emerald acres

"We could still bail on this stupid fucking dance if you want," James grumbles out loud and you roll your eyes at her without bothering to hide your amused smile. She never changes.

"We're not bailing," you say but squeeze her hand gently, trying to reassure her with your touch. You feel bad for her, she's not really one to socialize or mingle in the crowds. Or, you know, good with other people in general.

James lets out another curse word at your declination, but she squeezes your hand back, her calloused thumb swiping across your knuckles. You're glad she's no longer scared to touch you like she was at first, not knowing what was allowed and what was not.

You shiver at the gesture and James shoots you a glance. She smirks but says nothing which makes you clear your tight throat a few times.

"I already promised Mayor Abernathy we would both be there," you say then and James sighs deeply through her nose, making sure you know exactly how much she appreciates it.

You walk for a short while longer while, holding hands the whole way, until you reach the center of Roseborough where the traditional summer dance is always held. It looks beautiful.

You stop James before entering the crowd of happy partiers and turn her towards to you before looking her from head to toe and reaching to fix her crooked blue tie. You do a quick work of it, the motion familiar by now, while James stares at your face with a focused expression, biting her lower lip.

"Okay?" you ask after you're done and pat her chest with both of your palms like you're making sure that she's really there and real.

"Okay," she answers, soft and quiet, lifting her hand to touch you. You can barely feel how her forefinger grazes your cheekbone, but it makes you feel warm all the same.

It's strange how easy Sage is to touch now that both of you are comfortable with it.

They are holding you so tenderly, it almost hurts; their hands intertwined with your own and your foreheads are pressed together. They stare at you straight in the eyes and you don't find it unnerving like you did before you knew him, instead it makes you feel light like air from the happiness you feel growing deep in your bones.

"I treasure you, *redacted petname*," he murmurs.

You know Will likes to feel fancy so when you see the golden necklace in the jewellery store while visiting the city for the first time in months, you buy it with little hesitation.

You're excited and a little nervous to present it to her, but when you see the look on her face and how it lights up with delight after seeing your purchase, you know without a doubt you would do anything to make her happy.

"C'mon, put it on me!" Will exclaims, her voice bright and a little too enthusiastic to be as sultry as she probably intended.

You do as she asks, your fingers slightly clammy as you move her curly hair out of the way to wrap the necklace around her delicate neck, the little heart almost dipping into her cleavage before you clip it closed. For a while you and Will's gazes meet in the mirror and she gives you her most charming smile. You can't resist pressing a tender kiss to the back of her neck which makes Will gasp softly and lean further into you, chasing your touch.

"Thank you for this," Will murmurs then, admiring the gold on her neck, "I love it, *redacted petname*."

Juniper is always, always, always busy, and today it frustrates you more than usually.

It's been too long since you've spent time alone with faer, and you miss faer so profoundly you can feel the ache all the way in your bones. Juniper would call you dramatic if fae knew your thoughts, but at this point you don't think it's that far from the truth. You're in actual physical pain from longing.

You last saw faer properly a week ago. A week! That's seven whole days without faer comforting and loving presence.

You lie like a starfish on your bed, reluctant to get up to face the morning, when you know Juniper is long gone and currently at the clinic working and making the world a better place. You try not to feel too bitter.

Finally after a few minutes of feeling sorry for yourself, you sit up and glance at your bedside clock that reads 8:45 in the morning. You don't expect to find a small note next to it, and you blink in confusion before you pick it up, rubbing your sleep-fuzzy eyes.

The writing on the note is elegant and clearly in Juniper's cursive. You feel instantly ten times happier after reading it.

(this is set in the time when oskari and mc were still dating.)

---

Oskari is long gone, probably on his way back from the store by now, when you realise that you're really craving for something sweet and you have nothing of the sort in the house.

You debate for a while whether to send him a quick text, but he doesn't usually read those (and is even less likely to answer them), so you just slump on your back on the couch, and pull a blanket to your chin, defeated by your sweet tooth for now.

You close your eyes and get comfy, eventually falling asleep and waking up to the sound of Oskari banging the front door closed.

