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Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

kotaku.com.au

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Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#91

Post by rcgs »

raverbashing wrote: post #30
smosher wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirates is way too heavy a term here. This is for-profit and closer to true piracy than file sharing is. It could be unintentional, but if they've already been contacted about it they really should be quicker to resolve the situation. They're also shooting themselves in the foot, No surprise there, see http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/1641/itsfinetrustme.png for an example of the judgment they've shown.

Here's a lesson, never trust user input! This is not the first time, and not the last time either. (I'm waiting for the posts saying they should be using PostgreSQL)

As someone who likes to understand potential security issues, and who has just embarked upon a project which is using PostgreSQL, what is the subtext of your comment?

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#92

Post by rictic »

thom wrote: post #90
xsmasher wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every public web site on the planet is "accepting data from an untrusted remote client" - but allowing public db access is something else entirely.

Not every public web site enforces its business logic in client-side JavaScript and just accepts as valid the data that's submitted to a server. Every game that wants to submit a score to a central scoreboard has this problem, and it's a little absurd to debate the exact protocol by which an insecure-by-design architecture gets exploited.

You can submit the input sequence used along with the high score. You've then transformed the problem for the attacker from simply sending up an artificial score to writing a program to solve the game, which is harder and was an existing vulnerability already.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#93

Post by rictic »

uxp wrote: post #77
masklinn wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The one mentioned in this article for example, looked like a basic Flash game. Binding of Isaac is a flash game, and is anything but basic (one of the best games of 2011, for all its technical issues).

I don't understand the hate for flash games. As a general purpose Ad Content creation platform, I absolutely hate flash, but when it comes down to games there are hundreds of open source engines, thousands of books on game development on the platform and hundreds of thousands of tutorials all over the internet. It's a popular game platform that works really well for game developers with more of an artistic background…

The Binding of Isaac devs have talked at some length about the issues they've faced with making a decent sized game in Flash. This isn't just outsides tearing down something that they don't understand. There are real technical problems with making a full game in Flash.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#94

Post by kayoone »

shardling wrote: post #78
kayoone wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

77 copies in a year? The same game sold 20.000 copies on Launchday on the Xbox360. Seems like Linux gaming still has a long way to go. Steam isnt doing it for direct profit reasons either, they just want to push the software platform of their new console! But dont get me wrong, i like the direction, its just that linux gaming is totally irrelevant from a market perspective.

It was put in the store way after its initial release on most platforms. And I'm pretty sure anyone who got it in the humble bundle got a direct download. Trying to infer something about the state of Linux gaming from this single statistic is just kinda silly.

I did directly compare it to another closed plattform store, which is Xbox Live Arcade. When a very successfull game sold 77 copies in a year when the same game sold 1 million copies (on xbox alone) in a timeframe of similar length (0.0077%) that still says something. I am very certain that SMB still sells alot more than 77 copies on XBLA per day!

Of course you cant compare the Ubuntu Store with something like XBLA but still, its helps bringing stuff into perspective.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#95

Post by chris_wot »

phoboslab wrote: post #53
smosher wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirates is way too heavy a term here. This is for-profit and closer to true piracy than file sharing is. It could be unintentional, but if they've already been contacted about it they really should be quicker to resolve the situation. They're also shooting themselves in the foot, No surprise there, see http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/1641/itsfinetrustme.png for an example of the judgment they've shown.

Tommy Refenes has stated in an interview[1] that he said "it's fine" just because at the time he couldn't do anything about it. The level editor was programmed in a rush and he didn't think that anyone would exploit something offered to them for free. In the end, the guy who warned him that an "evil hacker" could compromise the system, turned out to be that evil hacker himself. For us web devs it pretty obvious that…

That, my friend, is called spin. I don't believe for one moment that the response "I've done this for years" doesn't smack of eye rolling and dismissiveness.

The right answer would have been "DM me", but that was done by the other side.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#96

Post by makomk »

thom wrote: post #90
xsmasher wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every public web site on the planet is "accepting data from an untrusted remote client" - but allowing public db access is something else entirely.

