Sonic Gather Battle fan made game reported to be Malware 

AnimatedGalaxy Lol Do nUt StEal mY SpRItEs

Plus some of the sprites were taken from a website and edited, with no credit given to the sprites' original creator and the website.

If someone tries to gather information and infect your PC in a place or way that makes you, your anti-virus, and your PC uncomfortable, that's no good!

Pfft that’s fucking old xD

if someone attacks your pc in a way that makes everyone feel uncomfortable, and unsafe, thats no good

Pfft

Fuck I thought that meme was dead. Here's a better one: "Sonic Forces" me to play Sonic Gather Battle so "Sonic Gathers" my IP.

Oh no no...his reason is much more petty than that....see he made custom sprites for alot of the characters, and because alot of people thought the sprites were cool...they ripped them. He didn't like his precious pixels being extracted from the game...so he decided to do this shit. I would kind of understand if the characters were originally made by him...but they aren't...the sprites of the characters hes protecting arent even his, yet hes going this far.

yeah but he probably never asked sega or nintendo if it was ok to use them

SeboTrzyDe3D Especially when they went after Bomber Games for _way_ less than this.

SeboTrzyDe3D Plus, he added the DRM to protect "his sprites", which he doesn't own even half of them.

Well the sprites are already ripped-off assets from Sonic Battle, for the most part.

Epicness123 The sprites have already been ripped which is why this whole drama started in the first place.

Epicness123 someone already ripped the sprites m9

I also noticed some in the gameplay footage many custom sprite that were made for Super Smash Flash, like the up-smash and "you're too slow" taunt. I makes this whole tantrum even more hypocritical.

Nah, someone really does need to reverse-engineer it without the viruses. But then they need to say they "fixed" and "improved" the game. *THAT'S* how you get divas like this really mad at you.

opalander lol

HA

@Ryan James found the dev.

It is malware, but the man or woman hasn't been caught yet...

I'm ok with edited sprites, it's just the illegal bullshit.

Bruh

A Free, and unfinished one at that.

because the Sonic fan community.

Auracle the dude doesn't want his edited sprites stolen or some shit

@peyton Ironic considering he took sprites from Sonic Battle already.

+Auracle Let’s get this shit straight right the fuck now: *Even this DRM isn’t going to do SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT to prevent anybody from “stealing their sprites.”* I mean, what, is this DRM going to block Windows’ built-in screenshotter, too? Further, nobody who’s going to be lifting the game’s sprites will be doing it *while the game is running.* Instead, they’ll just open the executable and attempt to find/extract them from there. The only thing they can prevent with this DRM is keeping 3rd-Party programs from actively scanning for the sprites in active memory/RAM, and even then, that protection can still be bypassed by running the game in a virtual machine and running your memory scanner from outside of the virtual machine, actively scanning the VM’s memory instead of directly scanning the game’s.

RipWitch Original sprites, do not steal!

I can vouch...since my friends were accused of using his sprites.

He’s insane. (The creator, I mean.)

That's dumb, there is this thing called the printscreen key, if it's displayed onto the screen, it can be screenshotted.

Sometimes the "cheat engines" can also be used to improve performance of the game by disabling or enabling certain shaders/sprites which the users system may fail to handle correctly.

WakkaSeta oh no not ken!

who is ken?

necessary*

DAMN

At least 70% of the character assets in this game are custom made. Sonic has his Brawl moveset integrated for example.

Fang jade this user cannot decide the terms of use of those sprites either, not just claim those sprite belong to him. That’s plagiarism.

Mr. Streetwize that's not custom made if you put in Sonic's smash moveset.

Uhhh... Yes it is. You don't just convert 3D assets into a 2D game.

Mr. Streetwize then how is ssf2 a thing? Explain.

Josh Blount I miss those days. Thank you players for killing the xbox one DRM.

Josh Blount Not only that, but when you paid your money you got a complete gaming experience. Yeah, the cartridge/cassette and CD-ROM days were the heyday of gaming.

