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

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Vratislav said:

Disclaimer: I do not stand with these statements, they are intentionally stretched. Just have enough of this drama to be one-sided .

I know, but I do want to add a few notes to the mix here:

 

1 hour ago, Vratislav said:

1. Even if zero players except griefers were affected, WE have decided that Annego is on the same level of evil as Microsoft.

As far as I can tell, the worst thing that happened to affected players is their game client crashed when using certain mods, and it was somewhat difficult to pinpoint the cause of the crash. At worst, an affected player is spending maybe a few additional hours of troubleshooting and needing to go through the process more carefully in order to figure it out, but this is also just a basic aspect of modding life. Is it frustrating? Yes, but in the grand scheme of things, it's more akin to the mild inconvenience of getting stuck in traffic than it is someone trying to brick your equipment or steal your information.

Incidentally, this is also why the TOS of any game that allows mods makes it clear that the user assumes the risk and responsibility for what could happen to their system by using third-party software.

1 hour ago, Vratislav said:

3. If the refund is not enough, what the heck will you satisfy? Tyron guillotining Matinez in the square, giving you his head on a golden plate?

I don't even think that would enough for the mob, to be honest. They would just find another target to take out their anger on. Plus if the precedent has been set that people can get what they want as long as they are loud and angry enough, regardless of the facts, then they will happily go start accusations against other people they don't like in order to punish those they have personal hatred against.

In any case, it's fine to be disappointed in Anego's response, but at that point if you're still unhappy, the best course of action is to politely state as much and then vote with your feet/wallet, since Anego is offering refunds. If you don't want to do business with them and don't trust them at all, there's really no point in continuing to linger on their services.

1 hour ago, Vratislav said:

People, who are screaming "malware" to press the studio to execute Matinez, are already damaging the game for other players.

I mean...this is why so many other communities--videogame or otherwise--get such a bad reputation. Anyone who's been in the gaming/nerd space for very long can probably list a good handful without much effort.

Vintage Story has been something of an outlier when it comes to the standard game community, since it has a rather diverse set of views from its players and most of those players can civilly disagree with each other and still get along relatively well. I'm not so sure that could be said now though, given how portions of the playerbase seem to be intent on acting in the wake of this incident.

Edited Tuesday at 03:09 PM by LadyWYT
Forgot a word

[Teh Pizza Lady]

11 hours ago, Bumber said:

It's the Welchia ethical dilemma all over again, but with demonstrable harm to legit mod devs and players. (Welchia caused some minor network disruptions due to its spread.)

the qualification of "harm" here is subjective.

8 hours ago, Cicadas said:

Is there a particular reason why all the posts about the Maltiez incident were merged into one?

so we would quit drowning out actual threads about the game with another new thread. This is a concept known as a megathread, which some of us have been asking for since this whole thing exploded.

5 hours ago, tiggerbiggo said:

since you wouldn't respond to me elsewhere

Because the rest of your post is just you reading between the lines stuff I didn't say and never meant, so the rest of your comment isn't even worth responding to. You know the saying, "Never play chess with a pigeon..."

2 hours ago, Angius said:

4. Look how needed this anticheat was! Cheaters are even griefing our servers! Look how right Malwaretiez was in his crusade!

Came here to say this. 

30 minutes ago, VANTABlack2000 said:

It's really making me consider if I want to continue recommending this game to people.

People still play Minecraft even though Micro$oft is a corrupt company.

30 minutes ago, Vratislav said:

Ask yourself: Were you disappointed so much, that you want to say goodbye and burn all bridges? Or do you also want to have Vintage Story destroyed for those who do not feel this way?

This is the correct way. Take whatever personal action you feel is necessary. Hush and leave the rest of us alone on your way out. (Not YOU, personally, but the ones saying "I'm taking my refund and recommending others do the same.")

