much bigger venture to sell to the community.
The biggest reason RMN allows rips, I think, is that we host a LOT of older games that started in the early years of RPG Making that used rips. If we were to say "No rips" we'd get people bitching about these old games like "but they can" and either have to remove every old game that uses rips from the site (um, no? we're about the only site you can find most of these games on nowdays) or create some sort of museum section.
We DO NOT allow people to steal from indie games because that's shitting where you eat. And yes, you can go "but stealing the resources from FF5 is wrong too" and you're not wrong, but most people in the community KNOW those old graphics and understand that you didn't make that shit yourself. They're much less likely to recognise a resource taken from, say, Elmo's Fun Playtime and thus they're more likely to equate that resource to your game (if later they play Elmo's Fun Playtime they'd think IT stole YOUR resources when it's the other way around). And that's just shitty behaviour and plain old not nice to thieve from each other. Steal from the rich, not your fellow poories.
It's also why we're very quick to make sure that commercial games don't have rips because we don't want no scuff with the law.
Also, if you don't credit you're an asshole. Always credit.
At the end of the day it's a case of we're old but we have some standards. Go use download Mack and Blue tiles or Teddy or whoever else instead. They're much better.
Darken
3952
The community sprung up from illegality and a questionable origin, but paradoxically that's what created the demand for a localized RPG Maker in the first place. Like most people I learned to make pixel art from importing a lot of rips and understanding how they were put together. It also just created more confidence where you could create an SNES looking game while at the same time make edits to get what you want without the hassle of having to make a whole game's art from scratch. Back in 2001 there was like maybe one crude pixel art tutorial to go off of.
It's scrapbooky and amateur but I think that's worth embracing. Idk some people really wanted to pretend that this wasn't part of the community's culture or DNA and it was easy to get insecure about "hey i didn't... actually make the art for my own game" yet for example soundcloud music artists are ripping shit all the time. This is like not a new or noteworthy debate in the grand scheme of things. Fanart is generally the way some artists even break in onto social media nowdays (more an issue of IP infringement). Japanese computer games in the 80s were notorious for plagiarizing from random sources, they really didn't give a fuck. The very same industry that would make rpg maker/dante. I also think the bootleg scene in China and NES downports are fascinating and deserve more credit. There's a circular discussion to be had about the gradient of influence/tracing/ripping I'm sure, but some people are too obsessed with art being this pure thing that comes out of a vacuum with pristine intentions and originality.
Not pointing this out to justify anything. But generally I just don't think copyright or ownership is compatible with how creative cultures congregate. It's just a thing you can't fully control or prevent. Trying to have a consistent bullet proof morality about this is just fronting for Big Companies that ultimately own everything and aren't sympathetic to your noble efforts to uphold a piece of paper Disney created to keep using their stupid mouse. Is there a grey area and a bunch of unspoken rules amongst artists taking from each other? Yeah sure but it's never going to be consistent and probably shouldn't be.
It's scrapbooky and amateur but I think that's worth embracing. Idk some people really wanted to pretend that this wasn't part of the community's culture or DNA and it was easy to get insecure about "hey i didn't... actually make the art for my own game" yet for example soundcloud music artists are ripping shit all the time. This is like not a new or noteworthy debate in the grand scheme of things. Fanart is generally the way some artists even break in onto social media nowdays (more an issue of IP infringement). Japanese computer games in the 80s were notorious for plagiarizing from random sources, they really didn't give a fuck. The very same industry that would make rpg maker/dante. I also think the bootleg scene in China and NES downports are fascinating and deserve more credit. There's a circular discussion to be had about the gradient of influence/tracing/ripping I'm sure, but some people are too obsessed with art being this pure thing that comes out of a vacuum with pristine intentions and originality.
