Teh Pizza Lady

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.

Y'all giving me ideas and now I'm neck deep in the game code figuring out diseases, poisons, and potions. I hope you're all happy!

That's kind of where I'm sitting mentally at this point. I will still play the game and I'm confident that moving forward the team will improve, but right now, it's not in a good place and there's nothing that we, as normal players of the game, can do about it except to vote with our wallets if we feel that's necessary. This pains me because it hurts the company, but sometimes things must be done for the greater good. I'm sure Maltiez would understand.

Children, please, just hover each other's usernames and click ignore before both of you get spanked by the moderators.

Well I was sourcing this from here: So maybe a lot of us misunderstood Tyron on this, but I definitely took it to mean that Maltiez was hired into an advisory role to direct the combat update, not necessarily have a direct input on the code itself. If someone from the VS Dev team could clarify this, it would help immensely to know instead of assuming.

As a software dev myself I can answer this. First it's about trust. Maltiez is on the VS team, hired by Anego, to advise them on the combat update. When a company hires an individual and then the individual does something bone-headed while on the payroll, that person, being an extension of the company, actively harms that company by doing so. Maltiez lied by not communicating clearly what his code was doing, broke the ModDB TOS, and actively harmed people's gameplay by coding his widely-downloaded core library mods to have anti-cheat code in them that was falsely flagging mods that weren't being used for cheating. Maltiez broke that line of trust by his actions and while he is still employed by Anego, he is harming the line of trust that we have in the company to produce a good video game and deliver on their promises. If we cannot trust the employees, we cannot trust the company. Second it's about the legality of what he did. Had he gotten approval from Anego via the proper channels instead of misconstruing what his code did either accidentally or deliberately and thus misleading the game devs about what it did, then his malware could be considered a feature. Many game companies have hidden malware in their code that breaks the game if you pirate it. It's very effective and hard to detect because the game still allows you to play somewhat but your experience will be harmed until you play a legit copy of the game. That said, Maltiez didn't get approval to do this. His code did not affect only the users of the cheat mod, it affected innocent bystanders. Two mod authors independently came to him because their legitimately obfuscated code was tripping his detection and breaking their mods. He whitelisted them and left the detector running for everyone else. At that point it stopped being a feature that misfired and became code he knew was hitting the wrong people and shipped anyway. That is not allowed and breaks a few laws concerning malware in different areas of the globe. Third his attitude around the whole thing was lacking. He acted as if he had the right to make the decision to combat the cheat mod himself. His anti-cheat was targeted, and poorly at that, against a single known cheat mod. When eventually caught he was flippant, and even blamed the person who caught him out for ruining his work. He dismissed accusations with "Oh well, it worked so I'm happy." as if that solved the problem of the code existing in the first place and then when pressed, he relented and removed the code or so he claimed. He only removed it from a few editions that contained it, not all of them. ModDB moderators had to go through his released and pull many versions themselves. So not only did he lie to the VS team, he lied to us, broke laws, and acted like we were the problem, not him. That is not the kind of dev you want on your team.

this is accurate An understandable position to have! From what I've heard because so many mods rely on his (PMLib, ConfigLib to name the biggest two), banning him would effectively cripple the modding community. I'm sure Anego has something planned for him, but until something official is released, we can only speculate which is useless in this thread and in line with what got others sent to vacation island. It'd debatable whether the responsibility of action fell in Maltiez's hands. If it did not, then his actions fell short of morally upright because he took matters into his own hands. I do not care for cheaters. They have no place in multiplayer games. Something must be done, but it must be done right and through the proper channels. Otherwise all we have is anarchy in the name of the greater good. You're missing a LOT of context from the VS discord then. I won't get into all the details of it because I feel @icesharkk has done a good enough job summarizing it here. Plus we still don't know all the details, just what ShadowFox could tell us in her brief QA session on the Discord. However, the facts remain that damage was being done against the names of Maltiez and Anego by people who weren't in a position to do said damage. Any damage done to Maltiez should be done by Anego. Anego doesn't bear the blame for this because they simple were not given all the information until it was too late. Given how rabid things became, I think shutting down the discourse before it turned into a full-blown doxxing witchhunt was the right call. As for Maltiez, he only ever was officially an advisor to the devs and only for the combat portion of the 1.23 update. I don't think he had access to the code. ShadowFox has already assured us that any code he does submit will go through rigorous review before it is allowed to be part of the game.

could have, but didn't, so speculating on it is useless and in line with the actions that got other forum members silenced/sent to vacation island.

Same. I'm seeing a few alchemy mods, but I'm not sure I like what they do. They seem to gameify the whole thing.