Fake or real dev site?

[Mrs_Allykat]

I asked my husband to look at it, as he is more versed in JS than I am. He said changing some syntax and some variable names does not constitute "new code." He called it an attempt to make a clever clone.

 

[Archeia]

@Archeia : That's all they edited? I think that is more like 99% identical code then.

Yup it's 99% "paraphrased" code.

 

[Kauzz]

lol, one admin of this site called me on FB yesterday saying they want to make a interview with me about my tilesets and etc. o-o

 

[Sleepy Kitten Games]

This news can't stay buried. Threads like these were how I learned to not use tiles from a certain now-banned person.
Just saw the posts on Yanfly's site myself, came back to the forums because the username looked familiar.
And yeah, speaking as a person doing a computer science-related major in college (which means a good handful of programming classes), there are some things where you can't avoid there being similarities. But whole plugins being virtually the same lines of code? Nah, that's deliberate plagiarism.

 

[Marquise*]

lol, one admin of this site called me on FB yesterday saying they want to make a interview with me about my tilesets and etc. o-o

No... No... No... too suspect... ish

 

[Yanfly]

@Yanfly @Galv and any other dev affected should issue DMCA notices on Fiverr and get this guy blocked
https://www.fiverr.com/intellectual-property?source=footer

I hope @Foundation is also able to revise his feedback as I doubt anyone can give a bad rating if they've not done business with him through that site.

I've sent them an e-mail but I don't know how much could actually be done. Based on their requirements alone, they're going to need evidence from all sorts as well as copyright certificates. While I could provide evidence of my code, his admitting to doing wrong, etc., there's no way to actually prove that the code they stole is something they actually put forth unless foundation_buzz themselves admit it. I'm not expecting much out of this, and the best we can do is just alert the community to stay sharp and not fall prey.

 

[atoms]

I think Yanfly did the right thing to block him, based on there conversation over Discord that was shared. The guy responsible really looks like he was just trying to deceive Yanfly and not really wanting to put anything right, despite claiming it. That is terrible to be honest, glad it's gone public.

 

[samkfj]

If it hasn't been already done, perhaps a mod could either sticky this thread or maybe make an announcement to inform all members of the forum. I can't really navigate the forum well on my phone to see.

I hope the damage will be fixed and offenders ousted--but anyone visiting might not see this thread in time.

 

[Kauzz]

No... No... No... too suspect... ish

Yeah, like WAT? because this offer come from nothing. (I've putted my last sample maps of tiles for MV on facebook 10 days ago, but it's very late to offer me something like this, and i'm not a famous tileset artist...) Anyway, he asked me just my e-mail to send me the questions, and him said they were going to send me me yesterday at night, but i didn't receive anything yet.

 

[Archeia]

Yanfly explains why we know it's Plagiarism.
http://yanfly.moe/2019/04/16/avoid-purchasing-plugins-from-foundat-io-part-3/

 

[bgillisp]

I like how they say "But we're not a programmer." So...why are you selling plug-ins? Shouldn't a programmer look at these and take responsibility for it? And yes, old code does work just fine. I'm still using ACE and Yanfly's code and except for having to tweak it a little to work with a couple little scripts I wrote for my game it works just fine.

Also under the new Euro Law that is proposed they are in violation of that (Article 13) just by selling this to anyone in the EU. Someone should point THAT out to them, as under Article 13 if I understand it right @Yanfly could sue them for hosting and selling their stolen code, and they would be liable, and NOT the coder. Granted it doesn't take effect for 2 years and has yet to pass the last vote, but...

 

[Sleepy Kitten Games]

Yeah, that "we're not programmers" excuse is pretty flimsy. As is the "but the plugin didn't work" excuse.
I've had plugins where they had incompatibilities. Not because they're bad or broken plugins, just because their developers didn't write their plugins to be compatible with each other (through no fault of either developer). What you do in that case is either a) decide you don't need one plugin or the other, or b) find a way to make them compatible.
And yeah, old code doesn't mean broken code either. There's still scripts for XP that work perfectly fine.
Those are transparently just really bad excuses for being caught selling other peoples' plugins and calling it their own work. Pun intended.

 

[Archeia]

I also like how when cases like this happens the excuses are always:

• It's a coincidence.
• There's only so many ways to do x!
• I don't even know those people.

I checked the facebook profile of the "programmer" and saw they liked Galv's page. Even I can tell from a single glance how they just literally lifted the code and just changed some layout and names here and there. Just some methods not being in the rpg_* core scripts but are in the plagiarized scripts is already a big flag. There's only so many ways to do x is a ****ty explanation since people implement things way differently from one another based on their programming preference too.

 

[Kupotepo]

@Amane Kagari, thank you for bringing this matter up.

In the coding, reserved words are identical, but the naming and logical order have to be different because it is personalized.

@Archeia, lol if paraphrase code, the original code gets credit. But this is just exploit other people work.

 

[hiddenone]

It's not only the plugins, a lot of the humanoids sprites are based off my Hine sprite base without any mention of that.

 

[bgillisp]

@Archeia : That is true. Early programming (hello world, make a box which reads a number and multiply it by 2, etc) is pretty similar, but later on that ceases to be true.

I remember when I was in my computer graphics class our first HW everyone's was pretty similar as it was just initialize the engine and draw a couple graphics on the screen at precise coordinates, but by HW 11 when we were coding raytracers and such the code was vastly different.

@hiddenone : What????

@Kupotepo : Right. And I also feel they should use the same terms of use the code they borrowed used, so since Yanfly is free to use for commercial and non-commercial use, that should be the terms on any code they use that is 99% identical to Yanfly's.

 

[Sleepy Kitten Games]

Yeah. Even in my Programming II class, there's already lots of different ways to do things. (Heck, had that with an assignment I turned in like 30 minutes ago.)
Eesh, plagiarizing plugins and not crediting the art they use. Some people...

 

[Archeia]

It's not only the plugins, a lot of the humanoids sprites are based off my Hine sprite base without any mention of that.

I did see the graphics packs but I was hoping not those too. This is just horrible.

 

[hiddenone]

@bgillisp I gave my sprites some funky feet, so I recognize them easily. While Foundation did take the the base down that pretty much was just my base with a different head, it would be best if they didn't try to sell any of the sprites made by the 'artist' that they hired.

 

[definite_lee]

Personally I suspect Foundation is a bad actor in this as well. They commissioned someone for plugins that contained stolen code and then tried to resell those plugins, while feigning ignorance that the code was stolen. Apparently the people that made said plugins did not authorize Foundation to resell them, so what you have is a case of two people acting criminally, independent of each other. Truly quite incredible.