Announcement PSA: ITCH.IO - Check your Names and Games!

[JtheDuelist]

Just checked and I am in the clear for now. Searches only pull up titles containing the same words, but not in the same order, and searching my own name gave the message that nothing was found.

 

[tammie]

Wow, this is terrible. I don't see any of my games like that, and I hope I never do. Those people sure are pretty awful.

 

[Lightcycler]

Thx @Archeia for posting this on your profile.

Just checked... my stuff's safe, but it's terrible people are doing this.

 

[RocketKnight]

I try to find my projects and i didn't found anything. For now, i feel lucky.

 

[Marquise*]

Phew! Safe! It paid to keep my stuff mainly private or non-game wise!

 

[Tuomo L]

I didn't find any of my stuff either.

 

[Rave]

Just checked if any of my games are on there.
I'm good...For now

Honestly, this is some scummy s*** and these people need to be stopped.

This. I honestly have nothing against cryptominers themselves, IF the game in question is upfront about that and has set "power limit" low, certainly less than 20% of the available power.

But plagiarizing people's games and then making money off the back of something you haven't made yourself, that's really awful and it needs combating. This is really bad and I hope this b**rd gets locked out of itch.io permanently with an IP (or IP range if he's on dynamic) ban for good.

 

[Marquise*]

@Rave I think they meant cryptomining as in stealing your very own encrypted datas and your bitcoins. So if you have too many send them our way. XD

 

[Sharm]

It means running a cryptomining currency application on your computer that you are not aware of. It wouldn't steal your bitcoins, but it would mine new ones using your computer for someone else's benefit. This will slow down your computer and take power away from other applications that you actually want to run. In other words, malware. Not something you want people associating with your game.

 

[Rave]

It means running a cryptomining currency application on your computer that you are not aware of. It wouldn't steal your bitcoins, but it would mine new ones using your computer for someone else's benefit. This will slow down your computer and take power away from other applications that you actually want to run. In other words, malware. Not something you want people associating with your game.

Exactly. I'm really actually fine with giving a chunk of my processing power to a website or a game if those three things are followed:
- I know it's happening
- It isn't too much (definitely less than 20%)
- The developer/site owner actually gets it, not some hacker.

In this case at least #3 and #1 is not fulfilled and I'm afraid #2 isn't either. Again, I hope that they will catch this idiot and ban him for good. It's probably some 13yo who thought he found a perfect "get rich quick" scheme anyway. Why 13yo? Because actual criminal hackers have much more profitable attack vectors for spreading cryptominers than through a gaming site.

 

[Sharm]

Ugh, not me. Right now it's a net loss game with mining costing more in electricity than would be gained by mining. It'd be cheaper just to pay more for the game.

 

[Marquise*]

@Sharm thanks for the correction/clarifications.

It feels less bad that way, but still the implemented way seems to steal from both sides. Still, I am always thinking cracking encryption... any encryption to earn a bitcoin, might in fact be the encryption of some personal information of someone somewhere; we'd never know. Also, it consume a lot of energy to tax our environment if the use continue to exponentiate.

 

[DarkHunter]

Wow...It's very danger when they stolen our game...I'm really terrified...

Please take care of your game. I hope guys are not victim of this forum. I wish guys are happy for lucky

 

[SinのAria]

I know this topic is a bit old now (I was around when it was discovered by someone), but as an interesting note, sometimes even the name of the game is changed. I know I already reported a few cases to Steam where a game was basically the same, but with a different title (and creator name), sometimes with character names changed as well as cases where the story was taken (almost word for word) with character name changes.

Yes, that's right. They were being sold on Steam (and key sites) for money.

And yes, some of them add in a bitcoin or other cryptocurrency miner to the game. Really scummy thing to do to someone else's game.

 

[Amane Kagari]

They've probably modified the JS in the game to become a crypto script (I hate it when people abuse js like that. It's given js such a bad rep.). It happened in a lot of other games that runs on js. It's really unfortunate that people would so things like stealing a game then turning it into a crypto and/or virus or something malice. I think that there should also be a warning posts (another PSA I suppose) about the consequences of downloading illegal or copied games (consequences which may result in damages to your computer via a virus or something else and/or even have your real info (i.e. credit cards, bank info, etc.) stolen by real thieves/hackers.) so that people would be further discouraged to support illegal copied games. (Or people should post that along with flagging the game(s) as theft.) That's at least my opinion.

 

[JtheDuelist]

@Amane Kagari Exactly the reason I am contemplating adding a "If you downloaded this game unofficially anywhere but *insert game's page on game hosting site's URL here*, please be wary of virus, cryptominers, etc." message to appear pre-title.

 

[Tuomo L]

@Amane Kagari Exactly the reason I am contemplating adding a "If you downloaded this game unofficially anywhere but *insert game's page on game hosting site's URL here*, please be wary of virus, cryptominers, etc." message to appear pre-title.

You saying people who code cryptominers couldn't justs edit out the warning?

 

[Isabella Ava]

They can edit his warning in a blink of eye... BUT, it's not like they can know about it

 

[JtheDuelist]

You saying people who code cryptominers couldn't justs edit out the warning?

They can edit his warning in a blink of eye... BUT, it's not like they can know about it

OR, I could do it as a in-game event as soon as the player selects Start Game, so they can't remove it without actually having RPG Maker MV.

 

[Mrs_Allykat]

Newbies like me don't need this sort of dis-heartening event. Yeah, I know, it's been a year, but still a "n00b." Anyway, the bitcoin miners are going to always be hard at work, and pirating games is just the tip of the iceberg for them. They've all but taken over some towns IRL to place their servers.

Anyway, I think putting something in-game is good, unless something happens to the site where a game is supposed to be distributed from.