Teh Pizza Lady

isn't that what dictionaries are for? I agree in a non-technical sense, your linked definition holds up but once technical things start getting thrown into the mix, definitions change drastically. Remember a theory is just a theory until it becomes scientific.

this comment should be fine. It's when the comments delve into personal attacks, hate speech, and other things that actually break the rules of the forums that the moderators are forced to take action. Some users seem more inclined to do that than others, but this comment is fine.

That's a fair point, and I don't disagree that there's some trust relationship at play here. But it's worth being precise about the mechanics, because I don't think it's as direct as "Anego holds your payment info." Anego doesn't actually hold your card/payment data themselves, that sits with their payment processor or bank, same as basically every online storefront. And it's worth being precise about that since my earlier comment is now coming under fire. Anego wouldn't have your card number just sitting in a database somewhere. What they'd have is transaction records tied to your account (name, order history, maybe a billing address if one was entered at checkout, I don't remember because I didn't actually buy the game; it was gifted to me). If someone wanted to actually pursue legal action and needed to identify a person behind a username, that's a subpoena to the payment processor, not something Anego could hand over directly even if they wanted to. And separately, that trust relationship, whatever its shape, is with Anego as a company, not with any individual dev. Maltiez doesn't have any special access to billing/payment records any more than any other non-billing team member would. So "he violated trust, and Anego holds my payment info" doesn't really chain together unless the claim is that Anego's handling of him is itself evidence they're bad custodians of financial data generally, which is a much bigger claim than "I don't like that they kept this guy on." My initial point wasn't even in regards to whether they could be trusted with that information, and instead it was more to the point that if this type of discourse continues to say untrue things about the company and it hurts their financial bottom line, then they have every right to pursue legal action and we, the players, aren't as anonymous as we think we are. Worth being precise on the technical side too, since I've got firsthand experience here: I've submitted pull requests to the actual game codebase and had a chunk of it rejected for not meeting their standards, had to rewrite it, eventually got a fix in for a bug that had gone unresolved through 5+ reports. Their review process for anything touching vanilla is genuinely rigorous, multiple sets of eyes, scrutiny on even how something's written, not just whether it works. That's the important distinction with ConfigLib though: AdditionalStuff.cs was never subject to any of that. It was Maltiez's own independently-published mod on ModDB, completely outside Anego's review pipeline. The process didn't fail to catch it, it was never in scope to catch it, since that pipeline never touches third-party ModDB uploads. So the real risk question isn't "will review miss it next time," it's "does Maltiez have another unreviewed channel to end users right now," and from what's been laid out (no commit access, no ModDB presence anymore, everything funnels through the same review as anyone else), that specific channel looks closed. End of story. None of this settles whether he should have been kept on, that's a separate question people are still arguing ad nauseam. I just don't think the payment-info angle adds much weight to it, since that particular trust relationship doesn't actually run through him and never will. Again, the term "obfuscating." People really like to use words they don't actually know the definition of, and "obfuscating a crash log" doesn't even make sense in technical terms. What Maltiez did was force the crash logs to not name ConfigLib as the source of the problem, so the cheat mod dev would have a harder time figuring out why his mod suddenly stopped working. As already pointed out, the fact that he didn't disclose what he was doing is exactly why it worked, and that cheat mod in particular seems to be one Anego and a lot of affected server owners had a real grudge against, given how hard it apparently was to deal with until Maltiez decided to take matters into his own hands. But that's beside the point I'm actually making. Hiding something and misdirecting attention away from it isn't the same thing as obfuscating it, obfuscation is a specific technical term with a specific technical meaning, and it doesn't describe what happened here. There's already way too much telephone happening with the known facts of this incident. If people are going to keep discussing it, it's worth actually being precise about what did and didn't happen.

What an odd place to tuck that information. I never would have thought to look there. Okay well thanks for clarifying!

False. It was very easy to find it and figure out what it did once people knew it was there. Maltiez did not try to obfuscate his code. That is a programming term that means to scramble variable names and properties within the code so that anyone who decompiles it will have a very difficult time understanding what the code does. That is what obfuscating code means. The code was not that. It just wasn't in the public repo. It is no more obfuscated than the code that runs Seasoned Firewood Redux, Injury Expanded, Inventory Transfer or Antique Tuning Cylinders, just to name a few mods that don't even HAVE public repos. Are you going to say those devs are obfuscating their code and thus incorporating malware into them? Because that's what you're implying here and it's provably wrong by the four examples I just gave you. Finally a voice of reason... It's a wonder the moderators haven't come down even harder on these forums because we're not in the off-topic section. People talk of censorship, but I think the powers that be have been extremely lenient and only stepping in when things are going too far to an extreme. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing all the dissenters just getting their refunds and having the door smack them on their way out. All the negativity does is breed more negativity and in my opinion, these forums are no place for it. If people want to have a healthy discussion about the topic @icesharkk created a thread for that. All these other noisy threads filled with negativity that keep popping up just need to go. Closed, locked, hidden from sight, whatever, just gone. But maybe I'm just salty because all this talk about he said-she said blah blah blah has drowned out my thread about the uses of flora in the game. You know... ACTUAL game discussion that ACTUALLY belongs in the game discussion forum? Pepperidge Farms remembers. Technically, he's not listed on the Discord any longer since he voluntarily left for "reasons". Clicking his profile shows that he's no longer in the VS Discord. Just wanted to make that small correction.