Not pointing this out to justify anything. But generally I just don't think copyright or ownership is compatible with how creative cultures congregate. It's just a thing you can't fully control or prevent. Trying to have a consistent bullet proof morality about this is just fronting for Big Companies that ultimately own everything and aren't sympathetic to your noble efforts to uphold a piece of paper Disney created to keep using their stupid mouse. Is there a grey area and a bunch of unspoken rules amongst artists taking from each other? Yeah sure but it's never going to be consistent and probably shouldn't be.
Re: Darken's post, this idea isn't even exclusive to games or visual art. Humans have always passed on traditions and cultures through art, and those ideas spread naturally through imitation. Stories, paintings, songs, all passed down through the ages by taking what one person did and repeating it. In a time before everything could be archived in the cloud in perpetuity, that's how everything survived. Trademarks and copyrights are, relatively speaking, a fairly new and frankly perverse concept that has mostly been perpetrated by massive corporations for the sake of controlling image and sterilizing creativity with their works.
But even in the corporate world, this idea of outright taking ideas or concepts from other places exists. Steve Jobs, when talking about Mac OS 1.0, the first mac GUI operating system, was asked if he was inspired by the original Xerox operating system (which was the first GUI OS), responded by saying "good artists borrow ideas. Great artists steal." I don't know if I 100% agree with that, but the results are there, and Steve Jobs was one of the most influential and successful innovators in history.
Musicians have famously always borrowed riffs and melodies from other musicians. I once went and saw a band in the late 00's called These Arms Are Snakes, and after the show I asked the guitarist where he came up with his guitar parts. His immediate answer was "well, most of them are just ripped off other bands". Now, its probably true that the music wasn't exactly the same as the places he borrowed from, but it is absolutely true that musicians will write music with some direct inspiration from other musicians.
There's also entire genres of music that exist purely because of sampling, which is kinda exactly the same thing as using rips if you think about it. The Amen Break is maybe the most important example, a 6-second drum solo from an innocuous soul record that became the most sampled piece of audio in history, serving as the foundation for much of hip-hop and electronic music. If you've never heard of the amen break, I am willing to bet you could look it up, listen to it, and you'll say "oh, this sample? Yeah I've heard this". It is incredibly pervasive, and a prime example of skirting around copyright laws in order to allow music and art to thrive and flourish.
On the flip side, the man who originally played the amen break died homeless and in poverty. I don't know enough about his life to know why, but it is true that he didn't receive his dues or the credit he deserved while he still lived. But does that mean all of the musical culture that blossomed as a result of his work is unjust, or doesn't deserve to exist? I don't think so, but it's a moral grey area, for sure.
But even in the corporate world, this idea of outright taking ideas or concepts from other places exists. Steve Jobs, when talking about Mac OS 1.0, the first mac GUI operating system, was asked if he was inspired by the original Xerox operating system (which was the first GUI OS), responded by saying "good artists borrow ideas. Great artists steal." I don't know if I 100% agree with that, but the results are there, and Steve Jobs was one of the most influential and successful innovators in history.
Musicians have famously always borrowed riffs and melodies from other musicians. I once went and saw a band in the late 00's called These Arms Are Snakes, and after the show I asked the guitarist where he came up with his guitar parts. His immediate answer was "well, most of them are just ripped off other bands". Now, its probably true that the music wasn't exactly the same as the places he borrowed from, but it is absolutely true that musicians will write music with some direct inspiration from other musicians.
There's also entire genres of music that exist purely because of sampling, which is kinda exactly the same thing as using rips if you think about it. The Amen Break is maybe the most important example, a 6-second drum solo from an innocuous soul record that became the most sampled piece of audio in history, serving as the foundation for much of hip-hop and electronic music. If you've never heard of the amen break, I am willing to bet you could look it up, listen to it, and you'll say "oh, this sample? Yeah I've heard this". It is incredibly pervasive, and a prime example of skirting around copyright laws in order to allow music and art to thrive and flourish.
