Sonic Gather Battle

So, I want to give my two cents on this “fan game”, and all the heat, and controversy, that it is getting has been earned.

So the question here is…

Q: What is Sonic Gather Battle?

Sonic Gather Battle or SGB, for short, is a Sonic Battle / Smash brothers clone, It’s a 2D fighting game in Simple terms. You can play as Sonic, Mario, Megaman. This is a crossover “fan game” akin to “Super Smash flash”

But from what I seen. It plays like a action adventure fighting game. A mixed of the two game styles.

So, now that you got a idea of what type of game this is, I can bring you the info, to why this “fan game” has got a lot of heat.

This “game” has come underfire for adding an “DRM” to it, to keep players from cheating online or in single player.

But the real reason is to protect “custom sprites edits” from being “stolen” from this “fan game” That is a awful reason to add DRM.. Sonic Mania had DRM, and that went poorly. And Sonic 2 HD (No, not the 2017 build / demo) that LOst worked on. That tire fire went downhill, seems people don’t learn…

Sonic Gather Battle DRM is a virus or Trojan.

One, this fan game will try to attempt to give itself administrative-level privileges. The fact that this “fan game” has the nerve to try to give itself administrative-level privileges is down right sick.

A fan game or a game SHOULD never need administrative-level privileges in anyway. If, a game needs administrative-level privileges, it means trouble.

What does this Sonic Gather Battle DRM do?

The DRM will look for the the keyword “cheating” or “cheat” and kill the windows with those keywords. “Doesn’t sound so bad” But jimmy, it gets worst. how it knows what you are using. It is spying or rather, watching what it being used on your computer..

Looking up Sonic Gather battle cheat or cheats will kill your browser, It has been noted that the game has access to your web browser

“Ok, that sounds bad but–” BUT JIMMY…..

IT GETS WORST.

If, you happen to use cheat engine while the game is running, the game will freeze or crash, needing to restart. Upon starting up a level, the USA Sonic CD boss theme will be playing while the background will be red with red eyes showing up and watching, followed up by the game spawning ghosts that can’t be killed. Making a dead game.

BUT IT gets MUCH WORST.

Your IP via (“what is my IP?”) is sent to the game dev to be blacklisted, and when I said that the game knows what you are using, it checks to see what you have done in your browser. All of this is illegal, for a fan game. AGAIN, ALL OF THIS WAS DONE TO PROTECT CUSTOM SPRITE EDITS

From what I seen in comments, Having the game installed, and not cheating won’t keep you safe. I believe your IP is whitelisted but the DRM for this game is doing some weird shit in the background.

I heard that uninstalling the game, makes things worst. I don’t know how true that is… But I am not going to question it. And there is so much more I have not even covered yet.

After this has blewup, and word of mouth, spread like wildfire. The wildfire being controversy. Leemena has went into hiding, disabling Negative comments that mention the game is a virus (Which is true). I can’t feel sorry for them. This was not a mistake or a error. This was a choice that They made to add this DRM into a fangame, just to protect custom sprite edits…

They have been banned from SAGE, I seen somewhere that it was mentioned.

As a Indie game dev in training, this makes me sick for a few reasons.

1 is Sega. The reason why they are ok with fans making fangames is that they know fans will make shitty fans games or good fan games or even great fans. They know that their fanbase is loud and toxic but they have enough trust in fans to know they won’t pull shady stuff like this.

Granted, Malware in Sonic Fan games has happened once. But if, this happens again or more then once, sega may crackdown on fangames, if they start having malware, spyware or other shit.

2 If, you are a streamer, youtuber, reviewer, speedrunner, this doesn’t have any impact on you. It’s where the indie game devs or indie devs who are new, get the shit end of the stick. When people like, Leemena do shit like this. The good side of the community gets dragged through the mud. Each Negative thing will build up.

We want people to like indie devs, not hate them. We want to give people entertainment to love, not to hate. We want to have people to trust us, not question if we can be trusted. Look. Word of mouth spread fast, we don’t need people trying to steal info or give users virus. I have plans on being a indie dev and trusted. But if, things like this keep happening every now and then, I will have my doubts.

“those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it”

When the very first version of Sonic 2 HD (2012), there were reports of a keylogger within Sonic 2 HD (2012 version) BUT later was found the cause of the false reports, it was bad coding practices. Sadly, due to word of mouth spreading so fast, there was no way to get the truth out there fast enough

With Sonic Gather Battle, This was, again, a choice that Leemena made to add this DRM to this “fangame” to protect “custom sprite edits” from being ripped or “stolen”