"Guess, who's back! Hope you didn't miss me too bad!" he yells, like the dork he is, and you find yourself smiling rather helplessly.

"Hey," you reply sleepily when he rounds the corner and sees you lying on the couch.

Oskari smiles and bends down to kiss your brow. It's such a gentle gesture, you flush under his attention.

"Got your favourites," he says then with a small smile and hands you a bag of your favourite sweets.

You almost want to cry at the sight of them and Oskari can tell because he winks at you and taps the tip of his nose before leaving you to go to the kitchen to unload the rest of the groceries.

i decided to take turns when i write with the gender selectable ROs and we're starting with Bo.

---

You've always figured yourself a passable cook, but today the struggle is real.

For once you wanted to be the one who woke up first to make breakfast for Bo like he does for you every day and that means that you're standing around in his kitchen at 4:30 am looking for sugar in the mess he calls his kitchen.

It's not like Bo's kitchen is untidy, it's just an organised chaos that only makes sense to him and you're still familiarising yourself with his house after getting the permission 'to make yourself at home'.

You're trying to make his favourite breakfast muffins to surprise him and Sunny (though the latter won't be up for several hours) and you're just tired enough to feel absolutely overwhelmed by the simple task.

Eventually, you gather yourself enough to make the batter and shove the muffins in to the oven just as you feel a scratchy beard against the back of your bare neck.

"Good morning," Bo says with a sleep-rough before pressing a kiss to your temple. You glimpse at the clock on the wall to see that it's a few minutes after 5 am, the normal time Bo wakes up every day.

"Hey," you say leaning into him. "I made breakfast. Your favourite."

You can't see his smile, but you can hear it in the air. "I see," he answers. "I hope you know I appreciate you and the things you do for us more than anything."

It’s an inevitable part of making an interactive fiction game that someone will, at some point, leak your in-progress work.

This sucks. It will feel personal. It will hurt. It’s not a great feeling knowing that something you’ve spent years creating, something that you’ve put your sweat, blood, and tears into is essentially being pirated. Developing an IF is demanding, to the point where many games cannot get off the ground if the author does not have enough funding to make ends meet. This is a full time job to many of us and we are dependent on Patreon and Ko-fi as platforms to make a living. Part of running a platform like that is offering exclusive paid-for content, often in the form of alpha builds, early access, NSFW content, and side stories.  

IF developers are not massive companies with billions of dollars to throw around. We are independent authors, often working alone, often just scraping by, making games that will eventually be fairly low cost to purchase or completely free. Unfortunately, some players are entitled enough to believe they deserve access to free alpha or side story content at no cost to them simply because they want it and they want it now.

These people are assholes. And, quite frankly, fuck them.

If you’re an independent IF developer making your game in Twine and releasing on itch.io, here’s a few strategies to help keep your private content private.

1) Keep Your Public and Private Builds Separate

If you have exclusive content, upload it as a separate copy of the game. Do not put alpha content in the public build of your game. Anything that is in the HTML file can be easily accessed through the browser.

When your game launches, it loads through the iframe, which will display all of the content included in in your game file. This includes your JavaScript, your stylesheet, and the contents of every passage, including ones locked behind a password. Even if you’ve password-protected sections of your game directly in Twine using something like HiEv's Simple Password Hiding, it can still be easily bypassed if it's part of the public build's files.

A solution to this is to make different builds depending on your needs. When you upload content to itch, set your builds that are not intended for public access to Restricted mode.

This will block the project’s page from being viewed by anyone who does not have the password. You can then input a password for your patrons and supporters, which will be properly encrypted by itch.

Restricted mode will prevent your game from showing up in search results and it will also not display on your profile.

In my case, I have three builds for Wayfarer:

Public

Playtester

Alpha

The top one is the public build, which anyone can access. The Playtester and Alpha builds are both in password-protected Restricted modes.

When I do my updates, I compile each build separately (I am usually changing version numbers and a few different things between them, so they contain slightly different information), treat them like three different games, and make three separate ZIP files for upload.