Unohdettu, what people tend to forget about those days is that some games had severe bugs which were never patched. For games initially released in one region then brought to another region, they were sometimes fixed, which is why speedrunners sometimes use various regional versions, as they have game exploits they can use. Metroid Prime is one example, where the PAL (Europe) version does not have the glitch that makes you able to get Space Jump Boots early, meaning a speedrun on that version is slower than on any other version. While I don't like the whole "release game in half-finished state and fix everything later" thing that publishers do these days, along with adding DLC for random crap that you have to pay stupid amounts of money for, the fact that games tend to get patched until major bugs are removed is great.

That wasn't its purpose, originally. This game has been around for years. Originally, the "gather" meant to "gather" in a large group, and online was planned. This is a recent change made due to the creator's own petty hatred against people hacking his games, specifically foreigners. It's sickening and downright childish.

Mr. Streetwize let me tell you, after this meltdown, people CONTINUE to “pirate” “his” sprites in a form of punishment to that user. A protest that your DRM sucks. A backlash this author shat out on. And also a reason for others to view sprites without getting infected.

Mr. Streetwize “don’t use my stuff without my permission”? Better to replace the word “permission” with “infection” in that sentence, that’s for sure.

A malware version of Alex Thomas Mauer.

It looked cool. And with online it would be awesome. Too bad the creator doesnt want people using his sonic advance and battle sprites.

This guy who made the game is a special kind of special. That is, he knows, but just does not give one damn.

Hope this person gets caught by Sega followed by a Lawsuit

PROTOGENT ANTVIIRUS BEST ONE

Needed sum memes after the spoop

Chris 64 and?

young zech tssh and Sega would definitely get sued.

young zech tssh not to sound rude but what do you think will happen.

The entire time that’d be insane

And the Dev put the in the DRM... all because he doesn't want "His edited sprites stolen". And "his" sprites likely aren't his anyways.

Amirite uptop

César O coelho sortudo What's hilarious was that the sprites got leaked anyway lmao

Remind me of the phrase "Do not steal" that been joking around Sonic community.

There all Sonic Battle and Advance sprites with little edits from him or somebody else. He stole them and acted like there his.

That could be what the cloud storage is used for. Host the mining pool out of cloud storage and load a cpu miner (for like Monero or something) into the "DRM".

Lmao

Creepypastas are typically easily forgotten. I doubt it'll happen though.

Nashville borf I am gonna do it

SuperSaiyanRoseGaming Thank you, Hellbent is my favorite Planet Dolan character.

Sonic Info Gather Battle

Процессорный кристал gather all yo informative

Now I KNOW what gather stands for. Close! Keep on trying! E for effort.

Very Official Productions thanks m8!

nope don't wan to Because he wants to protect assets he claims are his but aren't. It's a powerplay move.

Funny part? Those assets will be ripped anyway. DRM never, NEVER works.

drm always got cracked anyway

LegoLad659 It’s because he wants to protect his fake custom sprites ingame...

Ikr

i know right i understand if some hack a 10$-60$ game but this is a free game why the heavy oh you cant do this and we can do all this to you if you look up just this word or such its bs

Lemena is very fucking murky

*"is that profile pic from Futanari Club?"* It is.

That's actually A good idea.

Fun fact is there's been several fan sites with complete spritesheets available publicly for years now.

R Linders Well, "ruining" the franchise ISNT ILLEGAL.

No Bgs According to the “fans”, it is.

Just imagine a person that has bipolar disorder. That’s how you get a fandom.

This is well beyond mere DRM. It's a full goddamn malware suite.

One and Only Bill Cipher That game is 1000 times better, but i'm stuck at the fight against Knuckles. Emerl is so sluggish

I hope that Sega’s lawyers rape him with fucking lawsuit

SarcastTM Uh oh... If that's the case... will Sonic 2 HD be malwared as well?

I heard the "keylogger" was just a glitch? What's your source?

true😂

X fire MH Y.T. What a plagerism user. You cannot claim someone else’s as your own and then deny users from using it. Only the real author gets to decide the restrictions to deny it.