Not every public web site enforces its business logic in client-side JavaScript and just accepts as valid the data that's submitted to a server. Every game that wants to submit a score to a central scoreboard has this problem, and it's a little absurd to debate the exact protocol by which an insecure-by-design architecture gets exploited.

Every game basically has to trust the scores submitted by users. That doesn't mean it should trust users to mess with other users' scores, and it certainly doesn't mean it should trust users to mess with levels that other users have designed.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#97

Post by makomk »

fingerprinter wrote: post #84

http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406960226210700795 dpitkin from canonical: "Hi, I just looked into it and the check to Tommy and Edmund from Canonical is in process for the 77 copies of Super Meat Boy. We have been working together since November to get it resolved, no piracy here just some miscommunication. David Pitkin Canonical" edmund: "they got it from the HIB, HIB gives all the linux builds to Ubuntu during…

edmund's statement is a bit curious. HIB didn't merely "give all the linux builds to Ubuntu during the promotion", they advertised that all the HIB5 games including Super Meat Boy would be available from the Ubuntu Software Center: http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/24981005928/humble-indie-b...

So Ubuntu was meant to allow HIB users to "buy" the games for no money and download it, just not to allow non-HIB customers to pay money for them. Which leaves a much more understandable avenue for them to screw up. Also, he says he's really pissed off with Ubuntu prior to HIB7 but they're the ones who refused to allow The Binding Of Isaac. Does that really seem terribly plausible?

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#98

Post by makomk »

raverbashing wrote: post #15
shardling wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's still more complicated than that. From Ed's posts, it was originally placed in the store as a promotion related to a Humble Indie Bundle. http://www.formspring.me/EdmundM/q/406960226210700795

I had read this, it seems to all depend on what that "blanket statement" was

For context, this is the Humble Indie Bundle's announcement that all HIB5 games, including Super Meat Boy, would be available for download from the Ubuntu Software Center for HIB owners: http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/24981005928/humble-indie-b...

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#99

Post by makomk »

shardling wrote: post #78
kayoone wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

77 copies in a year? The same game sold 20.000 copies on Launchday on the Xbox360. Seems like Linux gaming still has a long way to go. Steam isnt doing it for direct profit reasons either, they just want to push the software platform of their new console! But dont get me wrong, i like the direction, its just that linux gaming is totally irrelevant from a market perspective.

It was put in the store way after its initial release on most platforms. And I'm pretty sure anyone who got it in the humble bundle got a direct download. Trying to infer something about the state of Linux gaming from this single statistic is just kinda silly.

Anyone who got it in the Humble Bundle got a copy in the Ubuntu Software Center too.

Re: Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

#100

Post by makomk »

shardling wrote: post #79
hdra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the problem here. The problem the developers of the game have seems to be the fact that Canonical is claiming "the authors of Binding of Issac [sic] declined to make their game available" when the truth is they are the one who rejected the game. Put it plainly, they lied. To me personally, it felt like Canonical is trying to appear "open", while in fact they are controlling their own store's cont…

No, that's not quite right. They initially rejected the game. Once it got popular, Canonical wanted to put it in, but because of the earlier rejection and the SMB stuff, Ed declined. So their statement was technically correct, but without knowing the full context was misleading.

That's still not quite right. Edmund's full comment was:

"they are just trying to save face. they rejected isaac a while ago because its content "wasnt a good fit for the Ubuntu store" then changed their tune once they found out how popular it was and that it was a part of the HIB."

Ubuntu have had some kind of arrangement with the HIB for a while where they offer as many of the HIB games for download as possible through the Ubuntu Software Center, and HIB purchasers don't have to pay again for them. What presumably changed wasn't the popularity of the game but the fact that it was part of HIB7. I can't imagine Ubuntu expected it to be a massive seller for them, given that the unauthorized SMB apparently sold all of 77 copies.

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