Yeah, it seems to me that if you make a game with GM, then you own it. If you own it you should be able to do what you want with it. That includes selling it where and how you want. If that means buying YYG's official iOS exporter to get it onto iPhone, fine. If that means using a free program that does the same thing, that's fine too.

As long as that free program doesn't contain or rely upon any code stolen from YYG then there shouldn't be any problem at all.

And since I'm too lazy to check for myself, and since there seems to be some confusion over the matter, can anyone confirm if this 3rd party program does or does not contain or rely upon code stolen from YYG? TIA. TTFN.

It had to be stolen - nobody has ever created an alternate runner for GML, so far as I know - at least, not so recently that it would be ported to iOS already.

It could very well be myself who is not clear on the facts - I just presented them as I understand them myself, as I see it.

I'm afraid I also have to disagree with FredFredrickson: I think you missed the point of my original post. I basically agree with redpicman, it appears there's been no copyright infringement, the law is not on YoYo Games' side (as much as they or their fans may want it to be), and so their legal threats are empty.

As far as a decompiler goes, I have to agree - there's really not much YYG could do about that alone, since there's nothing really wrong with, and no way to prove it, when someone rips apart a "compiled" game.

But as far as recompiling the game with YYG's other runners, I disagree. The very act of recompiling with a new runner might still be legal (or at least, not possible for YYG to stop), but distributing it would not be; a Game Maker user has the right to distribute games coupled with the runner they've purchased the rights to via their purchase of Game Maker (like the PC and Mac versions, for example). The iOS version remains under YYG's control, and as it is theirs to distribute; any distribution of games made with a recompiler and stolen runner, outside of YYG's control, would not be legal, and could be easily identified and removed from the App Store.

To that respect, I don't think their legal threats were empty at all. Assuming this could be their main source of income in the future, I expect they'd do as much as they could to defend it, even if it meant making an example out of some people early in the game. The people working on this project don't have the rights to distribute games compiled with YYG's iOS runner. That's really the bottom line.

I don't say this because that is the way I want it to be, and I am not the biggest fan of YYG myself, but if I put myself in their shoes, I can't see any other way to go about it. As well, how could they do anything about this situation down the road if they don't defend their position from the outset?

However, the authors have now decided to drop the project, although they still insist it's legal:

http://gamemakerblog.com/2011/01/06/ios ... t-dropped/

which does make me wonder, couldn't they have predicted irritation from YoYo Games? It should be obvious they'd get riled up over it so I'd have expected them to have decided beforehand to continue to the end regardless else not bother at all. Maybe the legal threats would simply mean hassle that they can't be bothered with (empty legal threats succeeding in their goal again, which would be a shame).

Still, this doesn't appear to be totally resolved to me - these guys have given up but it's still wide open for another anonymous group to start developing and publishing a new one, legally. YoYo really should take steps to prevent this from their software ASAP.

I agree - they really should take this as a warning of things to come as their software becomes even more widely used. But even if they don't, I don't think we'll be seeing any non-YYG compiled iOS games appearing in the App Store anytime soon.

I'm a little confused now.

Has the Apple runner been "jailbroke", or is it that you can run any converted file?

If its able to run any ios file then that's just bad design, especially when you consider all you need to hack a Game Maker save is notepad.

If you can't do that, and there isn't a hack to the runner, then I don't see what Yoyo has to complain about.

I mean you have to purchase their converter in order to submit it to their app store, correct?

Even then they wont just let anybody who isn't "up to the standards" have their game online.

Geez this is like a modern Greek tragedy.

The natives are revolting, and calling them revolting wont really help.

It's not quite like that. They've developed a runner for iOS that they are retaining control of. You submit your game to them, they decide if it's good enough, tweak it if necessary, and then they compile the game on their end with the iOS runner attached. This is then submitted to the App Store, and you split the profits with them.

