If you were raised in the USA (or certain other parts of the world as well) Christmas is heralded by things such as decorated fir or pine trees, hearing (the very 1950s) Frosty the Snowman, ads prominently featuring Santa Claus, renting the 378th remake of The Christmas Carol and watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with “limited” commercial interruption.

While these things might feel as if they’ve been around forever, the fact is a vast majority of your Christmas associations are owned and protected. Now what exactly does “protected” mean? Well, at the core, it means you can’t use it without a license. Period.

Here are some examples of protected music:

• Frosty The Snowman
• Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Carol Of The Bells
Jingle Bell Rock
Winter Wonderland
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
White Christmas
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
The Little Drummer Boy
Sleigh Ride
It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree
Silver Bells
Feliz Navidad
A Holly Jolly Christmas
Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)

and some examples of protected characters:

• Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Frosty the Snowman
The Grinch

Now before you go all Grinch.. err.. I mean Scrooge, there are both music and characters in the public domain.

Public Domain music:

Public Domain Characters:

• Santa
• Scrooge
• Reindeers without red noses

Also note that while even if songs are in the Public Domain, you can not use any recording of those songs (unless the owner of the recording has put it in the public domain). Recordings are covered by a separate copyright. For more info about Public Domain music, you can visit: http://www.pdinfo.com/.

You may have noticed that we went into unplanned maintenance on the 2^nd November for several hours. We shut the site down due to an intruder who managed to get access to our database via an exploit in a piece of 3^rd-party software. We are not yet certain what data they obtained, but it’s possible that they gained access to your user accounts, including the hashed (encrypted) passwords.

When you next log on to the site you will be asked to change your password. Please do this right away! Furthermore, we highly recommend that if you use the same password on any other site, you change it there too. While they didn’t gain access to your actual password, given time they can reverse the hash and possibly gain your password.

We are truly sorry for this intrusion, and we’re taking every step possible to ensure that your data is safeguarded better in the future. We can’t discuss too much more about this hacking attempt at the moment because our investigation is still ongoing, but it seems to have been a very interesting attack with an unusual motivation. We’ll give you more info when we can.

Yours,

FGL Team.

Hey Everyone.  We’ve heard a lot of buzz and questions about if the Indie Giving package and event will take place next year.  The answer is YES.  However, we don’t have all of the details worked out yet.   We’ll be updating indiegiving.com in the near future and we’ll also update this blog when we have some more info.   But rest assured, it will happen, and it will be awesome!

Here’s what we DO know so far:

- it will include an FGS ticket

- it will include all meals during the event day

- it will include at least 2 nights in a hotel

There’s much more, of course, but that’s what we have worked out so far.  So stay tuned!  And also, let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.

The encryption service is back online! Our apologies for the downtime.

If you previously attempted to save a new SWF file and saw a blank white screen or a message about Encryption Failure, you were affected by this problem. To fix it, just go back to the Edit Game screen, re-choose the Kindi encryption option (because it will have turned itself off), and press Save.

There are technical problems with the on-site Kindi encryptor. If you have uploaded a SWF in the past 1.5 days it has not been encrypted. We will be sending a note to all affected developers to make sure they know, but I wanted to give everyone a heads-up.

I’ll update this post when the issue is addressed.

Flash Player 11 is starting to become available in major browsers, so we’ve enabled it for use on FGL. If you uploaded a Flash 11 game earlier, you will need to re-upload it so that its version is detected correctly.

We’ve also added a checkbox that lets you indicate that your game needs “wmode” set to “direct”. This is needed by some browsers if your game uses the StageVideo or Stage3D APIs. Please make sure to check the checkbox if you need it.

Remember: Your Code Should Detect wmode Problems!

On a more philosophical note, we’re a little worried about the new “wmode” requirement. Some Flash portals don’t have a way to set this yet, and many smaller Flash portal owners are not tech-savvy enough to easily modify their site on their own. This is likely a problem that will work itself out in time, as portal owners realize they need to add this. But right now, most portal owners don’t even know about this requirement at all!

For the first generation of Stage3D games, we highly recommend that you detect when wmode is set incorrectly and display a helpful message explaining what needs to be done. Thibault Imbert on ByteArray.org has a good explanation of how to do this. He also shows how to detect when the game is running with the software renderer, meaning that performance is likely to be extremely poor: in those cases you may want to warn players so they don’t think the game is bugged!

