I think what's happened this anniversary event is the culmination of years and years of frustration in the community with the lack of transparency, communication and enthusiasm between GH and the community. It's just another event in the timeline of an overarching problem.

I understand that you guys may find the community really hard to deal with at times with a lack of a community manager, I get that, but this continuous cycle of no actual communication about the direction of the game, combined with simply having the game auto-run on a cycle of monthly promotions and reused events really paints Gray Havens generally in the community's eyes as a company that doesn't really care about the players and only seeks to profit off of promotions.

This cycle really doesn't help when the most action that the community sees being taken by Gray Havens is against RMTers (who are a miniscule portion of active players) and scammers.

It's no secret that the game is plagued with bugs and issues. AMD graphics cards are very prone to visual bugs. Memory leakage leads to a lot of Apocrea being unplayable for many players. Snowballs, water balloons and other visual effects can make sitting in Haven impossible. I could go on and on, but you get my point.

When these issues persist for years and years and get reported tons and tons of times, while the same in-game events get rolled out with no changes, it is very frustrating for the community when the game they love this much is getting this treatment.

A lack of transparency has only furthered this frustration as well. The lack of any official communication platform aside from the forums has always plagued the community as well. The main issue with the forums is that it is treated like just an outlet for game announcements. Game masters almost never respond to threads for suggestions or bug fixes, making it feel like posting any thread here is like talking to a wall.

When all of the online communities are community ran, it really feels like Gray Havens is putting in the bare minimum. It also doesn't help that when Nyxed joined the Arcade Discord about a year ago, it was abundantly made clear that there were zero plans for any official communication platform aside from the forums. It's honestly infuriating when the most communication we get is during the annual flash sale interview conducted by Legobuild. An interview conducted by a third party within unofficial means, containing information that is never posted by game masters ingame or on the forums.

It also hurts to see Puzzle Pirates seemingly get more attention from the company than Spiral Knights. While I am unqualified to talk about Puzzle Pirates, it doesn't help to see an actual developer being hired for Puzzle Pirates back in November, while, once again zero announcements being made for Spiral Knights regarding the direction of the game.

One somewhat positive example of communication however is the time when feedback for the Vault update was being collected on the Arcade Discord. While it was cool to know that players thoughts and feelings on the Vault update were being collected, it was somewhat frustrating afterwards seeing no response or announcement from Gray Havens once the period ended. Something simple like "Thanks for the feedback everyone! We're going to be reviewing it now" would be very nice instead of the channel closing with no statements at all. For all we know, all of the feedback provided wasn't read by anyone was instead chucked into the trash can.

There seems to be a general trend that the community has definitely noticed. Gray Havens only seem to respond to us when there's large community outrage. Flashback to the last Auction House update, in which TLDR, all outbid notices were temporarily funnelled to your mail. While this update definitely had good intentions and was certainly worked on, it was released with zero feedback from the community. Almost nobody asked for it. The community was spurred into outrage, and as a result, the update was rolled back. It also doesn't help that more pressing issues at the time like Tier 4 Shadow Lair balancing were still in the game for much longer periods of time.

This was when Nyxed came back to the Arcade Discord server. This was one of the few genuine times we actually had a direct communication line with Gray Havens. It was good to hear something new instead of the usual "thanks, we passed this on" copy and paste response in the ticket system.

Fast forward in time to where we are today. Spurred again by outrage, pitchforks and fire, only then does Gray Havens actually respond to the community. While I believe Knightlauncher itself is ok, I understand why the UCP was DMCA'd, but it's not my expertise to take about that. It's beside my point. Prior to this, the community had about zero idea about Gray Haven's stance on mod usage. While videos of how to install Knightlauncher on YouTube were struck down, the community felt very uneasy as we were unsure what would happen next. Would players get banned for using the launcher? Does manually patching 64 bit java count as modding? A simple announcement would help alleviate this, but instead, we were left in the dark once again.

I find it appalling that an announcement made by some third party individual has been 10x more exciting than the actual in-game celebration event itself, an event celebrating A DECADE of the game being out.

This simple lack of any communication, transparency combined with a complete unwillingness to properly communicate with the community has resulted in the dumpster fire that's burning right now. While other game companies put out Reddit Threads, update videos, roadplans and other communication posts, Gray Havens hasn't put out anything close to them.