[tiggerbiggo]

38 minutes ago, Vratislav said:

And that is the reason the discussion is not about reality anymore. If I stretch it to the other side:

1. Even if zero players except griefers were affected, WE have decided that Annego is on the same level of evil as Microsoft.
2. So you mean it that every company who hires somebody is responsible for every his bullshit from the moment he was born, because these people sold their sins to the company now.
3. If the refund is not enough, what the heck will you satisfy? Tyron guillotining Matinez in the square, giving you his head on a golden plate?
4. There is no right to try to reduce griefing opportunitites, as good guys are also shepherd dogs who are guarding the server 24/7 to minimize damage caused to players by its inevitable reverting.

Disclaimer: I do not stand with these statements, they are intentionally stretched. Just have enough of this drama to be one-sided .

But on serious note: I am sure there is big group of people who are not as much concerned, please respect it. People, who are screaming "malware" to press the studio to execute Matinez, are already damaging the game for other players. And this is situation, where righteous defenders of morality are becoming villains too. Ask yourself: Were you disappointed so much, that you want to say goodbye and burn all bridges? Or do you also want to have Vintage Story destroyed for those who do not feel this way?

1. The patterns of malicious behaviour shown by Malt are well established as bad, this isn't me or anyone else making up the severity of the actions they took, and their attitude after the fact.
2. If the company knows about it, then they are responsible for deciding whether hiring them is a good idea. A company is not responsible for things they don't reasonably have the ability to confirm, like for example "every his bullshit from the moment he was born" - Nobody cares about the details of their personal life, their decision to release malware into a public dependency is public information that the company knows. Again, I'd be fired for doing this.
3. A refund will satisfy me enough to leave and never come back. I've said that before, but I appreciate this thread is long so i'll repeat it. If I get a refund, and the devs want to keep Malt on, i'll leave you all alone. I'd much rather be able to trust the dev team and keep playing an awesome game, but if they insist on keeping a bad actor, i'm not going to stay.
4. Genuinely don't understand what you mean here.

And again with putting malware in quotes... As if that makes it not what happened.

If this is damaging the game for you, I suggest you wait until it settles down, because either they stay the course and give people refunds in which case us spooky naysayers will be gone eventually, or the backlash gets bad enough for them to finally do something.

[tiggerbiggo]

7 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

the qualification of "harm" here is subjective.

so we would quit drowning out actual threads about the game with another new thread. This is a concept known as a megathread, which some of us have been asking for since this whole thing exploded.

Because the rest of your post is just you reading between the lines stuff I didn't say and never meant, so the rest of your comment isn't even worth responding to. You know the saying, "Never play chess with a pigeon..."

Came here to say this. 

People still play Minecraft even though Micro$oft is a corrupt company.

This is the correct way. Take whatever personal action you feel is necessary. Hush and leave the rest of us alone on your way out. (Not YOU, personally, but the ones saying "I'm taking my refund and recommending others do the same.")

So you won't respond to me? Ok i guess, not sure why you even quoted me in the first place then if i'm not worth arguing with. Not even a thing about the whole fact that i'd be fired if I did the same thing Malt did?

[Vratislav]

3 minutes ago, tiggerbiggo said:

And again with putting malware in quotes... As if that makes it not what happened.

As non-native speaker, I am not sure what are proper rules of using quotes. In my native language, we can clearly use quotes in sentences like: I like people who greet others "Aloha" , so there was no intention to make term malware "so called". So it was a grammar error in the worst case.

And it also illustrates, how easily can be anybody misnintepreted, thanks.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Vratislav said:

As non-native speaker, I am not sure what are proper rules of using quotes. In my native language, we can clearly use quotes in sentences like: I like people who greet others "Aloha" , so there was no intention to make term malware "so called". So it was a grammar error in the worst case.

As a native speaker, your use of quotations marks is grammatically correct. 

[Sparticus247]

8 minutes ago, tiggerbiggo said:

So you won't respond to me? Ok i guess, not sure why you even quoted me in the first place then if i'm not worth arguing with. Not even a thing about the whole fact that i'd be fired if I did the same thing Malt did?

I can respond a bit from the other side of the debate if you'd like.

He is contracted to my understanding to work on the Mod API portion of the game for now, as they wanted his experience/expertise and advisement for the next big update. He is not touching and directly contributing to the core game codebase, and any work he does or might do requires a peer review and code merge.

