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.
WELL....I guess I give up.
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.
Also for the record jts THQ nordic not Square whom have ro take issue.
I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.
Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project
@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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
@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.
@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"
I will testify against you showing all the lazy holes and exploits in the steam link system that you turn a blind eye to.
I would have to try it again to double check, but as far as I remember one of the official game patches removed the check for the serial number. So the creators didn't care any more about redistribution of their game files.
Edit: It removed the check that the disk was physically present, which basically has the same effect, because now you could pass the CD to your friends and still play.
@thomashiatt your comment detailing the exploit publicly was removed.
I'll encourage the dev team to look into fixing the particular exploit; which I wasn't aware of until you posted it here.
The Steam account and your Game details need to be public during the first login. You can set them back to private after the initial login.
The steam linking instructions pretty much spell it out on their own.
@arma473 said in WELL....I guess I give up.:
@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"
The first paragraph is baseless and this was never thought true by anybody. Back during Zep Era everyone was well aware FAF could be shut down and there was nothing that could be done about it, people are still aware of it. There was never some divine right from God that would keep FAF safe from a C&D.
Let's remember Steamlink wasn't implemented to keep FAF safe from being shut down but rather to keep monetary risk from visi to a minimum. Big difference between the two and if people want to argue about keeping Steamlink to keep FAF financial risk or their personal monetary risk to a low then feel free to do so but it was never in the cards that Steamlink was going to keep FAF safe if people got serious about taking it down even back when the argument with visi about implementing it was going on.
Projects with much less total use of assets (and no profit motive just like FAF) like the KOTOR remaster mod have been hit with C&Ds and were not in anyone's capacity to fight. I heavily doubt any fair use defense would stand when FAF basically markets itself as a service that Square Enix is already providing via Steam matchmaking.
The steps to get around Steamlink were known literally day 0 of its implementation by the way because I heard all of them back when I had to argue for why we needed Steamlink back then and why it was useless as a legal defense. Back then I mostly argued for it because of the positive externalities against smurfing but with current data from onboarding case studies as well as the retention thread it can be seen that Steamlink had extreme negatives that were not foreseen at the time.
