Question about pservers

#1

Are pservers against the ToS?

#2

Yes.

#3

If you’re not playing the real RotMG, then there’s nothing Deca can do to enforce their ToS. If you’re hosting a pserver, then you’re violating various copyrights and probably trademarks too, and Deca could take legal action depending on where you live.

Personally, I wouldn’t trust any pservers. They’re still running on Flash, which makes it much easier for them to include malicious code in their client. Flash vulnerabilities are very well documented at this point.

#4

I’m not saying that the owners of the private servers are doing good (and that you should feel free to take part in these technically illegal activities), but these “legal actions” that you mention can take a lot of time. They are decisions that DECA can’t afford to make since it wastes a lot of time, money, and effort on these game recreations that don’t even make that much money in the first place.

#5

yeah they only took action against one server, which was very popular and had arguably a decent revenue stream, with a $400 rank (gave you /give) which a surprising amount of people bought.

#6

Yes. Pservers can fly under the radar for a long time, provided someone is wiling to put the time and effort into running them. There’s not much DECA can do. Even if they e.g. contact an ISP to get a server closed down it can just move elsewhere.

As soon as they try to raise money though, whether crowdfunding (Patreon, Kickstarter) or direct payments they are much more vulnerable as crowdfunding/payment companies are big multinationals with copyright/fraud policies. A sternly worded lawyers letter might be all that’s needed to close down the account. And without a source of revenue they can only survive for as long as someone is willing to subsidise and support them.

I am not sure they could survive even if they could raise money freely. It’s hard to compete against a game which is free to play for most of its players.

#7

iirc, from a Q&A session hosted on CussingCanadian’s channel, aimZer - the one who’s involved in legal stuff surrounding Realm, I believe - mentioned that, as soon as a server attempts to use Realm’s assets to generate revenue (such as in-game purchases for real-world money), they start taking action.

#8

@Wilhuff @GammaGamer @HatedFury @Dacammel @Skandling @Seelpit What if I made one and am playing by myself? Should I stop? Can I get banned for it? (Sorry if I bothered anyone by tagging them)

#9

What you should really be worried about is the site you downloaded it from. You’re not worth Deca’s time unless you’re stealing their customers.

#10

Ok. I followed a tutorial and downloaded github code, and my antivirus didn’t detect anything, so I think my computer is fine. Thank you for the help!

#11

Famous last words. Though it’s probably safe, antivirus is very far from perfect, especially on Windows.

#12

True lol

#13

We basically just shut down servers that make money off of our intellectual property. That is always the specific point where we decide to take action in terms of if we do something about the server or not.

Wanted to drop the quote, since "intellectual property " is a larger umbrella than “assets” – this would include stuff like gameplay systems, for instance. It’s also worth mentioning that there are some RotMG assets that CAN be used – not many anymore, but a few still come from the original Oryx 8-bit Bundle, which can still be purchased.

#14

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