There really needs to be some way to secure projects other than a $15 paywall

There really needs to be some way to prevent people from forking free projects. Its really not fair for someone like me who works on a project for 5 years just for some random 9 year old child to click a button and take all of my work and apparently be able to publish it to other sites while claiming it is theres and face zero consequences for this blatant fraud.

Currently the only way to do this is by paying at minimum $15 every single month. That is $180 dollars every year. Not only that, but $15 per person. I have two accounts, and use them both for basically the same purpose, but is it really fair that I would have to spend $30 dollars every single month just to prevent people from stealing all of my hard work?

I have personally seen people take entire projects and claim they created it while giving exactly zero credit to the people who actually worked on the thing. That has personally happened to me, the people who have been around for a while know what I am talking about.

I honestly cannot think of any other game engine that does anything similar to this. Unreal does not do this. Godot does not do this. I believe that unity tried to do something like that and everyone freaked out about it and threatened to leave. I am not saying no engine does something similar to this, but I havent heard of any that do, and there is probably a reason why.

Some time ago I was in a game development discord server with thousands of members and when I tried showing them my projects not a single one of them even knew what Playcanvas was. Why is that? This perfectly capable web based engine has basically zero percent market share, which it definitely should not.

It really does suck hardcore, because I have some great ideas for games I would love to create, but I am scared to work on them because at any second all of it can immediately be stolen and often I would not even know because I do not have access to a list of projects that are forks of mine. Even if I did there isnt any reasonable method for me to know if someone has been in my editor and copied who knows what.

As I said before Playcanvas is a perfectly capable engine, and honestly I would call it the perfect engine for making web games. If Playcanvas had a proper solution to securing projects I genuinely believe it could become similar to how flash was. Playcanvas could become the next adobe flash, but its not, and the reason as to why that is the case is the insecure projects. Well, thats the primary reason.

I say that because I believe the reason nobody knows about Playcanvas is because there are barely any games made with it. Why are there barely any games made with Playcanvas? Because at any moment someones hard work can be taken, so nobody actually wants to do anything here. I believe the thought process for most competent people who actually try Playcanvas is something like ā€œI just made my first project. But what does this fork button do?
So I can just copy someones entire project? Wait, can other people fork my project also? Yeah I am definitely not using this, time to install unityā€.

People have told me that Playcanvas is like this because it has similar rules to Github, but why? I have really thought about this and there really isnt any reason as to why Playcanvas has to be this way. The only thing I can think of is the Playcanvas devs wanting to squeeze a couple bucks out of their community, but is it worth it? I would obviously say no.

At this point Playcanvas honestly feels less like a proper game development program and more like the pirates cove, or that one episode from adventure time. Everyone can take anything from anyone else, and because everyone knows that nobody dares actually put in effort to create something worthwhile. Communism does not work in game development. The fact that I even have to say that is not a good sign.

If the reason is purely monetary than I absolutely assure you it would be far more profitable to allow free accounts to lock some small amount of projects to attract more competent developers to create actual good games to bring more people to Playcanvas.

I would literally rather have ads in the editor than zero private slots. This is of course assuming the reason is monetary. I am not sure if that is the case, and honestly I am not confident on what the reason for this decision could possibly be other than that. It is very hard to give suggestions and feedback when I dont know what the reason is for the choices being made.

Personally my solution is the ability for someone to lock their entire account. What I mean by this is the ability for someone to set their entire account so that nobody can fork their projects or open their editor, but they cannot fork anyone elses project or open anyone elses editor. And there must be some clause about multiple accounts needing to be set the same so that a person doesnt just make another account to yoink peoples work.

I understand doing all that would be quite taxing on the Playcanvas devs, and I dont know how many there are, but there has to be something to prevent this. At bare minimum give us one single private project slot. Honestly what exactly would the downside be of giving free accounts one private slot? If people want their project openly available then they can still do that, just give us something to prevent piracy.

