strawburry 2017-01-25 19:58:32

I'm a bit hesitant in signing this.

Being a casual observer of GD and its community as well as a long time account-less lurker on newgrounds for the past few years, I can say with confidence that a large part of the GD community is very bratty and immature. Seeing as the game has a target audience of small children, I never really had high expectations to begin with, but nevertheless a good chunk of the community is still overall not the best.

While the previous statement may be very much true, I still don't think that it's okay to completely generalize the community. I understand that a lot of them are small entitled children who think newgrounds is a website made to serve GD like a slave, but there are still quite a few members who recognize newgrounds as an independent site (as it should be seen), and agree that there needs to be changes in the behavior of the community and the way that audio works on GD.

Regarding the issues with the audio and the rights to it / payment to the musicians who make it, I completely agree. While it would be hard to implement (as music selection in GD levels is up to the community / creator of the levels), I do believe that RopTop should find a way to get a decent portion of the profit made from the game to the musicians (and maybe even moderators / creators in the game itself). It is a game based around music and rhythm, and the game would be nowhere near as popular as it is now without custom songs and a level creating system.

While I do think that these changes are necessary to insure a better experience on newgrounds, I don't think deleting the game from the app store and steam would be the best solution. While it would solve many of the issues presented, it would still be screwing over RopTop and the avid players of the game. Some may say that RopTop deserves it for participating in scummy business practices, but I still believe that this issue could be solved in a number of different ways without deleting the game, benefiting both parties and giving RopTop a chance to redeem himself.

I noticed the edit in the description, and I think that it's definitely a step in the right direction. Deleting GD would be a missed opportunity of sorts, as it has the potential to give musicians on newgrounds needed attention and money, even if it's not doing that right now. While at the current moment GD is bombarding newgrounds with negative attention and illegal uploads of songs, I do believe that GD has the ability to overwhelm the pretentious fans with a more positive impact on newgrounds in the future.

TL;DR the community is bad and so is the audio system but I still think y'all should negotiate & stuff so that GD could do good things instead of bad things for newgrounds

good luck with the negotiations c:

EtzerGD 2017-01-25 21:37:04

No doubt I agree with this. I have been considering making a video about this for the longest time, and as a Geometry Dash YouTuber who also creates music I have my foot on each side here. I think most of the GD community believes that they own songs and that producers on Newgrounds are making music specifically for the usage in Geometry Dash. There are some artists like Dex Arson and Waterflame, who have on occasion been hired/paid by the developer of Geometry Dash to make custom songs for players to use. I think the Newgrounds audio portal itself has become much more expanisve since the release of GD, but rarely would I attribute any GD player to the success of a musician. While I have seen a lot of times where GD creators have made a level with a song, and then that song rises to best of the year, I still tend to attribute it to the song's quality, not the level, because if it wasn't a good ass song it wouldn't be up there or even used in a level in the first place. If anything, levels just get songs some more exposure.
Robtop isn't behind the GD community on this one, he has blocked lots of song IDs and has occasionally updated the filters to try and fix these issues. In general, I think the majority of larger/better GD players hate it when people upload shit to Newgrounds. I was guilty of this in the past (about 2 years ago, before the audio portal flooded) and promptly received a temp ban from NG and the removal/defeature of my level made with it. I make my own music now, but I do still feel kinda bad about doing that a while back.
I think over time there will be less and less spam on the website due to more and more guidelines/warnings before posting, plus more of the community realizing its wrong. Not to mention Geometry Dash is on the decline.
Still, I feel like this petition seems a bit overly hostile. RobTop put custom music in with, to my knowledge, permission from Newgrounds. The whole platform of Newgrounds is essentially music, art, and video games all in one place, and in my opinion a great community site for collaboration between developers and artists. Newgrounds has never been about making money for artists posting there, that's what Bandcamp or iTunes is for. It is more about awareness and an extra place to get noticed. If anything the game is just offering more of a platform for musicians. Removal of Geometry Dash from the app store seems like an overreaction. There are definitely flaws, but they can be fixed. I know someone with direct, 24/7 contact to RobTop, so I will do my best to pass on some of this information. I appreciate this post, and while I do not agree with your outcome, agree with the reasons. I do think a lot of the community finds music as a commodity, and doesn't understand the disproportionality between making a level and a full blown track.
Thanks,
Etzer

hex-hammer 2017-01-25 22:01:02

Signed. I'm having a passive-agressive response about this but ultimately something needs to be done.

ThaliaSolari 2017-01-25 22:31:25

Trust me, the community is complete cancer. (Trust me I know from experience, because the creator Adiale started getting hate and even I myself started doing it for some reason, which I apologized for.) But REMOVING the game! GD has alot of people playing it and actually does have a good side to the community. I am TOTALLY against people putting shit on here that isn't theirs, but honestly removing GD is a terrible idea. So no. I am not signing the petition.

