DMCA Take Down

113 replies [Last post]
Hestia's picture
Hestia
Office Drone

We understand there is some concern about recent activities involving unauthorized use of assets. It's against the Terms of Service and the law to violate our copyrights and attempt to redistribute our game client or media assets, facilitate cheats/mods, or try to create a private server using our intellectual property.

This is not something we wanted to be dealing with this weekend during our celebrations or a holiday weekend. We, like you, would rather be spending the time in game having fun or with our families. Unfortunately it became clear that we needed to step in.

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.

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. Someone who acts with the community's best interest in mind would not have threatened to cause harm to the majority of our players.

For more information please review our Terms of Service: https://www.spiralknights.com/tos.xhtml

Please be aware that our forum guidelines are still in place. While we welcome feedback, personal attacks including those against our staff will not be allowed.

Yatez
.

"personal gain" "negative community impact"

Bomber-Kat's picture
Bomber-Kat
so while we're all here

I know this is a touchy topic but is this a bad time to ask cronus for frenzy/raging/storm rider mantles or plate mails in supply depot?

Skarmoleaf
>fixes how neut's damage bars

>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"

Gome-Xyz's picture
Gome-Xyz
Yes

Conveniently leave out the part where he sent multiple emails TELLING YOU HOW TO FIX A GAME CRASHING BUG before resorting to blackmail because you ignored the emails

Tell me it wasnt done with the best intent

Tell me it was done for "personal gain"

What a joke

Geomec's picture
Geomec
I'll take your word for it.

I really hope you were willing to work your community. You know that the connection between Grey Havens and the Spiral Knights community has grown sour. At the very least, could you hear our pleas so we can try to work together and improve communications? I'd love for us to have a healthy relationship. Please consider!

Spark-Of-Hope's picture
Spark-Of-Hope
I can understand the DMCA

It's understandable that a company has to take action when someone makes an unsanctioned modifications to their intellectual property, but the issue of being banned permanently is seen as going too far for some in the community. The whole idea of setting an example and so on.

Where's my Honor guard Gear for Spiral Knight's 10 birthday is my other issue to be honest.

Yatez
update

im still laughing at this

Gome-Xyz's picture
Gome-Xyz
And they keep REMOVING POSTS

And they keep REMOVING POSTS THAT CRITISIZE THEM RESPECTFULLY

Yatez
stop deleting comments that

stop deleting comments that express people's opinions

Rhagnarock
No means no

You should probably take a sex ed and learn about consent.

When one party does ignore you that means something. Blackmail and threatening is no way to go about this

>Conveniently leave out the part where he sent multiple emails TELLING YOU HOW TO FIX A GAME CRASHING BUG before resorting to blackmail because you ignored the emails

This? Apply it in any other scenario and most people would tell you to knock it off.

Also KL dev has a donation setup so they do make money off of SK content. Not that I don't want more content but ya know... there's a thing called "laws", might want to read up on that

Gome-Xyz's picture
Gome-Xyz
I get what you're trying to

I get what you're trying to say but it doesn't work here

he realised a vulnerability in the game and told them how to fix it

so what you're saying is he should have done nothing at all, and left that vulnerability to be exploited?

Skarmoleaf
Artists

People make money off of SK with comissions as well. Does that mean every single artist ought to be banned? Lmao no. Artists get paid to make content of SK. Lucas gets donations to keep up the servers that allowed for ucp and the gatemap viewer, both of which are now dead because of GH. And frankly it would've benefitted GH much more if they tried to implement some of his changes like the bugfixes or free camera rotation and shown that they work with their community instead of just saying they do. But instead they've just shown yet again how little they care about their community.

Rhagnarock
report and move on

>so what you're saying is he should have done nothing at all, and left that vulnerability to be exploited?

Report it and move on like I did plenty of time. I am the one who told OOO about the Winterfest glitch. Told em what it is and how to fix it.

If they didn't then ppl would know, was pretty cordial about the whole thing.

People said I was taking a ban bullet for everyone and I did not in the end.

Julaiwnl's picture
Julaiwnl
Pretty much

You said it, in your last sentence. He should've done exactly that, and told the developers about it. End of story. /shrug.