We love this game so much. For the past ten years, we've grinded, made friends, made amazing fanart, costumes, community events, created fond memories and guilds and much, much more. It's hard to put in words how much this game has done for so many people, and we genuinely care about it. We wouldn't be here if we didn't. We want others and friends to experience what we have experienced. But when the game is being treated this way and has been for years, its hard to ignore the problems.

Please Gray Havens, please communicate with us. It's clear the the old hands off approach backfires hard, and we only want the best for this game.

EDIT: grammar lol

this DMCA case kinda reminds me of how Ferrari handles protection of their brand. it is completely fair, if a little bit cold and impersonal. But hey, that's business.

the SK community is attempting an emotional appeal, which doesn't work in the business world. Grey Havens is standing by their fair but cold decision to file DMCA claim, and may have punished the player a bit too harshly. We are at a stalemate.

I'd like to suggest an alternate solution, inspired by the recent GTA loading time patch (awesome story btw):

1) consider unbanning the player in question, especially if they complied to the DMCA terms (perhaps temp ban - I understand the need to ban so people take the ToS seriously)

2) send the player a cool gift and message of gratitude for fixing the bugs (a la Rockstar Games style, but maybe a mixmaster instead of $10k?)

3) work with the player to incorporate only the Grey Havens-approved improvements into the SK client, and legally acquire ownership of the player's work with their IP

4) replace all compounds in T3 gates with arenas

Hopefully this would result in a win-win for both the SK community and Grey Havens. I've never used this player's custom application, but a lot of people say it is a great performance enhancement. If it benefits people and their ability to enjoy the game (and makes an otherwise unplayable experience playable) I'd say fuse it with the SK client Dragonball style

difficult times and difficult decisions for sure, but that's life. good luck to all parties involved, hopefully this chapter ends on a good note

I figure it's not a bad idea to weigh in on this situation. Going to bed at 3am when it was starting and then waking up to a disaster on The Arcade (Discord) has had me on edge pretty much all day. I can't imagine what it's like over there actually behind the scenes, but I don't imagine it's very upbeat.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the biggest issue we as a community face is an absolute lack of communication. I recognize that frequent communication isn't always easy, and isn't always necessary, but periodic checks with the community is a necessary part of keeping the good faith of the community. Transparency is the next big requirement. Without transparency and communication, the community will speculate and rile themselves up, making things up along the way or digging up information that we don't have, usually coming across information that is not too good to be spreading around (ie, when ex-developers left the company, and lining that up with update schedules).

When there is a lack of developer communication and transparency, it leaves a sort of power vacuum that community members get swept up into. The creator of Knight Launcher is one of these members who saw the frustrations of the community and found a way to solve them. Knight Launcher has helped so many users be able to actively play Spiral Knights, meanwhile the official releases seem more and more bloated and unstable.

Hosting a private Spiral Knights server is something I entirely understand being against the Terms of Service, especially since we've seen them with modifications time and time again (some of which are then released for profit too). Judging by the past actions, it's clear to see how Grey Havens would react to another private server.

But these other private servers were connected to people stealing assets for profit, not connected to a community member who has put many volunteer hours into diagnosing, finding fixes for, and spreading said fixes with the community. His work alone has brought many users back to play the game despite the horrible lag that has come from the aging engine and server issues. It's an understatement to say that he's one of the pillars keeping this game's community content, at least for the longlasting players who are the ones dealing with most of the issues that his project has fixed.

I've spent a bit too long on this page typing, but ultimately what I'm trying to get at is that we as the Spiral Knights community are used to, and expect, to be disappointed time and time again. We can accept that. A disappointing 10th anniversary is palatable (but not desired) when it's clear the people who are in direct contact with the community are at least trying to do something with the limited resources they have while also letting the community do their own things organically. What we didn't account for is to be disgusted by the ban of someone who has gained the community's trust through their words and actions.

What's ironic is that because the Knight Launcher folks have been transparent and communicate with their community members, anything that Grey Havens says is harder to take at face value. Grey Havens lost a lot of the community's trust, and we've been desperately wanting to have that trust back, but the silence is deafening, especially when it's rarely ever broken and hardly ever for something good.

I hope that this whole scenario can act as a sort of way for this trust to be rebuilt. When the community has trust in the game, they have no need to seek out the private servers that are well within Grey Havens' rights to shut down.

It really just hurts to see this all happen. The last time I had a feeling like this, it was right before it became public that SEGA was disbanding Three Rings. I'm willing to give it time to see how everything is handled, but I fear that without a proper official community manager we'll see this pattern repeat itself until the game is finally abandoned.

