Post by leafo in Why was my project remove from search - update, please support selling licence keys

Viewing post in Why was my project remove from search - update, please support selling licence keys

Check our quality our quality guidelines for information about how to ensure your page is visible. Make sure to include enough relevant information on your page about what the project is, and make sure it's downloadable from itch.io. No one "removed" your page from search, you changed your page that caused it to get unlisted by removing files.

Also, I see that you added a cypto currency miner to your project. This is a very bad idea, as they will trigger many virus scanners. It's also a poor user experience. If our automated virus scanner detects anything it can impact visibility.

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autuus5 years ago

The miner was removed. The system is modularized so the miner will be download able within the app and its not a poor user experience, its genious. It only mines when the headset is removed, since you dont need the gpu if your not in vr. Okay, well, since you cant really use the app without oculus home integration, its a bit unnecessairy to include the binary, since its autoinstalled with the key. Itch should support selling licence keys. Lets put that on your dev's todo list

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LazyKitty5 years ago(+1)

If you properly disclose what is happening - that's fine, i guess. Personally - if i was aware of a game using a miner, i would just skip it entirely. If you don't disclose it super clearly - it's malware, pure and simple.

Here are some of the things you may want to do when your headset is not on:

use computer
- watch a video
- use a browser (yes, those things use GPU, shocker, right?)
- look at your screen (who would have thunk it that GPU is used to generate and send images to your screen?)

Also, in the place where I live electricity is not free. I live in a fairly small apartment in mild climate, so when my GPU gets hot - it affects the temperature in the room significantly, it's part of the reason why I have a powerful GPU - to make sure it stays at fairly low load most of the time.

I'm sorry for my attitude, I don't really mean to judge your choices, but calling that miner "genius" is, in my opinion, a premature conclusion at best.

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leafoAdmin5 years ago(+1)

You can sell license keys, check the "External keys" section on your project's edit dashboard. You can use the "Other" section for your own keys.

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DaedalusMachina5 years ago (1 edit) (+4)

Please consider adding a 'no cryptocurrency miner' rule to game dev uploads. Classify them as the malware they are and protect the end-user. Let's not have itch.io become a dumping ground for malwareisms like Steam.

I don't feel that ANY user wants to have any kind of cryptocurrency miner software touching any part of the game whatsoever. There are some projects wherein standard normal game activities generate 'game currency' as a cryptotoken to identify that unique content and allow players to resell it. THAT type of thing does NOT require any cryptocurrency miner software on the end-user side; all of it is cloud/serverside with validation.

EDIT: Speaking with a few game devs (and many gamers); nearly all of them feel that any dev even attempting to get away with putting any kind of miner/malware in their releases should be banned from itch.io permanently; first offense or otherwise.

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leafoAdmin5 years ago(+1)

I agree that this is probably something we should outright ban. We really haven't had an issue with this being a problem though, so I'm going to hold off updating our rules for the time being. Generally virus scanners do detect them which causes the projects to get flagged anyway.

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DaedalusMachina5 years ago (2 edits)

Please reconsider that stance; a very clear 'no malware' rule needs to be put in place, including ATTEMPTS at POTENTIAL malware-like activity. For a recent example, please reference current events regarding Epic Games Store launcher using malware-like activity to illegally-access & weak-encrypt information from Steam friendslist in a pathetic attempt to acquire information without explicit permission.

In addition any developer that does this AT ALL (whether later-removed or not) needs to be permanently banned from the itch.io store with prejudice. I understand that itch.io is currently dev-focused, however in the case of malware and/or malware-like activity, there should be no tolerance of such on the itch.io platform.

I'd love to promote itch.io more as a legitimate storefront if such basic consumer-protections were put in place. An 'unconditional' refund system equal to or better than the Steam Refund System (2 hours or 14 days, whichever comes first) would also be nice.

The projects should not just be flagged, they should be auto-removed.

The 'developers' of the projects should also be flagged & a perma-ban should be issued if they are found to have violated the anti-malware rules. If a developer has a legitimate concern then they should bring it up PRIOR to uploading. For example, I personally developed & submitted (on the Nexus Mods website) a self-created utility for a video game that was created utilizing the 'trainer' EXE creation functionality of Cheat Engine (an open source program). I manually requested a whitelisting and explained how the utility was made and why it was being flagged. After review, my request was manually approved and the entire process was done with little fuss.

If a website for mods can manage a certain level of professionalism, then I'm certain that my expectation for the itch.io platform is to do far better than that!

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