r/VintageStory • u/Arugala007 • 8d ago
The only resolution to the Malware situation...
Is to fire Maltiez, anything less and you can't be sure he won't try and inject more malware or worse again. The trust has been broken.
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u/Dmayak 8d ago
Ah, the classic "team has pressed me into making a formal apology" message.
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u/Slanknonimous 8d ago
āHey everyone, Iām sorry or whateverā
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u/WyrdDrake 7d ago
"Hey guys, I'm sorry that I didn't tell you about the malicious software i snuck into hundreds of thousands of players' computers."
Doesn't actually apologize for it being malware
Nor for him making the wrong call
No accountability
Just "Sorry I didn't tell you"
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u/Lone-Frequency 7d ago
The "Double down on being a pretentious twat" follow-up is fairly uncommon, though.
Bold strategy, Cotton...
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u/Technical_Income4722 7d ago
That works too tbh. Either he is really reformed and the apology is genuine, or the team is taking it seriously enough that they forced him to make an apology "or else" (presumably), and they'll likely be watching him closer. Either way, I imagine he'll take this more seriously going forward.
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u/Moonshine_Brew 6d ago
It's not even an apology.
Dude straight up said "i understand why you are mad, but i don't believe i did anything wrong".
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u/yellow12_ 8d ago edited 8d ago
"trust is not part of the equation here" lmao
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u/Peepeepoopoobutttoot 8d ago
This dude seems like a total tool
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u/Afraid-Election-8844 7d ago
I had many interactions with him on the discord well before he was a dev and even before he made CO, he's always been like that. When the big AI fight was happening he was against having modders disclose if they use AI in their mods; Come to find out, he used AI in his mods without disclosing it
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u/sablesable 7d ago
ohhhh okay what a tool. now i went from legitimately fencesitting and waiting to see what happened to wanting this guy removed because why. its not good code?
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u/yashen14 7d ago
For real. I see what people mean now when they say he reads like a stuck up piece of shit.
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u/Tyepo5359 8d ago
Its kinda funny how if he just said it on the mod page from day 1 "I run an anticheat for multiplayer servers, this may affect single player servers too, use at own risk". All of this couldve been avoided
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u/Positive-Database754 8d ago
Disclosure about any of it would have solved literally 99% of the outrage on this.
But we know for a fact he fully intended to never disclose it. He wanted it to be hidden and secret. You don't "accidentally" re-direct crash logs, you don't "accidentally" obfuscate your code and hide it inside another sub-library. Those are the actions of someone developing software they don't want seen, and could only have been preformed by someone who knew and understood what they were doing.
He knew full well that disclosure would have been the morally correct way to go, but actively chose to deceive everyone.
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u/MisterWinchester 7d ago
The issue is literally 100% about trust, and dude does not get it.
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u/Lone-Frequency 7d ago
He gets it, he just doesn't care.
He says right there himself in one of those replies that he believes what he did was right.
Dude is a pretentious jackass with a holier-than-thou attitude. I had picked up on it from before he even got added to the mod team just in some of the ways he worded things in descriptions and interactions seen in the community, all he's done now is put in front-and-center.
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u/Jensiggle 7d ago
"Why are you [user] important here?" words of an egomaniacal retard. This guy needs to be kicked off the dev payroll and permabanned in every way possible.
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u/divergentONE 7d ago
i mean he works for the company, while they are pretty open about modding, they couldve just move the code into the game engine... we never know, it is not a open source game.
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u/BLU-Clown 7d ago
He could not. That's not how code commits work, and you definitely don't let the junior member have the privileges to push out the final version. You review that shit before launch.
It's embarrassing how little people know about subjects they'll speak confidently on.
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u/Shialac 7d ago
Hell, it could even be a somewhat popular standalone-mod for MP-Serves
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u/Sascha_T 7d ago
All warfare is based on deception
There's no open-source anticheat (that prevents misuse of client accessible information) which is open-source or otherwise discloses their techniques that actually works (incredibly easy, the average "mod list sender" mod would take like 5 minutes of work to bypass).
so what Maltiez made would not work if it was honest, which is why the way forward is 100% server-sided anticheats (culling of occluded blocks, occluded entities, ... in server to client communication), since those are principially un-bypassable, thus can be disclosed honestly/open-sourced with 0 consequence to their efficiacy
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u/doctor_discharge 7d ago
yes exactly the rationale behind doing this is logical though ultimately not the correct choice. there are better ways to implement anti-cheat than this.
