Wish Aaron was viewing this thread, he'd be pretty much the only one to get in contact about this and send word to the people who are handling the workshop.
To add to the problem the uploaders don't remove the games because by their logic, it alright if the company who owns the rights to it says nothing at all. This logic got Sonic 3 and Knuckles uploaded as a mod.
It seems like the majority of items that need to be taken down could be handled automatically, if Sega can't do this themselves maybe one of us needs to. There are plenty of ROM databases that have checksums for all of the commercial titles. I'd be as simple as scanning uploads to see if they have a checksum match with a released title, if so it's not a mod and it's not allowed. The majority of users who upload these things are too incompetent to change a few bytes anyway. If someone's smart enough to know how to make an actual mod, then they're probably smart enough to know not to upload actual games as mods. This won't help with people taking others hacks and claiming credit for them, but it sounds like the bigger problem is people uploading actual games.
That sounds like something the mod tool should had have in the first place. If we can convince sega to make this needed change, or allow one of us to make it for them, and remove every upload that doesn't match the checksums of the games sega is selling, The workshop could be greatly improved and be saved from being another rom site.
Would it be unreasonable to say the other revisions of an authorised game should be allowed, like REV00/02 of Sonic 2? EDIT: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=716412065 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=716434024 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=723782698 I caved in.
Just spotted a sega person over in the classic collection forum. Chris Budden. any one know him or if he can bring the piracy issue to Sega?
They already know that it's an issue. Their answer was them asking people not to upload that stuff, and asking people to report the offending works because if something is reported enough it'll be automatically removed. So basically: "Deal with it yourselves."
If that's all their response is going to be, then we have to take the issue to Jim Sterling and Kotaku. (I don't know any other game news sites) Sega can't just push the responsibility on to us and expect the content to stay legal.
Maybe a bit overkill, but I would think that something that scans an uploaded rom and compares it's content (not checksum) to a library of complete genesis/mega drive roms, flagging or rejecting roms that contain a certain percentage of data from a game in the rom library might be a better way to tackle the problem than the rather laissez-faire approach they're taking now. The threshold could be pretty high, it's unlikely a rom hack would have large chunks of the rom that are identical to that of another game even if it contained artwork from it.
Could work, but wouldn't it be more work than the checksum solution? It was posted earlier that a libary of Checksums already exists, but what would us or Sega even use for your solution as the reference material?
It's likely that they have access to the original ROMs for published games, drx's 2008 prototype release showed that they kept multiple revisions of games around at some point. If not, I guess they can get most of them from the Library of Congress archive: http://archive.org/download/MESS_0.149_Software_List_ROMs/MESS_0.149_Software_List_ROMs.zip/
So what? They'd get rid of the 90% of the current illegal ROMs and I'm sure that many of the uploaders don't know how to change any bits or fix the checksums when needed.
Well, the piracy just got worse as a recent genesis title is now on there. Pier Solar. That game is currently being sold on the game's official website in physical cart form for the genesis
If you have any practical ideas as to what can be done other than "keep pointing out uploaded commercial games to a board that can't do anything", I'd love to hear them. Because that's not very useful, y'know. =P
I know it's wildly unpopular, but they should implement a DMCA-style takedown system for mods in the workshop. Maybe trigger it by a number of points - so if a game gets X number of DMCA points against it, it automatically gets taken down and someone at Sega reviews the mod in general. That would allow groups like Watermelon Games to police their stuff while reducing the workload. While DMCA breaks when applied to a larger audience, I feel like the audience for Sega Genesis rom hacking (and downloading through steam) is small enough that it could be a valid form of policing. Maybe add an extra step so that, if you're submitted DMCA-style takedown notices on mods that aren't subject to them, the number of points your DMCA request gives out are reduced. Eventually, if you are flagrant enough with DMCA-style takedown requests, you'd basically become powerless because you'd have no points to give out against mods.
There is a dmca or copyright claim form link in the flag window, but I don't feel right using it my self.
DMCA in general is too broad, which is why I'm advocating a DMCA-like system. This would require nuance or else it'd be ripe for abuse.
