Dickheads Aventurine much?
"You're bustin' my balls, seriously, my balls are busted."So, I'm not in the Darkfall beta currently, but I do know a few friends who may know some friends who are in beta. I'm doing this because I enjoy your blog and I think some things need to become public knowledge. ;)
I have confirmed reports from multiple sources that the first person to leak screenshots (the dragon screens) was almost immediately identified afterward and quickly had legal charges pressed against him by Aventurine. I have no idea what type of penalty a guilty verdict would lead to, but I imagine it would be some kind of fine.
I included a copy of the Darkfall NDA with this e-mail, so you can take a look for yourself and see that not only does the company have the power to do this under the contract, but they also hold testers to the requirement of deleting all game files if told to do so within five days. But most surprising of all, this NDA binds testers to an oath of silence for FIVE YEARS after the beta ends and the game is officially released. So yea, it's pretty strict and tightly bound.
I welcome you to post any/all of this, including the NDA itself, on your blog. If you do, however, please refer to me only as "TalonWind," and don't post my e-mail address anywhere. Like I said, I'm not in the beta, but I certainly don't want to hurt my chances of getting in, or be identified by any testers that I'm affiliated with. Thanks, and happy leaking.
P.s - if anyone knows ways to make ABSOLUTELY sure that leakers screen shots can not be decoded PLEASE email me at darkfallheraldATgmailDOTcom.
YOur faithful slave Faithkiller
36 comments:
can you link the NDA?
fixed
I have never seen an NDA before, does anyone know if this is typical? Having to sign and return, and all the other things listed in the agreement?
Seems pretty hardcore.
that is not fucking typical...jesus that OVERKILL!!!11
I guess this explains the reason why the latest screen shots leaked have some parts of the images cut down. That's probably where AV encodes some sort of id of the player taking them.
Shouldnt be too hard to find out if they pressed charges against someone, since the nda says all things should be handled in athens courts. so anyone living in athens should be able to find out, unless they settled it in the quiet that is.
Linking NDA probably isn't even against anything.
But yeah, it's very hard to identify a specific person out of a picture where names are blanked, but with a small amount of testers playing, it's probably far from impossible. Decoding an image where the names have just been blanked over with black color just won't happen.
Who cares about pictures anyway that much? Sure, character creation is interesting, but I'd bet people rather read information about features that are in, like, well, how character creation works. Basing on the text, it's also pretty much impossible to identify who wrote it, unless of course you have a very unique way of typing something.
Personally I most probably wouldn't bother to leak if I got to the beta, but since Aventurine is far too silent, I have to appriciate those who do.
Oh, and it has to be pretty brilliant way to encode the info of the player to the image file if you take the pictures with printscreen. With ingame take screenshot button it probably isn't even hard.
I would never sign this NDA.
Don't care how much i want to play this game.
Also i think the guy in the dragon screens is easy to find through logs.
How many people you think have actually attacked that thing by now?
This whole encryption thingy wouldn't help them if the image is quite blurred and maybe taken by an extremely good camera.
People are just afraid. That's all.
Next 5 years? Are you sure this maybe isn't originally for the closed beta and they where to lazy to make a new one lol? With that said....
5 YEARS!? Why are people who where suppose to only be in beta for at least 2 months(when we still where under the impression of a 2008 release)? lol?
RED FLAG ALERT.
matt what are you talking about
there is no next matt. its 5 years after beta/release
What I'm saying why was the need for a 5 year vow of silence when the devs where suppose to release the game in 2008 initially? I mean 6 months I can see but 5 years?
It's like they are hiding something. I'm sorry if that does not spark any sort of doubt in your mind, but it did mine.
Launch will be delayed I'm pretty sure of it now.
if you wanna be absolutely sure you do not include any hidden elements in the pixels from the screenshots you take, just use a digital camera from a distance and take photos of the screen. most people will not appreciate this method, but it's better than nothing and should leave any hidden identifiable elements in the screens undiscernable...
After more thinking another way may be to take a screenshot, and overlay it over itself a few times with each screen offset a few pixels to the left/right/up/down/diagonal. it would create a strange effect ie: think of stereo imaging (if anyone is familiar with the method). but this should also help the hidden element (assuming they are hiding the players id in just a few pixels of space).
just add a little blur effekt with photoshop
I'm guessing if there are about 2000 players in beta even if they're all on at the same time it is probably fairly trivial to find the person posting screen shots.
In one of the older pictures he didnt blur his minimap or anything.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SwWbDIE91kw/SWQCO7Ydq5I/AAAAAAAABvc/UZRZaE_iFqI/s1600-h/darkfall3ei2.jpg
this newest picture here, I have his location on the minimap, I have the timestap in the logs, and I have the character race, gender and th fact that he was fighting a goblin scout. The original dragon picture even had his ping giving a rough estimate of how far he is from the servers.