Legendarios's picture
Legendarios
Good job

You decided to get rid of what makes the game run without having to reclient every 10 minutes. Instead of directly contacting the man to contribute with him to adding these extremely useful resources into your game, you decided to file a DMCA claim and ban the guy even after he complied with you guys. I'm so glad I'm no longer spending a penny on this game and I hope everyone else follows suit. Happy 10th Anniversary, which ironically marks the death of this game.

Rhagnarock
>People make money off of SK

>People make money off of SK with comissions as well. Does that mean every single artist ought to be banned? Lmao no. Artists get paid to make content of SK.

That's not how DMCA works... you kinda have to know about that first hand to then know what can get you banned. Drawing a picture of Mario won't get you DMCA, making a whole game with Mario sprite will. It's nothing new.

It's like you are all kids and never gamed before? You do know Nintendo goes bonker on people trying to do what Lucas is doing? How is that different from GH?

I swear... people here have no clue how digital property works. It's baffling.

Gome-Xyz's picture
Gome-Xyz
Do I have to bonk you over

Do I have to bonk you over the head

He did exactly that m u l t i p l e t i m e s but there was no compliance, so it had to be done, ideally it should never have happened but its not like it didn't happen for a legitimate reason.

Yatez
^

for the post above gome

you obviously lack a whole lot of context on this situation. do some research before saying stuff like that. thanks.

Sinkillerj's picture
Sinkillerj
This is nothing new. For

This is nothing new. For years Spiral Knights, despite being cross platform by nature of being a Java game already, has not had a Linux release on Steam. I attempted to contact them multiple times over the years offering assistance with this (among other game issues) as an experienced Java developer and Linux user.

They ignore you or shoot you down when you offer help in a formal way, but when you post a viable solution on the forums it's gone in a right hurry.

You aren't protecting your community Grey Havens, you don't have a community because you force them away. You should be hiring or accepting the volunteer help not spewing out DMCA's on the 10th anniversary of the friggin game. You did not make this community, you adopted this community, and it has been done with this behavior for years.

Yatez
^

wow that was phrased really well

Calyos's picture
Calyos
Well, this escalated quickly

I'm just going to grab some popcorn and see the community argue with each other while the culprit stays silent, smh (and I don't mean Lucas in this situation in case anyone gets the bad idea of my words.)

Julaiwnl's picture
Julaiwnl
Everyone should stop being

Everyone should stop being passive aggressive, doesn't do any favours to anyone really. Does the amount of times he said it matter? No. If he's being ignored, that just shows the amount of love and passion a developer has for their game. If issues are not being fixed, just move on and play a different game.
Now, going out of your way to do some justice yourself and do this type of stuff, don't expect it to go well :x

Rhagnarock
SK chaos of 4/4

>you obviously lack a whole lot of context on this situation. do some research before saying stuff like that. thanks.

I been munching on popcorn watching the community implode the whole day tbh. I'm aware what's going on. I just don't sugar coat anything.

Gets DMCA for a mod > proceed to announce private server from GH property.

You can't just grab people intellectual property cause you feel like it.

Rakaraka's picture
Rakaraka
Dear Hestia

We're willing to work to make Spiral Knights a better game but the transparency and willingness to do so just isn't there. When we find game-breaking bugs like this that hurt the gameplay experience for other players and can be abused we want them fixed immediately. The Wings Crash glitch was one of them and it was abused to win auctions for cheap and ruin community events, you all showed no signs of wanting to fix it until Lucas did his thing.

The Unofficial Community Patch provides fixes for more bugs of this nature and provides further QoL improvements to the game to make it a better experience. While that falls under the same category of modding, the intent is the same as applying 64-bit java. It's going to make the experience better for those who use it. None of the changes in UCP provide any sort of cheating ability that give players an advantage over others.

I'm sure Lucas/Turbillion would be willing to work with you all to make UCP an official update to the game where everyone can reap its benefits, but you all have to be willing to work with us.

Rhagnarock
No means no

>Now, going out of your way to do some justice yourself and do this type of stuff, don't expect it to go well :x

Couldn't agree more and I'm baffled this community is so entitled about this whole ordeal. Like what happens in life when a woman (or man) turn them down? Do they blackmail them?

WTF kind of behavior is this.

Julaiwnl's picture
Julaiwnl
Uhm xD

> Couldn't agree more and I'm baffled this community is so entitled about this whole ordeal. Like what happens in life when a woman (or man) turn them down? Do they blackmail them?

