Regarding the impact of the crashcode put into ConfigLib and the needed clarification and explanation of the code for layman understanding

[Teh Pizza Lady]

8 minutes ago, Gandorf said:

Disappointing 50% of your fanbase is no small thing 

you mean 50% of the people that voted.

I didn't vote. A lot of people don't use Reddit. I agree with @LadyWYT here, that the Reddit poll means absolute bunk in this situation. Anego made their decision. They made it within the EU laws governing termination of employees with cause. They made it with consideration of the importance of what Maltiez is doing for the 1.23 update. They made it knowing that it would be extra work to closely examine all his submitted work, so they, in good faith, can say that he did not submit anything containing any malware to the base game.

Anego made a decision that wasn't yours, mine, or anyone else's to make. They just so happened to choose something other than what you would have chosen. It's not about you. Get over it.

[Ceridith]

Well I'm late to the party on this one.

So Maltiez put anti-cheat code into some of his mods to purposefully crash the game client if certain heuristics were met, with the intention to disallow use of a certain client hack alongside his mods.

Should he have done that? No. At least, not without clearly communicating that his mod would do so.

Do I think it's worthy of the claims that he put malware into his mods? Also no, absolutely not, it's a complete over-exaggeration of reality.

At worst he stepped into a grey area with his actions of not disclosing that his mods would purposefully not work along with perceived cheating mods. While not good, it's hardly worth the uproar that a very vocal minority are getting themselves worked into. The code simply crashed the game client, which isn't much different than if anyone tries to use any other two or more incompatible mods that result in game crashing. Some of you are acting like he was intentionally corrupting people's systems, which is just nonsense.

[Mushroomancer]

25 minutes ago, Gandorf said:

Disappointing 50% of your fanbase is no small thing 

Besides the points already made by the others about the flawed nature of a reddit poll of all things, the poll is mostly venting, a lot like these threads. Anego does not run on mob rule. While such a thing might influence their decision making, it shouldn't be considered any kind of binding referendum by the community even if it was 99.99% voting in favor of burning the whole project to the ground. Anego has and should have full control of who it invites onto its team, and retains on that team. We don't have to agree with it. The only vote we get is whether to continue supporting the product they provide or not. We can discuss it, try to convince each other, wax philosophical about the nature of broken trust and the severity of offense, but we are not a jury. We are the players of a product still in very active development. 

[IAmMoss]

16 hours ago, icesharkk said:

Perhaps. I am hardly perfect and it has been a long few days.

I cannot simply read something without bias and to insinuate that i haven't taken the time to read it as neutrally as possible is a bit obnoxious. just because i do not agree with you does not me that my conclusion is as a result of bias. We do not agree on Tyron's response. 

my point in saying this is, don't accuse others of what you yourself do. To accuse others of nitpicking devolves the thread exactly how williams explained.

 

To claim you cannot read something without bias, then to say the insinuation that you have not is obnoxious, is contradictory. The problem is you and some others use your own assumptions to justify even more extreme assumptions. You assume Tyron's statement is a defense of maltiez, therefore that proves everything you have claimed so far. All the way up into you are now questioning the timeline completely. That is simply just illogical thinking.

 

And yes i know we disagree, i literally pointed that out.

Edited Monday at 04:57 PM by IAmMoss
no edit, i deleted dupe posts wooops

[icesharkk]

@IAmMoss it is not illogical or unreasonable so see Anego's willingness to omit and lie, to paint a better picture, as evidence that they will continue to do so or that other statements they make may be suspect.

Oh look this is the only thread left. Anego has deleted every other megathread even if it was cooling down on its own. PR before transparency. 
Merged
That's still it for me folks. I have shit to do irl finally and no more motivation to argue.

Edited Monday at 04:50 PM by icesharkk

[MKMoose]

16 minutes ago, icesharkk said:

Anego has deleted every other megathread even if it was cooling down on its own.

They were merged, not deleted, as far as my eyes and memory don't deceive me. I don't see any other way that this topic could balloon to over 700 posts when the highest-count topic when I checked one or two days back was just nearing 300 posts.

Edited Monday at 04:52 PM by MKMoose

[Mushroomancer]

4 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

They were merged, not deleted, as far as my eyes and memory don't deceive me. I don't see any other way that this topic could balloon to over 700 posts when the highest-count topic when I checked yesterday was just nearing 300 posts.

