Obfuscated Plugins - Something you should be aware of.

[123edc]

also [just thinking out loud a bit from what i noticed in this tread] w'll start moving into a circle ...

- as the OP proves, the plugins can still be deobfuscated and "stolen" if someone knows how to [and melicious people tend to find out about these "how to"
- they then will obfuscate their plugins themselfs ... so, that nobody can proof that it's stolen without the work of de-obfuscationg it
(+ as already mentioned, no way to control, if visu themselfs didn't do the same ... bec of the obfuscation)

that in turn will lead to even stricter obfuscation ...
and the circle runs and runs ... looking at you denuvo ...

in the end of the day, the one hurt by it will - yet again - be the normal people,
who will have to live with ever growing restrictions and impacts ...

 

[Iron_Brew]

also [just thinking out loud a bit from what i noticed in this tread] w'll start moving into a circle ...

- as the OP proves, the plugins can still be deobfuscated and "stolen" if someone knows how to [and melicious people tend to find out about these "how to"
- they then will obfuscate their plugins themselfs ... so, that nobody can proof that it's stolen without the work of de-obfuscationg it
(+ as already mentioned, no way to control, if visu themselfs didn't do the same ... bec of the obfuscation)

that in turn will lead to even stricter obfuscation ...
and the circle runs and runs ... looking at you denuvo ...

in the end of the day, the one hurt by it will - yet again - be the normal people,
who will have to live with ever growing restrictions and impacts ...

This is why Triple A studios are forced to use weighty DRM, which people then crack and "hardcore" gamers just patch their games to get around it, not suffering at all, while the population at large/more casual audiences are forced to deal with the fallout.

Performance then suffers and sales suffer because the broad audience doesn't understand that it's DRM doing the damage (or if they do they only know DRM BAD YOUTUBE MAN SAY SO), and because sales suffer the next project suffers too, only contributing to the cycle.

Code and asset obfuscation and encryption might fundamentally suck, and even negatively impact performance, but it's a necessary evil in a world where people will rip you off because they don't value your labour.

 

[Frostorm]

sometimes people end up with the same solution out of sheer luck, or rational analysis of the problem at hand, without knowing that you had the solution as well.
it's called "learning".

Except that wasn't the case... Those "thieves" used code directly copy-pasted at times while changing just enough, like the names of variables/functions/etc... If I remember correctly (and apologies if I'm wrong), some lines of code in the YEP plugins are written sub-optimally, by @Yanfly's own admission. But despite these somewhat suboptimal lines of code, the code found in plugins that were "authored" by said thieves were found to contain the same suboptimal code! If they were truly just using Yanfly's plugins for learning, those ripoff plugins wouldn't be so eerily identical to Yanfly's work.

 

[Archeia]

Please keep in topic and stop bringing up theft or whatsoever. This is about obfuscation performance and should users be concerned.

 

[gstv87]

the plugins can still be deobfuscated and "stolen" if someone knows how to

they then will obfuscate their plugins themselfs ... so, that nobody can proof that it's stolen without the work of de-obfuscationg it

*learning.*
I rest my case.

@Yanfly if you want to obfuscate code, do it in a way that it doesn't consume processor time.
AKA, do it the same way you'd do with a compiler.
can't compile JS? well, too bad.

if you were to hard-obfuscate the code and release the plugin as a garbled mess with no heads or tails, anyone who would try to tamper with it without knowing what it is would come to you and ask "Hey, I'm trying to change this and it's a mess. Anyone can help?"
TO WHICH you would reply: "It is intentionally a mess so that you're unable to change it. So, stop doing that."
IF you were to find an un-garbled mess released somewhere else that enables people to modify it, THEN you press legal matters on that person, providing the prosecutor with your own un-garbled mess of code dated a-previous-instance-of-time to that other un-garbled mess released somewhere else.
and all of that, without having any of the legit users of that code having to run any extra loops of processing to un-garble your garbled mess at run time.

I just showed how to deconstruct a problem.
that's what programmers do.
why didn't you arrive at the same conclusion?

 

[Archeia]

OK stop. I'm locking this since this is now off topic and I have posted a mod message TWICE. If you have any complaints talk to @Touchfuzzy.