Hello, Amazing Creators!

This is just a gentle reminder that the Starter Kits and Minigames we offer here at XNA Creators Club as part of Developer Education should only be used for educational purposes. We own the copyright on these. If you submit one of our Starter Kits or Minigames with no changes as an Xbox LIVE Community Game we will pull it down. If you see one in Peer Review or Playtest - you should help that Creator out by either failing the game or warning them.
If you have any questions feel free to ask - as ever the MVPs are there to help. Please be kind to them, because they are doing this out of the kindness and generosity of their own enormous space brains and kind hearts.

xxoo
~kathleen sanders
XNA Community Manager

How are considered reskins?

Gentle reminders won't dissuade determined deviants or capitalists.

if (shortTermGain > shortTermLoss)
   burnBridgesForProfit();

More (less?) seriously, if one texture is changed, does that still count as "with no changes"? Also, I'm unsure you can explain how your copyrights are relevant given how the source is released under the MS-PL, without going far enough into 'legal discussion' territory to get this thread locked.
I'm playing devil's advocate, I have no intention of putting a starter kit into peer review.

Running Pixel:

How are considered reskins?

Did they change the starter kit?
If yes, game is allowed.
If no, game is not allowed.

Mentil:

I'm playing devil's advocate, I have no intention of putting a starter kit into peer review.

Then don't. We have enough arguments without people making more just for the sake of it.

Note that NONE of the starter kits will pass peer review without modification. They were all written long before best practises or the evil checklist were in place.

The copyright is pretty easy to explain in one area - all the kits have he XNA logo in them - you are not allowed to use that logo and Microsoft are... anything beyond that is beyond the scope if legal discussion.

Nick Gravelyn:

Running Pixel:

How are considered reskins?

Did they change the starter kit?
If yes, game is allowed.
If no, game is not allowed.

Mentil:

I'm playing devil's advocate, I have no intention of putting a starter kit into peer review.

Then don't. We have enough arguments without people making more just for the sake of it.

Just for a better understanding and future reference: if I change a couple of textures and texts in the starter kits it is considered a change?

Running Pixel:

Just for a better understanding and future reference: if I change a couple of textures and texts in the starter kits it is considered a change?

You'll note I emphasized one of those words. Yes, that's a change. It is not the same as it was originally, therefore you changed it.

Nick Gravelyn:

Running Pixel:

Just for a better understanding and future reference: if I change a couple of textures and texts in the starter kits it is considered a change?

You'll note I emphasized one of those words. Yes, that's a change. It is not the same as it was originally, therefore you changed it.

Good to know. Thank you.

Cookiecups:

Hello, Amazing Creators!

This is just a gentle reminder that the Starter Kits and Minigames we offer here at XNA Creators Club as part of Developer Education should only be used for educational purposes. We own the copyright on these. If you submit one of our Starter Kits or Minigames with no changes as an Xbox LIVE Community Game we will pull it down. If you see one in Peer Review or Playtest - you should help that Creator out by either failing the game or warning them.
If you have any questions feel free to ask - as ever the MVPs are there to help. Please be kind to them, because they are doing this out of the kindness and generosity of their own enormous space brains and kind hearts.

xxoo
~kathleen sanders
XNA Community Manager

People, people, people.... stop being idiots and get on with reviewing and writing games....

Kathleen's post is pretty obvious and FV games would never have passed anyway without changes. Spending 20 pages arguing over wording isn't going to get anyone anything except a locked thread and some hurt feelings... maybe if we are lucky a ban or 2 so that people can think twice about wasting everyone's time.

The ZMan:

People, people, people.... stop being idiots and get on with reviewing and writing games....

Kathleen's post is pretty obvious and FV games would never have passed anyway without changes..

Who cares honestly. There are only a handful of starter kits, one per genre. If some idiots want to profit from others work and submit a reskin, so what. I don't forsee a huge list of reskins because there will be no profit in it once one or two are submitted, so XBLCG will not suffer as a result. Let's move on.