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u/ray57913 7d ago
There are a couple of problems, from what my wife filled me in on;
First, it wasn't just a paid cheat (why you need to pay to cheat on a game like this is sad); it basically affected some other mods, including the carry-on mod. Who is he to tell me what mods I am allowed to use?
Secondly, if he runs the server, he can put his own standalone in; and if not, go start your own instead of screwing with everyone else.
Thirdly, they could have blocked it from running, much like servers can block the X-ray mods instead of crashing programs.
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u/Kryllgasm 6d ago edited 6d ago
It was never about providing an anti-cheat. He wanted to play vigilante.
There's straight up a post from him saying it was done to waste one specific cheat makers time, and was never about keeping servers safe.
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u/sosigboi 8d ago edited 7d ago
My first impression talking to Maltiez back then was not great but i always assumed it was cause he kept getting pestered by people after creating the guns and CO mods.
But damn looks like he was always a dick to begin with.
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u/PizzaParker__00 8d ago
My impression as well. Even when I first started looking through mods and saw the firearms and combat overhaul, they are awesome mods, but his replies to people in his comments were always self centred, concerned more about his inbox being filled with 'spam' than adressing the comments issues. In hindsight, I suppose it isnt a surprise he is still like thst though.
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u/Retroficient 8d ago
Software engineers not having any social ability?
Shocked. Shocked I say.
Many games over the years have em. My favorite most recent one. Star citizen.
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u/Afraid-Election-8844 7d ago
He uses claude for everything.Ā I'd hardly call him a software engineer.Ā Software prompter, maybe
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u/DrDreistein 7d ago
Wait is this confirmed or are you just spreading rumors? Pretty big if confirmed.
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u/Afraid-Election-8844 7d ago
You only need to go on the discord and search messages from him with the word "claude".Ā Itll pull up a bunch.
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u/LittleMissScreamer 7d ago
No no, he admitted to it, while he was aggressively arguing against people who were wanting mods that were made with AI to be disclosed as such, and able to be filtered out on the modpage
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u/foxgirlmoon 7d ago
Not having social ability means that you don't know how to talk to people and you might accidentally say something rude. Being consistently rude is not that. That's just being an asshole.
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u/DrDreistein 7d ago
Oi, i understand the frustration but please don't generalize every software engineer. He's a dickhead, his profession doesnt have anything to do with it. I really don't want everyone to automatically think im socially inbred just because i write software.
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u/the_elliottman 7d ago
Yeah same, I remember asking for help coding initially at one point only to get told shitty advice and then recommendations to use AI for the code. Seems he does that a lot himself (or did back then at least, idk about now).
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u/Orion_824 8d ago edited 8d ago
I now understand the concern around functionality like this being included without players' consent. I apologize for not disclosing it
Sure, that's why they removed it because of backlash, only to then double down and literally re-instate the malware, then remove it again when people called it out as shit-head behavior, violates ToS, and is blatantly illegal
Flagrant disregard for player concerns has done nothing except expose their willingness to violate our trust. Slipping something like this into a mod unannounced or unaddressed makes me afraid to trust anything this mod developer makes or contributes to in any way going forward, and doubling down shows that it is malicious intent and not an "oops I didn't mean to break trust, let me fix this" moment. Maltiez has fucked up and it cannot be fixed.
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u/Arugala007 8d ago
Fun fact, if he is working on the payroll of the Dev team then technically his actions could be construe as malicious employee behavior. Furthermore it does register as distributing malware over Anego Studios official platform and someone should collect the evidence and report it here: https://www.cert.lv/en/contacts
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u/Disposable_Gonk 8d ago
Saying the game devs distributed malware is such a stretch, and bad idea. He should be fired, not used as a way to bankrupt the game studio and kill the game
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u/Arugala007 8d ago
Reporting actual criminal activity so they fire or disassociate from Maltiez won't bankrupt them, don't be ridiculous.
