Dear Ubi reps...a question for you about map re-uploads.
So that Cry Hard (Die Hard film tribute) map I made....
https://far-cry-arcade.ubi.com/ps4/m...818065408e508a
....was downloaded and reposted with no substantive changes (mode change) as "Die Hard Joseph." As of this moment, the re-uploaded map is the 3rd highest rated map on PS4 with almost 4k plays. Yay?
With this post coming on the heels of the recent kerfuffle I want to make it clear right up front that I'm not remotely angry at anyone in this scneario. Not the map re-uploader(s), and certainly not at Ubisoft for the product decisions that led to it. Further, I'm actually not offended by the concept of remixing someone else's work (after all, I didn't create the film Die Hard!). In fact some nice person on reddit politely (if unnecessarily) asked me permission to download the map & play around with it and I encouraged him/her to do so. But this...this doesn't feel like a re-mix to me at all. It doesn't feel good at all. The move feels particularly inauthentic because the re-uploaded map was re-uploaded by multiple accounts: SLYROCK27 - The account that uploaded the one that caught fire, but the accounts DRIZZLARZ, ENRIQUEZ300, IVANSHNUROV, ITSUKI1615 all have also uploaded "Die Hard Joseph" (Same barely-edited map with identical name/snapshots).
I'm still processing what's happened here. How should I feel about it? What do you think? Is the product simply working as designed here and I should just be happy for that group of friends who kept uploading my map until it took off? After all, I'm still credited as the original creator & it of course there was no nefarious hacking or rule breaking invovled. The product is clearly designed to allow maps to be downloaded, edited and re-uploaded. I respect ALL your team's product decisions (even the controversial ones). Farcry & Farcry Arcade are your creations after all, not mine. But something about this makes me sad. Am I being irrational? Maybe? I worked for years as a creative in advertising & a product designer in tech where exactly this kind of thing was labeled IP theft and that may have left me biased—Farcry Arcade is a different world from those and this behavior is explicitly allowed/encouraged via product functionality & prominent UI.
Fellow map creators: What are your thoughts? I'm assuming this is not the first time this has happened?
This indeed is not the first time. Map Stealing is 'officially' forbidden by Ubisoft's Far Cry 5 Code of Conduct.
Having said that, the Code of Conduct seems to be a joke because Ubisoft doesn't enforce it. The same topic comes up time and time again. Jaavaa had his map Toys Room plagiarized many times, and the copies still seem to be online despite him reporting this conduct.
I really do not see why Ubisoft isn't addressing these community issues. The easiest workaround for this would be to allow map makers to report their stolen maps ingame. Then have an automated process in play that says: if user reports a map that he is original_creator of, delete that map immediately. No time spent on support tickets, people have it in their own hands. And players who republish maps will see they get deleted and hopefully cease their activities.
It's not perfect, but this really seems to be the best cost/benefit fix to implement to me.
Sadly, this is the issue with the system as it currently stands. People would rather get popular from a direct reupload than put in the actual effort to make something great.
For example, I make levels in another game engine, and to have the reupload taken down, I have to spend more time than I should to report thefts. The problem is the inherent lack of creative control over your maps.
In other games, such as Source, or Unreal, while it is possible to decompile almost anything (Source itself being a prime example of this), there are some hacky-work-around methods you can use to prevent the map from being decompiled/edited, although they do not work with any degree of success.
The most you can hope for is a daisy-chain edit log on the map's overview in-game as it currently stands. The Arcade editor at this point just has no real way to protect the author's work, as there's nothing to stop blatant reuploading and theft.
More moderation is not the answer, just as better content control is also not the only answer; rather, the best case scenario would be a combination of both.
I think pest is, remove possibility to download other map makers maps.
And UBI why tey set the rules if UBI cant or not to want to controll own rules.
I raported oficially 3 hacers, and afther 2 weeks same hakes hacing in game agen!
All to gever i see big problems on UBI Corporation management, customer services and UBi structure- thats not working.
And thats not only my opinion, thats opinion i hear hig ranked UBi ex workes talking about!
I'm not sure I follow, but I'll try.
Yes, removing the ability to directly edit other maps would be a very effective way to nip this in the bud.
The rules were made to set guidelines; however, if the problem is like I have seen rampantly when I moderate a few sites and the Steam Workshop, the problem lies in the sheer number of false/generally awful reports that have no real basis, thus cutting out time that can be spent on the "real" reports. Believe me, I have probably had to delete >9/10 of the content reports that come across my dashboard because they're not real reports; rather, they're more or less what could be considered spam reports.
Reporting hackers unfortunately is a cat & mouse game; as you ban one script, another edition or an updated version will take its place. The more you ban, the more creative people get. This is why Valve implemented a delay-ban for VAC, as it allows them to net more people in a wave, as the hack programmers can't figure out what triggered the anti-cheat as quickly.
To alleviate this, there should be an automated system that'll instantly take a map down if its "original creator" reports it for whatever reason.Originally Posted by ReverendV92 Go to original post
Unfortunately, the inherently indiscriminate nature of automated reporting means that it has the ability - and the likelihood - of going very wrong, very quickly.
For example, I've reported at least a dozen reuploads of one of my files on Steam Workshop, and by doing so just one too many times, Steam's automated system banned the original, real file uploaded by myself.
Automated systems serve to alleviate this problem with bogus reports, but at the cost of any oversight to figure out what should be done.
A good middle ground, would be like IDF777 suggested, in either removing and/or giving authors the option of whether or not they want their maps to be downloaded, as well as using partial-automation to prioritize reports based on syntax and wording. If the automation filtered reports by the key wording, such as phrases related to stolen or reuploaded, it could help the moderation team figure out what is the highest priority, and work from there.
However, this also means that the prioritization would need to be able to be worked around if someone figured out exactly what to say, and how to say it, in order to effectively - in layman's terms - "cut in line" in order to prevent abuse.
There's only so much extra time & cost that the devs can put in. Ideally you'd indeed want mappers to (dis)allow republishing of their published map. This however would mean changing the data structure and publication process.
In TU6, the "delete map" report was added. If players could use that feature to also report their stolen maps, it'd only be a very small adjustment to the code. I'm assuming the 'delete map' report as-is now only removes the map from the game index, so if the creator messes up they can always file a follow-up ticket to undo his deletion request.
There is only one possible solution for this... once a map is published it cannot be republished. However I have found a sure fire way of curing it. I decided to not make ANY maps until this is fixed. So far it has worked! On FC4 my maps have been stolen over 100 times until I stopped it with a private mod. But it didn't work on my old maps, just the new ones. Since FC5 released there have been 5 different maps of mine stolen on FC4. To me it isn't worth the grief and aggravation. Ubisoft has no intention of doing anything about it and actually encourage people to steal maps. They keep trying to come up with workarounds and they just don't work.