I’ve been working on gun camos recently (most of which come from google) and I’m forced to not use a lot of them in my final product because they cost money to reuse in my own projects. I could be a scumbag and steal someone else’s textures and sell them for my own profit but I don’t like the idea of lawyers potentially coming after me (also morals). I wanna buy them and this would be 100% absolutely fine (I’d just pay the fee and use it) but then everyone else will just use what I bought for free.
I’ve seen so many other developers purchase music/audio effects/images that get blatantly stolen and cloned into other games and there’s no way to get it removed (I’ve tried, moderation/emailing/reporting doesn’t do anything, sorry but that’s just the reality of my situation). My solution is that assets need to be in your inventory in order for your game to use them. This would prevent a lot of copying, and although clients do load this data and can just steal it, that is soooo much more difficult than going into someones inventory and pressing CTRL+C on whatever asset you’d like.
What do you think? I’ve seen a lot of posts about this but it never truly bugged me until now when it’s affected me. I wanna make a very high quality game but I anything I upload can effortlessly be copied from the site. This brings me to my next point: implementation.
“But ScriptOn, how will the toolbox work?” and “how about old assets?” and “But what about all the old games!!”
Add a toggle under each asset (decal, audio, etc…) that says ‘Free to take’
Anything that’s set to ‘free’ can be used by anyone. This shows up in the toolbox
Anything you upload is defaulted to free
Everything that’s been uploaded already will be defaulted to free
You can go in after under ‘Configure’ and untick the ‘free’ box to prevent other people from using it
If the asset has ‘Free’ checked:
You can use this asset without ever taking it (adding it to your inventory)
You can still add it to your inventory (this will come in handy and I’ll explain why below)
If the asset has ‘Free’ unchecked:
If you do not have this asset in your inventory you can not use it
If you claimed this asset when it was free and the asset is no longer free you will still be able to use it.
“But ScriptOn, clients load data, not the server, silly!”
Run a simple check each time an asset needs to be loaded.
There’s probably much more efficient ways of doing this than I can think of, but I would say have it quickly ask the server if it can load this asset. If the server’s Place’s owner has this asset then give it the a-ok. Now cache this result on the server for the entire length of that server. Now when person #2 loads the game they don’t need to wait for this check.
Most of you have probably figured out by now that this works very similarly (maybe exactly?) like many other assets that the player owns. I’m explaining it thoroughly and showing why I’d like it for Decals and Sounds.
Client asks game server if its ok to download the asset
Game server says ok
Client asks asset server for the asset
This is how it already works. It isn’t secure because the client has to ask the asset server directly. If the asset streamed through the game server then it would be secure, but that would be a huge and unnecessary strain. Your concept of a “free” checkbox is also how it already works.
EDIT: Oh are you talking about developers using the exact asset you’re using? There’s no point in preventing this if they can still just download the asset and reupload it.
There is. I explained it above. It’s much more difficult for someone to exploit a place than it is to press two keys after going into my inventory.
It’d also make for at least some possibility of “hey roblox, he stole my thing. Ban him please”
I wanted to mention something about hiding the direct link to it btw, but I have no idea how that sort of stuff works. Regardless, it’s still harder to even use snipping tool and screenshot the Decal than it is to directly insert the ID, the cloned version would also have worse quality.
To be honest I don’t care what or how they implement it, I just want to be able to spend $100 on a texture without knowing that money means nothing unless I get sued (which will probably not happen but better safe than sorry) but it will still enable tons of people as they use the non watermarked version of that asset that I bought.
There are two types of people that want to steal your assets:
Scammy noob developers. These people won’t make a popular game and really aren’t a threat to anyone. If downloading assets was made more difficult these people would no longer be able to do it.
Scammy serious developers. These people intend to make a popular game, and have the connections and resources to do so. These are the ones that are a threat to you. They are experienced, resourceful, and dedicated enough to figure out how steal assets no matter how difficult roblox makes it. As long as its possible these people will be doing it.
If you can’t stop the people who actually pose a threat, then I don’t think there’s a point in making it more difficult.
Until someone makes a bot to just scrape assets from memory. You can already do this manually, and bots already exist to scrape geometry this way.
Maybe the current state of things is better than trying to make it more difficult. An all-purpose asset scraper would be even more convenient than going to each asset’s page and downloading it there, but people have no reason to make one until stealing assets is sufficiently difficult.
