WELL....I guess I give up.
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Steamlink doesn’t make you legally compliant.
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I think the intent is to demonstrate that the user owns a legal copy - and that intent is to clear their obligations - not the legal obligations of someone seeking to get around that. Of course it can be circumvented. So, technically - that's correct - it doesn't make YOU legally compliant, but it unbinds FAF from you in the legal sense by discharging their responsibility.
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The intent is that visi got spooked by his lawyers and gave FAF a deadline to meet and change their patch distribution method. Obviously nobody was going to do it and so Steamlink was implemented as the option B once the failed deadline inevitably hit.
Nobody at the time as a contributor was worried in any capacity about FAF being hit by any sort of legal notice and Steamlink does absolutely 0 to stop some sort of C&D. What Steamlink does is vaguely make it seem like FAF helps drive sales for Square Enix and we put the bare minimum effort to stop distributing files for free. In the end if Square Enix wanted to shut us down they are entirely within their rights to do so and Steamlink is irrelevant, just as any mod made for any game can get shut down.
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If you want steamlink gone you can lobby the board to undertake the associated responsibility.
It's not something I'm going to support without another mechanism of verifying ownership of the game. I'll resign from the association if we start supporting/encouraging piracy.
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It should be (probably is) against forum rules to describe ways to circumvent proof of ownership. Please don't ever share that info on FAF systems like the Forums @ThomasHiatt . You can edit your comment to remove that.
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Do people not know what CYOA means? It’s like getting offended when an emulator site tells you to rip your own Roms from the cartridge. Read between the lines.
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@zeldafanboy said in WELL....I guess I give up.:
Do people not know what CYOA means? It’s like getting offended when an emulator site tells you to rip your own Roms from the cartridge. Read between the lines.
FAF is not a dodgy emulator site and there should be no "wink wink" here.
There's more than one way to cover an ass. For FAF at least, cover it by staying within the law, as well as anyone can tell what the law even is. FAF is special compared to other fanmade mods because GPG told the public, more or less: "GPGnet is ending but you will still be able to do matchmaking on FAF, which is going to replace GPGnet in a lot of ways"
A lot of people relied on that promise when they made the decision to buy a copy of FA. I'm not giving legal advice here but a promise + justifiable reliance is powerful stuff, at least in the American legal system.
If people want clarity about what EXACTLY is legal for FAF to do, the best way for that to happen is to get sued by SquareEnix, hire lawyers (maybe rally the open source community for funding/free lawyers), fight it out in the courts, and get a judgment.
Clarity is overrated. The best thing for FAF is just go keep going forward under a little bit of uncertainty, and try to behave like responsible adults, for example taking reasonable steps to stop piracy so FAF can do what GPGnet used to do, namely provide a matchmaking service for people who own a legal copy of the game.
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It's pretty clear that distributing all the game files like FAF does for patching is against the law. And it's pretty clear that nobody cares. You were all happy to support FAF for a decade before steamlink was implemented, but now you consider its absence would be unethical and to be supporting piracy? Very convenient.
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GPG is not Square Enix and you're going to have a very fun time trying to prove that a significant minority of FA bought their copy of FA based on that GPG statement. Proving people bought FA because of FAF after that statement doesn't mean anything, we could drive 90% of FA sales but it still doesn't give any rights over the IP. Square Enix can and would just hit FAF with a boiler template C&D that every mod community gets and there is nothing that makes FAF special from the countless other communities that got smothered over it.
It isn't the right of Square Enix to make profitable decisions for their IP, it's their right to make decisions for their IP. The ruling would tell FAF it can exist as a community chat hub to organize games to play using Steam matchmaking.
And I'd broadly disagree. Steamlinking is probably the most damaging institution FAF has in terms of community health. It is practically the reason we lose half our players in our onboarding process. Making it easier and more intuitive is extremely difficult and nearly impossible as far as I'm aware simply because of the way the steam API functions which causes most of the new player issues.
The marginal security it brings is nowhere near the harm it causes.
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Also for the record jts THQ nordic not Square whom have ro take issue.
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@thomashiatt no it's not pretty clear that what FAF is doing is against the law, otherwise I would not be a representative of this organization.
