Legalities regarding this site...

[Joe]

Hi folks,

found this site from a discussion on BoardGameGeek. While I admire your passion for games (I have it also), by providing this site you are clearly walking a really thin edge (and I believe you slipped off already) by not asking permissions from publishers/authors of the games you allow people to play here...

I frequent Yucata.de, which in this regard is 100% legal - the owner asks permissions for every game he wants to add and there were several that were turned down, others were reverted after some time from publishers (even if they were free before), so they had to be taken down also.

Did you EVER ask a publisher for permission?

[sourisdudesert]

Hello Joe,

Some piece of explanation has been posted in this forum in french, and I promise to clarify all your point in few hours.

In the meantime, you have to now that the majority of games played on this website has been authorized by their authors/publishers, and that we intend to reach 100% very soon.

Cheers,
Sourisdudesert

[Joe]

Thx, will wait for the response...

[zfm]

Does the removal of "Hey, that's my fish" based on this?

[sourisdudesert]

Joe, everyone,

Board Game Arena is a "proof of concept" that succeed, and we are now working to make it 100% legal.

At the time we created this website we did not asked for authorizations because we were a young and little website and felt ridiculous contacting publishers and bother them about a prototype. As you may know since the beginning of this year this website has a fast growing success and we are contacting publishers one by one to make this website legal. As I am speaking, a majority of games played on this website are used under licensed now.

Originally, we intend to reach 100% licensed games before this summer, but considering the audience and the difficulties we are going to accelerate this planning.

Cheers,
Sourisdudesert

[tricio]

Hi Guys!
While I understand Joe's concerns, I would like to add a few comments. Today I spent a couple of hours with my gaming buddies playing here. We played games we own (RFTG, Dominion) and also games we don't own, like Coloretto... and I discovered it rocks! So, I would like to buy it... which is a problem because we live in Argentina, and is really difficult to find these games here.
This is clearly a site for gamers, who for sure would love to buy the games they play here. I totally think you should add links to amazon or other retailers the way boardgamegeek does. I think that is a good complement to the gaming experience, because it makes it easier to buy the games you are playing, and amazon does ship overseas
And I think the publishers should encourage this type of community initiative, which can only lead to more sales anyway
The site is excellent guys!

Regards
tricio

ps: html5 and not flash??? two thumbs up!
ps2: you should totally consider building a tablet-compatible version of the site.