I think you're correct. I think there were only 14 or 15 pages of responses. Consolidation is probably for the best. Not that the forums are especially busy in this day and age, but it does keep things clean.

[IAmMoss]

17 minutes ago, icesharkk said:

@IAmMoss it is not illogical or unreasonable so see Anego's willingness to omit and lie, to paint a better picture, as evidence that they will continue to do so or that other statements they make may be suspect.

Oh look this is the only thread left. Anego has deleted every other megathread even if it was cooling down on its own. PR before transparency. 

That's it for me folks.

once again. assumptions are not facts. Having a differing opinion on what a statement means by itself is entirely different than assuming Its a lie and then assuming 500 other things because of said assumption. you are pulling this forum past opinion and trying to claim your conspiracies (not trying to be aggressive, but that is what they are) as 100% fact, and its entirely dishonest.

Edited Monday at 04:55 PM by IAmMoss
added a sentence

[l33tmaan]

Boy I hope I'm wrong! 

[ImHereToProcrastinate]

24 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

mob rule

This is the thing that came to mind amid the calls for a firing. Internet mob justice, believe it or not, doesn't have a great track record (no source, but you know I'm right). Responding to a wrong with another wrong is just a way to perpetuate the cycle of vendetta.

I didn't vote in the poll, because I hate that it centers on punishment. I don't really care about how this guy is punished. And I don't even think it's appropriate for me to say how Anego should punish their employees, to be perfectly honest. I'm more interested in what steps will be taken to remedy this situation and to prevent a similar situation from occurring again (disappointed in that regard, but that's besides the point). Centering any discussion on punishment just gives credence to the people who try to dismiss this as an overreaction of a bloodthirsty internet mob IMO, because well.... the way the poll is phrased and framed it really does sound like that's the case.

From the poll:

"I believe the current punishment is appropriate."
"I believe a stronger punishment is needed....."
 

Ew. Makes me feel icky just reading it. Who and what is this punishment for? Do these people think that a harsher punishment will make Maltiez repent? If so, I haven't seen it mentioned by anyone. I saw people wanting an official response from Maltiez like... once or twice at most. Ok, will harsher punishment dissuade other people from doing something similar in the future? Well, I'm afraid that ship has sailed when the dev team learned about the code in February and did nothing. By firing Maltiez now, you are no longer saying "this is not ok" because they let it slip they knew to some impossible-to-know-how-much extent. So with rehabilitation and deterrence likely out, that leaves us with ... retributive justice.
 

In summary, this poll sucks ass y'all. Rant over.

[Sparticus247]

40 minutes ago, icesharkk said:

Oh look this is the only thread left. Anego has deleted every other megathread even if it was cooling down on its own. PR before transparency. 
Merged
That's still it for me folks. I have shit to do irl finally and no more motivation to argue.

I for one am happy this has become the mega thread here. Lots of good info for people to read from the top to bottom. We don't need the loop of.

1. New thread of "Out of the loop, what is this about the devs putting malware in the game."

2. Replies with timeline of events to correct that bit of "misinformation" and talk about the rogue modder, and their current contract.

3. Arguing over definitions, intent, and punishments.

4. Rinse repeat.

I may not agree with some of you here, but it's mostly been civil and constructive, and really shows the divide in the community in a microcosm.

[OBAMFSpike]

After everything is said and done; there is always more said than done. 

That poor horse just needs buried already. 

 

[reg8]

1 hour ago, l33tmaan said:

Boy I hope I'm wrong! 

oh well most people have forgotten about it already. they unfortunately won and got to keep status quo. unless a second statement is coming, which i have doubts about rn

[l33tmaan]

Surely he won't do anything that will embarrass them in the future! 

[Zaldaryon]

Yes, the threads were merged, since it's all about the same topic. So people that want to keep up will go always in the same place. Nothing was hidden.

[Stellarbone]

39 minutes ago, reg8 said:

oh well most people have forgotten about it already. they unfortunately won and got to keep status quo. unless a second statement is coming, which i have doubts about rn

Yeah, I've lost full faith here. This went from my top 5 recommended games to something I can't bring myself to support. And wanting it to improve is being met with insults, demands I and those like me leave, or simple silence. We'll probably never know the full extent of the damage here. 

[reg8]

12 minutes ago, Stellarbone said:

Yeah, I've lost full faith here. This went from my top 5 recommended games to something I can't bring myself to support. And wanting it to improve is being met with insults, demands I and those like me leave, or simple silence. We'll probably never know the full extent of the damage here. 

