Ahego Studios. Malware is illegal.

[quicksilvr]

7 hours ago, Endeavour said:

 Sure this situation is different but I believe you are overreacting.

 

He actively broke a law in my state. California Penal Code Section 502. I'm sure you can understand why some people are upset. 

• You knowingly introduced a computer contaminant into a computer, computer system, or computer network.
• You knowingly without permission disrupted or caused the disruption of computer services to an authorized user of a computer network.

[craigmg]

On 9/4/2026 at 1:17 PM, Cetasaya said:

Merriam-Webster.  Malware, noun: software designed to interfere with a computer's normal functioning

Pretty sure purposefully crashing our game isnt normal functioning AND the function was hidden.  And... the modder literally stated everything as such as well!  Multiple times!  Amazing!

And we don't even know if this modder has done even worse to our computers!  Yay!

You're laser focused on damage control and silencing voices, but uh....

You've lied, and obstructed, and are continuing to do both.  You're STILL not giving us the full truthful story and you're STILL defending a literal criminal.  

The modder is DEFINITELY going to be sued, at minimum, and will liklely be seeing criminal court as well.  And you're still defending and aiding them?  You do understand that by NOT being fully truthful with us and lying to us about malware crashing our computers that you have knowingly committed a crime right?  And some people have stated you've known about this for a YEAR now.

Okie dokie!  Good show!  Keep up the wonderful work!

Modders.  Uhhhh...

Don't fuck around with our computers with hidden code.  Dont lie and obstruct.  I would have never thought be even neccesary to say but HERE WE ARE lol

Edit:  Oh.  Oh no...

From another post...

It ran automatically when the mod loaded, then checked every other mod and library loaded into your game, looking for signs of cheat software: scrambled internal names, and specific names like Aimbot, KillAura, Esp and Nuker.

If it found a match, it waited a random 1.5 to 16 minutes, then broke your game client at random:

• Forced disconnect, or kicked you to the main menu

• Killed the client outright, or froze frame timing

• Wiped the interface, loaded creatures, or all server communication

• On the 1.10.x versions only: fired fake keyboard and mouse input every frame, and made your character attack itself

UIhhhhh... you guys are absolutely cooked.  Forget about discord, forget about being sued, or losing your game, you guys might be sitting in prison eventually.  Depending on how many and how bad the lies you've been telling us have been.  This is far far far FAAAAR worse than just crashing a game.  This is actual federal (in america) crime yall.  Manipulaing perhipheral inputs against the will and knowledge of users is a federal offense.  You had better shape up yesterday lol cause you're all likely in MASSIVE MASSIVE trouble.

God.

Damn.

All this on record and all (now) out in the open.  And aboslutely no telling what else this modder has done to our computers!  Wow!  Incredible!

you are profoundly illiterate if you think this would even come close to reaching a criminal court

[hellmother]

7 hours ago, quicksilvr said:

He actively broke a law in my state. California Penal Code Section 502. I'm sure you can understand why some people are upset. 

• You knowingly introduced a computer contaminant into a computer, computer system, or computer network.
• You knowingly without permission disrupted or caused the disruption of computer services to an authorized user of a computer network.

The point is you waived your right to complain on those grounds when you opted in to download a third-party modification to the base game.

None of this code was in the base game, it was in a mod you had to agree to download and add. The fact that it contained malware is shitty, and I personally think Maltiez should be let go, but Anego studios isn't liable for a mod fucking up your computer. You are.
 

Quote

Mod Downloads

By downloading a mod from this site or the game client, you as the user¹ agree to the following terms:

1. The entire risk associated with operation of third-party modded game content is assumed by you, the mod user¹.
2. Anego Studios does not warrant or assume responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within the third-party modded content.
3. Anego Studios makes no warranties respecting any harm that may be caused by the transmission of malicious content such as a computer virus, worm, time bomb, logic bomb, or other such computer program. Anego Studios further expressly disclaims any warranty or representation to any third party who may operate or otherwise utilize third-party mods.
4. Anego Studios cannot guarantee the integrity of third-party mods or that those will be free from attacks by third parties that may result in incomplete or erroneous results from operation, or damage to hardware devices to which the third-party mods are loaded or operating on.

https://mods.vintagestory.at/terms

[IAmMoss]

3 minutes ago, hellmother said:

The point is you waived your right to complain on those grounds when you opted in to download a third-party modification to the base game.

None of this code was in the base game, it was in a mod you had to agree to download and add. The fact that it contained malware is shitty, and I personally think Maltiez should be let go, but Anego studios isn't liable for a mod fucking up your computer. You are.
 

https://mods.vintagestory.at/terms

That's the thing. Disregarding the poor wording of tyron's post,and what not. These actions were done prior to his employment, and were only discovered after the fact. You can't blame anego for a third party modder adding malware to their mod, before they were even hired by the company. 