2) Do Not Use Draft Mode to Share Content

Draft mode is another private mode on itch.io. It is intended to be a draft of your game page, so you can get all your information, assets and files together before you hit publish. When your project is in Draft mode, it is unsearchable and no one can access it except those with Editor permissions. However, Draft mode comes with something called a “secret URL”, which bypasses the restrictions. Anyone with the URL can access the game page.

Do not use the secret URL to share alpha or exclusive content. Because anyone with the URL can access the game page, it is essentially a public link. Secret URLs should never be handed to patrons or even your playtesting team. Only use it for situations where you need a second opinion from trusted individuals.  

3) Change Your Passwords Regularly

Passwords can still be shared, so it’s a good idea to change them regularly on a monthly or bi-monthly schedule.

If you run a Patreon, keep a pinned post at the top of your Patreon that has all your current build details, the link to your alpha build (or side content) and its current password. This way it is easy for your patrons to find the access information, as well as any patch notes or game updates they may have missed.

4) Download Keys

Alternatively, if you don’t want to use passwords, you can integrate your itch.io and Patreon accounts and give out access keys to your patrons. Download keys grant permanent access to the restricted project’s page, content, and files. Download keys are associated with a single itch.io account and cannot be shared.

Information about download keys is found under Edit game -> Distribute -> Download keys. You can create keys manually, or configure your settings to generate bulk keys for your patrons based on their tier level.

However, if you do decide to go this route, you may run into difficulties if your Patreon is in a different currency than your itch.io currency. (I ended up removing the integration as the troubleshooting was too time consuming to deal with on a month-to-month basis.)

These preventative measures are not guaranteed to work 100% of the time, but it should help discourage easy access to exclusive content. There is always the risk that your patrons and playtesters may abuse their privileges and share links and passwords. Ultimately, if someone wants to pirate the alpha build of your game, they will.

This is where the community comes in. If you are a player, discourage piracy where you can. If an IF dev is trusting you—whether you are a playtester or a patron—with early access, keep it to yourself. Don’t share links, keys, or passwords.

Even if you desperately want access to alpha work and can’t afford it, please keep in mind that IF developers are indie creators struggling to make a living. We are not major game studios. Don’t steal our work and pass it around. It’s disrespectful to us, our games, and our communities.

Even if we push aside the money aspect (which like, damn it's not a lot to begin with?!?!?!?), do you know how DEMORALIZING it is to see your secret content being leaked out there? The content you had been planning/writing for months/years just taken from your hand. You don't even get to have a say in the release. SOMEONE TAKES THAT CHOICE FROM YOU. Do you know how hurtful that is?

And those places do not care that they are hurting creators. They will actively encourage those discussions. Mods on these forums will participate in those discussions. There were newly created members on that thread, a few minutes old, that requested new stuff when I checked it...

And you know how creators can counter that? Absolutely nothing that does not require a lot of Time/Money (and even then, nothing is full proof). Seriously, especially for Twine, these are the options:

Just pretend it's not there. AAA games will get cracked in days/hours even, Twine content is much easier to get than those... So why bother...

Follow Idrelle's tutorial (different links for different content, no draft mode, update passwords...), though this can still be shared around...

Get your own server, learn NodeJS or PHP to only serve a mirror to the player. But this requires you having your own server and learning NodeJS or PHP, and there is no tutorial out there because the code would be a case by case.

Turn your HTML file into an .EXE one and have a server run a DRM. Requires your own server, and also super difficult.

Obfuscate the code and/or passage map to make modifications more difficult. Still won't fix stealing files.

We share 90%-100% of our content for free on these platform. What is not shared right away will be maybe weeks/months in the future. You want something for free? Wait a bit longer OR play something else. There are thousands of works out there for free you can play right now. Honestly, not kidding about the number.

As for the people who use the mods and spread their content? I mean, all I can say is you are selfish and entitled. I'm sorry you can't wait even a week for things and that probably says more about you than anything else.

Do I think this problem is going to stop? No. Am I taking steps to deal with it? Yeah. Because I really don't believe piracy will end. But does that mean I'm going to sit back and just take it? Nah.