On the flip side, the man who originally played the amen break died homeless and in poverty. I don't know enough about his life to know why, but it is true that he didn't receive his dues or the credit he deserved while he still lived. But does that mean all of the musical culture that blossomed as a result of his work is unjust, or doesn't deserve to exist? I don't think so, but it's a moral grey area, for sure.
author=Liberty
So the basic answer is that the community started via piracy back in ye olde days when there was no english version of the engine. In a bid to get more resources and make their games akin to the ones we'd grown up being inspired by, it's no wonder that people ripped graphics - especially as there weren't many other graphics to make use of and those that did exist in the hey day of RM usually weren't complete sets but bits and pieces.
Over time the community created resources for use and shared them with each other for use, but there was a large number of fan games that used the resources from the games they were spawned from. And, again, there weren't really a whole lot of full set resource packs bar maybe Mack/Looseleaf, so people made use of the already-ripped (and added into a supplemental RTP) material to boost the amount of resources they had access to.
As the newer makers came out, a shift away from rips started to occur within most of the community, especially from the new sites that would come up to replace older ones and among those who started looking at RM as a serious game engine from which to make actual money.
When the official site came (RMW) they naturally had to pull away from rips as it just isn't legal to use the resources of other games for your own endeavors but this also led to a much bigger rise in custom resources and resource packs being made available legally - especially as it became a much bigger venture to sell to the community.
The biggest reason RMN allows rips, I think, is that we host a LOT of older games that started in the early years of RPG Making that used rips. If we were to say "No rips" we'd get people bitching about these old games like "but they can" and either have to remove every old game that uses rips from the site (um, no? we're about the only site you can find most of these games on nowdays) or create some sort of museum section.
We DO NOT allow people to steal from indie games because that's shitting where you eat. And yes, you can go "but stealing the resources from FF5 is wrong too" and you're not wrong, but most people in the community KNOW those old graphics and understand that you didn't make that shit yourself. They're much less likely to recognize a resource taken from, say, Elmo's Fun Playtime and thus they're more likely to equate that resource to your game (if later they play Elmo's Fun Playtime they'd think IT stole YOUR resources when it's the other way around). And that's just shitty behavior and plain old not nice to thieve from each other. Steal from the rich, not your fellow poories.
It's also why we're very quick to make sure that commercial games don't have rips because we don't want no scuff with the law.
Also, if you don't credit you're an asshole. Always credit.
At the end of the day it's a case of we're old but we have some standards. Go use download Mack and Blue tiles or Teddy or whoever else instead. They're much better.
So it isn't about the assets being from an "indie game" or not from an indie game, it's about how recognizable the asset is? Terraria is super popular, and I bet almost everyone who played my crappy Dragon Ascension game saw Skeletron as a boss and was like "hey, that's from terraria." So if an "indie" game is popular and recognizable enough, say for example Minecraft, it's allowed since people know the asset is from minecraft and not your own? Or if you included Sans Undertale in your game as a secret boss, everyone would know it's Sans Undertale and not your own creation so it's cool? So the issue is about not stealing from extremely small developers like you and always issuing credit when it's due? Good to know. It's kind of hard to define what is considered indie or not, but I'll try. Like, an old super obscure SNES RPG probably made less money and is less popular than your average modern indie game, even if it was made by a big studio like Square. But the SNES RPG is fine to rip from but a modern indie game isn't? It's kind of confusing but I'll try my best to make sure what is and isn't okay to put in my game. Also, glad to see you back liberty. Haven't seen you in a while.
I've gotten to the point whenever I find a resource I want to use I add everything to a document I keep in the game folder so I can make proper credits at the end of a game.
myindigocard
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author=fafraname
I've gotten to the point whenever I find a resource I want to use I add everything to a document I keep in the game folder so I can make proper credits at the end of a game.
Yeah, that's what I'm starting to do as well. Make the "credits" first before anything else and put them in a google doc/notepad document in order to keep track of who to credit. Then I add the credits both at the end of the game and on my game page on RMN/Itch.io so people don't need to play the entire game to see the credits.
