Most of the time, wizards relies on the fact that their product is more refined than the alternatives to promote use of their shits. FFG needs to take a page from that book. If the cardgamedb switch was smoother and the site had all the functionality of netrunnerdb, people wouldn’t be as mad. Frankly, if that were the case, they could have just made it the best one to begin with, included visual spoilers before everyone else, etc, etc.
Taking this path is obviously bringing them a lot of backlash and unless they step up their game very very quickly, they’re going to suffer from it, if not just because people will have a lesser opinion of them.
Yeah, maybe the spoilers are the issue. Darksbane once said that he had to wait for the “now available” announcement from FFG to add a new datapack to his “card spoilers” section.
I’m really confident that FFG will reply to my letter of compliance with a bit more details about what it is they want to see removed from netrunnerdb. From there, I’ll be hopefully able to comply and everybody will be happy. fingers crossed
The reason for the handling thus far is incredibly simple:
Fantasy Flight Games is not a large company.
They don’t have many employees. They don’t have a lot of money. They do not have the resources in time, money, or personnel to make their deck builder better than the fan made ones. They saw somebody trying to make an online version of the game (jinteki.net) and that person was pulling the images from netrunnerdb.com, and that was it. Scorched Earth. They dont have the resources or manpower to answer simple e-mails in a timely manner (usually takes weeks to get responses from most FFG employees/departments), or to monitor forums, or to sort out who was doing what and who was in the wrong here, They saw a threat (jinteki.net) and they went after in, and associated acts.
To be honest, I think @spags is almost certainly right, I doubt how quickly FFG could or would back up threats to a French guy hosting a site in the Netherlands, that sounds like a nightmare on their end, and as pointed out, they don’t have manpower or money to throw at the problem.
What FFG should do is talk to the owner of netrunnerdb.com, and be transparent about what is and isn’t fair game. The fact that that has not happened yet may be as simple as they don;t know yet what they need to protect, and what they don’t. That may take some meeting with lawyers. I do wish that FFG would do a better job tapping the community for help with projects it clearly doesn’t have the manpower/desire for - things like an online deck builder, and actual sanctioned tournament software. These are things people in the community are willing to create, seemingly for free, and can probably be licensed to FFG for a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things.
I’m glad to hear that you’re offering them a compromise. Here’s hoping that they’re able to provide you with a straightforward list of their desires!
In any case, thanks for all your work thus far; here’s hoping you can keep going!
It would be pretty easy for them to send the hosting provider for the site is a DMCA takedown notice, citing the un-complied-with C&D as evidence. Most hosting providers won’t fight that :).
Goddamn, yes. Approach netrunnerdb.com, approach NRTM, and ASK if you can make these the official shit for a small amount of money. Fly them into Worlds! They’d be thrilled.
I second this. Very poorly handled but a great idea to pay them a small sum, license it, and fly them to worlds. I’m literally dumbfounded, though I can understand them being worried about jinteki.net. In that case, just communicate with the creator (obviously someone who loves the game) what is okay, and what is not. Maybe it’s on the creator to contact FFG, I’m not sure.
I could at least understand why they might think pursuing OCTGN would be a good idea (“People are playing our game without paying us?! To the lawyermobile!”). I have no idea why they would even want to shut down NetrunnerDB.
i guess maybe its because donators were allowed, so owner acutally earned something. ofc it was for better server and a thank you beer, nothing more, but still lawyers know better…
I don’t think they’re happy about OCTGN Netrunner existing, but they recognize that trying to stop it would cause widespread community backlash, (even worse than netrunnerdb). They have stopped other web-based ports before. I suspect that they’re trying to put an end to jinteki.net before it gets a following, but will continue to leave OCTGN alone.
Letting netrunnerdb go down as collateral damage is pretty unwise on their part, though.
OCTGN is a different can of worms. By itself, it doesn’t do anything. That would be like C&Ding Adobe for Photoshop because people create illegal prints and whatnot. It’s just a tool. You can use OCTGN to playtest your own created games.
Really, Jinteki serves one purpose: to recreate Netrunner by playing an automated game in browser for free. It’s other features are superfluous to why people would use it. The deck builder is more of an inconvenience than anything else.
NDB provides an API that allows anyone to stream card images and data to anything, including Jinteki. The API and high rez images are what did them in, as well as being linked with Jinteki, even though they had nothing to do with it.
Personally, I just don’t understand the point of C&D’ing any site or platform, especially for a smaller company. it almost seems counter-intuitive to me. consider the music industry in the past decade. the smaller labels have never been the ones punishing pirates. only the larger labels and companies have done so. and yet I have never heard of WOTC shutting down any sites. you can play with every MTG card ever in your browser on Untap. there is a donation feature. and here comes indie (comparatively) FFG C&D’ing a deckbuilding site. Idk, just doesn’t make sense to me why FFG or any lawyer would care. only thing it could do is build community which builds sales. I don’t think NetrunnerDB is cannibalizing any physical sales. idk i just idk
edit: Oh god, the BGG thread is a nightmare. let’s not devolve to that…
I second this. Very poorly handled but a great idea to pay them a small sum, license it, and fly them to worlds. I’m literally dumbfounded, though I can understand them being worried about jinteki.net. In that case, just communicate with the creator (obviously someone who loves the game) what is okay, and what is not. Maybe it’s on the creator to contact FFG, I’m not sure.
In reply to their cease and desist email, I said i’m willing to comply and asked if it is acceptable to remove the online game play part but keep the card browser and deckbuilder. Jinteki would be like Meteor deck or NetrunnerDB with less features.
I believe there is a big demand for online gameplay and would be very glad if FFG provides an official online gameplay platform. I am more than willing to help FFG build something and asked for contacts at FFG to discuss online gameplay.
This is their reply:
"We are already aware of the community desire for an online forum to play and have taken that into consideration. Because we already offer deckbuilding and card browsing services, we do not allow others to do the same.”
It basically means:
The gameplay part is not the issue. The use of logos, artworks and text from Android: Netrunner without permission is.
They want the whole website down.
Other deck buiders and card browser could receive the same treatment.