GPG encouraged modding and FAF when it shut down. They helped build this community.
So long as we don't break the spirit of that covenant and start encouraging piracy, or go against the original intentions -- say by cross-modding and taking SupCom 2 content and putting it into FAF, I'm fine with representing FAF in official capacity, talking with Square Enix/THQ Nordic should they send a C&D and defending our case in court should it be needed.
But only so long as we verify ownership of the game and actually do operate with good intentions.
Anyone who wants steam link gone and argues that it's OK should also be ready to sign up for the board and put their personal name on the paperwork behind the organization that runs FAF.
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Why did FAF not break that covenant for the 6 years it was up without Steamlink then?
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@ftxcommando I don't believe it did break that covenant.
But if we right now removed steamlink with no alternative verification mechanism, I believe it would be a breach of that covenant and I will not be a part of it.
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At that time it wasn't pushing a modified EXE, so the feeling was that no clear violation existed. When the legal playground changed in Europe, and it was clear that US jurisdiction was no longer going to be a shield on potential prosecution, steps needed to be taken to show that the organization was exhibiting 'good intent' - and this was a highly visible and practical choice (Steam absolutely drowns all other forms of SC ownership - even now).
Yes - there is discontent and resistance from a small group. Heck, we even see it over at LOUD where we don't have the same legal requirements (we don't mess with the EXE itself). There will always be such a group. You just have to accept it, especially in this day and age.
It's one thing to modify freely open data and script files, especially in a project that has an extensive history of permitting such. It's another to go rooting around in 'protected' software (as the EXE is legally seen) and make changes to it - and then go about handing those changes out - especially if it's seen as you handing out this software, for free, without verification.
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I have quite the problems with that narrative because it's entirely post-hoc and not what caused Steamlink to exist nor was this concern ever brought up when exe changes were being implemented. In fact even if it were a concern I would go so far as to say reverting the exe changes (which afaik only consists of the lowering of desyncs in replays by preventing commands during disconnect ticks) would still be a net positive for FAF.
I'm very interested if someone has some case law that showcases a situation similar to FAF making a substantial defense.
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Why would it be legal to distribute the game without modification? That's literally what piracy is. Whether or not you modify the game you still cannot legally make copies and send them to people.
You cannot even claim in good faith that Steamlink verifies ownership since you are aware of the trivial exploit I mentioned and haven't attempted to fix it, which would also be trivial. Plus the server will still send you the game files without even logging in, all you have to do is open a replay using the python client and you get whatever files you need to run that version of the game.
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@ftxcommando other exe changes were made including ones to support shared armies.
There is no "narrative" here. Before the association, Visionik was personally responsible for the operation of FAF, and he made the choice to introduce steam link for these reasons.
Now it's the association that's responsible for future choices.
If you so vehemently want to remove steam link and not otherwise prove that we are still intending for FAF players to own the game; then you know what to do.
Lobby the board so they are all willing to be responsible for the action because they will be.
I advise you bring a lawyer and get a statement from them if you want to be convincing.
But even with that, it's going to be without me unless there's sufficient alternative to prove that we are still operating with the intention of making sure our players own the game.
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I'd love to just let me into the association 4head
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@ftxcommando said in WELL....I guess I give up.:
Why did FAF not break that covenant for the 6 years it was up without Steamlink then?
GPG knew that FAF wasn't requiring Steam-linking when it told the public they could use FAF as a matchmaker for FA. So, at least for some period of time, FAF gets a free pass on that.
But who is to say that, as time progresses, FAF doesn't need to adapt? FAF wants to update the exe, make balance patches, and otherwise innovate. So it makes sense that as time goes on FAF would have to "grow up" and also innovate ways to protect against piracy.
One of the defenses that FAF is likely to bring in the event of litigation is "fair use." And, while I'm not an IP law expert, my guess is that someone relying on a defense that has to do with "fairness" (or for that matter, a lot of other defenses FAF might want to use also have to do with fairness/equity) is going to want to be able to say "we took reasonable steps to prevent piracy" not "lol we think piracy is funny, get rekt corpo scum"
