Forums > MobyGames > Removal of watermarks is in process
MobyReed (302) on 5/2/2015 8:54 PM · Permalink · Report
As of today, all new covers and screenshots added to the site will be without watermarks. Additionally, image quality is being improved by 5% and covers are increasing in size from a max of 640px wide to 800px.
All existing covers and screenshots are being reprocessed. We're starting off with covers and one by one you'll see the new versions appear. There may be some site slowness as this is running, but it looks like it's not affecting things toooo much so far.
Currently about 50 covers are being processed every minute. Which means it may take... 3 to 4 days to complete! Then we'll start on the screenshots. Those should process at a faster rate since they are generally smaller, but there are a lot more of them. I'll post an update when screenshots start and have an idea of how much time they take to process.
Thanks to Nelio for his work on this the past couple weeks!
So why are we removing the watermarks? Well, essentially we think it's the right thing to do. Screenshots/covers don't belong to us and watermarks obscure the image. It's understandable why the site originally did this and it used to be very common, but we feel it's an outdated practice.
This very likely means that more sites will scrape the images, and it's concerning that it'll significantly increase bandwidth usage. But we'll see what happens.
Ultimately the goal is to make MobyGames the best possible resource for game information and we hope everyone finds it just that much more useful as a result!
Cavalary (11397) on 5/2/2015 11:23 PM · Permalink · Report
Now this is some good news. The scraping is a troubling side effect, but as you say, they never really belonged to MG, and the watermarks just make them... wrong, it's not the actual image anymore, and sometimes they may obscure something relevant as well.
Simon Carless (1836) on 5/4/2015 12:17 AM · Permalink · Report
Super happy that we've prioritized this here at Moby and this is in progress! As I think I mentioned elsewhere, I actually source many of the covers and screenshots for the 'In Memoriam' section of the Game Developers Choice Awards from MobyGames scans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd6_M1kQwJE&t=53m20s
...and I'm sure there are plenty of similar (fairly) important things that need better quality images for covers and screens. (Books, websites, historical articles.) It was only cos I've been involved in MobyGames recently that I've been able to sneak into the Admin section and grab the versions without watermarks. That kind of access should be available to all.
Big thanks to Nelio and Reed for getting this sorted and rolling it out so swiftly.
MAT (238603) on 5/4/2015 2:13 AM · Permalink · Report
Already noticed this happening, fantastic thing!!
BTW, when its done, you might wanna add this as a MG News, as well as April 26th site update, it's a big improvement and should be added to news for others to more easily notice it. Guess adding news is Simon's job ;))
vileyn0id_8088 (20958) on 5/4/2015 2:50 PM · Permalink · Report
A welcome change! thumbs up
MrFlibble (17953) on 5/5/2015 12:49 PM · Permalink · Report
How are the watermarks removed? The original image can be restored because the watermark is transparent and the colours can be reverted back to the state before the watermark was applied? Or watermarks here were added as a separate transparent layer which can easily be removed from the image?
NĂ©lio (1985) on 5/5/2015 1:34 PM · Permalink · Report
None of those. We have originals and processed images. Processed images are compressed, resized, and had the watermarks layered on top. We are simply reprocessing the originals so that the watermarking step is skipped. Same thing with the screenshots.
In some situations the originals are shown to the users instead of processed images. That usually happens when the source material is low-res (under 640x480).
MAT (238603) on 5/8/2015 1:21 AM · Permalink · Report
I believe great many screenshots are less than 640x480 which is the limit when watermarked logos are added, so screenshots lower than that don't even have to be processed as they don't contain any watermark logo, unless you want to remake them with lower compression level... although GIF and PNG shots could be skipped as they aren't compressed to begin with.
MobyReed (302) on 5/7/2015 10:42 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
It took a couple more days than expected, but covers have finally completed! Now every single one of the 270,000+ covers on the site are free of watermarks.
Screenshots are processing, and completing very quickly. They may actually be done by late tonight or tomorrow morning. Less than half of the screenshots needed to be reprocessed, because any image under a certain size (e.g., most old games) didn't get watermarked.
MAT (238603) on 5/8/2015 1:25 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
I don't think so.
RE: Revelations 2 covers I submitted which were saved to 800px by default as I submitted them after that support are not reprocessed correctly.
Front and back cover still have watermarks, while media scan has it removed.
FRONT - http://www.mobygames.com/game/resident-evil-revelations-2/cover-art/gameCoverId,303608/
BACK - http://www.mobygames.com/game/resident-evil-revelations-2/cover-art/gameCoverId,303609/
MEDIA - http://www.mobygames.com/game/resident-evil-revelations-2/cover-art/gameCoverId,303610/
Edit: The only way I could be wrong here is if this is just a caching problem. If it's not caching problem, then this may have happened to other covers as well.