Alpha-Paradox 2017-01-25 23:37:50

Look, I understand *exactly* why you did this. I read the whole thing and took in to consideration every word. But one thing, you can't let a bunch of pre-pubescent 12-year olds ruin a website. YES! I KNOW HIW THEY WERE POSTING COPYRIGHTED STUFF ON THIS WEBSITE WHERE IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE COPYRIGHT-FREE but come on. I still agree with you on every point except for the fact that this is a game that millions of people play. This isn't gonna get the game removed. But it will certainly send a message to RobTop (sorry if it seemed like I was mad, I like arguing with people lel)

Quarl 2017-01-26 01:10:41

This is horrible news. Good thing I'm obscure and make bad music. If I ever caught someone stealing my tunes I'd just leave them a bad review.

ADR3-N 2017-01-26 01:47:50

@Chris354, the closest thing I have to statistics is my daily diary and own experience as a mod. I can tell you that since being modded in December, I spent my first two weeks removing over 500 songs a day, religiously, sometimes even 2000 in one day. It was an all day affair -- and I was just going through the search, not unscouted. I may have missed tens of thousands more. And yes, a lot were copyrighted, meaning we could easy get slapped by a DMCA

Lumpfriend 2017-01-26 02:15:11

Active GD user weighing in. I'm no artist, so take what I say with a grain of salt... It shocks me how spammed the audio portal is with music that was obviously submitted by someone with the intent of using it in geometry dash, despite all the notices and a banner being targeted directly at geometry dash players. I don't come from the most mature of userbases– I'm sure you could guess that– and I witness everyday evidence that even if Robtop were to implement his so-far planned changes to the audio mechanics of the game (he is slow and hard to communicate with, and if it never happened in the next couple years I wouldn't be surprised) that many users wouldn't heed any pile of warnings thrown at them. Sure, maybe some are just ignorant, but many more are just stupid.

I absolutely think improvements need to be made to the system in-game, but for all the notices in the world i personally doubt much of a dent would be made in the issue, and the purpose of the changes would be mainly to show that this issue stems from no fault of Robtop and every fault of his game's fans. I suspect that the only way to fix this might be to do something drastic, like remove custom song functionality from gd entirely– although as a player I myself hate the possibility of this reality. In any case, removing GD from the mobile stores might do something if Robtop won't communicate, to bring attention from the issue, but unless it's comes to that I think it's entirely unnecessary when instead a part of the game can just be removed, and sill if it does then since many people already have the game installed it wouldn't fix the solution directly, at least not for a while.

I've already stated I'm not a musician, and I cannot sympathize with these issues that they shouldn't have to deal with. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain that Robtop does not make any ad-revenue that would otherwise go to musicians, and that his profits come from purchases of the game and views of ads in-game. If anything, he should, like someone suggested before me, reimburse artists whose music helps geometry dash because it has grown popular in the game.

Mich 2017-01-26 02:49:12

I want to put in that I've never personally tried to contact RobTop, so I cannot testify on how responsive he is in that regard.

Anyhow, it's somewhat comforting to me to know RobTop and NG are apparently still actively working together in trying to do something about the situation.

I've only heard about banners and improved communication though, and I'm a bit skeptical about how effective those are, considering the numerous examples I've seen of uploaders blatantly being aware of the rules but selfishly breaking them.

I guess adding the banners and disclaimers in Spanish and some other languages based on where would-be uploaders are visiting from might help a bit though.

I'm curious what the updates the mechanics will be, and whether they include anything more than better messaging to users. I would also be interested to know if there is any quantifiable data showing GD has done good things for viewership and/or financials for Newgrounds; with the influx of stolen music it only looks like it'd be an increase in takedown notices, and in volunteer work required (which of course is not a financial loss, but I digress).

---

Rambling aside, having taken some time to think it over I think I no longer agree with flat out having the game taken down. In any case, it'd be much simpler and more direct for Newgrounds to cut the link and revoke access to the GD system, if it comes to that.

Loogiah 2017-01-26 10:20:24

hey, I'm a pretty popoular GD creator (I guess)
While I do agree with you that it's bad that people are uploading songs that aren't theirs, I don't see how you're gonna solve anything, by demonizing us and generalizing everything. I hate how everyone in the comments here is saying how we're ALL bad, while the part that uploads stolen content is like 1% of our actual community. We've actually tried preventing people from doing this, but it's not like us telling them to stop is going to do anything, they're still going to continue.