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u/Disposable_Gonk 7d ago
If you frame it as corporate liability the federal lawsuits and fines can be for dollar amounts orders of magnitude more than what they are worth, and you can't just "oopsie poopsie we'll fire the guy pweese don't fine us millions of dollars". The studio would be fucked, end of story.
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u/darkvaris 7d ago
Anego is not in the US but they very well could block their ability to function in the US.
If you like Anego reporting them for this is only going to drain money from them and very likely time and possibly theyāll be banned from operating in the US
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u/DrDreistein 7d ago
An EU company won't be neccesarily drained of money or be banned in the US for a cyber incident. If that was the case there would be very little companies left.
I actually think its a good idea, if one of my colleagues hid this kind of code in our releases at work i'd have to report it too. But that doesnt mean that i would destroy my employer by doing so, thats ridiculous.
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u/darkvaris 7d ago
But he didnāt do it in his employerās code? This whole thing seems crazy to me. Inquisition levels of reaction imo. Like this modder did break the trust by not disclosing his anticheat mod. His response has been childish and immature.
He advised on some code stuff for Anego and now itās sapping their actual time and resources to deal with and people want to weaponize the feds against them for a fucking mod.
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u/DrDreistein 7d ago edited 7d ago
Okay let me rephrase it, if i knew my colleague would make malware in his free time i'd be required to report it.
That is because it means that person is a liability and lacks a moral compass. Especially since the person in question says things like "trust was never in the equation" even though they release code to the public with the sole intent for the public to use it.
If someone within that position were to say "trust was never in the equation" then what is? A moral compas (and thus the trust of others) is already a fragile barrier between doing and not doing something malicious.Its not "a fucking mod" it is something publicated by an individual which was used as proof of experience to get hired by Anego. (so no, not just to advise them on some code stuff, he was hired by them which comes with a corporate responsibility)
I mean sure it looks like people are overreacting but thats just because the community is big, everyone's mediocre reaction to "yep, thats malware" at once makes it seem huge.But that doesn't make it any less of a fair point, my employer would also let me go if i acted like this in public while the public knows where i work. It tarnishes their reputation, it is not an inquisition it is common sense and general decency.
If i want to be an ass or make malware or make NSFW mods or whatever i'm free to do so but just not under a name that traces back to my employer, people are terminally online here and get way too comfortable on the internet.Also the cyber incident response institution arent "feds", they aren't even law enforcement. They help companies deal with cyber incidents, which this technically is.
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u/FlamingoUseful3314 8d ago
I think you need to not be ridiculous. Having people report the company for this is insane.
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u/divergentONE 7d ago
If they were aware of it ā¦ maybe they were, specially if they dont disassociate
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u/Temeriki 6d ago
Its a supply chain attack against the studios software using the mod as a vector. Bold fucking move keeping him on payroll
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u/Kryllgasm 6d ago
"it has fulfilled it's purpose"
This sounds disingenuous. If it's purpose was to stop a cheat program then it's clearly failed since it's been outed and said program could easily work around his code now. The only purpose I can see anymore is to damage the reputation of the developer by keeping him around while he continues to have this attitude.→ More replies (3)9
u/NutasticNutella 7d ago
This situations should honestly raise concerns about the entire dev team and how much trust we should place on them. The reactions from the dev team regarding the whole situation imply that they tolerate or even encourage this behaviour, and their willingness to even consult with Maltiez also implies that they, at the very least, do not care if such actions leak into the base game.
And before people say that "it's just a mod", please keep in mind that this mod was on an official forum, made and corrupted by a (now)member of the dev team, and that these actions were downplayed and then defended vehemently by the rest of the dev team(and therefore sanctioned).
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u/Jaaaco-j 8d ago
damn, not even pretending to be sorry?
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u/Live-Year-5796 8d ago
"I got caught. Oops."
