Possibly the most frequently broken rule on /r/lewdgames was #2: No Piracy.
The context for that rule on Reddit and on Lemmy is not quite the same. However, I’d still like to keep the stance that we want creators to be comfortable posting to the community, and not have to worry that someone will direct people to a site with an unlicensed copy of the game.
To that end, I plan to maintain a whitelist of sites that are acceptable sources for games. To be on the whitelist, they would need to make reasonable effort to keeping unlicensed content from the platform. IMO, F95’s stance of “provide a copy of the game but link to the official patreon/itch/whatever” isn’t enough.
Right now, I would whitelist patreon, itch, steam, dlsite, and subscribestar, but I’m open to suggestions.
Reasonably, any site fully controlled by the developer of the game can be sourced.
I will admit that that leaves some gaps; fan translations tend to release free copies of the games they translate (often Japanese games that would be available on dlsite). I’m interested in community feedback, especially from developers, on this.
Lewd Mods should be able to be sourced from anywhere, so long as they do not directly pirating anything. This will probably require additional consideration in the future.
There’s also a risk that being too loose with any questionably legal content could lead to blocking or defederation of this community/server, both of which I’d like to avoid
That sounds like a very reasonable stance. I prefer those communities to stay appealing to dev to show off their projects. It would be a shame to have piracy drive them away.
whitelist (…) any site fully controlled by the developer of the game can be sourced
Sounds reasonable indeed.
IMO, F95’s stance of (…)
I have seen different approaches to piracy sites, especially on the many Discords I’m on, from “link away” to “don’t even talk about it or get banned.” On the Discord server for Come Home which I’m a mod of, we have made good experiences with “Mentioning F95 and similar sites is alright, but advertising it or posting links is not.” Especially because it DOES have some value for devs with its dev forums, also mods and fan translations.
Just my $0.02 :)
I appreciate the feedback, and that’s kind of how I’m leaning here as well.
If the game is only available in a language through fan translation, I don’t believe it is necessary to curb “piracy”, as that isn’t a product that can be paid for.
I do think this post is straightforward and well thought. Redirecting to direct sources for a developer is almost always easy, and redirecting to a pirated source is more difficult. If someone wants to pirate, there is no reason to muddle up this group with it, as this would just be redirecting them elsewhere, anyways.
