Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby Julius » 18 Jan 2020, 00:19

I was pointed to this website and thought I would share it here:
https://redbricks.games/about

It claims to be some sort of "ethical" game crowd funding site and seem to at least put some effort into putting Free Software and libre CC licenses up front (although not allowing them exclusively).

Have a look :)
User avatar
Julius
Community Moderator
 
Posts: 3297
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 14:02

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby dulsi » 18 Jan 2020, 02:30

I took a look. The site is AGPL and there are a few open source games on it but I can't find the source code to site or the games. It's kinda like patreon but limited to games. However you are encouraged to break things down to "bricks" which users can then support. So instead of donating $10 for game development, you donate $10 for the UI redesign. It's nice that you can search by license. Terms of service are in French and since everything is in euros it might not be for me anyway.
dulsi
 
Posts: 570
Joined: 18 Feb 2016, 15:24

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby Lyberta » 18 Jan 2020, 07:52

Terms of Service seem to be in French with no English version.
Lyberta
 
Posts: 765
Joined: 19 Jun 2013, 10:45

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby GunChleoc » 18 Jan 2020, 17:34

dulsi {l Wrote}:since everything is in euros it might not be for me anyway.

Why is that a reason? It is possible to donate in $ if you live in Europe, so it should work the other way around without any problems too.
User avatar
GunChleoc
 
Posts: 502
Joined: 20 Sep 2012, 22:45

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby dulsi » 18 Jan 2020, 18:14

GunChleoc {l Wrote}:Why is that a reason? It is possible to donate in $ if you live in Europe, so it should work the other way around without any problems too.

You're right that it isn't that big of a deal. My main concern was possible difficulty in getting funds into US bank. Looking into it more, the payment processor is in US so that probably isn't a problem.
dulsi
 
Posts: 570
Joined: 18 Feb 2016, 15:24

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby Julius » 18 Jan 2020, 19:54

Yeah, it is a bit confusing. They claim to be Canadian, but the organisation is registered in France.
User avatar
Julius
Community Moderator
 
Posts: 3297
Joined: 06 Dec 2009, 14:02

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby Wuzzy » 22 Jan 2020, 21:25

Long story short, I'm skeptical.

For documentation purposes, I repeat here what I have written to them as comment:

I see in your About section “freedom” is one of your core values. Cool. I came here to challenge your notion of freedom and being an ethical organization.

Personally, I consider all proprietary software to be unethical because it gives its owners unjust power over their users by the power of Copyright Law and secrets. Do you agree? Maybe you do, at least that's what your About section suggest.

Looking at this website, I quickly noticed various problems:

1) JavaScript trap: I notice this website makes extensive use of 3rd-party JavaScript, most or all of which is also proprietary software which you automatically distribute to your users. That alone makes me consider the website also proprietary.
If freedom is truly your goal, you should be concerned about the JavaScript trap <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html>. 3rd party JavaScript also has another ethical problem in that you are, willingly or not, supporting the ever-growing surveillance capitalism because the 3rd parties will be able to easily track the users of your own website. If freedom is not your goal and surveillance is not a problem for you, it is still in your own interest to avoid 3rd-party JavaScript like the plague because once the 3rd-party breaks down, so will your website. It's an unneccary dependency that can be easily avoided: Just self-host all JavaScript.

2) Proprietary media? I see this project has the media license set to “proprietary”. Is this intentional? Frankly, I doubt that you could even claim copyright on the media, since it's basically only simple shapes. You can't copyright rectangles. ;-) Or have I overlooked something? In most countries simple shapes would be considered Public Domain, no matter what license you try to slap on it. But IANAL. I'm just some random stranger who has read far more about copyright law than is healthy. ;-)

3) Proprietary projects: I see your website hosts various projects with proprietary licenses. I *think* I understand the rationale behind this; you want to give full freedom to *the project owners*, and that derives from your sense of freedom. However, there's a small logical problem with this: If the project owners are free to claim full copyright over their projects, it also means that the users will automatically *lack freedom*. See, that's the thing about freedom: Freedom is always the freedom of other people. You can't have it both ways. You can't call yourself pro-freedom while supporting proprietary software projects.