Didnt something similar to this already happen, where free accounts could not publish games here but now they can? Or was it self hosting? I dont remember. It can even be considered a new feature brought by the 2.0.0 update. Now free accounts get a single private slot. That should be extremely easy to implement. It would literally be revolutionary.

I dont hate Playcanvas, its by far my favorite game engine. I make this post because I want it to be better.

While I canā€™t speak for PlayCanvas (I no longer work there) nor share numbers etc, I can give more context of the space that PlayCanvas is in.

What I would assume here is that you would have one private account that comes with more storage than a free account and move projects across from the other account. More storage is available on request to the PlayCanvas team.

Godot is fully open source so they donā€™t have monetisation options. They have sponsorships and donations but no pricing plans. W4 is a consultancy so while they will contribute code wise to Godot, they arenā€™t really part of Godot and operate differently.

Unity and Unreal make the vast majority of their revenue off the top 2-3% of their users via support plans to their largest clients and other services they provide (eg Unity Ads, source control etc).

Their subscriptions and royalties donā€™t really add much to the bottom line for them percentage wise. They offer the tools for free because they want to be the de facto standard software to use for real time applications and willing to take the loss/cost of it for free/hobby users.

They are also not a hosted editor/build environment that is available in the browser. Similar engines/tools would be

  • Construct (limited number of objects/actions on free plan)
  • Phaser Editor (not available on a free plan)
  • GDevelop (locks out some features like iOS builds but quite generous on the free plan)

Thereā€™s some nuance here. Across the broad game dev community, yes PlayCanvas is barely mentioned but same could be said for the other web based game frameworks.

In the Web Game Dev communities, it is well known alongside three.js, Babylon, Phaser, Pixi etc

Part of the reason is that web games themselves have been a much smaller market and hard to monetize (I talk more here about that)

However, as the web game market seems to growing with Poki, CrazyGames expanding, Discord Games Activities, YouTube playables, Telegram and other messenger games etc. This has put all the web game frameworks like PlayCanvas more into mainstream with game dev professionals.

Depends on where you are looking. There are quite a few games made with PlayCanvas in high traffic areas. Some that I could share before are shown Made with PlayCanvas | PlayCanvas Developer Site

  • Venge.io (on Poki)
  • Tribals.io (on Poki)
  • Color Together (Discord Activities)
  • Chef Showdown (Discord Activities)
  • Nowwa.io
  • SimplyUp (on Poki)
  • SwordMasters.io (on Poki)
  • Vortellisā€™ Pizza Delivery (on Poki)
  • Townstar
  • Om Nom Nom

And more that I canā€™t mention because they havenā€™t disclosed they are using PlayCanvas

These arenā€™t ā€˜smallā€™ games either as they have loads of players relative to the size of the dev teams

The other side of this is as mentioned, web games didnā€™t/donā€™t monetize well so a lot of use cases for games engines like PlayCanvas is non games.

Product visualisations, simulations, advertising, eCommence etc because thatā€™s where the money is for those types of projects.

Basically, Iā€™m saying that thereā€™s another whole subset of users/companies using PlayCanvas that isnā€™t exposed to you. And within those communities, PlayCanvas is part of the mainstream conversation where itā€™s compared to Unity due to itā€™s advantages on the web.

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Well at least I got a reply. I suppose its a step in the right direction. I really am glad you provided all of this information. I will say that I was vaguely aware that Playcanvas was used for some applications. Although as you said a large portion of those do not publicly state their use of Playcanvas, which just reinforces the lack of public awareness.

And if you are correct in saying that Playcanvas gets most of its money from what are basically virtual commercials, then thats even more of a reason for implement what I am suggesting. Honestly would it hurt Playcanvas bottom line by a single percent if free users had some private slots? Even if it did, the mere opportunity to have a larger market share should be far more than worth whatever miniscule loss the company would receive for giving free accounts private slots. All I ask is for is a single private project slot for free users.

Not 100% sure what you mean by virtual commercials.