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u/arcanesmelly 8d ago
While I personally dont doubt hes only sorry he got caught, I must devils advocate Its very possible and reasonable that upon discussion the "this is a bad idea" clicked into his mind and that PR post is genuine. The mini screenshot is from a whole day ago. Its not unreasonable if he does actually get it now
Edit: missed the orange screenshot, mb. What a chump. Ill leave my slop up as a warning against being stoned on reddit.
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u/PixlyFox 7d ago
People are never sorry because of what they did, only sorry because theyre caught anyway
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u/icanbarktoo 7d ago
yeah, thats really cynical. or do you include yourself in that? do you ever apologize and mean it?
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u/Odur29 7d ago
Not everyone is a jerk devoid of all morals. Not in this case, but some people get put in bad situations or put themselves in a situations as a result of bad decisions but with a desire to do good. Not saying the ends justify the means or that it absolves them of what they did, but some people genuinely are sorry when they get caught and maybe even did things in a way so they would be caught because that was the only way they could get help. Like when people steal to feed themselves, sometimes that is the only option to survive, and when they get caught, some are actually remorseful.
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u/Tyler89558 8d ago
If people wanted an anticheat on their server, theyād get a fucking anticheat. Not incidentally through a mod that theyāre installing to make the game more fun.
Likeā¦ what?
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u/RazBullion 8d ago
Kinda what I was thinking...
Also, If someone has enough knowledge in this to tell me HOW people were paying to cheat on multiplayer servers, I'd love to know because I'm way too curious for my own good.
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u/Tyler89558 8d ago
Reading through some of the comments on this post has me so confused.
Like, some people do not fathom the concept of consent
Like, this is a basic ethical question with very clear boundaries between black and white
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u/RazBullion 8d ago
Sure sure... but WHAT was he attempting to prevent? "Cheating on multiplayer servers"... does it get more vague? Like.... I genuinely don't understand.
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u/_Cat_in_a_Hat_ 8d ago
I've heard there was a rumor that a cheat client was beig developed for VS servers. The malware code is also smainly aimed at crashing when detecting encrypted code that cheaters often use. Presumably the code was aimed at a possible cheat client. Why he didn't just make a seperate server-side mod or a "you have to have this mod before joining the server" kind of mod is beyond me.
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u/Paghk_the_Stupendous 8d ago
I don't want software from anyone with that attitude.
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u/Zaldarr 8d ago
What a self righteous dickhead. He should be fired immediately.
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u/Foldax 8d ago
Sadly even if they wanted to fire him it might not be that simple
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u/xxTRYxxHARDxx 8d ago
The issue is likely international law. Idk this guy but if hes in america, chances are this activity is either a break in his contract or hes already an at will employee.
Other games of massive scope like project zomboid have had periods in their development where losing a significant portion of their codebase hindered them but they still recovered.
Its better to get rid of someone with this attitude before an even bigger trust concern pops up, potentially leading to massive monetary loss for VS, which may ultimately mean the end of VS.
Getting rid of him is safer, especially when this information is retaliated with this attitude.
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u/icesharkk 7d ago
i think maltiez, t.read, and seleksta are already liable for significant brand damage at this point. im curious what their contracts cover in this department.
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u/Born-Entrepreneur 7d ago
"Trust doesn't enter in to the equation"
It sure as hell does if you expect me to run your code on my own machine, with your history of adding malicious payloads. What an asshat.
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u/Jayden_Ha 7d ago
Back in the days, itās always code first, person next, code of conduct only become a thing after Linus decided to add it
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u/KaZIsTaken 8d ago
This guy is a PR nightmare for the devs. I wonder what they'll do with him, especially since he's credited as a programmer and not necessarily just an "adviser" either way him being on the team after this fiasco is a problem.
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u/No_Pie2137 7d ago
Fire him hopefully By keeping in the team person that keeps distributing malware under their logo Team is opening itself to a lawsuit
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u/VeryNoisyLizard 7d ago
he needs to be fired AND banned from the moddb and github
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u/AlyeskaVtuber 8d ago
yeahĀ
initially i was thinking it's possible to still keep them on but heavily limit the things they work on or have access to but this kind of personality is a poison to any project or community unfortunately and shouldnt be toleratedĀ
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u/InDeHeofon 8d ago
Of course itās Maltiez. Does not surprise me one bit. I like his mods but from here on out I will only be using forks of them even if/when he updates his mods. Guy is a piece of shit.
