Assets theft?

[ladyonthemoon]

I notice that all the textures, sprites and scripts are directly available in the Data directories of the games, at least in Avernum, Avadon and Queen's Wish. Isn't Jeff afraid that people take them and use them in their own games? Even if some of the graphic resources come from OpenGameArt.org, others were made specially for the games and Jeff had to pay to use them.

[Dintiradan]

Accessing the assets isn't that hard, even for AAA games. If you wanted to prevent that (or at least make it more difficult), you'd have to use DRM, which Jeff is against. The best way to deal with another company copying your digital assets is a lawyer.

Edited October 25, 2019 by Dintiradan
accidentally a word

[Thaeris]

Fear of theft regarding intellectual property... from my opinion, is mostly just fear. However, someone who does lift art assets and use them in a different paid product without consent may very well not like it if they get caught. It's not to say it isn't done, but I'm guessing most of the culprits who engage in this activity are not profiting much, if at all, from their lack of originality. That said, unless they are engaged in blatant piracy, those individuals likely pose little-to-no threat to the original developers by using the assets alone. The threat to the original developer or IP holder would be a competing product (free or paid) which would reduce their own income. If that product also happens to use stolen assets, then the hammer swing just gets harder and faster.

 

...As per why the assets are accessible, consider that the original developer wants to access them as well. To make new filetypes or encrypt existing filetypes, etc., just slows everything down (possibly in more ways than one) and also discourages modding. The latter is not a selling point, especially if people will buy their product for the sole reason of running a mod the original developer didn't even have to make! That's kind of the selling point of Blades of Exile, after all.

[googoogjoob]

I think maybe the most telling thing is that, as far as I know, every Spiderweb release (at least back to the original Avernum, not sure about the Exiles and can't check right now; so that's for at least 20 years) has had all its graphical assets in freely-accessible form, in various formats, and to my knowledge nobody has ever pilfered them, or at least not in any way resulting in a public scandal or lawsuit. I don't think most of the assets would be very useful to a thief, anyway, unless they happened to be making a 2d isometric fantasy game at coincidentally the same view angle height as a Spiderweb game. Maybe some of the portrait art would be useful. The scripts would be worthless, of course.

 

On the other hand, the free accesibility of all the games' assets has resulted in a decent number of very good mods, even apart from Blades scenarios.

[Randomizer]

I don't know if the topic still exists, but once upon a time Jeff was given a sound effect that he used in an early game until he found out it had been taken from another game without permission from the right holder. He found out from the legal complaint. So Jeff has been careful not to make that mistake again.

[Thaeris]

On another note, I will contend that most people who lift assets without consent tend to be hobbyists, modders, and the like. Their behavior is morally and ethically questionable at best, but their intent is generally fairly innocent. They will typically not see a dime for the hard work [of their own] which they do produce, and simply resort to using the assets of others because, well, it's hard work after all! I want to also clarify that I'm not condoning this behavior, but I do understand it. I have seen other modders do this sort of thing, no profit was involved, and they were just trying to tell a story in most cases. I would be surprised if anyone who's ever tinkered or thought of tinkering with games has not come into contact with such people, or was such a person at one time themselves. If there's an analogy for this, it might be like playing with Star Wars and GI Joe action figures in the same session as a child: the original IP holders would not approve, but it doesn't hurt anything. Marketing your own material by blatantly using those assets is a different story, however.

 

...So again, the real concern seems to show up when you either have shameless, blatant theft and plagiarism of ideas or materials, or otherwise when money starts to flow (or alternately, be diverted from the IP holder). Or worse, both. Fortunately (and unfortunately in some cases), those sorts of activities are generally quite apparent and easy to shut down. The bulk of people who tinker with game assets and use them for their own purposes just aren't worth the worry, so why bother making the assets hard to get to in the first place? As a further aside, note that many people have managed to get into the game development field because they were modders and tinkerers... It might actually hurt the industry in the long run if they made things too inaccessible.

 

In the context of the forums, modders may end up in Avernum, but the unscrupulous will certainly wind up in The Abyss. 😋

[ladyonthemoon]

Thanks for all your contributions!

 

It's just surprising that Jeff leaves his stuff in the open like that when everyone everywhere are obsessed with protecting theirs from theft... On the other hand, I understand his understated point: "You steal my stuff? You'll have to deal with the consequences."

 

I'm currently working on my first game, the question of protecting my work went through my mind once or twice although I'm far from any step where I should care. It's not my main concern yet and I think I'm going to just leave it behind.