I don't see the problem with us using your songs. Really, what's the big deal? I thought Robtop talked with NG's staff members to have a deal with using NG's music on GD. So what's the problem if we use your not-stolen songs in the game?

I suggest everyone to calm down. Calling us names isn't going to solve anything.

And really, removing GD will be the absolute WORST case scenario. Don't get your hopes too high: it won't happen.

Loogiah 2017-01-26 10:25:00

Forgot to add this on my comment: I'd like to have proof of what you claim to be ''harrasment'' from the GD community (like ''They fire off abusive comments on people's songs, and passive-agressive messges on people's inboxes. The relevant artists and moderators take the brunt of it, of course.'' ''Once banned, they revenge flag users' legitimate songs (yes!), but of course we moderators can see that what they're doing is a whole load of rubbish and that gets undone very quickly.'' ''They treat off-brand and new artists on Newgrounds like shit.'')

I've been checking this site for a long time now and never saw anything like this. How can you even know what goes behind people's PMs?

ADR3-N 2017-01-26 11:47:24

@Troisnyx @Loogiah

Loogiah, I'm going to be hard pressed to find any abusive reviews I've seen for you to look (as they've mostly been flagged and removed and I rarely screen them, but each and every day, there is always some ignorant GD player commenting on podcasts or voice acting reels "this is why RobTop should have partnered with SoundCloud", cussing out artists like @Xtrullor who have disabled downloads, leaving 0 star reviews like "what is this shit" on someone's very first submission, or stealing content. Look at the unscouted, see how many stolen songs are flooding the portal, covering up the legit artists. GD has virtually broken our Audio Portal, and this is the first thing we see from your community. The nice people aren't the ones crawling out of the woodwork and cussing out the moderators.

If you want examples, you can check my newsposts. We deal with stuff like this image I'm about to link, however, on the daily, and sometimes worse.
http://blogimg.ngfiles.com/976000/976380/861005156_uradik.png

Troisnyx, doll, I think you might need to take a break and cool your head. People who don't go through what we go through -- we being the users affected by the wrong doings of the GD community and the opaqueness of its creator -- people who don't have to deal with all that shit thrown in their faces have no earthly idea how it feels when your intellectual property is trampled on, spat at, and used like a cheap whore, all while someone else gets paid for it. No, I can't keep my tracks off GD by simply disabling downloads. Someone can simply read the source and reupload the mp3 anyway, just like they do to TheFatRat and Desmeon.

RobTop is getting paid for other people to make custom levels to music that he didn't make, and that his users can and will steal. All the discouraging in the world isn't stopping it. All the regulation in the world won't. Disabling certain song IDs won't. Disabling downloads won't. What will fix it, then? Removing the game entirely is perhaps a little extreme -- but the fact that we've been backed into the corner enough that people think it's a good idea, after THREE YEARS of this shit, that says something. Although people would probably just get it back through megaupload or something. Removing the custom levels and/or not pulling songs from NG would deter theft, but then people would surely just roll back updates and do it anyway. Allowing users to use mp3s straight from their phones would have been the sensible idea to start with, instead of forcing us to endure this shit from misguided fools determined to use whatever song they want, consequences be damned -- but of course the big 3 labels would sue Rob's pants off and take the rights to GD in a quick minute. There really is no way to win.

ADR3-N 2017-01-26 13:24:15

@Quarl, don't leave a bad review if you find some asshole stealing your stuff -- that's against the review rules, but do flag it! We mods will remove it in short order and make sure the offender is dealt with.

@Cank, I don't think at present there is a way for us to block Geometry Dash on our end, but all of this is being discussed now as a result of what's happened in the past few days. Personally I'd be happy if GD were updated to handshake with NG in a way that we could allow our artists themselves to specify whether they wanted to allow use or not. You know how we can select whether to allow commercial use, non-commercial use, or no use -- a new checkbox whether to allow GD use or not wouldn't solve the theft, but it would protect our rights better without us having to disable downloads altogether -- if that checkbox would automatically allow or disallow when that handshake came along.

BrenthEMan 2017-01-26 13:40:49

@RealFaction - not sure where you got the idea that Rob hasn't responding to us but that is incorrect. He might not be responding to individual users but I'm not sure why you're reaching out to him personally anyway. The deal with GD is between the site and RobTop so if you have any issues with the game they should be brought up here so Tom can get them addressed. Nobody should be reaching out directly to him. That would be like users reaching out to Roblox because on of their ads makes noise.

And this is the first time I've heard anyone wanting downloads enabled but no use in GD or elsewhere. Maybe an option can be added that toggles availability to GD but for now users will just have to disable downloads if they don't want their tracks used in GD or anywhere else w/o permission.