Kinda unrelated but sure...? XD

Skarmoleaf
> "Gets DMCA for a mod >

> "Gets DMCA for a mod > proceed to announce private server from GH property."
The private server had been a long going project for years, and it had been hyped up for long before the DMCA. He wouldn't call off the announcement because of the DMCA and leave the community dissapointed. Don't twist what happened.

Gome-Xyz's picture
Gome-Xyz
Also reminder that the

Also reminder that the individual in question doesn't even have a chance to defend himself, so GH can write the narrative as they'd like.

Sweet-Hope's picture
Sweet-Hope

Hestia i can understand why GH want to protect their game and yes i agree on the part that other people can use the work of this "user" and add cheat into the server and harm the game, however i think doing the "nintendo stance" to your community its a heavy impact for your game we know you dont want to mess up with the fragile balance of your game

we know community its a ungrateful and childish one, but take on mind that it have been years not going to said "content update" but more of fixes in your game, lack of communication have lead us to believe your game dont have enough staff to do coding in your game. we dont have any news about your team and i dont say "whats in development" because we already got into our mind "we dont want to make promises" you made that clear that years ago.

but this should be a wake up call for you. GH team should asking themselves "why a player did this to the game?" and that answer its: We honestly dont what you can do for the game. can your team do the coding? its like the rumors says? about only nick can work with the game code and thats because he barely understood it because the engineer who code it left the team after sega adquisition?"

right now one guy just stand up and made many fixes that let your game keep a stable playerbase, i havent swichted to win10 because SK isnt that stable in win10, there some users in steam forums that cant even play the game until they try the 3rd party launcher. but what if someday someone make just another client for it own personal gain to get the cheat you fear so much? we wouldnt even know if you would be able to handle it if that sometime happen?

GH please, really PLEASE dont do the "nintendo thing" of harming someone who love so much your game and try to help it get better, hell i will be fine if you take out the custom textures, models and skins, but implement many of the fixes and let fix your own client so many users can enjoy what we did 10 years ago with your game.

i personally wouldnt threaten you will leave your game, i love it so much because for me its the perfect MMO no other MMO its like this one that rely on player skill rather than a RNG system like enchacement or whatever thing or meta builds. but being honest you should let know your commuinity if you are able to handle the game to code and fix many of the problems your community have been poiting for years.

seriously this should be your wakeup call

Sinkillerj's picture
Sinkillerj
Let's not forget that this

Let's not forget that this conversation is a little bit hypocritical:

Grey Havens:
Takes over game in the guise of maintaining it for the community.
Issues very little in the way of maintenance patches.
Adds endless PAID cosmetics.

Community Member:
Loves the game and it's community.
Issues long overdue patches and QOL.
Has an optional donation link that no one is forced to use.

Do you not see the problem here? Grey Havens if you really want the help reach out, show that you care about the game for more than profit, let us help you, and for the love of god stop trying to spin a narrative. I'm pissed about how you treated Lucas, make no mistake, but the situation still stands that I'd help you any day with issues like Steam Linux support if you would only accept it. Why? Because I care about this game.

Legendarios's picture
Legendarios
Covering Up All Lies And Deceit

"extort our company for personal gain"
Lucas never extorted your company for personal gain as Knight Launcher is a non profitable program that does nothing but optimize your already terribly optimized game that you don't want to even try to optimize.

"negatively impact the community"
The community, as you can clearly see, has nothing but good thoughts of Lucas, who has always been constantly working on updating UCP to allow everyone to run Spiral Knights as smoothly as possible. All you need to do is read any comments in this thread and that's proof enough.

"elevate their own personal position" "threatened to cause harm to the majority of our players"
Okay this is just a joke, he never threatened anyone. Not a single community member has ever been threatened by Lucas and I feel like you are disrespecting him just to cover your extremely flawed reasoning for doing this in the first place. Please stop spreading lies to the community, because it's not only disrespectful to him, but to us as well.

The "majority" of your players used Knight Launcher to run the game extremely efficiently, so this is just the 4th time that we have to hear a blatant lie in the same exact topic.

