Hedgewars on Facebook

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Thu, 2015-03-05 16:15

mr_engino

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Joined: 2015-03-05

Posts: 1

I remember that team 17 once had a version of worms for Facebook that they, for whatever reason, took out. I now suggest that there should therefore be a variation of hedgewars on Facebook. it would be a good source of revenue to help in developing and updating the game. tell me what you think.
cheers,
mr_engino

Thu, 2015-03-05 16:35

sheepluva

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Joined: 2009-07-18

Posts: 563

Hi mr_engino and welcome to the community!

I do remember some facebook-games from the turn-based action artillery genre - but I don't think I saw one from the company/franchise you mentioned (not that it matters).

I have no idea how games on facebook work? Do they require flash or are there also HTML5/js games?

Then maybe Hedgewars could be offered there if the javascript-port of the game ever gets completed.

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Fri, 2015-03-06 08:28

Wuzzy

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Joined: 2012-06-20

Posts: 1301

Summary (Opinion of a non-developer): Forget it! Porting Hedgewars as a Facebook game is probably not going to happen. First there are many horrific terms, some of them in direct violation with free software princibles, many other terms are unfair restrictions. Also, I think developing for Facebook would be ethically questionable.

Developing for Facebook Apps and getting accepted would mean you have to abandon free software principles.
They have a policy regarding Facebook Apps, see here:
https://developers.facebook.com/policy?_fb_noscript=1

Section 4, points 13-15 directly violate free software principles:

Quote:

13. Don't sell, transfer or sublicense our code, APIs, or tools to anyone.

14. Only use our SDKs to develop and distribute apps for use with the Facebook Platform. You may also distribute any code libraries or sample source code included in the SDKs for inclusion in such apps.

15. Don’t modify, translate, create derivative works of, or reverse engineer any SDK or its components.

Apart from that, the policy has many, many points which are really ugly.

Section 5 point 10 is not nice:

Quote:

10. You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from and against all damages, losses, and expenses of any kind (including reasonable legal fees and costs) related to any claim against us related to your service, actions, content or information.

The entire section 6 is horrific, it it mostly about how Facebook wants to be a data leech on everything, and other stuff. I quote it completely (most notable points in bold):

Quote:

1. We can analyze your app, content, and data for any purpose, including commercial.

2. We can monitor or collect data related to your use of SDKs.

3. We will use information we receive from you or in connection with your Platform integration in accordance with our Data Policy.

4. You give us all rights necessary to enable your app to work with Facebook, including the right to incorporate information you provide to us into other parts of Facebook, and the right to attribute the source of information using your name or logos.

5. We may share your contact info with people who want to contact you.

6. We may use your name, logos, content, and information, including screenshots and video captures of your app, to demonstrate or feature your use of Facebook, worldwide and royalty-free.

7. You give us the right to link to or frame your app, and place content, including ads, around your app. If you use our social plugins, feed dialog or share button, you also give us permission to use and allow others to use such links and content on Facebook.

8. We can audit your app to ensure it is safe and does not violate our Terms. If requested, you must provide us with proof that your app complies with our terms.

9. We can create apps or products that offer features and services similar to your app.

10. We don’t guarantee that Platform will always be free.

11. If you exceed 5M MAU, 100M API calls per day, or 50M impressions per day, you may be subject to additional terms.

12. Facebook and its licensors reserve all right, title and interest, including all intellectual property and other proprietary rights, in and to all SDKs.

13. Any SDKs you receive from us are provided to you on an "as is" basis, without warranty of any kind.

14. We can issue a press release describing our relationship with you.

15. We may enforce against your app or web site if we conclude that your app violates our terms or is negatively impacting the Platform. We may or may not notify you in advance.

16. Enforcement is both automated and manual, and can include disabling your app, restricting you and your app’s access to platform functionality, requiring that you delete data, terminating our agreements with you or any other action that we deem appropriate.

17. We communicate with developers through Developer Alerts and email from the fb.com or facebookmail.com domain. Ensure that the email address associated with your Facebook account and the email address registered to the app are current and that you don’t filter out these messages.

18. We may change these terms at any time without prior notice. Please check them regularly. Your continued use of Platform constitutes acceptance of those changes.

19. If you use Social Plugins, Facebook SDKs, or operate a Platform app or website, you must follow our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and these additional rules unless you have our written permission to do otherwise.

Let me repeat 6.6 just here:

Quote:

6. We may use your name, logos, content, and information, including screenshots and video captures of your app, to demonstrate or feature your use of Facebook, worldwide and royalty-free.

I guess this means you have to say good-bye to the GPL then.
Wink Smiley

9.1.b is completely unacceptable IMO:

Quote:

b. Don’t use your Facebook.com game or email addresses you’ve obtained from us to promote or link to a desktop web game off of Facebook.