"I just wish it was all disclosed earlier" - it was many, many times to various people. There are no secrets or conspiracies here. There's really nothing to disclose. That's why this is all so ridiculous and overblown. Maybe we can label this a learning experience and move on. That's all I'm going to say about it.

Chris354 2017-01-26 13:48:51

@EDM364 actually, something that could hit Geometry dash is if it's servers have to be taken down, once those servers are shut down they can't even roll back the update on it to get it working again, because there would be nothing for them to recover or interface with at that point.

And guys, EDM is right - an issue that could be going on is that sometimes 10000+ songs have to be removed on some days means that the Moderators are literally getting fried to death here. The problem is so bad at this point that it's literally going to overload the portal soon if something isn't done about it.

Quarl 2017-01-26 14:05:22

@EDM3634

I'd still contact a mod. I'd just also take the opportunity to tell them their music is shit because the irony of calling my own music shit would make me happy. If my own music can't make me happy than why did I make it in the first place? I get to call my music shit if I want to and no one can stop me! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

ADR3-N 2017-01-26 14:29:44

@BrentheMan, it might be the first time you've heard, but lots of users don't want their music featured in GD but don't want to disable their fans downloading their songs -- myself included. I like to be able to link RL friends my NG page and them be able to check out whatever is there at will, download optional. This is why I haven't disabled downloads, and it's pretty awful that I should have to. That's a slap in the face, not to mention a last resort, and even then, not only can some guy just view page source and get my song to upload and get scouted (because I'm somewhat lesser known), which is what a lot of GD thieves are doing regardless -- they don't understand how our site even works -- but look at the absolute vitriol more popular artists are getting when they DO disable downloads. It's not just the mods that are getting the rude comments and hate mail/reviews/ratings. It's big name artists too -- many of whom were badgered by these same people to come to NG for GD.

There is a clear problem here, and it's not that our users aren't being loud enough that they don't want their songs used elsewhere. It's that our community isn't being respected by the bad apples of the GD bunch, who are ruining the experience for everyone, and it's a pain in the ass to specify on every single work you don't want your songs used in GD levels when you'd like NG creators to be able to use your music in their submissions, especially since then, few will respect it and you'll just get zero bombed and end up flagging tons of useless reviews on your tracks.

My point was, we have a checkbox for non-commercial use only. GD is a commercial use though, since Rob is making money off of it, thus breaking that CC license. The whole system has just been implemented haphazardly, and no one can deny that. It's pointless to argue, especially when RobTop has only been transparent with you, Bren (and sometimes Tom), not even his own community; everyone except a handful have been kept in the dark, his original intent was never made clear to the community, and his updates are slower than molasses. The way it is now, our own musicians don't even have the freedom to say "hey, I want NG creators to be able to use my work in their submissions freely, but I don't want the ability to use it packaged and sold with some app without my knowledge or consent, thus breaking the non-commercial use CC license I chose to use here on NG", and that's shitty any way you look at it. This is the reality AP users like me are being told to swallow, and until you spoke up on this page, no one really knew which way was up or if it was being dealt with at all. Consider that Troisnyx has indeed been bringing up the idea of a petition to remove the game based upon all of these concerns for a long time and the breakdown in listening and communication becomes apparent -- that it takes something as extreme as this to get a moderately forthcoming response. NG has been more than polite and patient, 3 years of patient. To suggest anyone is wrong in wanting some sort of justice/progress/change sounds like stuffing your ears full of coffee beans to the truth. Although I do agree the main reason for the petition should not have just been the community. It should have been that the game itself is blurring the line between initially innocuous and illegal. Were this copyrighted music, not CC music, being used, the lawsuits would fly. Of course, his users are stealing copyrighted shit, so those lawsuits will be aimed at us.

No offense. You've been around quite a bit longer on the scene than I have, but literally no one outside a few staff was aware ANYTHING was being done, and it almost sounds as if we were just expected to sit idly by while our community was endangered -- the threat of being "sued out of existence" is real, after all. This egregious harm is evident to anyone that uses the AP, but the solution to it has never been. If something is being done, people need to know. We've got people under the impression we CAN'T fix the problem and we're stuck with this abuse forever. I spend half of my time assuaging these fears, and I'm so damn pissed off, I could spit nails. Pardon me.

@Chris354, I was more saying someone who had an old version of the app could upload it to megaupload or similar and in a sense jail break it to run so they could keep stealing stuff.

Keypat 2017-01-26 17:06:15

Signed this as well, I was not aware such problem existed.

enders1 2017-01-26 17:46:30

signed this as well!

BrenthEMan 2017-01-26 17:57:51

@RealFaction - yes, and I'm saying that FOR NOW, the workaround for not having this feature is to disable downloads.