I don't know if I got the story right, but he did harass people in the past. I was their when it happened.

X fire MH Y.T. this guy is insane....its because of him that one of my friends on DA left

Well I might know of a way to get back at him, but it might take the help community to give him the message. Since we can't have nice things anymore, he dosen't deserve this type of respect. I have some sprites from a older version of the game that someone ripped out, and I'm planning on posting them to my deviant art, as a protest against this terrible mess. It may tick him off, but I don't give fuck. flame wars don't work on me.

How the hell has Sega not hit this jackass with a legal cease and desist? He's blatantly ripping off their work, I'm sure he's making money off it somehow and he's giving the franchise a bad name.

Yes and no to those questions. Also apparently from what I've heard it doesn't allow you to uninstall the game now, so its safe to say this is now classified as malware as you literally can not get it off your PC without having to do a factory reset or a system restore

Dankus Memus well actually if you don’t activate any of the drm you can uninstall it.

BSPD95 ないに ception.

Sonic Mania itself was bad enough.

*Some sprites that is not belong to them.

And the thing is, they were just sprites ripped off from other games.

Who even cries over Pokemon Cards getting stolen you can just go to the dollar store and get new ones.......

ChillyKitty Hence why they used that comparison. XD

Exactly. I've seen kids fight because of that sometimes.

So, you put that into a VM and it didn't run?

dlausactor6373 Worse if Sonic Fanatic. *Shudder*

Someone's gona get yiffed.

What year does he think this is? 2003?

Yeah, but there, it has context as to why it's there and also it's sorta illegal.

It is illegal buddy, under US law you can't do it and it can still take your IP address and sh*t like that I wouldn't like anyone to add a DRM like that to ANYTHING.

Maybe without Monika knowing where you live, instead she infects your computer to delete which browser you're using when she goes nuts.

Uhhhhh... I don’t wanna sound uninformed, but... what’s that last part supposed to mean? I understand everything up to ‘kernal level control’.

Talia Starlight the kernal is the code that links your hardware to your operating system and allows them to "talk" to each other. Taking control of this means you can change anything about the operating system or the hardware. This should only really be given to drivers for hardware such as graphics cards, CPUs and sound cards that allow you to tweak their settings.

Ohhhhhh... Jesus fucking Christ, this DRM is malicious.

holy shit, security much?

More like bullshit paranoia, considering that (and it has been mentioned a LOT) all of this was because the developer wanted to protect “his sprites”. That’s literally it... he broke the fucking law over some pixels that didn’t really belong to him.

im still not sure if denuvo really is as terrible as people make it out to be, but it sure as hell isnt something terrifying as this

Not to mention that there’s no need for DRM on a *free game.* **SMH**

or a game that has almost nothing original to steal from since its almost all sonic battle advance's sprites he ripped directly from SEGA

or you could just not cheat...that is an option too. Skill used to be a thing people were proud of...this version of the anti cheat system is WAY to intrusive though.

It literally gets in your computer even if you dont cheat tho. Its with you forever until you explode your pc.

thank the "pirate=free" and "easy way out" culture that took root in some parts of the gaming circles aka winning at any price. Ofc this exists within consoles as well since the "win" culture exists there as well especially within multiplayer shooters online but it is easier to axess on the computer scene which is why these kind of horrible drm start to show their faces as well as the move to allways online though launchers. That is why I don't hate on steam and blizzard launcher for example even though I would prefer something like gog solutions. Steam and blizzards launcher are full of interesting games that wouldn't get released in this climate unless it had some form of drm protection shielding it from said pirate culture. City skylines which is probably the best city builder around exist on steam but not on gog just to mention one. Now As I said in my first comment "this version of the anti cheat system is WAY to intrusive though." still apply in this particular case and a drm that litterary ask for admistrator axess to overwrite bios itself is something I condone.