yeah, not really a good idea to slander or libel someone who has your payment information which includes mailing address. EDIT: NOT that Anego would use this information to pick on individuals indiscriminately or nefariously, but if push came to shove and it hurt the company financially, then they would have grounds to pursue legal action.

not to mention the potential for backlash if, say, someone really spreads the word that Anego just makes malware. Pretty sure that slander or at least libel both of which are actionable in courts of law. The censorship protects both parties.

*gently pats on head* It's okay. Everyone is drinking stupid juice around this topic, myself included.

I don't think anyone was arguing that what Maltiez did wasn't malware. The goalposts shifted and DT Ignite came under fire as malware and I was just trying to demonstrate that it wasn't. That's all.

False. "Malware" (malicious software) generally refers to software designed to damage, disrupt, spy on, or gain unauthorized access to a system without the user's knowledge or consent. Things like viruses, ransomware, spyware, or trojans. Carrier-preinstalled apps like DT Ignite don't fit that definition for a few reasons: Disclosed purpose: It's typically used for remote diagnostics, device management, or carrier support features. This is documented functionality, not hidden. Consent, even if buried: Clicking through a carrier agreement or terms of service when you activate a phone is legally treated as consent, even though almost nobody reads those terms and the app was already sitting on the device before you agreed to anything. That's consent in a legal sense, not necessarily in a meaningfully informed sense. No malicious intent: The legal and security-industry definition of malware hinges on intent to harm or deceive. Carrier bloatware is designed for the carrier's or manufacturer's business purposes (support, upsells, data collection for their own use), which can feel invasive, but is a different category from software built to steal your data or damage your device. What's fair to call it instead: Bloatware -- preinstalled software you didn't choose and often can't fully remove Potentially unwanted program (PUP) or potentially unwanted app -- a real industry term for exactly this gray zone: not malicious, but unwanted and sometimes hard to uninstall A legitimate privacy concern, if it collects more data or has more system access than users realize

Diff is not a dev or employee of Anego. Diff is very smart and very well versed in the ways of programming however and has been very helpful in explaining exactly what the code did which you can find here: https://hastebin.com/share/uqeyuhirof.markdown taken directly from that link: Sometimes reading is important.

Oh sorry, I thought we were just going to baseless extremes with our comments, my bad.

I feel like if you're this paranoid, then you shouldn't use any device unless you've thoroughly vetted or at the very least written the software yourself. No computer, phone, car, game console, etc until you can be sure it doesn't have malware in it. #jussayin At some point you have to accept it was a one-time thing for a single purpose. It wasn't right that it happened, but it did, was reversed and we can all move on from this now. Also I work in healthcare, too.. if you use your work device to play video games that's a terminable offense. Your work devices are the property of the company you work for. you shouldn't be using them to play video games...

Welcome to the forums! I would ask how you found that, but it looks like you have mods installed because I don't recognize that item in your offhand, nor whatever that is in slot 6. Still, an interesting find.

oops nevermind it was the mod I was developing. False alarm everyone!

"But my game crashed! So it's clearly Maltiez's fault!", right? It couldn't be the other 67 mods I had installed, right? Clearly I'm a victim here.

It seems you may have stumbled across some mis-information and possibly misunderstood what you read. Maltiez's code only crashed clients. If your server was crashing then the mods you removed were indeed the problem. I hope that clears things up for you!

It's an initial response. We'll know more later. Or we won't. I'm sure Tyron knows more about the situation than the rest of us do. His response either told us what we need to hear or what he could say with confidence. Like him, I don't want to speculate, so I will leave it at that, as should everyone else. We do not know if Maltiez was truthful to us, so Tyron's contradictions could very well be the truth.

Personally zero.

Vintage story also used to be my favorite game. It still is, but it used to be, too.

Seems like some sort of screamo heavy metal lyrics for sure.

Just a friendly reminder that troll behavior is not welcome in this space. We are here to discuss this matter civilly. Please do not pollute this space with conjecture, assumption, personal attacks, troll remarks or the like. If a user is combative or troublesome, just ignore them, report, or both. EDIT: Or just wait and be patient and the moderators will take care of it for you.

Anything can be true if you can't find evidence to refute it.

You have to look at unique downloads per version, which they don't show, but the total number of downloads misrepresents how many people actually downloaded it.

I can't speak for the Lady but I think that's what she meant when she said that there isn't any response that he could have given. Either Tyron didn't know and should have paid better attention in which case fans of the game are unhappy, or he did know and let it slide in which case fans of the game are unhappy.