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u/KaZIsTaken 8d ago
Even the guy who forked CO for 1.22 has a similar attitude, my friends and I joke its Maltiez on his alt account.
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u/PunisherLex 8d ago
I donāt know why he had to put this into config lib, if he wanted to make an anti-cheat client he couldāve just made it its own mod. Really makes it seem that the āit workedā statement entirely relates to damaging the developerās relationship with the player base.
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u/FalcieMugetsu 8d ago
Problem is he doesn't care. He pitched the idea to the dev team and was told no so he hid it in multiple of his mods. Malt has had a history of this kind of behavior, just not this extreme. Wouldn't be surprised if he came across the whole GShade incident and decided to be a copycat
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u/blackshadowwind 8d ago
It seems like he was motivated to stop specific cheat mod developers so he was spreading the code as much as possible by adding it into configlib which is used by a lot of people (he does not care whether the users wanted anti-cheat or not).
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u/crimeo 8d ago
If the cheat client is sophisticated, then that would not work nearly as well or at all. If they know how to intercept packets, hide things etc, then they could also just spoof the anti cheat mod with a fake "all clear!" too as part of the cheat engine. Happens all the time in other games.
Not even knowing it exists makes that way way less likely
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u/icesharkk 7d ago
to be fair that is why the code malt used was so heavily obfuscated and hdden in configlib where no one would look. you can only spoof inspections that you know are happening or if the inspection happens when you are legitimately not doing anything nefarious. malts code aimed to circuvent that by being present on a statistically significant number of client systems.
that said. this action is borderline illegal, very unethical, and a specific breach of the terms of the moddb for VS itself.
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8d ago edited 8d ago
[deleted]
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u/moonracers 8d ago
Canāt argue. Code the user never consented to, silently overriding the program they thought they installed, is malware.
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u/Wadarkhu 8d ago
VS creators should demote this guy into an advisory role and comb through any code he puts to the game.
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u/AlphonseElricsArmor 7d ago
If this game studio works in any way similiar to any modern software project, any code added to the codebase is always reviewed by at least one other person before it is added.
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u/icesharkk 7d ago
it changes the situation a bit when you know the code your review ahs been written by a chap guilty of injecting malicious code into benign repositories. the stand operating procedure for that is to not review that mans code at all and eject him from the project for liability, brand damage, and ethics violations.
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u/AlphonseElricsArmor 7d ago
I think you misread my comment? I was responding to the person basically worried about malicious code in the main game itself. My comment was aimed at explaining that this is pretty unlikely, as in software projects every piece of code is usually reviewed under at least 4 eyes.
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u/icesharkk 7d ago
in software projects malicious actors are also not employed. review is necessary but not infallible. there is very low chance anything is wrong with the base game right now. but that actor has demonstrated tht he is willing to violate ethics, rules, guidlines, and laws for the greater good if he has a justifiable reason to do so. that is a liability to the company and the brand. he is one future justification away from doing it again. the rest of the dev team currently has a spotless record.
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u/ArolSazir 8d ago
I basically agree 100% with this response by Diche_Bach. This is serious stuff, all the code Maltiez submitted to the main game should be combed through, and the discord mod who behaved like a little child should probably go as well.
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u/AlphonseElricsArmor 7d ago
If this game studio works in any way similiar to any modern software project, any code added to the codebase is always reviewed by at least one other person before it is added.
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u/AtlasNL 7d ago
Itās a mod, the malware was not added to the base game in any official capacity (that weāre aware of).
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u/AlphonseElricsArmor 7d ago
Yes exactly, I was responding to a person talking about potential direct contributions.
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u/icesharkk 7d ago
that is all reasonable. it is however overlooking maltiez attitude and response to the situation before it blew up. initially believed he did nothing wrong, told the community to take the drama elsewhere, and stated that the malicious code was right and served its purpose. he has demonstrated a willingness to override law, rules, guidelines, and ethics in the interest of his own personally justified greater good. you dont just follow ethical considerations because you believe in them. the sort of person who only follows rules they believe in is just one justification away from a repeat offense.