(Edit: thanks to Chribbe in the comments for the link!)

We’ve been quietly testing a new version of our pre-review service, and it’s now in open beta: video pre-reviews!

If your game is still in development, and you’re willing to work with us to make big changes to the game (if necessary), we would be happy to pre-review it. We’ll play your game and send you a video of the experience, so you can see exactly how we played the game, where we got stuck, what we liked and didn’t like.

To request a pre-review, click on “Edit Game” for your game and look for the Prereviews box.

Note that we anticipate a turnaround time of approximately a week. Also, in order to keep the queue from getting too long, we no longer give two pre-reviews: for now, the limit is one per game.

This is an experimental service we’re offering to the community. It’s still new and it needs your feedback. Please let us know what you like and don’t like about this service!

Other Changes

We’ve been bad about remembering to blog when new features are added! Here are some recent updates (including some just added tonight):

• Co-Author Permissions: Developers can now decide whether their co-author has permission to edit the game or not. By default, co-authors can edit anything about the game, just as before. If you un-check this box, co-authors won’t have access to the Edit Game screen for your game. However, they will still be able to see bids, use First Impressions, and view feedback.
• “Bidding Notes” Changed: We are repurposing the “Bidding Notes” field so we can show it elsewhere (for instance, when your game is in the Game Shop). We moved it to the General Description tab and renamed it “Notes to Buyers”. We also converted it from HTML to plain-text. If you used fancy formatting in your bidding notes, please go check it now to see if it looks acceptable.
• Preview Players Have Levels: Preview players now earn “levels” when they give good feedback (much like developers earn levels when they sell games). If you’re a developer who receives great feedback from a preview player (or anybody else!), please take a moment to mark the feedback as “Great Feedback”. This gives a little pat on the back to the person doing this favor for you.
• Game Agents Powered Up! Thanks to new back-end tools and new team members, our game agents are now working closer than ever with sponsors. Sponsors, we know your time is precious, so we’d be happy to help you find the best games for your specific needs. If we haven’t reached out to you yet, please feel free to drop us a note directly!
• EasyLicense Payment Info: If you go to the “My Account” page, you’ll see a new option: Payment Info. We use this information to pay developers when they sell a game through EasyLicense. When you have an EasyLicense deal pending, we’ll ask you to fill this information in. (You can also fill it in early, of course! If you fill it in  now, it will save a step in the process so you get your money to you a day or two faster.)
• Forum Signatures Capped: Forum signatures are capped to 250 pixels in height. If your forum signature is longer than that, scroll-bars will appear. But even 250 px is extremely large, and should be used sparingly. Please keep your forum signature under 200 px if at all possible!

Tonight’s quick update fixed a few issues that people have brought up in support tickets repeatedly, so I figured it would be useful to let people know they have been addressed:

• When a game was in regular bidding and is then switched over to QuickAuction, any sponsors Watching the game are sent a private message explaining that they have only 15 days left before the game is gone.
• The “preview” feature of the game uploader didn’t use the same JavaScript as the rest of the site, so it wasn’t a reliable preview. This has been fixed.
• The website now acknowledges the existence of SWF Specification 11  (even though Adobe hasn’t released this specification to the public yet, the latest Flex SDK targets it by default, which is gross and goes against the very concept of open source specifications, but what can you do). The website was previously reporting that these games “require Flash Player 11″. This is incorrect, as SWF specification 11 can apparently target Flash Player 10.2 and 10.3. This has been fixed (including retroactively, for games that were already uploaded).
• When a game is doing a QuickAuction, we’ll no longer send automatic emails to developers encouraging them to use site features that are disabled during QuickAuction (namely Buy it Now and Steal of the Week).
• The “Weekday” email setting for sponsors now actually works.

Thanks, and as always if you have problems or need assistance, please use the Feedback menu to get in touch with us.

- Eric

We’ve added some cool new features in today’s update!

“QuickAuction“

This is an experimental game sales mode. The developer agrees that their game will be on public display for 15 days, and then they will pick a winner. (Or, if they don’t like any of their offers, they can choose to self-publish their game.) This is a great way for sponsors to make sure their funds aren’t locked up in games for very long time periods, and is a useful tool for developers who want to sell their game more quickly than the recommended two month auction period.