The way that PlayCanvas gets used in non games situations would be a brand like Nissan would want an interactive experience on the web, they hire a creative agency to make it and at that point, they have 4 main options:

  • Unity
  • three.js
  • Babylon.js
  • PlayCanvas

In this case (https://youtu.be/46f73gp1_TU?t=67) PlayCanvas was chosen so they paid PlayCanvas the $50 per seat per month for the enterprise to use the software.

PlayCanvas is very much known in the web space for realtime experiences.

I canā€™t say because thatā€™s sharing data thatā€™s not mine to share. But if it diverts paying users to non-paying users because now they can use a free account for private use, thatā€™s not a good thing. You mentioned before you have two accounts, so now you can two private projects. Whatā€™s stopping you having 5, 20, 100?

For getting industry developers on board, having a trial option is more effective. When I was working for PlayCanvas, it was something I did manually anyway via vouchers so having it self serve would be much less friction for people.

You mention marketshare, argubly (and this is personal opinion) the important marketshare is where it would be considered to used in industries and PlayCanvas is already pretty well known in that space (even more so now with Guassian Splatting).

Itā€™s going to get more market share in that space by having more features, easier workflows and more product value. (and maybe a bit more marketing)

The unfortunately part is that the market for web interactive experiences isnā€™t that big (yet).

Having more free users that are hobbyists will help little that regard (again personal opinion) unless they convert to paying users well enough that makes supporting more users worthwhile (supporting as in dealing with admin issues, community management etc which is increases staffing costs)

All that said, with the web games space growing that I mentioned before, there is potentially more serious hobbyists that want play around in that market, similar to what you mentioned before in the flash days.

So maybe thereā€™s room for a hobbyistā€™s tier thatā€™s much cheaper (e.g 2 USD a month)?

You mentioned ad support before. Given the eCPM rates, it would take several thousand ad impressions per user per month to get enough value to cover a nominal amount of revenue.

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cā€™mon guys. You pay just for the online editor & itā€™s features (cloud storage, version control etc). Free plan with public projects is a great choice for research & studying.

Assuming you wanna have some private projects, you most likely work on a commercial basis and earn some money. If you canā€™t afford $15 per month, you can decline paid plan and work with the bare engine locally (without the online editor, just bare hands), thatā€™s always been free to use.

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I meant like a digital ad, like the Nissan example you gave. Perhaps I worded it weird.

Perhaps you did not notice but I already mentioned that problem. Currently my only solution is to have some sort of rule against it, perhaps with ip checks or something. Although if people are slick they could probably find a way to avoid it anyway. I will admit that is probably the largest issue, and I do not have a proper solution to it at this time.

I literally have no idea what a ā€œvoucherā€ is in this context.

I will admit my perspective is purely from game indie development. I am not some company that needs some interactive web experience, nor do I understand how they operate, so perhaps my opinions are quite lopsided. All I am saying is that Playcanvas is certanly viable for games, and I see no reason why Playcanvas cannot be used for both effectively.

Again, the same could be said about flash (I bring up flash quite often because Playcanvas is quite similar to it in terms of purpose and usability). Flash allowed random people to make whatever they want, while also being a juggernaut in terms of professional animation. How many tv shows were animated in flash?

*Spongebob
*Fairly Oddparents
*Family Guy
*The Cultural Nuclear Bomb (AKA My Little Pony)

Among other series I cant be bothered to find. Perhaps with some advancements we could have entire tv shows or movies made using Playcanvas.If that ever becomes the case I believe free users should get free slots just because why not, let em have a free private slot.

Perhaps limiting the amount of people who can work on any given project? Currently its something like 10 people, which from my perspective should not be entirely necessary for free users such as myself.

I suppose the more people that use Playcanvas the more people who have to prop up Playcanvas is not an untrue statement. Although it should be mentioned a free private slot will attract more professional people (or rather would prevent them from being driven away as I believe they currently are), and the more professional a community is, the less ā€œpolicingā€ it would require per capita (Pro McProface probably isnt going to be causing a ruckus, especially if they are going to be utilizing a private slot).

