Introducing
Ghost Bla.me
Hi everyone! I wanted to share something I've been working on for a couple months
As creators, we all know piracy is a real problem - files get leaked, credit gets stolen, and it's frustrating to see your work distributed for free
I couldn't find any good solutions to prevent this (because it's impossible...) but as a software engineer with about 10 years of experience, I built something myself
Idea and Solution
I wanted something simple: upload my files, add an invisible tag per download and only if someone ever leaks them, I'd know who did it
No complicated setup, no new accounts for members, nothing extra for them to worry about. Just login with Patreon, click download and that's it
It was designed especially to handle VaM files without affecting gameplay
How It Works
Option A: Watermark Only
Upload your files, get them back with invisible signatures, distribute however you want. Even if someone steals files from inside your
.var, these will still have your unique signature.Option B: Full package
- Same as Option A but your patrons can download from Ghost Blame where each download will have it's own tag. If it leaks, you can find out who leaked it.
- You decide which Patreon tiers get access to which files.
- You can also block brand new Patreon accounts from accessing your content, helpful since leakers often create throwaway accounts.
Privacy Concerns
I know what you're thinking - "isn't this some kind of tracker or trojan virus?"
Nope, the 'watermark' is basically some gibberish text. Not sending data, no code to execute, It can't do anything on its own and is readable only by Ghost Blame
And I made sure the data is:
- Stored anonymously - not a single piece of user data stored in files
- Encrypted - no one can decrypt the text, not even with a quantum computer
- Authenticity - Impossible to forge/edit, if data is tampered with it - it becomes invalid.
- Private - while Patreon gives us access to more stuff than we need, we don't even collect emails, we store ONLY the data needed to function, encrypted of course.
I won't pretend it's bulletproof - that's... again, impossible. Someone determined enough will find workarounds eventually because it's "mathematically possible", but it's not a trivial task, this is not just a text inside a json file that you can remove with notepad, it's a lot more than that
Quick Links
- Platform website (where you can find more about the features)
- Join on Patreon
- Discord:
vuquar
Happy to chat even if you're just curious or have a feature request,
Ask me anything here, DMs or discord
Ask me anything here, DMs or discord