Just because they’ll get it anyway doesn’t mean we should give it to them on a silver platter.
Make it as hard as possible. Its like ditching a security system because people will hack it anyway.
Did you read my post? The public isn’t the enemy. The dedicated developers are.
[quote=“sparker22, post:9, topic:30191”]
Its like ditching a security system because people will hack it anyway.
[/quote]No, because a security system is designed to be unhackable. Its easy to scrape assets from memory,
My point still stands. Just because they will inevitably get it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have any measures to get it. They shouldn’t be able to see any not free assets on the website to begin with.
Let them resort to scraping it through memory. The less options there are to getting it the better.
The current system is so bad because taking someones assets doesnt even feel like stealing. Every asset you upload is publicly available and searchable in the library. You only have to check a box called: Show unavailable items. I think assets are often stolen without people even thinking about it.
Also I don’t think that you can correctly categorize people into two different types of people who want to steal your assets. But I don’t want people stealing my assets regardless of them posing a threat to me or not.
I’m tired of hearing that we shouldn’t make improvements because there’s more difficult ways to accomplish the same thing. That’s what we want - for it to be more difficult. Obviously we aren’t going to have a concrete solution in the near future, so adding difficulty is the best way to counter the problem. Custom assets are blowing up on the site, so I hope to see some kind of implementation soon to guarantee assets can only be used by those paying to use them.
It’s exactly the same concept as speeding cameras and firewalls, they don’t stop hackers or people that drive dangerously, but they act as a deterrent and make it harder. You will never be able to stop criminals, but you can make it a lot harder for them to harm anyone.
Yes. This exactly. The way the current system is set up its easy to both genuinely not know that you’re stealing and to play dumb and pretend you didn’t know.
I’m pretty sure we’ve been down this road in other threads. Let’s take a look at local scripts. These are loaded on the client, so it’s inevitable that their source will be stolen. Since the dedicated are able to do it, does that mean we should open-source all of our local scripts? Of course not. ROBLOX even has and likely will continue to patch programs that provide a quick-and-easy way to steal source code like this. Why are our other assets any different?
There are 2 major misconceptions on your part:
All dedicated scammy devs are capable of stealing assets
Your idea of damage is the same as everyone else’s
Is the creator of escape the dentist obby capable of making a front-page game? Unfortunately, yes. Are they capable of packet sniffing? More than likely not. Not everyone who can compete wih your game is able to do the things you assume they can.
Also, popularity isn’t the only way a game can be damaged – you’re assuming everyone develops the same kind of games you do. Smaller subsets of the community which thrive off of small but dedicated communities are more easily competed with, and non-dedicated scammy developers can pose a threat to them.
At least people would need to spend robux to reupload sounds, instead of just using it for free now. that’s also one of the few things resulting from this that’ll make a wall that’s higher than a stupid fence
As I understand, the problem is that a developer can use, in their own games, certain types of assets owned by other developers, because the website does not enforce whether or not clients can download them. So, the solution would be the following:
The website will only allow a client to download a private asset (of a certain type, e.g. sound or mesh) if that client is connected to a game owned by a user that also owns that asset.
Note that this does not prevent malicious clients from downloading whatever they want as usual. But remember that the goal is to stop developers, not clients. A developer would have to get everyone who plays their game to use a malicious client, which is infeasible.
A developer cannot coerce a client to retrieve directly from rbxcdn. They must go through the main website (roblox.com/asset), which is already capable of enforcing whether the client can download an asset. And, once again, malicious clients are not relevant here.
Currently, in order to stop misuse of a piece of content, you have to take down not only reuploads, but your own assets as well, which is rather silly. By applying the solution above, you’d only have to worry about taking down reuploads, which makes a lot more sense.
There is also the question of how to share these assets with developers you actually want to share them with. Currently, you have to make an asset public temporarily, which is unsafe. Some kind of gifting system would be necessary for this.
A payment system would also be interesting. The incentive to buy an asset would be to own a legit copy that has no chance of being taken down.
If I upload a music piece with licence for 1 game. Then I don’t want other games to use it.
They can download the music and upload it themselves but then its THEIR responsebility for using unlicenced music, not mine. If their music gets reported and taken down, mine wont.
This is a Critical flaw in roblox system and has been for a long time now.
Non-free items should not be free.
We really need this fixed.