Now as of the punishment, he is basically banned from contributing to the community ever again. All of his popular work is being stripped from him and to be taken over by Anego, and he is banned from ever making mods for the game ever again. For me I feel satisfied with that outcome and I trust the rest of the team.

Now will they keep him in his role after all this is said and done? Idk, it's all speculation at this point. I do NOT expect a community message out saying that his contract will NOT be renewed after the next big update is released. On the other hand, internally I would expect something like that to be happening behind the scenes.

Does Anego need to publicly list all the MODs that were flagged by Malts efforts in an official statement line by line? Idk, what good would that do at this point? They acknowledged the issue, gave a general idea of how bad it hit the modding scene in terms of raw numbers affected, and said that Malt is never allowed to be part of that community ever again due to his own actions.

Do I think his actions were stupid? Yep. Do I think he should be banned from the modding scene after this? Yep, and he is. Do I think that we are maybe overblowing the ramifications and reactions a bit and directing our anger towards Anego because some of us are mad that we can't punish him more ourselves? Also yes.

[Zaph42nd]

5 hours ago, Demoncyborg said:

adding this here since it seems to be the most recently active topic. posted on the discord earlier

Think that's not a bad response but I'm a little unsure if whitelisting will be an effective solution to curb griefing, claims-system will probably need some overhauls and appeals to get added to whitelist I imagine will be a lot of work, especially for those of us who aren't on Discord (and therefore require more searching to cross-reference)... Regarding refunding, a bit of a precedent being set here with this, not sure if I'm overly for it since it means you could refund over non-game related issues (which I feel somewhat goes against how refunds have worked historically) but I suppose it's to appease the masses.

1 hour ago, Vratislav said:

But on serious note: I am sure there is big group of people who are not as much concerned, please respect it. People, who are screaming "malware" to press the studio to execute Matinez, are already damaging the game for other players. And this is situation, where righteous defenders of morality are becoming villains too. Ask yourself: Were you disappointed so much, that you want to say goodbye and burn all bridges? Or do you also want to have Vintage Story destroyed for those who do not feel this way?

Wholeheartedly agree, my issue with the malware accusations and firing is that it seeks mainly to just be divisive, I feel like we've already established what the issue is and Anego is working on it but no one solution will satisfy everyone. Also too, there's a narrative not being told here and a lot of people probably calling for these things aren't seeing, it's compliance with fair hiring/firing and contract law, that's probably being glazed over in a lot of these responses. At the end of the day though, I think it's important to know that this ultimately doesn't shape the game in its current state nor its development visions, it's a side effect of growth in popularity and development scaling up but will eventually come to pass... 

[LadyWYT]

18 minutes ago, Zaph42nd said:

Regarding refunding, a bit of a precedent being set here with this, not sure if I'm overly for it since it means you could refund over non-game related issues (which I feel somewhat goes against how refunds have worked historically) but I suppose it's to appease the masses.

I'm okay with it. I'm not going to ask for a refund--I have no reason to--but I feel most other companies wouldn't be offering refunds in situations like this. They'd offer some bland corporate apology but keep your money.

[Stellarbone]

I keep seeing this "They want Maltiez hanged and skinned!" take and I don't get it. Held accountable and removed from the dev team yes. Tarred feathered and boiled, no. That's asinine. 

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, Stellarbone said:

Held accountable and removed from the dev team yes. Tarred feathered and boiled, no. That's asinine. 

Stripping away his mods, banning him from creating more mods, and keeping him on a much tighter leash is still holding him accountable. For many in the community, that's enough. For those who demand harsher punishment though, or who hold personal vendettas against the guy for whatever reason, that's obviously not going to be an answer they're satisfied with. They're free to disagree, and politely express as much, but at this point a good chunk of the disagreement isn't really polite, as much as it is a bunch of people upset that they didn't get what they want and trying to form a mob to force Anego's hand or otherwise start fights with those who have different opinions about the verdict. That's where it stops being simple disagreement and starts becoming a problem.