That would be more than enough information to track down that player/account posted it if they have at least some crude form of logging.
Id say the best way to avoid getting caught is to probably turn off all of the interface and take a picture from first person mode. That should cut down on any of the information they can use from the screenshots alone.
As for hidden pixles or anything else hidden in the images, I doubt its anything that crazy, that would make it to hard for them. However, if they do have an ingame screenshot key I wouldn't be surprised if it had some sort of exif data (I think thats the term I'm looking for)
Looking at the dragon picture I can see that picasa 3.0 was used. probably by the blog owner to resize it, however it means that they could encode something in there.
Summary:
if you're taking screen shots
*Turn off ALL of the interface
*Go to first person mode
*Use printscreen and paste it to paint
I'm no lawyer, but unless the testers got some sort of compensation (money) from their work (betatesting) or someone paid them good money for leaking, then I don't think Aventurine can win any court case with this NDA.
My Google-fu failed me on this, hard to find any 100% sure answer to this, someone with more time can sort this out.
Btw, that 5 years of silence is a usual thing in NDA's.
Sorry for double post.
@Troller
The 5 year silence is usually only see in NDA's for government related contracts. At least from what I've seen here in the states.
Beta tests this far in the game stage don't generally need a 5 year silence. Aventurine employees that started even a year ago, sure they might need to be sworn to silence because they know more about the engine and game code.
Beta testers don't know enough information to do any harm. And with the game (supposedly) so close to release I can't see any reason why they'd need to stay quiet for 5 years.
Finally, for your point about the NDA not holding any weight, I don't know if I agree. Generally NDA's are fairly solid if a company actually decides to persue it. Things like EULA and TOS for games generally don't hold up in court so maybe thats what you were thinking.
shit Blizzard's TOS and EULA allowed them to sue the makers of glider for millions... they hold up it's just some things are not worth the time involved to actually go through wit hit(like gold farmers, to many people do it to really combat the market).
@Dennis
Inside EU (includes Greece) it's not unusual to have a 10 year of silence in NDA. And I do mean NDA's, not EULAs or TOSs lol. NDAs are usually written between business partners or between an employer and an employee, in both cases money changes owners so there's definately a compensation involved. But like I said, I'm not 100% certain of this.
Here's something I found about Agreements:
"For an agreement to be legal and binding, it must have some form of consideration. This means that all parties involved must receive consideration or something of value. Otherwise, it is considered a gift rather than a contract."
Link: http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/contracts-agreements/731-1.html
The ability for them to sue is easy. The ability to have them collect if you live outside the country is next to impossible. And I doubt the US would extradite you to Greece due to a violation of the NDA.
"consideration or something of value"
is a very vague term. What constitutes value or consideration?
Being able to beta test a game ahead of time could be considered valuable. I'm sure there are people that would pay money for a beta account. And people don't seem to be willing to sell them which means they must consider them valuable.
Legal terms are always open ended and up for discussion for this very reason.
you know some fair spin on this because my negativity, but if someone is in beta could they REQUEST the permissions to maybe write a review or 2 about the game like Gianna is? I mean it would be worth a shot right?
Easy reason for 5 year silence: suppose something bad happened in beta, like a technical flaw is revealed, or there was some bad practice by the company. This could hurt the company, conceivably, say 3 years later if someone were to say "OMG, back in beta, they did *this*!" or "Guess what, this system is implemented like *this*!"
Why take that chance? Who cares what other companies have used for NDAs?
@Dennis
No, beta testing a game is not considered to be a payment, for that I'm 100% certain. It's actually the opposite, it is considered a work you do for a company, and in this case you're doing it for free. As a sidenote, the sum of money they paid you would have to be at least a minimum wage, so 1$ wouldn't do it. If they could prove that someone paid these guys for leaking, then that would do too.
You should be looking up the details of contracts from Greece, and how they are applied overseas. US contract laws are irrelevant.
What email do I send this NDA to once I have filled it out?
Simple. Just advise leakers to not leak screenshots or videos. That sort of leaking is always lackluster for me anyhow. I want to get INFO about the game. Leakers, just submit lots of info, eff screenshots.
tv-shows like Survivor and Big brother has contracts so they cant talk about the show for a year after it first airs (in denmark at least).. and they have a fixed date way before the show starts.. so since DF launch date is only some months old and that NDA is probably older i dont really think 5 years is that strange
How come on the "NDA" the VP's first name is spelled "Spiros" but after a quick Google search, his name is actually spelled "Spyros?"
This has shady written all over it.....
Probably because his name is Greek and is translated it more than one way.
Really hope that serious action isn't taken against the leaker. Aventurine knew that it was going to happen, making an example won't do anything except diminish their reputation. Gamers will always find ways to leak beta info, it's an unwritten rule that gamers have to.
Plus the leaked info only goes toward hyping the game even further.
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