He did just got banned from the SAGE event though and he most likely will get a DMCA, not a lot of people plays this fangame though thankfuly

Considering that this is becoming more of a public outcry (and for good reason), he's gonna get hit with a C&D sooner or later from Sega.

the issue is when a fangame is good, it gets popular - and if it gets popular, companies gotta tell them to stop to protect themselves. Else, someone who actually does it to try to cash off of the company can go "why can't I do it when _they_ do it too?" when they get in trouble.

mania was made by a romhack and fangame veteran, they have a completely different mindset and again looking at mania it paid off. Though in this specific case i wouldn't mind a c&d letter to this entitled insane son of a bitch going around doing this shit, for a few edited sprites! Not his own, no he edited them, that is all he fucking did to them, they are not his!

>Calling Doom mods fangames

Search a version before dicimber 2017 or 2016 one of those versions is where it started to have the DRM

Or get an emulator

Jack the Blind Organist and Crêpeypasta that TOTALLY practice in Legal Foodyism *I A M P R O T O*

old good meme

That is the Sonic fanbase for you. :P

OrdinaryPen bruh! This isn't nintendo. This is sega letting all ppl to make hacks, mods & exe games. SEGA DOESN'T DO WHAT NINTENDO DOES BY PROTECTING THEIR SHIT.

Developer: _MY OC’S MUST REMAIN HIDDEN TO THE WORLD, but how should I keep them protected? Oh, I know! I’ll just _*_FRICKING DESTROY ANY POSSIBLE ENJOYMENT THAT ONE COULD GET FROM THIS GAME, AS WELL AS GIVE ME THEIR PERSONAL INFORMATION IF THEY SO MUCH AS GOOGLE CHEATS FOR IT._*_ Yeah, that seems fine!_

no. oc's aren't sprites. they're original characters

I think Mario is a playable character in-game, so hopefully the do.

Dave Pelzer would be proud to write about someone like him, it seems (You did reference one of his books)

Silver Wolf nope. He deserves to have his legs chopped off with a rusty machete

The Escapist That should also work on him

The Escapist ouch.

*_N O_*

Needlewind donut steel

I know, that's the joke. actually I can even see some smash flash custom animation in there, like the "you're too slow" or up-smash.

Dreamcast Sonic They were ripped straight from Sonic Advance

Dreamcast Sonic Could've fooled me

Agreed, it doesn't matter what the intent is of the developer: malware is malware.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to class DRM as malware.

How? Did you look at the "has Denuvo, will destroy your pc nonsense", lately? Hell to stay on topic just look at the most "helpful review" on sonic mania, that was full of lies and false equivalencies aka securom was satan, denuvo is his brother you're all burn in hell if you buy sonic maina, ofc i exaggerate, but nonetheless, this shit had 86% upvotes, i even remember posting it on twitter as an example for false outrage and manufactured outcry by the community. Denuvo is a freaking holy angel compared to shit like securom back in the day. This year alone there was an "anti denuvo" thread, mostly posted by the same guy funnily enough on nearly every new steam game, these always had 100 to 200 replys or even sometimes pages. I would be glad if you could give me a single example for the stuff you stated, as far as i can see it we are having the opposite problem. Some seem to be perfectly fine spreading stuff like game xy that has denuvo will destory your hdd, ssd, or even your whole computer, because they seem to think the cause makes these tactics right at the end, not it doesn't it spreads misinformation, outrage and in the end of the day is harmful to consumer and developer. For the record i do not know how many Denuvo games i own on steam, but i know for a fact which has made me problems, while i wanted to play it offlline, that game was Doom 2016 and as far as i know this doesn't have denuvo anymore, so even this is a pretty much mute example.

He’s actually worse than Christian Whitehead.

Mutation Hedge the only best way to play this game is to download an older version of the game

Older versions have it too, i think

Broder The Hedgehog Nope. The latest version I have doesn't have any stupid BS the creator has put in the newer versions.

really what version do you have?

SONICvsLF2: Gather Battle v1.1a and SONICvsLF2 v1.0. These are pretty old.