[Ceridith]

The notion that there's no accountability for Maltiez is ridiculous. There have been consequences publicly communicated, and likely some we don't even know about as they're internal to Anego. It's really concerning how much a minority of the community is getting themselves whipped up into trying to get someone fired over what amounts to a lapse in judgement that at worst caused inconvenience to people trying to troubleshoot mod compatibility.

It's not right what Maltiez did, but I don't think it warrants termination. A lot of people calling for his termination probably aren't even considering the harm it will do to the game, they just want revenge. It's irrational.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

7 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Stripping away his mods, banning him from creating more mods, and keeping him on a much tighter leash is still holding him accountable. For many in the community, that's enough. For those who demand harsher punishment though, or who hold personal vendettas against the guy for whatever reason, that's obviously not going to be an answer they're satisfied with. They're free to disagree, and politely express as much, but at this point a good chunk of the disagreement isn't really polite, as much as it is a bunch of people upset that they didn't get what they want and trying to form a mob to force Anego's hand or otherwise start fights with those who have different opinions about the verdict. That's where it stops being simple disagreement and starts becoming a problem.

They won't be satisfied even if he rots in jail and is buried in an unmarked grave. Look at what mob justice did to Jacopo de' Pazzi. 

[Stellarbone]

I just think having him leave the discord is performative. Losing his job is the only real accountability to be held here. Anything more is just people being weird. 

Edited Tuesday at 04:12 PM by Stellarbone

[Sparticus247]

6 minutes ago, Ceridith said:

The notion that there's no accountability for Maltiez is ridiculous. There have been consequences publicly communicated, and likely some we don't even know about as they're internal to Anego. It's really concerning how much a minority of the community is getting themselves whipped up into trying to get someone fired over what amounts to a lapse in judgement that at worst caused inconvenience to people trying to troubleshoot mod compatibility.

It's not right what Maltiez did, but I don't think it warrants termination. A lot of people calling for his termination probably aren't even considering the harm it will do to the game, they just want revenge. It's irrational.

Eh, I wouldn't say that it's just a minority opinion. There are a lot of mad players out there that are rightfully angry. Now the extent of the anger I feel might be going a little far, as Anego basically laid out they think this has been dealt with, and that segment has some vocal people that do not accept it as enough. What happens internally at this point is up to them, and honestly I don't think we need to know.

I'm fine with people being mad about it, there was a breach of trust with a modder, and he handled the whole thing pretty piss poorly with the community, and seemed to have forgotten that he wasn't JUST a community member anymore, he also was contracted to work with Anego, and that comes with maybe a bit more professionalism being expected. A professionalism that was not on display whatsoever

With the rapid patches to the server updates put out during this release, there obviously has been issues with cheat mods and people trying to do some junk on multiplayer that is obviously sidetracked some devs over there, and probably frustrated them to a degree that created some grumpy atmosphere internally.

Malt saying he did not do it for the community, but because he had it in for those cheaters probably is true in a sense. There were people already working on the actual patching necessary to try and stop them, Malt probably just wanted to shut them down his own way on the side for his own joy of sticking it to them.

That last part's all speculation of course, but I've seen stuff like that happen in life.

[Sparticus247]

5 minutes ago, Stellarbone said:

I just think having him leave the discord is preformative. Losing his job is the only real accountability to be held here. Anything more is just people being weird. 

And being banned from making mods and contributing to mods in perpetuity, and having all of his work he has spent an extent amount of time on taken from him and given to others.

Don't forget that part.

[Abdoola]

23 minutes ago, Ceridith said:

It's not right what Maltiez did, but I don't think it warrants termination. A lot of people calling for his termination probably aren't even considering the harm it will do to the game, they just want revenge. It's irrational.

 

23 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

They won't be satisfied even if he rots in jail and is buried in an unmarked grave.