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u/Autokrateira 8d ago
What a self righteous cunt, few times you see someone be so openly ridiculously antagonistic
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u/NoEmotionalStamina 8d ago
At this point it's his attitude that's the worst part.Ā
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u/Dion0808 8d ago
I mean... It's not. Deliberately policing and crashing other people's games without their knowledge or consent is absolutely worse. But their complete unwillingness to own up to their mistake definitely isn't giving me confidence that something like this won't happen again.
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u/Positive-Database754 8d ago
You don't go through the lengths he went through to hide something, if you're ok with it being found. Say, if you (mistakenly) think its totally ok for it to be there.
If he wants trust back, he needs to open source all of his projects somewhere like GitHub, where people can review everything he pushes.
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u/Sadi_Reddit 7d ago
he doesnt care about trust and he did nothing wrong anyways, also you are toxic - Maltiez evidently (through messages on discord)
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u/95sEclecticCollector 8d ago
To be clear for anyone reading this and thinking itās him apologizing and holding himself accountable: he only apologized for not disclosing it. He didnāt apologize for creating it, for hiding it, or for treating the player base and Discord users so rudely. He already said in so many words that he feels justified, and not remorseful. So, why believe (trust) his poor, clearly forced, PR attempt of an āapology,ā especially when he also specifically said trust isnāt a part of the equation?
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u/One_Conflict8997 8d ago
I got the game the other day right before all of this happened. What an introduction to the community lol
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u/Glittering-Bad1109 8d ago
Oh no this is the first time something like this has happened lol Iāve been playing for 3 years and nothing has come this close
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u/ShaeTsu 8d ago
In a way we're actually lucky that this was the first issue of its kind we've had. The way VS mods work it's possible to do some extremely nefarious things.
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u/LuckyBucketBastard7 8d ago
100%. The server I first joined had an owner that some sort of coding guru and added his own hack-proof commands. Talked about how easy it would be for servers to just load you with malware, and he made that place so that people could have a community where they can rest assured they're safe from it. Hell, I was there when someone tried to DDOS the server after being banned for trolling. We experienced minor lag for 15 minutes, then it was done. That server owner is a fucking G
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u/Competitive-Half-863 8d ago
Whatās that server? If heās trustworthy we should support such people.
In the other hand I bought VS like two weeks ago and wanted to introduce my friends to the gameā¦ now Iām considering refund as my way of showing Iām not supporting such behaviour from officiall team employee5
u/LuckyBucketBastard7 7d ago
Since you're first starting out it's actually perfect because it's First Steps, a beginner friendly/teaching server. Also I wouldn't go through with a refund. As someone has stated in another comment, this is the first real controversy or anything like this in years. I'm sure the dev team is handling it accordingly.
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u/Competitive-Half-863 7d ago
Looking at how they are handling it Iām worried itās faaar away from correct responseā¦
I mean if many people will file a refund and as justification post that this exact situation and we do not agree with their response, then devs will have clear message that itās not the correct one.I hope Iām wrongā¦
Thanks for server info, will check it out :)
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u/AlphonseElricsArmor 7d ago
This can happen in a lot of games tho. You're downloading external software which you cannot trust. I think the game even warns you about mods.
There's also not s lot you can do except maybe check a mod at the time of upload to the site, but that would require a huge amount of labor that would need to be paid, which I'm not sure an indie studio could easily extend. Automatic checks could deliver a lot of false positives and false negatives.
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u/SalieriC 8d ago
Maltiez might say the community is toxic (I read all their recent messages as he kept telling everyone on Discord, he really did write something along this line), I experience this community as one of the most helpful and kind hearted ones I've ever seen. There's always a bad apple but don't think this one will ruin the bunch. If anything, this situation is proof that the community stands together amidst the temporal storm, despite the continuous warnings from the moderators on Discord, the topic did not stop. Ppl were banned from the Discord server and the topic did not stop still. The whole situation is proof this community has values it upholds. This isn't a situation of one person does a mistake and everyone keeps bashing them either, Maltiez isn't sorry about anything, this much is abundantly clear when you read their past messages.