I am personally insulted that this post would decide to insult my friend without reason and honestly the fact is that you guys won't take anything to heart from your community that just wants you guys to understand that we want the game to be better, but you'll not for even a second consider anything from your community. Nothing but nonstop neglect from your general manager and above all else just old copy paste responses. Can you SERIOUSLY just listen to us for once and take what we say as something that betters your game? I honestly can't understand why you are incapable of doing something so simple.

Calyos's picture
Calyos
^

The GHs so called library of games is just a prison for IPs that they have attained rights of, they can shape the urn however they want with lies and made up reasons. By now the game is a cheap cashgrab that they profit off of thanks to the overpriced lootboxes that they put in at least twice a month. They won't listen no matter how much pressure you put onto them as so far, since GH took over, there was little to zero care about the game (if not absolute null) and the proof of that is the silence they maintain unless they get praised for something or a serious issue arises.

Yatez
^

love u leg lets go play genshin together into the sunset

Hestia's picture
Hestia
Office Drone
>>but the issue of being

>>but the issue of being banned permanently is seen as going too far for some in the community. The whole idea of setting an example and so on.<<

As with any violation of our TOS that results in a ban, if individuals who were banned related to this wish to request a review, they can do so by emailing support. We regularly remove bans from accounts to offer them a second chance if we believe they will adhere to our Terms of Service. Such requests generally take several days to review provided the player has sent in all the necessary information.

>>The private server had been a long going project for years, and it had been hyped up for long before the DMCA. He wouldn't call off the announcement because of the DMCA and leave the community dissapointed. Don't twist what happened.<<

Using our anniversary as a vehicle to announce your theft and reproduction of our game is not something any game company is going to allow. While we try to be lenient on many DMCA issues, this is an obvious line that cannot be crossed. We will protect our intellectual property rights from egregious misuse though all legal avenues we have available to us.

Eellmm
as much as i'd love to feed

as much as i'd love to feed into the mob mentality of chewing on GH's lifeless corpse, i gotta wonder why they'd try to deflect blame like that. I can understand how much of it is blame deflection and mindless brown-nosing, yet I'd still like to hear what they think extortion and threats are.

Irishespeon's picture
Irishespeon
>> As with any violation of

>> As with any violation of our TOS that results in a ban, if individuals who were banned related to this wish to request a review, they can do so by emailing support. We regularly remove bans from accounts to offer them a second chance if we believe they will adhere to our Terms of Service. Such requests generally take several days to review provided the player has sent in all the necessary information.

Why is Genolo still banned and he hasn't received a response in several months then? Stop lying.

Magyar-Lovag
If I seen this before

Yeah. I remember same thing happened with Battlefield heroes. Rising hub got shut down like what five times ? Don't worry now they have close to one hundred thousand registered players. Same thing going to happen here, If there is no will for work. Have some decency for the dead, don't make money out of it.

I love this game, and this day was filled with anger (not without reason) Hope yall can keep your word and actualy listen to your community. Trying to avoid things like this would be great for each sides. But the best thing would have been if it wouldn't started in the first place.

“Now we live in fairyland. The only lightly disappointing thing about this land is that it is smaller than the real world has ever been.”

Scootsy's picture
Scootsy
posting in not ebic bread

GH are you seriously trying to spin it like this? This whole fiasco sure reminds me of Nintendo's frowning disapproval of the Super Smash Bros. Melee competitive community and the fairly recent DMCA of the Slippi program, Fizzi is carrying the Melee community on his back right now just as Lucas is carrying the SK community on his. Really disappointing that you choose not to work with him to improve this incredible work of art I have nearly 2k hours in, hope the backlash you receive here gets his ban reversed at least but I have strong doubts after hearing the tone of the OP. #FreeLucas

Legendarios's picture
Legendarios
Covering Up More Lies And Deceit

"Such requests generally take several days to review provided the player has sent in all the necessary information."
Several days is more like several months, as nobody in GH wants to even do their jobs. Plenty of players that I know have been banned for months while waiting for an official unban response in their emails. While game masters always respond to their support tickets, they just never like to give legitimate updates on their emails, which is even more annoying for these unban appeals. It literally makes me have to send a support ticket to them to remind them of the emails, only to be responded with their copy paste responses of "we do not discuss unban appeals of other players". Tell us something we don't know, GH.

