Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, it's all very stupid. The putting crashcode or save corrupting code into your mod thing, I mean.

I get hating it when people do gross stuff with mods, but that's just uncalled for. Publicly denounce the stuff you hate, sure, but to actively punish them for doing stuff you don't like? That's a bad, bad path.

As a perfect example of that, people are now freaking out about mods potentially having Malware in them. Which...yes, that was technically malware, but not the sort of thing people associate the word with. So I would not be surprised if there are now people who might have used mods who've now decided it's never worth doing because it might wreck their computer or steal their bank passwords or whatever.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Didn't something like that happen with Gregtech mods in Minecraft? I thought I was in a wrong thread for a moment.

[Frumple]

It happens off and on with modding in general, really, anywhere the mod capabilities are expansive enough to be used like that. If it hasn't happened with something minecraft related I'd be surprised as hell, that scene is bloody huge and has been trucking along for over a decade now. Someone had to have had a normal one and intentionally built in features that screw with either other mods or base functionality at some point, heh.

E: Though amusingly enough, there's a wikipedia page on minecraft modding and it specifically has a malware section. Turns out it's been seeing pretty major issues off and on since at least 2017, ha.

[Great Order]

There's also that complete anarchy MC server that lead to some incredibly serious computer vulnerabilities being found.

[Mephansteras]

Didn't something like that happen with Gregtech mods in Minecraft? I thought I was in a wrong thread for a moment.

My understanding is that the Gregtech stuff was even more petty, since that was around 1 mod making things easier than Gregtech wanted and Gregtech then breaking stuff if that mod was active. But, yeah, I expect this pops up in any easy to mod game. Sad as it is.

[Loud Whispers]

There's currently been some kind of amusing drama in the modding scene.

Someone, we'll call them A, created a mod called Take No Prisoners. They made it open source, allowing anyone to mod it in any way they wanted. Someone else, we'll call them B, proceeded to fork the mod into an NSFW mod. I don't know the details, but I'd imagine with the OG mod it'd be a wee bit rapey.

A didn't like this. At all. Seriously. He threw all the toys out of the pram and not only stopped working on TNP but pulled it from the forums and removed every link to it. Ironically, this only left B's NSFW mod to do the same thing, so anyone wanting TNP's features was now forced onto it.

Realising that people were now using a mod that he didn't like in larger numbers, A decided the best way to fix that was to then add malware to his other mods. From then on, if one of his mods detected B's mod it'd crash the game and corrupt the save. Hilariously, the code it detected was in the TNP mod too, so what happened was anyone running the OG mod *or* the NSFW one was unable to play with any of those mods.

This was an unpopular move. Once this was discovered the guy was promptly banned from the forums and the subreddit, and Alex basically had to alter the modding rules to include "Don't make malware you fucking idiots". Meanwhile, the unofficial Starsector Discord had the mods act as insane as Discord mods do and they were praising him for it... Right up until they realised people didn't like that where they then temporarily then, I assume reluctantly, permanently banned him from the server.

I'm not surprised tbh. The starsector modding community on discord and the starsector forums are prone to cultish and antisocial behaviour

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

way back last year in october there was that stupid drama from another modder inserting beartrap code which would secretly amplify damage from their "challenge mod" ships against anyone else using ships from mods they didn't like
the stupidity got amplified even more when the modder who called this modder out for using beartrap code, was also discovered to have inserted their own beartraps in their own mod which would make their OP challenge faction auto-hostile and damage-amplified against anime girl faction mods

idk what it is about the starsector modding community that so regularly violates basic ethics and mature, sporting behaviour but hopefully in time they sort out their shit and establish some basic decorum

people on the forums seriously arguing for clemency because it was just "instant-crash code" and not bricking your hole computer. BRUH. Mods should not intentionally corrupt your save -_-

[Great Order]

And the TASC mod had an IP logger in it at one point, although that seemed to be innocent-but-naive in motive. Guy wanted to see where people were playing his mod as far as I'm aware.

[Loud Whispers]

Even so, got to ask ppl's permission to collect their data for any reason

[Great Order]

Well yeah, just that the guy seemed to have a moment of genuine Hanlon's razor.

[Frumple]

Even so, got to ask ppl's permission to collect their data for any reason

At least if you're in a polity with vaguely sane privacy laws. That... unfortunately doesn't include a lot of the world

Ethically, though, yeah. Enforcement spotty, please try again later (hopefully).

[Iceblaster]

-snip-

mfer makes it open source then gets surprised when people make a thing with it.

Like. I get putting restrictions on usage, but like. You kinda have to make it known when you do something like open sourceing it. Frankly, once you open source a project and you haven't made it known what can and can't be done with it, you're kinda stuck with whatever happens.

but then again, modders seem to be a special type of breed to just get absolutely wild. see: all the various bethesda game modders who throw fits.

[Egan_BW]

Modding is where the barrier to entry in software development is lowest, which means you get all types.

[Mephansteras]

Yup. And, of course, you never hear about the well behaved ones.