I'm going to lock this thread in about ten seconds if people continue dragging on this debate which is now spanning three threads. We've heard your complaints. Some people think it's dishonest or unfair and other don't. Just drop it or I'm going to start locking threads. It's just getting redundant and annoying at this point. If you don't like reskinned games, don't review them and don't make them. Just move on already.

The ZMan:

maybe if we are lucky a ban or 2 so that people can think twice about wasting everyone's time.

What a ridiculous statement.

I'll play along - how about we ban ECHS BACHS?

In before the lock.

As just a consumer/gamer I find this whole thing funny. I also don't care whatsoever about reskinned games and who is making money off them or not. I wouldn't even know about this if it weren't for the fact that I read this forum. So I could care less about Echs Bachs or his games. He can keep on doing what he does & I'll keep making my voice heard with my wallet. If he happens to provide a game worthy of my money, then I'll buy it whether or not he just changed a texture in a starter kit.

Anyawy, it amazes me to no end of all the complaints from developers like this. I swear to you that stuff just like this will eventually completely kill off the whole service. Self righteous attitudes need to be checked at the door or quit spending your time here & go make better games.

BTW, had this service been done with the ability for free games first & then later on added the ability to make money off of them, you probably wouldn't had problems like this where people are trying to game the system to make a quick buck. But no, developers had to make money off their creations. Now you got to live with it.

Tommy McClain

I know this post was designed to try and satiate the arguments about the reskins and put the issue to rest, but without a more complete and concrete statement about what is/isn't allowed in this vein the chatter will continue. I used to think that the XNA community was setup in this loose way so that the community could be self-policing, but it's hard to say that when people get slammed for expressing what direction they would like to see happen on these kinds of issues. We either need to let the community have some level of dictation on this, or we need a solid conclusion to offer people when reviewing. "No changes" means the same as it did before, since as ZMan has said, the starter kits can't get in as-is anyway because they don't follow the normal practices. We still can't conclude on something like those charity offers that were up earlier.

ZMan already pointed out the obvious. All starter kits currently contain and display the XNA logo which is 100% NOT allowed. If the submitter removes that logo, a change has been made. It is now allowed.

There are guaranteed to be other things that must be changed before a start kit can really successfully pass peer review but at least the logo must no longer be displayed. So no starter kit can ever be released through the channel without at least that one change. And that one change is enough for it to be considered "changed".

Really, everyone just stfu and go on with your lives, gawd, just go make games. Really, I believe that the first post should be a sticky or put into the FAQ and every reply should be deleted (including this one).

The Zedox:

Really, everyone just stfu and go on with your lives, gawd, just go make games.

Blueprint Racer 4d was a shot across the bow, and I don't really care about it. It's the imminently upcoming shots that I'm worried about. This debacle has highlighted a number of ambiguities and flaws with the peer review process. The typical response until now has been 'use common sense', but grey area defies common sense, which is why judges exist. If no clarifications or changes are made, it'll set a precedent that will be followed, cluttering community games and particularly the peer review process. I can ignore these issues and just code now, but if several months down the road my game gets clogged in peer review due to these problems, or ignored by customers because community games has had its credibility destroyed, I'll have wished I'd have done something about it before it was too late. We're complaining due to the fact that we have so little power to do anything about it. We can either patch the holes before things get really bad, or we can wait for the flood to come before we start breaking out the planks and nails.

Ok, so we should keep talking about it, why? THEY KNOW THE PROBLEM NOW, WE KNOW THE PROBLEM, MOVE THE F ON! Talking about it just irritates people. I'm even sorry for replying. Just let it go. If stuff doesn't happen like you thought because of some other thing (which I might add, you would probably never even know why your sales or peer review might be "clogged" up), it's freaking tough. Life is tough. I'm not sorry this comes out the wrong way, I am being rude because people just need to stop freaking talking about it. I'm just waiting for the next "whine thread." Thread please lock.

Discussion repetitive and pointless => Thread locked.