Anti-sniping system: To make sure that all sponsors have time to react to any last-minute bids, sponsors who already bid during the auction can continue to bid for a few days after the QuickAuction ends. The exact amount of time available after QuickAuction ends is partially random, and partially up to the developer. The intent is to guarantee that there is at least one business day after the auction period ends to let other bidders react to sudden last-minute offers.

Keeping it simple: Games that use QuickAuction cannot use ”Last Call”, “Buy It Now”, or some other site features. The goal is for QuickAuctions to be simple and quick!

How to turn it on: Developers, you can find this option on the “Edit Game” page for your game. Be careful, as once you activate it (and your game is approved, if it wasn’t already approved), then it is impossible to stop the bidding until the time is up. You cannot accept a bid during this time. While this feature is in the “experimental” stage, only developers with at least Market Level 1 will be able to activate it. This is to keep the number of games using it low, and to make sure only the savvier FGL users use this — it may have rough edges that need help, and we don’t want brand-new users to get overwhelmed!

“Endorsements”

Speaking of experimental features, here’s an experimental social feature. When you view a user’s profile page, you’ll see a button to “Write Endorsement for This User.” If the user approves the endorsement you write, it will be visible to anyone who visits their profile page.

The goal is to help sponsors and developers feel confident in who they’re doing business with. If you’ve had a good experience working with someone, feel free to write a short endorsement for them!

If this feature proves useful, we’ll augment it in future updates. If nobody ends up liking it, then we will follow our usual policy of removing it and pretending it never happened.

Sponsor Bidding Improvements

We’ve improved the sponsor bidding pages in many ways:

• Smarter bid auto-filling: when you go to place a bid, the form will be filled in with the details from the last bid you made on that game (if you had already made a bid). If this is your first bid on the game, it will use the last bid you made on any game. There’s also a link on the bidding page to clear the entire form so you can easily start from scratch.
• Track counter-bidding more easily: when you view a game’s previous bids, you will now see them numbered by the order in which they bid. The first bidder is “Bidder #1″, then “Bidder #2″, etc. If the same bidder places multiple bids, they’ll get the same number each time. We’ve heard from several sponsors who were confused when bids said things like “this bid uses the same details as my last bid”, and hope that this helps clarify those situations. It also adds a bit more transparency to the selling process.
• Follow what’s going on easier: we’ve revised the “My Bids” page and the bidding page to make it easier to tell what’s going on and take action. Please let us know if there are other improvements you’d like to see!
• See expired bids: you can now easily track your expired bids. There’s a menu-option for it under the “My Bids” menu. If the game is still for sale, you can place a new bid. If it’s already been sold and has been moved to the Game Shop, you can buy a non-exclusive license from there.

Other Improvements

We also have a bevvy of smaller improvements and fixes. Here are some highlights:

• Whenever a developer adds a new game to the site, makes a major update, or has their game approved for bidding, this info is automatically posted to the developer’s Followers List, so people following you can always find your latest games. (You can always go in and delete these messages from your Follower List if you need to, and you can also completely disable this option via a new check-box on the My Account page.)
• The game uploader has better error messages, and if things go poorly with the Flash uploader, it offers to let you switch to an old-school HTML uploader instead.
• You can now specify “Special Notes To Bidders” for your game. These notes are shown on the bidding page right as a sponsor is placing a bid. (This feature was previously restricted to high market-level developers.)
• We now enforce the developer’s wishes when they indicate that they only want certain types of licenses. If the developer hates Exclusive licenses, for instance, the system won’t let sponsors make those offers. Hopefully this will save time and hassle for everyone involved.
• Sponsors can now receive their New Game Emails every weekday, skipping weekends. If you choose this option (from the My Account screen), any new games added on Saturday or Sunday will go out in your Monday email instead.
• The numbers on the developer dashboard now update whenever you reload the page (instead of waiting until you next log in to update).
• In the “Community-Driven Activities” forum, whoever creates a thread has the power to delete other peoples’ posts. This is to help people run contests, etc. without distractions. Please use this power responsibly.

Let us know what you think (or report any problems you see) on the forum!

We will have 1-2 hours of downtime late tonight (technically tomorrow morning, around 1am EST 7/23). We’re doing some routine maintenance and putting up a new version of the website. Stay tuned!