Ethically-Sourced Copy-Pasta Client.

[Zentetsuken]

How is secretly harvesting your map tiles, equipped hat, and current location Ingame not a bigger deal than this lmao. literally any faction would love to have access to that information, and if they had released a client that was doing this they wouldn't be getting a pass. Yet here's loftar like "well idk gee shucks I guess it's kinda bad for him to do that but WHAT ABOUT SNAILS MOTIVES?!"


cringe.

This x10000000000000000

Until shubla's client forum post is removed and he is banned or forbidden from advertising it on this forum it is a MAJOR blow to the precedent set by the developers and at the end of the day it only serves to make them look bad. (and one could easily argue after a quick skimming of shubla's forum history that this has been his goal all along.)

Despite his arrogant and heated arguments and consistent trolling over the entire ordeal, his poor excuse for a fix - he admits to still making personal decisions about the release of certain map tiles and is still collecting data without users knowing because there are 100s of users trading and sharing files amongst themselves who (because of the way all other client creators have set a positive and selfless precedent for this) would never expect any wrongdoing.

I understand that there is an official warning from developers about custom clients, but when so many people have been delivering them with the truest and most selfless of intentions for so long, it really seems *extra* shitty for somebody with obvious unethical and malicious intention to present their work in the same light.

The same person who was making death-bots last world and killing randoms to push his own political views, who made 100s of forum posts with dozens of forum alts to push political views is the person that is holding unpublished map tiles and user data under the guise of keeping/releasing them under totally impartial and unbiased terms. And it's somehow allowed because he made you press OK before opening the client? Bizarre ...just bizarre ....

The fact that the developer response is so passive is absolutely ludicrous.

[loftar]

This x10000000000000000

Instead of posting nothing but hyperbole and reiterations of previous points, how about you actually make an on-point reply to the post where I stated my conclusions, as linked in the post just prior to yours? As I already stated, I'm open to debate on the subject, but what you're posting is not debate.

[SnuggleSnail]

He's not saying it in a very professional way, but he's kinda right. If you caught me tracking half of the userbase with a client without informing anybody I suspect my entire village would get purged.

[azrid]

He's not saying it in a very professional way, but he's kinda right. If you caught me tracking half of the userbase with a client without informing anybody I suspect my entire village would get purged.

Almost as if how a player conducts themselves in the game plays a role on how they are treated later. How strange.

[Ardennesss]

He's not saying it in a very professional way, but he's kinda right. If you caught me tracking half of the userbase with a client without informing anybody I suspect my entire village would get purged.

Almost as if how a player conducts themselves in the game plays a role on how they are treated later. How strange.

Correct, you're so close to understanding why people are upset that Shubla isn't even getting a hand slap here.

[loftar]

If you caught me tracking half of the userbase with a client without informing anybody I suspect my entire village would get purged.

For one thing, I'd say that would depend on the circumstances. If you were only using the data to publish a public map with no obvious intent to use the data in any malicious manner, I'd be more likely to overlook it in that case as well.
For another thing, however, I also think it's fair to say, precisely with regards to the "no obvious intent" part, that factions that are obviously competing harder are held to higher standards. You would have more motive to use the data maliciously than Shubla (whom I think noone would seriously claim is even trying to compete at the top level) would have, so clearly that would have to be factored in. Contrariwise, if Shubla started competing and siegeing people down (especially, but not exclusively, if they were users of his client), then I'd clearly have to revisit the issue posthaste. I wouldn't be overly worried about Romovs and Ender either, because I don't know when I last saw them play with competitive factions.

[SnuggleSnail]

I'm not currently in a faction, and I wasn't in a faction until late last world. I have zero interest in competition, I just happen to enjoy fucking with people. What Shubla has seems way better for that then anything else I can think of, including client crashes etc. I don't think it's reasonable to assume he's not malicious, or entirely incapable of doing malicious things, or feeding others information to be used maliciously because he lived in a shitterville last world. I mean, he was even in AD at some point.


You say there's no obvious intent, but looking at the code it really seems to be like there's no explanation other than him having a private map with player dots on it. I think the person who made the mapping service it's based oneven said as such in the original thread. I think that even existing implies intent to abuse it somehow.


edit:

3. I've seen you wrote that you use player coordinates/hats to draw online players on the map, but the public map does not have them. I assume that you have a private version of the map which shows all online users of your client? What is the purpose of it and who has access to it? How do you control this data? This is a huge potential security breach which can lead to player's deaths and raids.

[loftar]

having a private map with player dots on it.

That is a fair point. Looking back at the format of the data he's actually sending, there may be a case to be made that it is needlessly revealing if the point is merely to build a public map. It should be possible to batch collected grids together every half hour or something. If that is a non-trivial implementation, I would in fact strongly suggest that Shubla turn his telemetry off until he has the opportunity to implement that.

[Zentetsuken]

having a private map with player dots on it.

That is a fair point. Looking back at the format of the data he's actually sending, there may be a case to be made that it is needlessly revealing if the point is merely to build a public map. It should be possible to batch collected grids together every half hour or something. If that is a non-trivial implementation, I would in fact strongly suggest that Shubla turn his telemetry off until he has the opportunity to implement that.

Is the fact that he now has private access to all that needlessly revealing data worth nothing? He can turn it off in 2 seconds but he still collected it all and can view it at any time. If he personally and privately has a map of players and where they appear in the world, in what density and whether they are dedicated to the game enough to have hats, hat is arguably an incredible advantage. Even if he had no intention to use that information maliciously, he now privately knows the population density of every area and can set up his base in the least competitive spot and achieve a calculated advantage.

Is the act of having already collected this data (regardless of his intentions) not worth any form of punishment? Even as small as an official stance from you to not condone this behaviour and simply stop his ability from ever doing it again on your forum platform? Because it seems to me that this action from you wouldn't even be a punishment but rather a logical reaction to what has already happened and cannot be undone.

Edit: I understand that you already addressed the issue in some way and that it seems that a lot of us are repeating ourselves, but even within the last hours you are looking in to the issue further and noticing new details you didn't before. I think it is worth reevaluating your initial reaction to this.

[cherryquartz]

having a private map with player dots on it.

That is a fair point. Looking back at the format of the data he's actually sending, there may be a case to be made that it is needlessly revealing if the point is merely to build a public map. It should be possible to batch collected grids together every half hour or something. If that is a non-trivial implementation, I would in fact strongly suggest that Shubla turn his telemetry off until he has the opportunity to implement that.

The fact that he is even collecting that data is suspicious, if he doesn't need it for the public map, WHY collect it? He is fooling you all with this holier than thou nonsense. Surely you can see that his actions are at best suspicious, there is literally NO reason for him to collect that data unless he is using it for malicious purposes.
Who he plays with and whether he is in a large faction should have nothing to do with it, even as a small village, having the location of anyone that uses his client gives him a HUGE advantage, a very unfair and malicious advantage. I wonder why you seem concerned about Snails intentions regarding Shubla but defend Shublas intentions even though he has given no valid reason for collecting such data, especially without any opt in or out feature. You also allow him to advertise the map, the map code he stole from Alg, he has admitted that he stole the code and yet you still allow him to advertise the content, content that he now benefits financially from.

You're setting a precedence for this activity and behaviour to run rampant on these forums, same as when you allowed Shubla to bribe you into changing the boat combat mechanics. Something needs to change, for whatever reason you're allowing one person to make a mockery of yourselves, this forum and the game in general.