We may never even see the devs acknowledge that there WAS any damage. my expectations are low, and nothing suggests to me that I should be expecting more

[Stellarbone]

15 minutes ago, reg8 said:

We may never even see the devs acknowledge that there WAS any damage. my expectations are low, and nothing suggests to me that I should be expecting more

I'm more thinking damage to the community and the image of Anego and Vintage Story. There's so much misinformation, so much vitriol, so many hurt feelings and bruised egos. Even the official statement acts like what Maltiez did was a good thing, and another developer said on Discord that 'our trust wasn't breached' because the team knew about it to some extent. 

[IAmMoss]

7 minutes ago, Stellarbone said:

I'm more thinking damage to the community and the image of Anego and Vintage Story. There's so much misinformation, so much vitriol, so many hurt feelings and bruised egos. Even the official statement acts like what Maltiez did was a good thing, and another developer said on Discord that 'our trust wasn't breached' because the team knew about it to some extent. 

debatable. vigilantism is not a universally positive moniker and that is what tyron called maltiez

[Stellarbone]

2 minutes ago, IAmMoss said:

debatable. vigilantism is not a universally positive moniker and that is what tyron called maltiez

I'm against vigilantism like this. Not sure what part is debatable exactly, but I stand firmly in the "this was not okay" camp. 

[Mushroomancer]

To be clear:

• What the code did was functionally manufacture an incompatibility between itself and a mod used for malicious actions on community servers.
• This was done without that code being revealed, and done in a way that was not specific enough to the 'Griefing Mod'.
• Other mods were hit as bycatch and it took time to figure out what was causing the issue.
• The 'malware' did not do any damage to the hardware or stored data of any 'victims'.
• Maltiez said he wasn't doing this to protect servers, but did not claim at all that it wasn't to benefit the community. These are two different things. This framing implies that the goal was a proactive instead of reactive defense, to discourage the development of the 'Cheats' instead of protect servers from them reactively.
• The community's reaction to the discovery was immediate and vitriolic causing moderators to crack down overzealously on what they saw as an outrage spreading to places it was disruptive. Naturally the community reacts to this with further vitriol and offense at what is perceived as rug sweeping and censorship.
• Tyron's framing in the official statement implies that Anego sees this less as an issue of programming ethics and more an issue of lacking transparency and poor communication.

The above is the most gracious possible interpretation I have come to for this entire chain of events. This is an entirely valid interpretation of how things unfolded and, in my opinion, is enough for Anego to justify staying their current course of action.

The primary issues of fault in this interpretation are that 1.) Maltiez was not more vigilant about affecting other mods and 2.) concealing this feature from the community inherently makes it a deceptive act. 3.) Anego being informed of the feature in some capacity and not further investigating was a lapse of judgement or maybe an excess of trust in the belief that Maltiez had responsibly implemented this feature.

I just don't see those issues as justifying the sheer level of backlash.

[tiggerbiggo]

3 minutes ago, Mushroomancer said:

To be clear:

• What the code did was functionally manufacture an incompatibility between itself and a mod used for malicious actions on community servers.
• This was done without that code being revealed, and done in a way that was not specific enough to the 'Griefing Mod'.
• Other mods were hit as bycatch and it took time to figure out what was causing the issue.
• The 'malware' did not do any damage to the hardware or stored data of any 'victims'.
• Maltiez said he wasn't doing this to protect servers, but did not claim at all that it wasn't to benefit the community. These are two different things. This framing implies that the goal was a proactive instead of reactive defense, to discourage the development of the 'Cheats' instead of protect servers from them reactively.
• The community's reaction to the discovery was immediate and vitriolic causing moderators to crack down overzealously on what they saw as an outrage spreading to places it was disruptive. Naturally the community reacts to this with further vitriol and offense at what is perceived as rug sweeping and censorship.
• Tyron's framing in the official statement implies that Anego sees this less as an issue of programming ethics and more an issue of lacking transparency and poor communication.

The above is the most gracious possible interpretation I have come to for this entire chain of events. This is an entirely valid interpretation of how things unfolded and, in my opinion, is enough for Anego to justify staying their current course of action.

The primary issues of fault in this interpretation are that 1.) Maltiez was not more vigilant about affecting other mods and 2.) concealing this feature from the community inherently makes it a deceptive act. 3.) Anego being informed of the feature in some capacity and not further investigating was a lapse of judgement or maybe an excess of trust in the belief that Maltiez had responsibly implemented this feature.