I love Spiral Knights and the community surrounding it, I love the memories I've shared on it with many of you over the years and I want to continue to do so with everyone else, seeing people quit and be hateful about this I can understand though I don't agree with it.

Being optimistic and factual is very important to me especially with relationships in this case the relationship between the community and Grey Havens, lets cut to it I think both Grey Havens and the person that was targeted by this DMCA takedown have both made mistakes but its important to try to mend this. At the end of the day both Grey Havens and Lucas care for this game which is important common ground and should be the a crucial part to take note of in all of this. I understand Grey Havens is a business defending their assets but they chose a hostile route that was not necessary. I get the concept of making an example but I feel it is also a very negative way to go about things especially in this instance. The line between "willing to work with players" and "setting an example" is to thin here. Lucas has gone out of his way to improve the game of Spiral Knights not for malicious intent which seems to be a misconception and please understand Grey Havens impatience with the slow nature of how you deal with the game is not malicious or at the very least not meant to be malicious. None of this has anything to do with personal gain and was solely in the interest of preservation not theft.

Hestia you mentioned that their is a possibility to give accounts a second chance and I hope you mentioned it because you whole heartedly believe that is an option in this case, this is not something Grey Havens or the community needs especially on this special day.

Please try to work together and look past misunderstandings that's all I ask for, thank you for your time.

You as a company single-handedly kept this game alive, we all appreciate this, it's as clear as day that we're all in favor of this game.
You also interact with the community at a moderate level in the game itself, we don't want this game to die off, we want it to grow, and we understand you have a very small team.

However

-The stigma you have unleashed upon yourselves with how you've handled your OWN community trying to help the best way they can, people are bored, people are leaving, and it's painful on many aspects, and this isn't entirely about the DCMA, this is about Spiral Knights as a MMO and community.
This all can easily be forgiven, but the choice is ultimately yours.

Three Rings Design and the original development team with Nick/Geordie/Ian/Harry Mack and even extending out to wonderful GM's like Eurydice, we understand that they're not there anymore, but they were passionate about their creation and celebrated milestones years ago as the game grew, pushing as many updates as possible and always planning special projects within the game. This sense of pride and love and motivation is gone, you've left us hanging for such a long time, you've kept us in the dark, and treated us with secondary priority, we still stood here logging in and enjoying this seemingly hidden gem all the time, putting fourth time and money into it instead of playing any other game, we've been so excited to see what could change year by year, and fast-forward to the 10th anniversary, and it's nothing new and exciting.

Maybe because you aren't the original development team, you don't feel as passionate for this Intellectual property and should consider giving it to someone who will keep it alive, and expand it or take our hands as a community and make this game fair, fun again and grow it to new horizons. Most developers will put the hard work into a game to make it great again even if it's started out bare-bones basic and buggy, take an example from Sean Murray and his Dev team for No Man's Sky, Hello Games, they had so much negative reception and did a complete 180 and made it all better, I'm not saying you should be exactly like them and no ones forcing your hand, but you're a company and companies don't survive off simply letting things stagnate, you don't have that privilege or leniency to let the game sell itself.

If I ask all my employees at work, friends and family if they know what spiral knights is, I guarantee 1 out of all of them will know what this game is, we advertise for you as a community we introduce players to this game and if you can't keep it consistently fun and enjoyable for newcomers, what sort of outcome are we to expect? This won't last forever and while nothing lasts forever you have everyone trying to help you and revealed no plans to make it better for us, show us that you feel passionate about this game, show us you love your game, you cannot deny the truth of all of this, how do you think your player base would feel if the 10th anniversary was just adding rare items that existed before to the featured auctions and supply depot? Do you think we feel happy, and not an ounce of disappointment? We all deserve better than this, and I've acknowledged that you ultimately extended the game's life, but we're putting money into this, we're supporting YOU, why can't you support us back?

You aren't bad people by any means, you're human just as we are and there's a side to every story, a project so unique and diversified like this should not become wasted potential and memories.

Ok sure, let's watch this whole thing from GH's respective.

You are a company that obviously doesnt care about the game (SK), hasnt released even the simplest of bugfixes (even though the community has reported them multiple times and even shows you how to fix them), makes large amounts of money with every promo it releases, while server quality is terrible and ofcourse goes without saying not content has been released.