Also, I personally have been trying to help out here on the forums as best I can (you probably have seen half the topics taken up by my profile picture quite regularly).

Perhaps Playcanvas should stop waiting for the market and start making the market? Its not like flash was waiting for the games market, they became the market.

My opinion is that Playcanvas should do, something. Anything really to prevent free accounts from getting their stuff stolen. I know you no longer work here, but just please pass these ideas to the execs if you can.

Honestly I didnt really think of that. Yeah, all of this has to be stored somewhere. Actually if Playcanvas made a standalone editor exe editor it would fix literally all of these problems. I am 100% in favor of an offline editor. The loss of possible paid users would be offset by the decreased server storage costs.

Ah, in which case PlayCanvas is paid via the use of PlayCanvas. Not through the ad revenue etc I donā€™t see how giving free users private projects would help in this scenario?

A coupon code that they can use for X months of personal plan/enterprise seats.

Mostly because unless you are specifically targeting the web, there are arguably better options out there for platforms like PC, Console, Mobile etc (Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, Defold etc). Even Vampire Survivors that was written in Phaser.js was originally released on Steam in an Electron wrapper. They later ported it to Unity.

It was also pirated a lot in that space :sweat_smile: Iā€™m not sure if Adobe made that much money from it. Also the language (ActionScript) and SDK (openFl?) was freely available so people made games via that too (again no revenue generated there)

Thereā€™s an assumption that team sizes are more than 10 here in the professional space. I canā€™t share actual data here but many of the games/experiences made in those showcase reels are not made by more than 10 people.

Arguably ā€˜theyā€™ did with Snap Minis/Games. Adobe didnā€™t set out to create a games market. It just happened via users. But the market didnā€™t translate to revenue back to Adobe realistically. It made tonnes of money for the game developers though.

They do read the forums so I donā€™t need to.

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Well I am not trying to be mr whiny pants, I just thought I would share my opinions. Also, I am not entirely sure what your position was, but in your opinion how difficult would it be to provide some sort of offline editor? Basically just like how it is not but as an exe program like blender. Perhaps even taking the pre existing editor and just emulating the server? I know that was done with Goanimate with wrapper offline as the result. Perhaps something similar could be done with Playcanvas?

Thatā€™s perfectly fine, please continue to do so :slight_smile:

Very-ish. Iā€™m no longer aware of the current goals/ideas but when this was brought up in the past on the forums, the stance was that PlayCanvas would remain a ā€˜cloud editorā€™.

Thereā€™s a whole bunch of backend work that does things like processing the FBXs/GLBs and converting them to templates, animations, materials etc. Technically, it could be done but I donā€™t think there are plans to do this.

Also, what happens to private projects if the payments expire? Like the Nissan example you gave does Nissan have to hand over 50 bucks every month until the end of time or else their private project becomes public?

If the payment expires or subscription ends, the project is locked with the option to make public or delete. The project is unlocked when they start the subscription again.

Prior to that though, they can export builds to self host (and tweak if need be), export a project archive for offline backup (to import into the editor at a later date)

So for example, letā€™s say a single freelancer needed PlayCanvas for two weeks to build a branded as

They pay the $15 for the personal plan. Make the project, have it signed off by the brand, give the brand both the exported build and project archive

The freelance may keep a copy of both too.

Freelancer cancels the subscription. Project is locked and the freelancer may choose to delete it. Or they may transfer the project to the brands PlayCanvas account.

At a later stage, maybe the brand needs another version and they choose a different freelancer.

The brand can give them the project archive to import themselves and work on in the PlayCanvas editor

How do I do that import export thing?

Bare in mind itā€™s for backing up purposes and only the current state of the project in the main branch

Lmfao ā€œmalicious team membersā€. Well its great that this is an option.