Spiral Knights - DMCA Take Down

DMCA Take Down

113 replies [Last post]

Mon, 04/12/2021 - 11:03

#101

Quintinius-Vergnix

void

So many Grey Havens simps imao

Mon, 04/12/2021 - 13:20

#102

Brindibou

First I want to say thank you

First I want to say thank you for even making this post and being transparent about what happened. You really didn't have to considering the emails that the entity involved had shared and the responses that we've seen them make to GH staff. (i'm assuming there are more that they chose to not share considering the explanation that you guys are giving us).

After actually looking into what happened with all the information that's public it was extremely obvious that there was a lot of hidden context that wasn't being shown - I don't really understand why a majority of this community seems to think that being hostile and making threats is a way to get a point across or puts them on higher ground when all it does is make you look like the villain of the situation.

There are ways to go about expressing your frustration with GH that don't involve harassment campaigns and threats. Throwing a temper tantrum because you "did it nicely and it got nowhere" only gives GH further incentive to not take this community seriously. Regardless of what someone has done for the community that does not give them the right to act in the way that they acted in this situation. There is clearly A LOT that isn't being shown/discussed and the fact that people refuse to see that makes me lose a lot of faith in even wanting to try to have a level headed discussion about this.

Especially when you get labelled a "grey havens simp" for looking at it with a calm and rational mind and not an instant hate bias.

Thank you for keeping this game online, as much as i'd love to get new content updates and as much as I am disappointed in the way you guys handle a lot of things (disk guns being a great example) I am still grateful that I can still login and play this game. Please try to be more transparent in the future and communicate with us ignore the toxicity I promise you it's just a very loud minority and that not everyone in this community is filled with hate.

Mon, 04/12/2021 - 20:33

#103

Midnight-Dj

@Brindibou

Especially when you get labelled a "grey havens simp" for looking at it with a calm and rational mind and not an instant hate bias.

So you don't like being labelled...

I promise you it's just a very loud minority and that not everyone in this community is filled with hate.

But you are more than happy to label anyone who dislikes what GH done in this situation as toxic and filled with hate. labels like 'GH simps' and my personal favorite 'GH cheerleaders' exist for a reason you know. And I can assure you that we ARE NOT the minority, there are a lot of people who are not happy with how GH treated the community in recent years.

If we are going to talk about been biased, GH has perman-banned the perpetrator without giving him a chance to defend himself or at least speak his mind (which is suspicious to me). And judging from earlier posts, GH has been probably removing comments on this threads while leaving others intact. So who is been biased here?

Tue, 04/13/2021 - 07:59

#104

Number-One-God

> And judging from earlier posts, GH has been probably removing comments on this threads while leaving others intact. So who is been biased here?

There were no posts or threads deleted by Grey Havens that I known of that are constructive, good-faith, and will.
The posts that got deleted that I'm aware are either spam or don't go absolutely anywhere, and instead just go to the route of "Screw you, you're bad... now do this before I unistall the game!".

We do have sway, but only when conveyed in a way that shows true intent, and a desire to see the best for this game has to offer
Going "So many Grey Havens simps imao" doesn't do absolutely anything but improve the game's aspect and direction, and I think many agree with me.

Tue, 04/13/2021 - 09:05

#105

Deurus

GH pls dont forget keeping the feedback

Still, this treat keep open but there is no communication from grey heavens, however the mayority of comments from the players are worth to reading, others of course just set on one side, "grey heavens did the right thing, and everything is awesome " or "Burn GH cause they dont care about comunity", from my view GH are only milking the corpse of a cow.... and i know money is needed to keep the servers, but c'on, every one can see the intentions of keep adding expensive promos (wich items can reach over 50$) to a free game from decade who havent got an improvement long ago.

A wise action could be work together with lucas and the comunity to fix, improve and maybe adding content, or even adding reskins for items that are created by players, which are worth my money, instead of those boring and reused promos.

About the DMCA: we as comunity or even Lucas can not take your game, we all know you have the right of keep your property, however its really sad to see how you manage all this situation on which theres a lot Misunderstandings.

Tue, 04/13/2021 - 12:43

#106

Brindibou

@midnight-dj

The fact that you pulled a direct quote from my post and than put words in my mouth in the same sentence goes far enough in proving my point that I don't feel the need to provide you with an actual response.

As far as him "not having a chance to defend himself" that's not how this works. He has every opportunity too through the arcade discord but he CHOOSES not too. That alone is more suspicious than anything else you're insinuating. He CAN post the full email chains to disprove GH's claims but he's refusing not too presumably because there is something to hide.