And now you see someone has created the ucp, which by itself fixes numerous bugs and helps with performance (like java x64, lag from particles etc), And even though you could talk to the creator and take down the ucp while you add these fixes to your own game, you just file a dmca. Why didnt you add the QoL changes to the game? Why didnt you accept help that Lucas offered for free to improve the game? Why dont you listen to the community?

guys rang is sad we are all doomed

I completely agree with @Theirillusion here. Grey Havens may not be fixing stuff, but the thing is they never promised to do anything game-changing. Someone messing with THEIR code is totally not the solution. They were kind (or not aware enough) to not charge against KnightLauncher earlier.

I appreciate the good intentions the Knightlauncher team had at the beginning, even if they were not on their right to do it. but what I have recently seen is childish and stupid. They should have known since the beginning that what they are doing is illegal and that having support from part of the community means nothing realistically speaking. The DMCA takedown was a natural thing and it actually arrived late.

You can encourage people to play the game and participate in activities they enjoy organising tournaments, contests, etc. Not giving them cheats to toy with that actually make the game worse in certain scenarios.

I was not even happy about the Lockdown rankings that I am running because I could never be sure if people was using your cheats as they were playing, to have more advantage than others

also another fyi while im thinking about it!! most people here aren't arguing the DMCA take down!! People are arguing how turbillion was banned even after complying with what GH asked for!! Also the false assumptions they made in this post and the take down!! people please get your information right before posting opinions!!

Excuse me, what? When?
There are hundreds of more than competent people shouting and screeching for a chance to help with the game.
I know the community can be childish and I know it's additional resources to spend on them, but why not let them?

A really big reason why people are tilted about this is that a player did something for the community and you acted against them. That would've been fine if for the last 5 years (give or take the time from the last big update) we'd seen player-made content be celebrated and implemented.

I really get the problems with the community, but please look at the positives. A community this attached to the game is a gold mine. Work with them. Or at least talk to them. Most of us feel like we've been screeching into the void with no response. Even a genuine "ok that's how things are" would be better than complete radio silence.

Raul, if he had shared the bug, it would have done more damage, as people would have exploited it, that's the problem.

"We are often willing to work with players who wish to add to the game, report issues, or create tools for the game. Such a relationship between the interested party and a game company requires that both sides honor the legal rights of the game company and act within the best interest of the entire game community. We have similar relationships with others and it's something we enjoy fostering in the interest of our community and to encourage creative growth."

I can recall a few times where people wanted to contribute to Spiral Knights on so many different topics and fixes already without even needing to either modify and use exploits or try to disassemble the client itself. The issue I've noticed for sure is that sometimes when suggestions are being heard through actual verbal interviews even, we don't get back a clear and sound "yes", "no", or a settled "maybe" on what we'd like relating to improvement for Spiral Knights sometimes. It ain't necessarily revolving just fixes for the game itself but as well as some nice additions that Game Masters/Grey Havens can get involved in too such as improvement and add-ons to the game/site, events that can happen on a weekly/monthly basis that involves the community outside of gameplay measurements, and genuinely wanting to have newer players to come and stick around for more interest in what's to come. I can for sure see that there are some good ideas to pitch out, but they either are never executed to hit the field or just fall off to the side for a while such as additional Forum Avatars and bringing back some monsters/additional areas (Giant Green Jelly area in Silme Gardens?).

There should be a better way to honestly communicate with one another such as more interviews and even talking with a select few about ideas and issues to be resolved. I still remember how several players were able to just hang out and talk with you all, about the love for the game even, yet nowadays it feels as though GMs just... Want to run away and/or not stick around to talk? It becomes even more apparent with some radio silence that players get through The Arcade Discord, forums, and even through email support tickets that could be potentially critical to help out with both the community and the team that runs Spiral Knights since things just become less resolved over time or stuck there to collect dust in the dark. It can create a negative atmosphere, in general, more than a positive just based on the communication approaches alone between the developers/Game Masters and the players/Knights. A select handful of Knights can reach out by other means but it still doesn't help that there are even loopholes involved just to reach out and talk, which shows how much of a communication barrier there is from time to time.

Outside of that, I do have some questions now that may or may not help clarify some issues that are and aren't involved with the ToS.

