Cicadas

Also to quote Tyron: "As a result, all game servers using any of Maltiez’ 3 mods were effectively protected from malicious users attempting to use said cheat mod." No they were not. It became another list item for me and my community admins, more development time from a server hosting perspective, of figuring out why certain mods were crashing. They did not protect my servers or my community from a would be boogeyman or modded hack client. What genuinely has protected my servers and my community, is vetting and vouching for each other. Removing people who break our community rules. Self community moderation and building. Not vigilantism.

This exactly, as many other comments. Eruannon, sums it up greatly. Maltiez deliberately produced Malware and distributed through a community repository. This is incredibly negligent and harmful. Regardless of the severity or justification of the intent. In laymen term, it would be like poisoning or tampering your favorite soda with a mild annoying flavoring that some people are affected by, and some others could potentially have severe allergic reactions. Beyond that, the ignorant responses or the permissive behavior to Maltiez's actions is just astounding. No person I've worked with would do something like this and get away with it, they would be fired immediately and removed from the team.

I want to also thank members of the VS modding community and community at large for spotting Maltiez's malicious code and bring it to light to everyone. I look forward to other modders who take commitments to transparency, community building and safety strongly and forking away from Maltiez's mods. I hope the discussions here and in other forums and channels will remain respectful and that something genuinely good for the community as whole comes about and not the lackluster response that I am observing. I also want to recognize a common statement in both the reddit and other threads is that Maltiez's actions have affected Vintage Story Dev's community trust and the reputation of other modders by Maltiez's mod false positive'ing other modder's mods, crashing and even bricking some user's games and saves. This is serious, this is severe. This was deliberate and a malicious mod, a malware no different than what I would have to had deal with in my prior profession. Keenly. 1. Maltiez's behavior and conduct in the discord in other forms of communication being utterly disrespectful 2. Maltiez's actions affecting VS/Anego Studios' reputation. 3. Maltez's mods false positives against other modder's mods * and negatively affecting their reputations too I hope those unfairly banned will get reversed.

I want to continue to support Vintage Story and have done so by buying several VS keys (approx $330 worth) and distributing them via raffles on my community discord, now I no longer feel comfortable with further supporting VS. I want to see VS succeed and be the best it can, but I don't see that vision right now. I am disappointed but not surprised. I do not think Tyron's statement and actions are sufficient. I do not think the Vintage Story Dev team comprehend the severity of Maltiez's actions, the Dev team's own inaction (or knowledge of what Maltiez did) or the bigger picture ramifications it presents. I think Anego Studio failed to address and effectively deal with the root of the problem, which was another pay-for-use (and its free-to-use variant) illegal mod being distributed to the community. I think Anego Studio withheld information of malicious code tied to one of their developers and failed to communicate, inform, educate and protect its community. My trust in Vintage Story and Anego Studio has been significantly damaged as they have decided to keep Maltiez on the development team, to include their code contributions regardless of it being under more scrutiny. This incident and VS's actions onward will be something I strongly consider as I host Vintage Story vanilla and Modded for my community and the mods that are available in ModDB. Mods that run on my own server equipment, equipment that could be running malicious code in ways I have no immediate way of detecting. A similar incident that reminds me very strongly of what VS is dealing with, is StarSector and how it was handle by their lead Dev, Alexander Mosolov. Do better Anego Studio, learn from this mistake and do not ever repeat it. 1. What the real problem is, undisclosed malicious code execution distributed by ModDB crafted by a Vintage Story Dev. 2. VS/Anego Studio either deliberately or negligently withheld information about malicious code developed by a dev and deployed by their mods and showed a lack of ethics or judgement. 3. VS/Anego Studio failed to inform the community properly and take effective action. 4. VS/Anego failed to take proper actions dealing with an illegal pay for use mod. 5. A crisis/PR team is insufficient and not a solution, you need to genuinely address the problem of both bad faith and illegal mod makers. You need enforcement, auditing, and curation of modDB and stronger avenues of tackling TOS breaking mods. Otherwise vigilante code through mods is basically rubber stamped as "ok". Relevant Topics: - Should Maltiez's mods be removed from ModDB Yes. I do agree moving their mods to a custodianship is sufficient however I imagine it will put a strain on the VS Dev team till they find community trusted and reliable modders to take on Maltiez's mods. Should Maltiez be banned from Vintage Story Yes, effectively immediately and their development activities, to include their development contract with Anego Studios void. Maltiez should have no further ties now or in the future with Anego Studios. What should be done about Maltiez' code and development contribution to the VS Dev Team and Vintage Story proper? I think they should be removed completely and understand this will negative affect the combat update and development time. Scrutiny of the code must be intense, documented and open to audit. Communication after this should be transparent and clear.