I just don't see those issues as justifying the sheer level of backlash.

Just to be clear, it's malware if it caused harm or not (Putting the word in quotes doesn't make it false), and the intention doesn't matter. The number of victims also doesn't matter, even if it's zero. The problem I have with the situation is Maltiez' attitude and the behaviour proving they are a bad actor capable of breaking the rules because they think it has a greater good.

I've said several times in this and other threads, I truly believe that if my company found out that i'd done something like this, i'd be fired. Even if it wasn't in their code, this would be gross misconduct and i'd be let go, or at the very least people wouldn't trust me any more. Their current course of action cements this event into policy, we now know that Anego as a whole cares more about maintaining their relationship with a bad actor than it does about its reputation and programming ethics. The fact they have tried to downplay the facts of the situation, still haven't addressed the rest of the community's concerns, and seem insistent on keeping this malicious developer on their team is pretty bad imo.

[Mushroomancer]

10 minutes ago, tiggerbiggo said:

Just to be clear, it's malware if it caused harm or not (Putting the word in quotes doesn't make it false), and the intention doesn't matter. The number of victims also doesn't matter, even if it's zero. The problem I have with the situation is Maltiez' attitude and the behaviour proving they are a bad actor capable of breaking the rules because they think it has a greater good.

I've said several times in this and other threads, I truly believe that if my company found out that i'd done something like this, i'd be fired. Even if it wasn't in their code, this would be gross misconduct and i'd be let go, or at the very least people wouldn't trust me any more. Their current course of action cements this event into policy, we now know that Anego as a whole cares more about maintaining their relationship with a bad actor than it does about its reputation and programming ethics. The fact they have tried to downplay the facts of the situation, still haven't addressed the rest of the community's concerns, and seem insistent on keeping this malicious developer on their team is pretty bad imo.

Many of the community's 'other concerns' are based on the least charitable possible interpretation of events, but my main concern is the conflation of the 'Malware' that Maltiez produced and the common perception of 'Malware' at large. This was not ransomware, it was not data theft, it wasn't bricking systems. People - and you in this very response - are behaving as though Maltiez is going to start smuggling in worse and worse code into the core of Vintage Story when there is no evidence of that and the community's assumptions on his motives are - well, assumptions. Admittedly based on a somewhat prickly and stand-offish personality and individual, but still assumptions. You act as though what Maltiez has done is a spiritual corruption that proves he is going to continue doing more evil acts that tempt every programmer who sets fingers to code.

If I agree on anything it's that we need some kind of further communication from Anego on the matter because at the moment it seems like a particularly uncharitable interpretation of everything said and done up to this point has calcified. Though I'm not sure there's anything they could say to deescalate the situation at this point, it very much seems as though that uncharitable is going to continue. 'Trust is broken' and what not. Though given the uncharitability, I suspect that trust prior to this event is being very overstated.

[Abdoola]

1 hour ago, Mushroomancer said:

I just don't see those issues as justifying the sheer level of backlash.

Let's see if Latvian authorities think if the backlash is justified or not. Reported the incident. 

[Gandorf]

1 hour ago, Mushroomancer said:

Many of the community's 'other concerns' are based on the least charitable possible interpretation of events, but my main concern is the conflation of the 'Malware' that Maltiez produced and the common perception of 'Malware' at large. This was not ransomware, it was not data theft, it wasn't bricking systems. People - and you in this very response - are behaving as though Maltiez is going to start smuggling in worse and worse code into the core of Vintage Story when there is no evidence of that and the community's assumptions on his motives are - well, assumptions. Admittedly based on a somewhat prickly and stand-offish personality and individual, but still assumptions. You act as though what Maltiez has done is a spiritual corruption that proves he is going to continue doing more evil acts that tempt every programmer who sets fingers to code.

If I agree on anything it's that we need some kind of further communication from Anego on the matter because at the moment it seems like a particularly uncharitable interpretation of everything said and done up to this point has calcified. Though I'm not sure there's anything they could say to deescalate the situation at this point, it very much seems as though that uncharitable is going to continue. 'Trust is broken' and what not. Though given the uncharitability, I suspect that trust prior to this event is being very overstated.

Past examples from other communities show it often starts with slipping something "lite" and then over time evolves into full-on "I'm the law" moments on modders' part. Really, this is a story as old as modding, although this case is worse in a way since he is now on the studio's payroll

Edited Monday at 09:36 PM by Gandorf