Cannot say for others, but I personally don't want revenge, or Maltiez rotting in jail. What I do want though, is Maltiez not allowed to touch the game code anymore. I don't trust in Tyron's pinky promise to keep an eye on him, as: 1) there were accounts of malware being snuck through a code review, and 2) Tyron seems to be on "whatever not a biggie" stance. So, until Maltiez is removed from a coding position, or an authoritative 3rd party gives their verdict "everything is fine", I consider the base game itself as potentially compromised. And I don't have time or desire to decompile VS and run it via Procmon / Burp Suite / Ghidra you name it every time they ship a minor patch, just to check if it is still safe. I have a life to live. So, it goes into a quarantine for a time being.

[Stellarbone]

7 minutes ago, Sparticus247 said:

And being banned from making mods and contributing to mods in perpetuity, and having all of his work he has spent an extent amount of time on taken from him and given to others.

Don't forget that part.

I dont have a lot to really weigh in on that part. Suppose it can be debated forever really. I don't think he should have lost his mods like that, but I also feel a developer modding their own game is a conflict of some interest. Again, it all seems performative. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

11 minutes ago, Abdoola said:

What I do want though, is Maltiez not allowed to touch the game code anymore.

And the only way that's going to happen is if he's fired and in regards to that EU law must be followed. It's a real hassle to terminate anyone in the EU.

[Abdoola]

4 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

And the only way that's going to happen is if he's fired and in regards to that EU law must be followed. It's a real hassle to terminate anyone in the EU.

Yes I know. That's why I filed a report to CERT.

[LadyWYT]

8 minutes ago, Abdoola said:

1) there were accounts of malware being snuck through a code review

Where are these accounts, and where is the proof Maltiez tampered with the game code itself? Just because someone accuses him of something, doesn't mean he did it. 

Tyron made it very clear that whatever is intended to go into the vanilla game goes through a very rigorous review process. Those who have submitted pull requests to Anego Studios have also confirmed just how rigorous this process is. This is also just common sense and standard operating procedure when it comes to professional software development, no matter who is writing said code--you check things thoroughly before you ever ship it to the customers. Sure, no one has to take Tyron's word for it, but in that case those who don't trust the people running the company are better off taking the offered refund and just...not doing any more business with people they clearly don't trust.

3 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

And the only way that's going to happen is if he's fired and in regards to that EU law must be followed. It's a real hassle to terminate anyone in the EU.

If you're trying to ensure he never touches the code again, I'd think you'd also have to fire anyone he's remotely associated with in order to ensure he doesn't slip through by proxy. Which is one reason that I don't think just firing him actually satisfies the angry mob that's after him.

[Sparticus247]

24 minutes ago, Abdoola said:

I don't trust in Tyron's pinky promise to keep an eye on him, as: 1) there were accounts of malware being snuck through a code review

See this right here is exactly what I mean by misinformation being spread. 

Can you specify exactly what malware was snuck past code review that was part of the main codebase? To my knowledge and understanding, there was none.

The specifics really matter here, because it was a third-party modification to the game that had the crash "feature" baked in if it detected what it considered an incompatibility. This is the thing that's being floated as the malware, and was never part of vintage story proper.

Edited Tuesday at 04:51 PM by Sparticus247
Typos

[Abdoola]

4 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Where are these accounts

Just a recent(ish) one - XZ, but there were more. Like, say, Webmin.

5 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

and where is the proof Maltiez tampered with the game code itself?

There's none. But, absence of proof is not a proof of absence.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 minute ago, Sparticus247 said:

See this right here is exactly what I mean by misinformation being spread. 

Can you specify exactly what malware was snuck past code review that was part of the main codebase? Do you mind knowledge to understanding, there was none.

The specifics really matter here, because it was a third-party modification to the game that had the crash "feature" baked in if it detected what it considered an incompatibility. This is the thing that's being floated as the malware, and was never part of vintage story proper.

I saw Gandhi in my toast this morning and you can't prove I didn't, so it must be true.

Just now, Abdoola said:

There's none. But, absence of proof is not a proof of absence.

see above

Edited Tuesday at 04:50 PM by Teh Pizza Lady

[Abdoola]

2 minutes ago, Sparticus247 said:

the thing that's being floated as the malware

As a cybersec engineer I can say that, if something looks like malware, smells like malware, acts like malware and quacks like malware, it is malware.