So minijuegos.com stole my half finished flash

[>flashl!ght<]

not unless you use a 'real' game development platform. Flash was never designed for this, to the estent we want it. It's an open source, which creates problems with attempting to market anything built in Flash, as hacking is extremely easy. Maybe one day MM will make Flash more secure. You may also want to try Macromedia Director(Shockwave). For one thing it handle pixel-bitmaps natively, unlike Flash.

I still think with enough effort you can make it difficult enough that most of these companies like minijuegos.com wouldn't steal it...

One crazy idea is to make a Union. Enough Flash game developers ban together that when the group finds a site like minijuegos stealing SWFs, then they group together is able to pursue legal action. However this won't help much for overseas offenders. And considering 90 percent of Flash game developers are under 18, I doubt this would get anywhere fast... :/

[kpesanka]

thehumanchimp, downloading the swf file was easy enough. If I had flasm here(I'm on a mac at the moment), I'm sure I could do the job.

[yanuart]

maybe we can set up somekinda group to watch and give fair warnings about those leecher's sites ?? sort of denounce them in public..

[thehumanchimp]

oh damn, i forgot to add no cacheing. Was that how you did it?

[tonypa]

But I dont want to be detective and spend my time finding thieves in the billions on sites everywhere on the world.

I only want to make games.

If someone steals it, I dont really care too much, cause the time I would waste getting it removed (if at all), I could spend better to make another game.

Plus, sites like addictinggames and minijuegos bring most players to my games and after all, why would I make games, if nobody plays them. So, I take those sites as free advertisers Without them I would need to pay to get my games shown, but they do it for free, so good for me.

[kpesanka]

thehumanchimp, no, nothing to do with caching. Would you like me to say it out loud? If not, email me at pesanka@gmail.com and I'll give you the scoop (it was actually a no-brainer).

[>flashl!ght<]

exactly what im thinking, tony. i make games for fun. its like a puzzle to me. i do branding/company identity/web dseign/print/ ect. for work(okay, and i enjoy that too) but Flash games? its all for fun. i havent released any of my good stuff, simply because i dont care to show off or make anything out of it. and most of them are unfinished, because as soon as i 'solve' the challenge, im unmotivated and too busy to complete it.

point: Flash games are little hobby to me, nothing more. but then, what do i know?

[slight]

Originally posted by yanuart
isn't there something we can do to stop activities such as minijuegos ??

After reading this thread and many others like it, and looking into all the tools and various ways and means of abusing swf, I have come to the conclusion that the best strategy is not to work against the likes of minijuegos. Let them steal it. Use _url... but not to cripple the game - advertise your site. Let the user know what features wont work off site (in many cases, the hiscore table will obviously not work) then let the user decide where they want to load the game from. My guess is most people will stay on the minijuegos server, unless they really like your flash.

Here's what my game looks like now if the _url is wrong:
http://www.evilbastard.org/slight/cc2c.swf
I would be happy if minijuegos or freeonlinegames hosted a copy of that version, in fact, I'd almost go as far as submitting it to them myself. Almost, but not quite.

[T1ger]

thehumanchimp, you finally met your superior? =)

I cant find the swf name with the tool.

[kpesanka]

False alarm - I had the wrong swf. thehumanchimp's challenge still stands.

[yanuart]

hey if you're making your flash games for free you should piss off by the fact that site like minijuegos is a commercial sites (with banners and pop ups)..
some ppl make flash game for a hobby, but some make them for a living and they spent their times and efforts making a good flash games.. and i bet that minijuegos don't share their incomes rite ??
i still think that minijuegos is so wrong and i think there's gotta be something to be done..

[tonypa]

Originally posted by thehumanchimp
Yes, Version 2...well, if anybody can leech this new (".swf goes here") swf or download it and host it on their site: http://members.lycos.co.uk/humanchim.../movieLock.php
I would be very intrigued...

You just have to delete the code in frame1 of congrats212secure.swf. Or replace the address variable with something else, like empty string.

[leason]

A few weeks ago we had a discussion about a policing force that would automate the "police" side of game creation/distribution. Here is that thread. Basically we are going ahead with it just to try it out. Progress is slow but its coming.

I tried doing what you did T1ger and could not make it work in IE either. HumanChimp, could you get that to work in IE? I'd really like to see how you guys pulled that off. I know its not totally secure, but it sure would help, and any leech bots would get foiled by it.

-Lee

[yellowman]

Originally posted by thehumanchimp
oh damn, i forgot to add no cacheing. Was that how you did it?

You might want to turn off directory listing aswell. If you want it to be a 'little' harder.. it would be quite easy as it is now:
http://members.lycos.co.uk/humanchimp/movieLock/

/klas

[thehumanchimp]

tonypa: can you pm me and tell me how you managed to download the file. (If you got it by seeing the directory listing, that doesn't count ...anymore at least!)

Anyway, It gets renamed every time it is viewed with a rndom now 10 digit number. Which should hopefully eliminate most leeching.

yellowman: oh god that directory listing thing was embarrasing. Sorted now - renamed a few files etc.

[tonypa]

Originally posted by thehumanchimp
tonypa: can you pm me and tell me how you managed to download the file. If you got it by seeing the directory listing, that doesn't count

lol, I used the directory listing

[thehumanchimp]

leason: i had a check, and it did work in IE. What happened to you? did nothing show up, or did you get an Authentification Failure notice?

I got that once, because my computer was going realllllly slow, and so the Authentification timer must have ran out.

[thehumanchimp]

ok tonypa. If you can get it now, i would be mystified.

[T1ger]

http://www.aleksanderstrand.com/rensec/

Leeching is now IMPOSSIBLE! and it's darn hard to get your hands at the swf too! I dont think anyone here can do it.

Slight: your reply is quite right, but if you make something for money, you really dont want it to be anywhere else...

[strille]

thehumanchimp, I could not resist:

http://www.strille.net/works/misc/stolenTest/stealer.html

I've not changed your file at all other than renaming it to stolenTest.swf.

Step 1. Retrieved the .swf file and placed it on my server (not going to tell everyone how though)
Step 2. Looked at the actionscript in it, but haven't modified it. Saw that the first frame checks the _url, if it's not correct it goes to your site by getURL, if it's ok, it goes to frame 2.
Step 3. Created a loader movie (stealer.swf) that redefines the getURL function to do nothing.
Step 4. Your file is loaded into the loader, the _url does not match, it tries to go to your site using getURL, but that function does nothing now.
Step 5. The loader movie tells your movie to go to frame 2.


Edit: T1ger, I retrieved your .swf the same way as thehumanchimp's.