4) Quote from “Our Values”: “our only rule is that you respect the law and others.”. Obeying the law is the opposite of freedom. ;-) SCNR

5) Lack of discussion of unethical business practices: I notice the lack of any discussion of unethical business practices on your website. This is a glaring omission because in the last few years, large video games companies have done some really nasty things with lootboxes, gambling, free-to-pay scams, online-only restrictions, psychological manipulations to empty your wallet, crazy ideas such as streaming games (=Google Stadia), and so on. Yet you did not distance yourselves from such practices. Do you know the Jimquisition? This guy Jim Sterling regularily tears the so-called video games industry a new one. It's great! :) https://invidio.us/channel/UCWCw2Sd7RlYJ2yuNVHDWNOA

6) Unclear/weird company values:
6a) “a fair repartition of the benefits between the employees after strengthening the company’s capital”: Who defines what's fair?
6b) “the establishment of a 1 employee = 1 vote principle for every major decision, including managers and directors”: Who defines what's a “major decision”? Is there anyone who is able to overrule the vote of the people? If yes, who is it?
6c) “a horizontal hierarchy so that everyone can express themselves”: This statement is contradictory with “1 employee = 1 vote”. If there is a hierarchy (even a “horizontal” one), it means some people have more power than ohers. So what is it now?
6d) “respect for everyone, regardless of gender, religion, social origins or political belief.”. What about neo-nazis?
6e) “support for associations advocating inclusiveness, such as Women In Games France”. The goal of Women in Games France is to double the number of women and “nonbinary” people in the video games sector in 10 years. This is a completely nonsensical goal. What if not that many women are actually interested? I'm all for equal rights, so any artificial barriers that women face should be removed. But that's not what their goal says. Their main goal has nothing to do with freedom.
User avatar
Wuzzy
 
Posts: 989
Joined: 28 May 2012, 23:13

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby Lyberta » 23 Jan 2020, 13:03

Yup, shady.
Lyberta
 
Posts: 765
Joined: 19 Jun 2013, 10:45

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby mdtrooper » 18 Feb 2020, 18:42

More firewood for the fire (it is a cliche spanish):



I see that the project is a bite dead.
And I have a Patreon in https://www.patreon.com/migueldedios.
User avatar
mdtrooper
 
Posts: 185
Joined: 26 Jul 2012, 13:24
Location: Spain

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby FredericRP » 19 Feb 2020, 14:38

Hello there,

I'm not a developer nor part of the development team of redbricks however I'm part of the "ethical games" association that now operates this platform. We found out this morning that you found our platform: thank you, we are so happy about it! (and sorry that we only have a french version, for now, we are french people, not Canadian, what made you think that ?)

We are a few people believing in ethical game development and this platform is a way of putting that publicly, helping developers that want to follow that purpose. Yet, this takes time and the platform has launched publicly only a few months ago, we have a LOT of stuff to do and this is not our day job.

The source code is available on https://gitlab.com/OtterWays/redbricks (OtterWays is the french videogame company that created the first version, we have to migrate that to the ethical games account) so everyone can contribute to this project. I know for instance that calls of third parties JS CDN servers has been removed in the past few days.

One issue we are facing now is that if we want to support ethical game development, we have to develop a platform that is also user-friendly for a wide audience, and third parties JS helps that a lot, especially for a very small team like us (well, some of us think that, not everyone). We made a first effort to include the least JS possible while keeping only what is required (you should have a fully functional website if JS is deactivated except Stripe payment).

Due to personal matters, the development and support are not 24/24 nor 7/7 but we welcome everyone that wants to help us.

And.. definitively NOT dead :D
FredericRP
 
Posts: 3
Joined: 19 Feb 2020, 14:07

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby mdtrooper » 21 Feb 2020, 12:29

Thank you FredericRP. It is good news.

I sent a pull request with a few strings translated into spanish.
And I have a Patreon in https://www.patreon.com/migueldedios.
User avatar
mdtrooper
 
Posts: 185
Joined: 26 Jul 2012, 13:24
Location: Spain

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby FredericRP » 02 Mar 2020, 15:50

Many thanks :) (and yes, I was in family vacation last week)
FredericRP
 
Posts: 3
Joined: 19 Feb 2020, 14:07

Re: Crowdfunding site for "ethical" game development

Postby Wuzzy » 23 Apr 2020, 11:19

One issue we are facing now is that if we want to support ethical game development, we have to develop a platform that is also user-friendly for a wide audience, and third parties JS helps that a lot, especially for a very small team like us (well, some of us think that, not everyone). We made a first effort to include the least JS possible while keeping only what is required (you should have a fully functional website if JS is deactivated except Stripe payment).

3rd-party JS really should be avoided like the plague. Any dependence on a 3rd party is a problem, for multiple reasons: If the 3rd party goes down, so do you. Privacy problems. If the 3rd party makes breaking changes, your site breaks. And so on. Need JQuery? Just self-host the .js files. Need Node.js? Self-host it (warning: NPM is now owned by GitHub and thus Microsoft)! Need $LIBRARY? Self-host it. I think you get the idea. ;)

If you sacrifice freedom for convenience, you lose because it means you have already ignored the goal for ethical development. :( Free software and usability do NOT have to exclude each other, by the way. :)

And finally:
https://kryogenix.org/code/browser/everyonehasjs.html
User avatar
Wuzzy
 
Posts: 989
Joined: 28 May 2012, 23:13

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest