So, it is always unfortunate that I have to put protection in place due to abuse. Although I knew the loop hole was there, it was always something that I imagined would have been abused by small time websites if any. Which really wouldn't have mattered all that much.
No instead I discovered a large online games website had been abusing the loop hole. That site is y8.com. Honestly this has seriously got me very annoyed! The reason being is by bypassing our embed codes, no credit is given to the developer and no statistics will get recorded. Which as far as I'm concerned as they wouldn't know the latter their intention was to pass these games as their own in a blatant attempt of plagiarism. I cannot see any other reason why they would have done this.
Now it looks like this has gone on for awhile and they have racked up 1000's of game plays on our games while their members have been unaware that these were not developed by them. Due to the stats not getting recorded it's not something that I noticed. Although from time to time I check our internal server stats which tells me everything.
Now I want this to be as public as I can make it as I see this as really anti game developer practices. A complete disgrace to the gaming industry and they should be held accountable for trying to in my eyes steal other people's hard work. It is something that we state in our TOS.
Wow, @y8_com stealing my games (MY OWN IP's) and breaking our TOS https://t.co/u0nrafNGp4 Seriously not HAPPY!!! Make your own damn games... #gamedev @indiedev
— PLAY iDev Games (@HTML5Arcade) September 13, 2020
I find it hard to believe they would attempt to do this. None the less every cloud has their silver lining. So I've got to work to try and solve the issue and fix the loophole. So now if anyone tries to bypass the embed code they will see the below message:
Honestly as a game developer I care highly about your IP's and your hard work. I built the tools so you have complete control over your games and I'm ashamed to say that they had abused our tools and system for their own gain. Although I'm also happy to say they won't be able to do it again.
To leave this on a bit of a happier note I have been working on a large update for the site. A game API system. I've been talking about it on twitter so hopefully I'll have some more news on that soon.
Thanks,
-iDev
