I often end up in a situation where I create a script for someone, but want to protect the contents from being stolen, for example in a game that uses team create. What is the best way to protect my content? I’ve had people re-use my scripts before, and make pretty good profit, while the Roblox support e-mail was unable to help my case as “With time and dedication could be built to replicate your models, and this is not against the Rules of Terms of Service.”.
You used to be able to do this using ModuleScripts, but due to the flaws in the system, this has been closed. Do you guys have any advice on the best way to handle situations like this?
There’s a new website coming out called Devable, you can find it pretty easy on here. It’s not open to the public yet but the guy is doing whitelist waves here and there on his discord.
I’d suggest going there, since the ending of support for private modules it’s been pretty impossible unless you obfuscate your code, and you won’t really find any good ones for cheap.
Working on a Team Create but wanting to protect your code from others is pretty sketch if I do say so myself. Personally if I invite someone to a Team Create, there’s an expectation that they aren’t hiding their code. Especially if they’re paid.
Within a Team Create, there is no real way to hide your code. Eventually the source will need to end up in the game somehow for the sake of testing and making the game work upon publishing as well.
I’m usually not the one that is working on the project. I like to help out some friends with some projects that do take up my time, and I’m proud of my work, but it has happened on multiple occasions that I develop a system, and someone ends up taking the system and presenting it as their own work, even going as far as releasing the model. I’d like to take some steps to protect myself when situations like this arise, because even if I do own the copyright, Roblox support is pretty unhelpful in this department, which I understand.
I don’t think I’m willing to write legal documents, because I think that is way too much for situations like this, I’m just mapping out what my options are here.
This sums it up, however to expand for the OP you can give each developer a dedicated environment where they can carry out their projects with limited access to unnecessary game resources. Role-based access control is a common implementation on Roblox, where each developer or team of developers have access to their own isolated environment, which gets merged into a dedicated environment ready for production.
E.g. builders have access to environment A which contains models, programmers access to environment B with game functionality, contractors access to an isolated environment with only the necessary assets according to their contract.
The above is purely an example. You could implement it differently so programmers/builders have access to an environment with components they specifically are responsible for. The underlying concept is RBAC, limiting the scope of potential leaks to an isolated instance.
I don’t have much time, so I’ll have to summarize. Essentially, you need to execute your scripts on your own server and allow others to remotely call it. Trying to secure your scripts on their server is like trying to secure localscripts: it is an infinite cat and mouse game. So, the question becomes, which server?
You can roll your own server / service however there is a lot of work involved (handling authentication, payments, scaling and resources, installing Lua / LuaJIT, maybe a web interface) so your best bet is to use a service that provides it. There have been a couple of people who have tried to provide the services, but I think mine has been in existence the longest (since January 2019).
At times I actively develop on it, others I’m not as active. If you have issues, I’m more than willing to help out. However, as a free service I can’t dedicate myself to it. Here is the link:
At this rate you either sell the scripts expecting things to be beyond your control past that point, or you only work with people you trust/yourself. Unfortunately it is a real problem that I have dealt with myself in the past, but ultimately it’s up to trust or accepting that once it’s out of your hands, it’s no longer truly just yours.