- When it comes to selling custom Spiral Knights merchandise to the public, not just custom artwork/commissions for other users, do you need permission first before doing so? Such as how someone is selling "Spiral Knights t-shirts, mousepads, mugs... for $" on Etsy as a quick example, and some users they do just that vs asking straight-up for permission.
- Should there ever be the case that an official "Community Manager" can ever be involved to help talk and communicate between players and the team? As Fiery-Diskgun and Fangel mentioned, it's quite important that we need one to help both create more together and demolish fewer bridges in-between.
- Is there a possibility that the community can get together and vote on a few polls for some ideas that the team of Grey Havens would like to bring into reality? I can get that the "Mystery Present" situation can be cute and nice, but polls that the community can contribute to can help with sticking to one plan/idea and help the player base feel at ease.

Woah, this is probably the most amount of activity I have seen on this forum, it even GOT the DOC back from the ether, so that is saying something (long time no see!)

I remember a long time ago, Fangel told me about my emotional issues and how I should come to terms with my anger, but I must ask, Fangel, have you come to terms with GH? Are they just as tone deaf as I have described all the way back in when trashure vaults were released?

GH is stuck in the past and in their own echo chamber, and no matter how many GH cheerleaders want to say GH is in the right, flipping this much of a bird to a decent chunk of what is left of your community is simply speaking, unwise. At least throw a warning beforehand, say, 'I know you want to fix our game but screw you, we are GH, we do whatever we want with our IP and there is not a thing you can do about it, so cease and desist or go play another game :)"

And like all things that got stuck in the past for too long, GH will die by its own rules, time and time again as history has demostrated.

Excuse me but I don't think it is kind of you to call a person an entity. Please just say "a person/a player".. Even if someone did something wrong, don't just call them that. It's very unrespectful.

why just not embrace the modding community that fixes your game instead of nuking it just because they are willing to enhance others experience in the game?
shit company smh
stop reading your terms of service
listen to what we are trying to say you all along

>But how exactly did you, Grey Havens, prove that Turbillion is Lucas' knight?

IP address? It's been a standard thing since... 2+ decades at this point. We really need to explain how you have a public IP when you log to anything on the internet? Games, forums, img, facebook, twitter, google, they all know your IP and where you live due to your IP and gps in your phone. When you file a ticket they know who you are. When you are "blackmailling" (from Lucas own word) a dev, they know who you are. They don't forget a day later.

>He didn't have the intention to gain money out of this

Having donation setup tells you otherwise. He did make money while developing this. Can we stop saying he didn't gain money out of this? He clearly did. Otherwise he wouldn't have a donation setup. Let's stay in reality.

>His ko-fi page was set up for people that really wanted to support the amazing work he did.

So he WAS getting money. It's a simple yes/no question. Did he receive money from the playerbase to work on this project that has IP to GH? Yes he did.

Pretty much shut down case.

P.S. It's the same thing when a teacher tells you copying from the internet is plagiarism and will result in 0. Just interpret an article and you are fine, don't copy/paste it. Pixelmon is a good exmeple of them just pulling Pokemon 3d Sprite, convert to mc and call it a day. Was DMCA, they made the sprite from scratch and now it's a popular pack on CurseForge. Work smart and with the flow not against the flow.

@Maerry

"I know what Lucas has done is wrong but he wanted to contribute to the game and you didn't help him to do so, so he had to do something illegal." - post 81

Here is the reason that it is illegal: you are not entitled to anyone else's property. Period. I feel like Judge Judy saying that.....

Also, if a player wants to contribute to the game, but the developers (who legally own the IP) don't agree, then the correct course of action is to cease and desist. Either that, or build a completely new game (Kpiral Snights?) while making sure not to infringe on SK's IP (which is what I'd to tbh, sounds like a fun project).

"Excuse me but I don't think it is kind of you to call a person an entity. Please just say "a person/a player".. Even if someone did something wrong, don't just call them that. It's very unrespectful." - post 78

Actually, "Entity" is short for "Legal Entity", which simply means an individual, corporation, business, etc. in the eyes of the law. It's just how businesses and governments around the world communicate. It may be strange and impersonal, but it is what it is.

With what you have done yesterday your intentions are 100% clear.

I wonder how little you will earn Wednesday when your automatic timer hits 0 and releases the diamond promo.

You may be ready to battle us and defend your property but you already lost the war.

EDIT: Don't forget to check out Kozma's Backpack on discord :)

>Uhm, you do realise that the so-called blackmailing happened months ago, right?

When someone blackmail I would put a special x to his name and maybe warn him in private about not doing it and keeping it private. Also warn the legal team about someone trying to blackmail the company and how they got their info.