Tue, 04/13/2021 - 14:45

#107

Midnight-Dj

@Brindibou

The fact that you pulled a direct quote from my post and than put words in my mouth

I didn't, I just quoted you without any modification and pointed out your hypocrisy. You don't like being labelled and then in the next paragraph label others as 'minority' and 'toxic'. I am just pointing out your double standard.

He has every opportunity too through the arcade discord but he CHOOSES not too.

Well, is Arcade discord ran by GH or the fans? If it is ran by the fans, what is the point of posting anything there? Because it won't solve anything. I wouldn't surprised that he is simply covering up his tracks and not have an entire army of GH simps tracking him down.

ORrrr, he isn't posting there because he realized that this DMCA means how little GH cared about his plea for communication so he simply cut his losses and moved on. No point spending days debating with GH cheerleaders on a third party website (dicord) when he can actually invest those effort into another game.

Tue, 04/13/2021 - 15:10

#108

Fishysh

fnd

>fixes how neut's damage bars used to mislead the users with a higher displayed value than what it has
>"threatened to cause harm to the majority of our players"

Wed, 04/14/2021 - 06:00

#109

Skepticraven

↑↑↓↓←→←→ba

@Brindibou
""He CAN post the full email chains to disprove GH's claims but he's refusing not too presumably because there is something to hide."

A lawyer would probably advise against that action. Public discourse is not where DMCA claims (and counter-claims) are settled.

@Midnight-Dj
"GH has perman-banned the perpetrator without giving him a chance to defend himself or at least speak his mind (which is suspicious to me)."

The first post outlines that "when this particular entity attempted to extort our company". That tells me communication existed. Puts on tinfoil hat. Also, GH doesn't need to give anyone a chance if they have evidence of breaking the TOS. Does anyone actually read TOS/EULAs to see how legally powerless users are?

I'm not part of the modding community in any game, but modding is clearly against SK's TOS. While GH hasn't specifically named who "the entity" was, others in the thread have. All the "mods" people bring up in this thread are "quality of life", which would be nice to integrate. I doubt these alone would really gain legal retaliation. I glanced at the repositories in question and as someone who has some experience with software licensing I'm just shaking my head at the "reverted changes". The defending posts in this thread completely miss the straw that broke the camels back - forking the client code for unofficial distribution. Why would this be a good thing? This is classic staging for MITM attack. All it takes is one malicious auto-update (which was also present in the aforementioned repository) to harvest all its user account data (username + password). Is this the "extortion" mentioned in the first post? Then again, this is all speculation on what may have gone down based on public knowledge.

Wed, 04/14/2021 - 07:26

#110

Blazeringtech

GH can do what they want

Sorry to say, this won't appease the ears of the rabid half of the community that is defending the "Entity" as we all call it. But Gray Haven reserves all the right to defend their ip, from unautharized modification that someone spread to the game modification tool that they also created, both against the TOS. "The entity" didn't have permission to make those modifications, and he certainly didn't have the right to spread it amongst the userbase. Not to mention the black mailing, it's just a very pathetic and immature display. It's a shame how he took such an approach to this, It doesn't matter how hard he tried and got denied, didn't give him a right to commit a felony. He could have been persistent, he could have argued better, but now as for the consequence of his actions we all suffer, he went too far and now other projects have to suffer/halt because of him and his rash decisions.

He is not a saint, don't defend him like he is, he handled this very poorly and in response he lashed out. He brought this DMCA on himself.

If you can improve the game in any way shape or form, and it's against the TOS then talk to the developers. If the developers don't listen or deny you, then don't publish it or resort to black mailing, it's that simple.

Instead, there is a much simpler solution to this than blackmail or illegal modification. It's to let the game die. Stop whaling for a game that hasnt fundementally changed for the better part of 10 years. What you people call "update" is laughable. And it makes me sad how people will defend stuff like the sleep stuff and slime casino when it adds nothing. New gear? Sure but it was already in the code. The only real new content SK had was OCH, and that was what, published in 2013? Grey Haven has made it painfully clear that they won't try any harder than reskins and loot boxes.

Stop whaling for a game in which half if not most of the players just stand around in haven, the ready room or their guildhall afk. Stop whaling for a game with developers whose only sole intention is to milk it dry. Yeah they may keep the servers running but at what cost? Laggy servers? Stuff like this? I'd rather have no pie than a rotting, stagnating one. It's better to have something new and fresh and full of life from the ashes than something that hasn't changed at all.