Sinkillerj's picture
Sinkillerj
Three Rings was a game

Three Rings was a game company, Monomi Park is a game company, you are about as much of a game company as modern Atari, it's nothing but IP and profit with you. How are we supposed to take this other than you being concerned about your money printer being less efficient? If you were worried about that you should have stopped driving your community away.

Rakaraka's picture
Rakaraka
@Hestia

I'm very curious about your thoughts on Knightlauncher then. I think we tried to ask you all before during the GM Interview, but we got no such answers.

Geomec's picture
Geomec
Hestia

Lucas isn't some wicked cyber criminal. Knight Launcher isn't theft. Grey Havens, please work with your community and talk to us instead of DMCA takedowns and forum censorship. Please reach out to your community.

Choridia's picture
Choridia
Well, might join this drama as well...

I might not be the person to talk here, really. I abandoned this ship like... so long ago, probably soon after last content update. But seeing this post, with such a blatant attempt to excuse yourself?

Grey Haven. I do know that this company does have members of devteam that were originally part of Three Rings. And I heard plenty about Lucas, despite always avoiding usage of third-party tools. So here, I'd like to ask you a few questions when we consider if your DCMA caused any harm.

When was the last Quality of Life major update?

When was the last serious bug fix?

When was the last optimisation patch?

When was the last content update?

Did you fix memory leaks?

Was your game optimised for modern hardware? High-end CPUs, better usage of memory beyond 2Gb etc? And well... maybe updating your Steam distribution with newer version of Java?

Are you ever going to remove Nick Popovich from credits, since he's long gone from your company and especially never worked for Grey Haven?

When will you finally re-code Sealed Sword and Autogun lines charge projectiles spawning a step behind the knight, and making them spawn in front instead, so they don't just die in walls? And for that part, actually a lot of other weapons with projectiles in charge? Something that was asked for since release but apparently putting a charge a step further from model is too much of a chore even back when the game was 1-2 years old.

For what I see, this game currently runs only on lootboxes with vanity and seasonal events that don't even receive any major makeover on next year. Since Three Rings stopped existing and being part of SEGA, can Grey Haven say that there was any major contribution to the game aside from just having servers online and milking the remaining players who were still trying to enjoy the game?
Do you not feel it that you're basically shooting yourself in a leg and then put a blame on community, with which a company as a whole doesn't really have the best relationship, despite community members still having their trust in more active GMs, all while people in game itself have to think of new ways to entertain themselves as you long since stopped putting any effort into in-game entertainment?

Rhagnarock
theft... "borrowing"?

>Lucas isn't some wicked cyber criminal. Knight Launcher isn't theft.

They are literally making a private server for the game with all of it's asset. That's theft lol

Rakaraka's picture
Rakaraka
Knightlauncher

@Rhagnarock -
Knightlauncher has nothing to do with private servers. Knightlauncher is simply a tool that makes installing 64-bit easier and a helpful tool for modders. Knightlauncher was programmed completely from scratch and wasn't stolen from anyone.

Grey Havens refused to give their thoughts on the tool previously and no one was banned for using it, but I think we need to know what they think about it.

Calyos's picture
Calyos
^

That's a valid statement.

Geo-Guard's picture
Geo-Guard
sad state of GH

for how much long will you laugh at us we'll see
we asked for bugfixes/updates
nothing
so we made them ourselves from scratch i don't see a problem here

Flowchart's picture
Flowchart
Hestia is Bestia

Are you ever going to remove Nick Popovich from credits, since he's long gone from your company and especially never worked for Grey Haven?

This shouldn't be done, he (and the others) did work on the game so he deserves credit on it even if he isn't working on it currently

Night-Of-Zero
Sorry

Sorry GH, but I've lost faith in you. The UCP fixed long-running issues in the game, which you were given the explanation on how to fix. You say you are willing to work with the community, but turn away mods and the patch developed by them. Everything has to be on your terms, but you're unwilling to set reasonable terms in the first place. There's a dedicated community here that is making bugfixes and mods. It's sad to see you spit in their face.

Choridia's picture
Choridia
@Flowchart

While you might have a point, I don't ask for removing any mention of Nick. However, he is no longer lead designer, where is absolutely no mention of new workers, he is not associated with Grey Haven and thus I personally believe that they shouldn't sully his name with how poorly they treat his child.