Months ago, years ago... if that name would pop up I would know the detail of that person, what ticket they filed before.

You have no clue how it works on the other side, you don't even understand how a single threat will be flagged forever in your account. To have DMCA it means a document was built and a legal team had to look into it. It wasn't done by some random person, when you are dealing with the legal team, that's the last line of communication. All party involve tells you to pass THROUGH that legal team and to stop communicate with them. That's standard procedure.

So yeah, GH been pretty lenient and we don't know what happens behind the scene but I can guess because I've been studying and working in this field so I know how it works.

Having a DMCA thrown at your face isn't a simple task to just make a phone call. It takes days/weeks to build a case.

If I go on Apple website and start fixing stuff and sending them the fix, they will sue my ass. It's illegal to do that without permission from a bug bounty or a contract. I know this because I tried to look into infosec and whitehat but that's not for me as it is really, REALLY, hard to deal with companies.

I have credentials to work on certain thing, I have qualification to work on certain system. That's how it works. Whether you want to agree with reality or not is another topic. I'm just here to tell you how it works.

A criminal charge will stick with you: blackmailing a dev will stick with you. They will remember that person even without any further flag.

Plus I am 100% sure they do give warning. I've been warned before/temp ban for a week and know wayyyy too many ppl who got warned for it to not be a thing. Lucas is hiding a lot of stuff on purpose.

>We have similar relationships with others and it's something we enjoy fostering in the interest of our community and to encourage creative growth.

>However it became clear that would not be possible here when this particular entity attempted to extort our company for personal gain with actions that would negatively impact our community unless they were able to elevate their own personal position.

This part from Heista tells me Lucas isn't telling the full truth and was probably just pushing his own thing over and over again after getting told no. You can't just knock on people door until they open. They don't have to and you don't have to come in just because no one answered.

I've seen it way too many times that "one poor soul" was unjustifyingly banned and then a mod steps in publicly, show everything they did and the community go "eh... guess it was deserved". That's why I side most of the time with the company, specially when I have an extensive experience of said ban system.

Edit: Also sending a YT link to talk about law is probably the funniest thing ever. Site actual laws not a random Youtuber I never heard of. Actual source.

The Player and the Company have Rights and Duties.
Rights are what the player has available to use in the game, and Duties, which is following Terms of Service and alike.

Rights are what the company receives, be it money to keep the servers going, and well as profit so they can use that money to pay for the employees and keep the game afloat with new content, but it also has duties, which is provide said content, bug fixes and performance problems.

"bringing back some monsters/additional areas (Giant Green Jelly area in Silme Gardens?)"

I've been advocating for this for quite some time. All required triggers are still present and fully functional, they would just need to remove the wall and replace it with an energy gate. Something else I would be willing to help with given my knowledge of the scene format lol.

"I recommend finding out what "Titanium Warriors" is and how that ended up"

I'm not gonna pretend for a moment that what PlayN did with Titanium Warrior was right, but that's China for you. To the credit of the developer they attempted the license the assets legally multiple times, the posts are publicly available. Ultimately that project died due to lack of marketing, the server was a ghost town, but the idea of turning Spiral into a MOBA was interesting for what it was.

Ultimately I would like to see them be more open to vetted community submitted content from those familiar with the scene editor, a tool which is already public and open source. It would allow unique ideas to exist in a legally approved way. Heck I've had level ideas for years.

Happy 10th anniversary everyone! Lawyer speak and lack of transparency, just like old times. It feels like the shard bomb replacement fiasco was just yesterday...

free my mans lucas LLL

Man, I just logged in to say I cringed so much reading all the veterans defending GH actions just because they don't want the community to basically kill the game, so they would lose all their crap since there is no way to take it of the game now that steam trade is not supported. What a time to be alive!

I have a question for all of the modders out there.

Since I returned to the game, people have started entering Vanaduke's hitbox. At this point, it's a fairly widespread method, even people in public groups use it. I returned to SK during 2020 Winterfest, and before that, the last time I played was in 2019. In 2019, people were not using this strategy (at least not publicly), so it's fairly new.

Here's the question:

Was this Vanaduke strategy discovered because of a hitbox mod that displays enemy hitboxes? To me, as an outsider, that seems like a possibility... Perhaps somebody had a hitbox mod, and noticed that Vana's hitbox changes during the transition in/out of the mask phase.