Just let the game die so we can move on and have something new, if we can at all. Gray Haven won't listen so there is no point in fighting them. The community can do something else, look at Toon Town Rewritten, hell even Club Penguin Rewritten. If you all long for content and updates, then make those yourself by being inspired by SK, make an entirely new SK inspired game or a spiritual successor. You have the means and the community and the passion to accomplish it. You have the talented people who can make something new that are dedicated to this game, but you don't have to be tied to it, it's not impossible to do. I've seen what the "Entity" and all others who are involved in that scene can do. SK is long gone, it's time to accept it. Don't let the game that is a shell of its former self lure you into a stockholm syndrome.

Thu, 04/15/2021 - 03:37

#111

Midnight-Dj

GH can't do whatever they want, they aren't god

@Skeptic

The first post outlines that "when this particular entity attempted to extort our company". That tells me communication existed.

Pardon me but where in that sentence did GH mention that they communicated with Lucas? They simply said, 'Someone tried to take something from us so we put a stop to it.' That could literally mean any thing.

GH doesn't need to give anyone a chance if they have evidence of breaking the TOS.

If they have evidence? Where are they? Where are the pictures of the mails exchanged? If there is no evidence, why are you so convinced that GH is in the right and Lucas actually broke ToS? I actually did some research (ie. google) and found a reddit thread made by someone called 'Lucas' and he is the self proclaimed creator of the knight launcher. And he talked about the event from his perspective, I won't link the thread here since GH might just ban me for evoking their divine wrath.

Now to abridge some of his statement, he stated that he 'got into contact' with GH and fixed some of the bugs with them, hope is high and all is going well until he posted a Utube video on how to install KL and it was DMCA'd by GH, I guess earning money on Utube counts as 'extortion'? Because he never mentioned forcing GH to do anything in his post. Now granted, I trust a redditor as far as I can throw them, but at least there is another side to this whole story. Whether you want to believe it is up to you. If this gets removed, well, let's just say perma-ban is nothing compared to vindication.

As a final trivia, the post is 180 days old as of this reply which is strange that only now GH brought it up... *puts on tinfoil hat*

Does anyone actually read TOS/EULAs to see how legally powerless users are?

I am pretty sure most people know that, and most GH detractors here aren't saying that GH is wrong, the ToS pretty much makes them unassailable, we know. But it is how GH choose to conduct themselves that drew my and many people's ire, the lack of transparency and lawyer speaks are still emblematic in a time when they should be listening to player feedback. Was the snubbing of Luca's work really necessary? Couldn't they have simply compromised? Lucas didn't even request monetary compensation (at least according to him), but oh well, who cares, I have probably wasted my time posting this as no one here will listen to me.

Thu, 04/15/2021 - 06:52

#112

Skepticraven

↑↑↓↓←→←→ba

@Midnight-Dj
"They simply said, 'Someone tried to take something from us so we put a stop to it.'"
Extortion is a form of theft that involves a form of threat. Last I checked, threats require communication. Of course "communication" here could have been "don't host our code" without any response...

"If they have evidence? Where are they?"
The repositories had a clear public log for me to see. Most DMCA notices, when filed, typically require action within 3 days. There was 1 major change 2 days after the first post in this thread. The change was a feature removed described as "from now on [client updates will] be available from our own servers".
This seems rather clear from the admin's first post in this thread: "It's against the Terms of Service... [to] attempt to redistribute our game client...".

Interestingly, there don't appear to be any recent changes removing the quality of life mods that people have discussed in this thread. While GH as a company probably can't say officially say those mods are okay, the fact that the DMCA action hasn't brought them down is a bit more telling on their stance. I can't comment on the YT videos you speak of, due to not seeing them.

"... and found a reddit thread..."
If it's the same reddit thread I found, I recommend re-reading the last 2 sentences. They definitely read like public admittance of non-compliance. Why ~180 days ago? Good question. I've never filed a DMCA claim, but maybe it takes that long when you're not google or amazon and are in the middle of a pandemic.

Thu, 04/15/2021 - 12:48

#113

Turbillion

My message

As much as I'd have liked to drop this message earlier I preferred to resolve this situation by myself, with Grey Havens and their support team privately.

I've seen a lot of messages in support of me, Knight Launcher, the Unofficial Community Patch (UCP) and everything around it in this thread, and while I appreciate it, I was the one at fault here. The UCP due to its very nature was infringing the game's Terms of Service. I knew that and that's exactly why I pulled it off the moment Grey Havens requested it. And I was also at fault when it comes to the private server. Grey Havens was just defending their Intellectual Property which I did infringe and so I apologized for my doings. I shouldn't have worked on it and so I'm no longer.

Huge thanks to Grey Havens for taking into consideration my apologies. While I know the vast majority of the community isn't much happy about their recent management, its worth noting that they are genuinely open to work stuff out, and at least to me, they have been very kind and responsive while debating this process.

Hopefully this message serves to give this discussion a good conclusion.

Regards,
Lucas.

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