Which would mean no mention of the original Hedgewars is allowed, not even a link to www.hedgewars.org.

9.1.c.:

Quote:

c. Use Facebook Payments as your only payment method for all in-game purchases.

This sounds very fishy. It could become problematic if something like a donation button is added.
Any why should you limit yourselves on only one single payment method?

9.2.a looks problematic as well:

Quote:

2. Desktop web games off Facebook.com:

a. Only use Facebook Login, social plugins, and publishing channels. Don’t use connections such as friends lists.

I am not sure if it would really apply, but as the normal Hedgewars has an internal (very simple) friends system, Facebook might be opposed to it.

Conclusion: Given these terms: The idea of adding a Hedgewars port to Facebook is completely sickening to me. It would not only mean to sacrifice free software principles on the road, you have to give up a lot of other stuff.

It is likely that a Hedgewars-to-Facebook would simply be rejected by Facebook, Inc. in the first place. But even if it is accepted, the terms they demand from developers are just horrific.

Hi, I am a Hedgewars developer. Smile

Fri, 2015-03-06 12:43

sheepluva

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Joined: 2009-07-18

Posts: 563

Wuzzy allegedly wrote:

[ ... lots of things ...]

Hey Wuzzy, thanks for looking into it.

The first things you mention seem to relate to SDK licensing

From what I understood which wouldn't necessarily conflict with the GPL unless there'd be a static link between "FbHedgewars" and the SDK, which might be the case (no clue).

That Facebook ofc as usual wants all data it can possibly get is no surprise, but since FbHedgewars would not collect any particular Data it has no real relevance.
Okay, chat I guess, but yeah, if you type anything on Facebook you're spied on by facebook.

Quote:

c. Use Facebook Payments as your only payment method for all in-game purchases.

Payments in Facebook-Games need to use Facebook-Payments - they do that to protect their own financial interest (so that they don't host games so that others grab all the cash).
Also this would not affect Hedgewars outside of FbHedgewars I think.

Quote:

b. Don’t use your Facebook.com game or email addresses you’ve obtained from us to promote or link to a desktop web game off of Facebook.

I can see why they do that (to avoid "demo" games that are just meant to lure people from fb to external web-games).
However this would probably not apply to Hedgewars, because Hedgewars is only a desktop game, not a "desktop web game".
Not yet anyway. HWJS isn't a functioning game yet.

About logo use. That the e.g. logo is shown on/by Facebook would - I think - not necessarily violate GPL since it's just a graphic, not a program/library/code being included in a static way.

I agree, it wouldn't be nice if Facebook would use Hedgewars logo/etc. to advertise for themselves rather than only FbHedgewars, although I don't think Hedgewars will ever raise to a significance for that to happen.

However my conclusion is, as usual, that Facebook is cancer, that its methods are fishy, its ethics are almost non-existant and its legal bullshittery is concerning at least.

So I doubt that any Hedgewars core dev is going to seriously pick-up the Facebook game idea and make it happen.

I doubt it'd be technically possible even if we wanted.

Except maybe by making an entirely new or extremely reduced version of the actual game - which would be incompatible with all the regular players.

Since we have no interest in monetizing the game there is no effort to go through all that hassle just to increase the popularity of the game a little.

sheepluva <- me my code stats ->
a Hedgewars Developer

click here to message me

<- where I'm from

what I speak ->

Fri, 2015-03-06 15:25

nemo

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Joined: 2009-01-28

Posts: 1861

I don't even get it. What is a "facebook" game.
If we got our HTML5 port back up to date, and announced it on our facebook page so anyone who had us as a friend or whatever could get to it, how is it much different? Is all this just to get embedded in an iframe wrapped w/ facebook junk or something? The game works much better in HTML5 mode as fullscreen anyway.

--
Oh, what the heck. 1PLXzL1CBUD1kdEWqMrwNUfGrGiirV1WpH <= tip a hedgewars dev

Fri, 2015-03-06 15:55

sheepluva

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Joined: 2009-07-18

Posts: 563

nemo allegedly wrote:

I don't even get it. What is a "facebook" game.
If we got our HTML5 port back up to date, and announced it on our facebook page so anyone who had us as a friend or whatever could get to it, how is it much different? Is all this just to get embedded in an iframe wrapped w/ facebook junk or something? The game works much better in HTML5 mode as fullscreen anyway.

The embedding is interesting as far as social cancering is concerned. "Your friend is playing Hedgewars" notifications and stuff like that. A bit like steam I guess. Just without the awesome.

sheepluva <- me my code stats ->
a Hedgewars Developer

click here to message me

<- where I'm from

what I speak ->

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