[Voicelessflu]

That is not true sekelsta was aware of  Maltiez  actions 

"This is a valid concern, and it ties in with the other concern about the dev team having known about it months
ago. The thing is, he told us about it. So from our perspective, our trust has not been breached" 

But what about the  trust of the people who boat the game?

[icesharkk]

2 hours ago, IAmMoss said:

That's the thing. Disregarding the poor wording of tyron's post,and what not. These actions were done prior to his employment, and were only discovered after the fact. You can't blame anego for a third party modder adding malware to their mod, before they were even hired by the company. 

no I can hold them accountable for his continued employment especially since this campaign continued during his employment there. Furthermore Tyron and other devs on the team have admitted that Anego were inform by maltiez, and simply declined to look deeper. They shouldnt have to check code from the moddb unless there are concerning reports regarding the mod in question. But in this case there were reports and maltiez had already asked to add this anti cheat into the game itself. it is not unreasonable to expect them to put two adn two together. even if they didnt taking decisive action now that it has all come to light would still be acceptable. 

It is not the community's fault that Matliez chose to violate the law, ethics, and ToS and it is not the communities fault that Anego has chosen to stand by his employment, justify his actions, ignore and lie about the collateral damage done, and praise the success of his operation.

[IAmMoss]

10 minutes ago, icesharkk said:

no I can hold them accountable for his continued employment especially since this campaign continued during his employment there. Furthermore Tyron and other devs on the team have admitted that Anego were inform by maltiez, and simply declined to look deeper. They shouldnt have to check code from the moddb unless there are concerning reports regarding the mod in question. But in this case there were reports and maltiez had already asked to add this anti cheat into the game itself. it is not unreasonable to expect them to put two adn two together. even if they didnt taking decisive action now that it has all come to light would still be acceptable. 

It is not the community's fault that Matliez chose to violate the law, ethics, and ToS and it is not the communities fault that Anego has chosen to stand by his employment, justify his actions, ignore and lie about the collateral damage done, and praise the success of his operation.

and ive already laid out what may complicate terminating his position. Tyron already did admit culpability in not looking further into what maltiez really meant when he had brought up his "anti-cheat efforts". The thing is, we have the benefit of hind sight. maltiez offhand mentioning his own efforts and then another statement asking to put anti cheat in the game at a different point in time could look entirely disjointed if mentioned even a few hours a part.

 

Who said the community is at fault? I'm speaking specifically on a person (quiksilvr) trying to say anego is criminally liable for a third party mod containing malware.

What does it mean to "stand by his employment"? They arent standing with him in solidarity saying he did nothing wrong. supposedly some discord moderator did (so what?) I already said, that i don't read tyron's statement as flattering to maltiez. Again, explaining the reasoning why someone did something is not automatically justification. Tyron mentioning problems with their inner tos points to this being more nuanced than you make it out to be.

 

And speaking on the supposed "reward" of banning maltiez, look at it this way. Yes, he has said many times he does not like this community, and has expressed leaving. Despite that, he has continued to be a hostile member of the community to anyone with so much as a question Doesnt mute or leave the discord, doesnt quit interacting, etc. For some reason or another he feels the need to stay. banning him from everything, is for both our and anego's benefit. He has clearly displayed clear apathy towards us right up until him being silenced. Anego can't have him running his mouth at the community, essentially harassing us while on his high horse, and also try and repair standing with the community. All of you demanding immediate answers act as if this is the last we will ever officially hear of this. To which i highly doubt. This whole fiasco isnt even a week old.

[Voicelessflu]

sekelsta says it is months old not less then a week

[IAmMoss]

20 minutes ago, Voicelessflu said:

sekelsta says it is months old not less then a week

seklesta is one developer and the scope of the situation is still relatively unknown internally. how many devs is "they" to what extent did they "know"? Im more inclined to believe tyron, who has since been very trustworthy and faithful to the community, that they didnt realize to what extent maltiez was speaking of.

 

Also when i say this fiasco isnt more than a week old, i mean its discovery and everything that has happened since.

[Myrth]

Never thought i would see people who want cheaters in their games.

[Myrth]

So far from what i see is dude makes anticheat in his mod it crashes cheaters then community big mad he had anticheat for some reason - was there anything else? i just came back after a year to see VS progress and i could give no poops about this debacle and whats next but i do like a bit of tea.

[Voicelessflu]

I don't like Malware and think what Tyron did was wrong. 

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, Myrth said:

So far from what i see is dude makes anticheat in his mod it crashes cheaters then community big mad he had anticheat for some reason - was there anything else?