The reason why this is a big deal is that, through the process of decompiling the iOS apps, users outside of YYG have obtained access to the iOS runner, and can now recompile any game they want to run on iOS by swapping out the default runner with the iOS version.

YYG, as far as I can guess, is concerned for two reasons: First, they have not granted anyone outside of YYG access or distribution rights to the iOS runner, and second, this is a prime source of income for their company for the foreseeable future.

It's more of a modern geek tragedy, hehe.

I'm no lawyer either, but I don't think scoffing at them is very nice, either (not a comment directed at the topic creator, but more the comments below). What they did was expected, and frankly, it seems perfectly reasonable.

Everyone here probably already knows all of this, but I'll go into it anyway.

As I understand it, Game Maker creates games essentially by attaching the scripts / code people write and all the resources they create to a generic "runner" application that then reads all that code and makes the game go. This is a double edged sword; it makes the games very easy to port from one system to another, since all you need is a runner that runs on that system, but it also leaves "compiled" games wide open for being ripped open to have all the raw assets stolen. This is great for when you've accidentally deleted a source file. And awful for anyone who wants to use Game Maker for any real work.

When YoYoGames took over Game Maker, they had a big task ahead of them - the program needed to be made vastly more profitable to pay for their game hosting service, as well as for support for the registration system and for making future changes /updates to the program. Somehow, YYG needed to monetize the system in a new way, and what they settled on is creating new runners for many different platforms, particularly handheld gaming devices, for which they would become part-time game publishers.

It's actually a pretty good plan, really - with a growing community of people creating and uploading tons of games, there's bound to be something good now and then, and many of Game Maker's users would jump at the chance to take their mostly hobbyist projects into the greater arena of professional, marketable, and profitable gaming.

So that's what they did, and they are halfway into setting up their submission system and getting Game Maker games ported over to iOS and Android, with some games already released for iOS.

Decompilers have always been a problem for the Game Maker community, because it takes control of a game's resources out of the hands of the person who created them. Judging from the opinions voiced above, I'm sure many here will disagree with me, but I think that if someone wants to keep the resources they created for a game (code, images, sounds, etc.) private, that should be their choice. Discussing anything decompiler-related on the Game Maker forums was prohibited, but up until now, decompiling games has been nothing but a tiny thorn in the side of Game Maker users - I doubt that YYG cared much about it at all, before.

Now however, they have a vested interest in keeping the innards of a compiled Game Maker game private - not only can a game's resources be ripped out, but also the attached runner - particularly, the iOS runner, which is not (and will not) be available to the public... because YYG's business model depends on it not being available to the public. How could they remain the sole publisher of Game Maker games on iOS and other platforms if anyone can attach a rogue iOS runner to their code and instantly have an iOS game?

One thing that YYG has always maintained since they took over (and added a shiny new EULA to Game Maker) was that the resources of a game are the creator's property, but everything else, including the runner, remain theirs. This means that reverse engineering a Game Maker game, ripping out the runner, and then distributing it is illegal, because it's not yours to distribute. I know that the internet community generally scoffs the at the idea of intellectual property, but when you consider that their entire business is on the line, can you blame them for being defensive about it?

I have no doubts that they are quite serious with their legal threats; they are reasonable and completely easy to prove if anyone gets caught trying to submit a rogue Game Maker game to the app store. What's funny is that even if YYG couldn't work out something with Apple to block any non-official use of the GM iOS runner, they could use the same decompiler to find games that use it, and from there, it would be easy to get the app taken down and the revenue stream forked or stopped.

Obviously, there's not much they can do about random people online trading homebrew iOS games made with Game Maker and the decompiler / recompiler, but I don't think anyone should consider actually using it for a commercial project - because the law is indeed on YYG's side, and as long as they have the money to do so, I am sure they will do what they can to keep that from happening.

Whew - hell of a first post for me. I'm not trying to make anyone mad, troll, etc. here - I'm just giving you my take as someone who's been using Game Maker for about a decade, and who spends a fair amount of time on the official forum. Cheers guys.