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Donation sustained communities

ScorpionOT

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Greetings, OTLand comunity

I was wondering, what is the current stance of Cipsoft on donation sustained Open-Tibia servers and what is the OT community stance on sustaining themselves through donations? Would this cause any problem, and is this commendable for a successful project?

Thanks,
Tornadia (no relation)
 
Kinda greedy to charge for cipsoft premiumin 2017 imo but some servers do it. It seems like it has killed a few hosters reputation for doing so.

Hosters can do plenty of non p2w benefits for VIP if they aren't lazy and greedy that can get players to sustain the server cost.

Its all about what you call it to me..

Do you want to CHARGE* players for cipsoft premium..

a donation is expecting nothin in return.


If someone is slapping rewards as a "donation" when every player is only donating for the sole purpose of receiving points? IMO that'd be categorized as fraud xD
 
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CipSoft allegedly lawyered up, in Urheberrecht specifically, which is copyright. It's not really clear if they're trying to target the OpenTibia scene in its whole, or only servers running the leaked CipSoft files, or only big servers raking in a lot money. Perhaps it's nothing OT-related at all. There was (were?) a shut down of a RL-Tibia clone server though, I think.

As from the player's perspective. I think we just need good servers, not necessarily ones trying to be big productions. Just some good design and execution. A well designed game does not lock vital content behind a paywall. A well executed one doesn't bother the player with microtransactions. It all depends, man.
 
I'm nearby sure they never made a public stance, once years ago someone came up with a history of being threatened by Cip through mail by being sent to court, I don't buy it, seems a great excuse to shut server down and fuck up costumers (aka donators, lol).

Using intelectual property from CIP is illegal in nearby all countries in the world, they never enforced anything though.
 
Would cipsoft actually have the right to sue a server because of using their sprites (because that and the map/quests/npcs) are the only thing they really own... They even stole some sprites, and some of their sprites actually belong to the tibia.pl community and players who decided to donate them as freeware.

Or should they send a cease and desist letter first? Just for curiosity.
 
I'm nearby sure they never made a public stance, once years ago someone came up with a history of being threatened by Cip through mail by being sent to court, I don't buy it, seems a great excuse to shut server down and fuck up costumers (aka donators, lol).

Using intelectual property from CIP is illegal in nearby all countries in the world, they never enforced anything though.

I think both Classictibia and one of Marcus' servers (MasterCores?) were supposedly threatened with legal actions by Cipsoft. The latter turned out to be a scammer posing as Cipsoft and people suspected Classictibia just used it as an excuse.

How does the intellectual property work in terms of the server engine though? I understand that the client and the sprites belongs to Cipsoft, but not the server. Maybe it's similar to addressing torrent sites? It's not simple because it is the users – not the owners – that do the crime. (Assuming we're not talking editing Cip's client or using the leaked files from 7.7 because those might be different).
 
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That's pretty much what I am trying to address here. It's different to torrenting in the sense, that all of the sources used by the community are created by the community. It's like Ultima Online deciding to sue Cipsoft because they used the water sprite from Gimp and they pretty much ripped off their idea. I do believe that using the sprites and official client isn't very recommendable, however.
 
if your using their client everything in that client = copyright
if your using their sprites = copyrighted sprites

on the flipside.. if you use the open tibia client and use only custom sprites there is nothing they can do (at that point it is a different game) .. for example those pokemon servers (tho to be fair i'm sure nintendo is a scarier beast then cipsoft :p)
 
@christophe Does that mean Cipsoft need to sue each individual OT player instead of the server, because they are the ones using the client and the sprites?
 
i think it's a bit of a grey area but a company would never go after the "player" they would go after the hosters
 
@christophe If lobby organizations of an American multi-billion dollar industry couldn't shut down Pirate Bay then I think OT hosters will be fine. That's not to say OT hosters could win in court against CIPsoft – but OT hosters don't have to play a fair game and can just move their server to a different ISP, different country and so on.

In the end I have a hard time seeing what CIP would actually gain from all this. People play OTs instead of the original game for a reason; whether that be the cost (no prem), features, client version or whatever. Even if CIP shut down every OT server, they still lack those things which makes players leave them in the first place.
 
claerly none of you is informed correctly Statement from cipsoft website said something like:
We would never want to stand in court against somebody so it is solely for the defense they are lawyering up like with beholder and to be honest i think they aim to sue tibiatunnel etc for ddosing their routes (and literally charging for their business)
 
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claerly none of you is informed correctly Statement from cipsoft website said something like:
We would never want to stand in court against somebody so it is solely for the defense they are lawyering up like with beholder and to be honest i think they aim to sue tibiatunnel etc for ddosing their routes (and literally charging for their business)
I love how what you said is grammatically wrong to the limit, but it makes perfect sense somehow.
 
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