It was crashing other legitimate mods(like Caves N Caverns), while(as I understand it, anyway) hiding the cause of the crash. Those crashes weren't intentional, but they happened due to the way the "anti-cheat" worked--causing the game client to crash if there was a mod present that contained a certain percentage of obfuscated code(I think I've got the correct term here). As far as I'm aware, Maltiez had added this code to his mods(ConfibLib being the main culprit) before his involvement with Anego Studios, and doesn't seem to have been honest regarding how he was going about his "anti-cheat" endeavor.

And that's why most people are upset--he took matters into his own hands and caused collateral damage when going after the cheat mod. I don't recall anyone being upset about the cheaters being dealt with(apparently they quit maintaining their cheat mod because they couldn't figure out the crashes), but that doesn't mean that people are okay with how Maltiez went about the whole business. That's also why there's a lot of infighting in the community right now--some are satisfied(or satisfied enough anyway) by Tyron's official remarks on the matter, and others are upset because they disagree with how Tyron's chosen to handle it.

[hellmother]

19 minutes ago, Myrth said:

So far from what i see is dude makes anticheat in his mod it crashes cheaters then community big mad he had anticheat for some reason - was there anything else? i just came back after a year to see VS progress and i could give no poops about this debacle and whats next but i do like a bit of tea.

What you're missing is the implementation of the so-called anti-cheat was a) never disclosed in the mod description and b) created false positives which was crashing totally unrelated mods. The crashes took months to debug because of the way the anti-cheat was hidden, which lead to folks discovering it was an undisclosed "feature" of the guy's library mod.

[Endeavour]

6 hours ago, Myrth said:

Never thought i would see people who want cheaters in their games.

Nobody except cheaters want cheaters in their games, but we want a general library mod to be a general library mod, not an hilariously terribly designed anti-cheat with potential for false positives.

 

Edited Sunday at 09:56 AM by Endeavour

[Voicelessflu]

I don't like "cheaters" but what am I to do when the dev team is the ones doing this. I had  some goats and was looking forward to making cheese. I found salt. That's all gone now. I don't want malicious code in the games I play. In the mods I use. The devs are happy to say that I don't get to decide that and I don't know what to do. I can't really do anything. That they think I would want this. That I would thank them is the most insulting part.

[Endeavour]

14 hours ago, Voicelessflu said:

I don't like "cheaters" but what am I to do when the dev team is the ones doing this. I had  some goats and was looking forward to making cheese. I found salt. That's all gone now. I don't want malicious code in the games I play. In the mods I use. The devs are happy to say that I don't get to decide that and I don't know what to do. I can't really do anything. That they think I would want this. That I would thank them is the most insulting part.

Where is this code in the game?
What exactly does this malware do and how exactly does this function?
When did the devs exactly put this code in your game?

Also why is "cheaters" in quotation marks but "malicious code" is not? 

Edited Monday at 08:07 AM by Endeavour

[Mushroomancer]

10 minutes ago, Endeavour said:

Where is this code in the game?
What exactly does this malware do and how exactly does this function?
When did the devs exactly put this code in your game?

Also why is "cheaters" in quotation marks but "malicious code" is not? 

Honestly cheaters should probably be in quotation marks for the opposite reason. The way everyone says 'Cheaters' implies that these were some goofy little guys gaming the system on servers when in reality the cheats had the potential to be tools for massive griefing and to damage server economies while 'Malware' seems to be being used to conflate the severity of this situation with ransomware or keylogging.

"How do we know Maltiez isn't going to put something worse into the code?" Why didn't he smuggle it in instead of this code? His motivations weren't to prey on the community and if he had the desire to do that he already would have used his mods as vehicles for it. This is someone who clearly thought through the logic of how to best target the 'cheat mod' without being caught by it. Was it his place? No. Should he have done it this way? No. Is there any evidence he was scraping data or doing long term damage to the systems of victims? Also no.

But yes, these are not things 'The Devs' did, these are things Maltiez did. Pretending that Anego is now going to start pushing malware into the main branch of the game is hysterics and melodrama.

[Kiluria]

I really wish people would make such a fuss when Microsoft once again includes unwanted code in its software or creates security vulnerabilities that endanger global security.
 Seriously though, the new Outlook app used to send emails from third-party providers directly to Microsoft without asking. That was malware. Yet even today, 60% of people still use Windows, and nobody cares. But is this poorly written anti-cheat module really the downfall of Ahego Studios? By someone who wasn't even working there at the time? Is this a joke?

The irony is this: If you really want to pin this on Ahego Studios, it wouldn't even be malware. It's technically impossible to write malware into your own program if it has 0% influence over the operating system or third-party providers. It wouldn't even be illegal to cause your own program to crash.

 

[Zaldaryon]

This discussion is leading nowhere productive and leading to insults. Locked.