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[Dacke]

Hi, I'd like to ask someone with experience of the Flash world to straighten some things out for me. I got into an argument with someone who runs a small Flash portal and I need to know if his claims are true.

My question is this:
Given that a game is sponsored: Are you allowed to use (for example) a Firefox plugin to grab the game swf and then republish it on your own (commercial) site?

Can you do this without asking permission? Is there a spoken or unspoken agreement between sponsors (like armor games) and anyone who wants to republish those games?


This is how it went down:

1) I see this guy asking a developer to update a game to a newer version (in a friendly tone). He then proceeds to say that he has used Firefox to grab the current version and has published it on his own flash portal. But he'd like the developer to update the game so he can grab the newer version and publish that one instead.

2) I figure he is a simple thief and try to tell him off:

Hi. I just thought I should tell you this: It’s ok to have Firefox grab games from sites, if you want to play them locally on your computer. It is, however, very illegal and immoral to grab someones game (without permission) and put it on your own site in order to make money. If you want a game on your site that you do not have permission to publish, simply put a link to the official place of the game.

3) He responds by telling me how the Flash world actually works:

    Heya,

    It actually isn’t illegal or immoral at all to grab games and host them on your site, it’s actually encouraged and the exact reasons why kongregate, armor games, bubblebox, and other sites exist and are successful. The rule is this, if there is sponsor branding in a game, whether it be the developer themselves or a company, you’re welcome to spread the game as long as the swf isn’t altered in any way, in fact, these people DEPEND on people such as myself to help spread in the viral process. In addition, if the game is NOT allowed to be grabbed (still in beta, fixing bugs, various other reasons) the game will always be site locked, armor games is a perfect example of this with nearly every new game they sponsor being locked for roughly a week. I’ve been a part of the flash development scene for a number of years now as well, I’ve had 5 sponsored games and talk to Lars of king.com and other sponsors on a regular basis, Greg included. lastly, I know [the developer in question] personally, I’ve reviewed a few of his games on FlashGameLicence.com, another place I’m hugely active in the flash scene. Anyway, not trying to pummel you into the ground with a haha, I’m right, you’re wrong, just figured I’d inform you of how things really are since that was clearly your motive towards me.

[Eclipse]

actually you can do that and publishing other people games is not only allowed, but encouraged both from sponsors and the developers themselves.

You're allowed to publish only a version that has the sponsor logo at the start or somewhere in the game but you surely can, it works this way. So, yes, he was right.

My games were uploaded in hundreds of portals after the sponsor one, it's the only way the sponsor receive additional traffic for your game

[bateleur]

Yup, it's fine.

This is one of those weird cases where an entire industry has adopted a de-facto standard which conflicts with most people's moral intuition.

But here's the thing: study this model closely, because it's a blueprint for the future. Nobody in the system's getting screwed. Nobody's crying about pirates and stamping their tiny feet in rage. It may seem weird, but it works.

[Μarkham]

Yeah, it's weird at first, but really only hurts you if you don't have a button in the game that links back to your site.  It's still a violation of copyright law, and they have to remove your game if you ask them to, but at this point, it's a little futile.  Might as well put a link to your site and Mochi ads in and let it spread through the net.  It might even reach people willing to pay you for a site-locked version with their logo in it.

[moi]

[EDIT (more on topic)]
I have read on flashgamelicense that it is actually expected that smaller portals will steal the SWF and put them on their website. It gets the author/sponsor more ad coverage and sometimes more ad money.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

It's expected but still nice to ask permission.

A while ago ebaumsworld got smeared to the ground cause of some internet drama resulting from them not asking permission. I was smart and had a linkback to my site in my games so when he "stole" it I would get some of that traffic and profit. This was right before sponsors became huge so a lot of people weren't getting compensated for their work and fell into all the hype against that site.

Funny thing is most of the people bashing it weren't even flash authors who just fell into the angry mob.

Nowadays as long as you credit the author (not the sponsor, the developer) with a site link it shouldn't be a problem.

[st33d]

When people nick the games off of our site we lose out on the advertising revenue that is surrounding the game. Bear in mind also that advertising on a html page pays out a lot more than an in-game ad. Also, even if you have mochi ads in the game, there are some countries where the ads aren't going to pay out.

Having links back to your site in the game doesn't help a great deal when the end user has already started playing the game and the game saves only work at the thief's site (the nature of the Shared Object).

I'd suggest url locking and encypting what you're going to upload if you haven't got a completely open source attitude to what you're putting up.

[Dacke]

Thank you everyone!

Interesting to learn how these things work. To me it makes perfect sense that a sponsored game would be distributed for free. I'm all for things being free and opensource and even pirated and what not. It's just when people make money by pirating other's work I start seeing red. But that's obviously not the case so no harm done.

But there is one thing I really don't get. Why can't the sponsors simply supply people with the swf? How hard would it be for the bigger sponsors to have a "Do you want to publish our games? Register here and get all the lastest versions!"-page? I figure it would be safer for those who republish too.

[genericlogin]

Kongregate.com has a "Games for your site" link tucked waaaaay underneath the homepage. I don't see other sites doing the same though.

[aeiowu]

you can put it up on flashgamedistribution.com if you want it to go viral. If you want your game exclusive to your site a simple site-lock does the trick.

But yea, I agree Dacke that it doesn't make a ton of sense, but it's the way it is. At least for the developers since these portals that get viral versions of the games make much more money off of ad revenue than any single developer could hope to through traditional sponsorship/ad-rev.

[moi]

Sponsoring and branding do have an influence though. For example, I have came to associate armor games with good quality games now. If I were to look for good Flash games to play (say on Google) I would look for their name first.

[Eclipse]

Sponsoring and branding do have an influence though. For example, I have came to associate armor games with good quality games now. If I were to look for good Flash games to play (say on Google) I would look for their name first.

same here armor games and newgrounds mostly