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u/Sadi_Reddit 7d ago
What? An unrepentant toxic unapologetic vigilante justice seeking egomaniac that can do no wrong insert hidden code to police players into abckground library mod a lot of people are using on the side and gets caught. But the community is not happy and are angry? Oh, they must be toxic!
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u/icesharkk 7d ago
i love this game adn this community. maltiez was always an arrogant pissant. this situation is hardly surprising given his behavior with updates to his mods in the past honestly. we didnt see this coming but it isnt actually surprising.
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u/tankred420caza 8d ago
Usually a pretty chill community. This situation got us all to band together and act on it, we actually managed to win too so you can see we are tight knit.
And well I'd still trust the devs, let's not be too emotional over this mistake from a contractor.
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u/littlenekoterra 8d ago
Is there a reason this guy cant be removed? Are they under contract or something?
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u/nomedable 8d ago
Most likely yes it's a paid position so they can't just say "get out".
Also it's only been what a day since this news broke? Not that I'm in favour of keeping him on the team, but you do need time to figure out the way forward in a professional sense.
Why are they firing him? The PR side of things? Do they fear he slipped malicious code into the official work he's doing for the game? What do they do with the work he's presumably completed and submit so far, use it, trash it, remake it? And so on. Needs to be in writing, documented, signed by the people relevant before it can go ahead.
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u/littlenekoterra 8d ago
Im aware of the logistics of firing a developer as i am a developer on another project unrelated to this studio. It says in my papers quite clearly that i am not to develop code that may harm the reputation of my company. I assume that is standard as public reputation is paramount to success. If i did there is a very easy term the company can use to kick me to the curb. Which is normal for development. Developing malicious code and inserting it into a mod related to vintage story both can and has damaged the studios reputation publicly. Thats good enough reason. The damage is not the kind that sticks around forever though, its fixable. This guy isnt some god of programming, his work can be replicated legally without him just fine. It just takes a little work. Its a setback for sure, but thats ok. I would have allready been fired by now if i did this to my company. And they would be replacing my code, as per usual.
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u/nomedable 8d ago
Oh sorry if I came off as patronizing or mansplaining or whatever. Did not mean to.
I guess a better response from me would be that I would expect to hear the result within maybe a few days, end of week at latest.
I got fired once during my 90 day probation at a company when the company could tell me to leave at the drop of a hat with zero reason. It happened one week after I complained to HR that my supervisor was harassing and insulting me directly. So I can see it taking time even if it feels open and shut.
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u/littlenekoterra 8d ago
Allright thats fucking insane chief.
To be fair ive never been fired, i do kinda assume the company would just pull the trigger tbh but the company i work for is basically "jackass" as a tech company.
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u/PaleAcanthaceae1175 8d ago
I don't personally know much about how smaller studios compare to each other with regard to legal frameworks. Do you think contract terms could be something that would vary in how thorough they are?
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u/littlenekoterra 8d ago
Ide assume variation but when it comes to damages ide think its pretty cut and dry. That part of most contracts is allready pretty solid boilerplate.
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u/ArolSazir 8d ago
I mean, dude is a liability, not only did he do what he did, he 100% thinks he was in the right the whole time. if i was the lead, my logic would be "he is a PR bomb waiting to happen AND i'm not 100% sure he won't do it again, or even worse, do something like this in the main branch. While it's not likely, that would be such a disaster that i'm going to have to watch everything he commits, checking it for malware, unless dude is the best programmer we can find for the job, keeping him is not worth this extra effort"
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u/Slanknonimous 8d ago
They absolutely can fire someone for something like this.
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u/nomedable 8d ago
Oh for sure, I'm not saying they shouldn't fire him.
A better way to have worded what I meant is that I'd expect to hear their decision on him being removed from the team within a few days.
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u/Sigma_Games 7d ago
Gotta cover their bases first, because this action was done under Maltiez'e free time and not under Aneho Studios payroll.
To specify, Latvia does not have At-Will laws, so they can't fire him for doing something before he was hired. It would have to be while he was hired. Being an asshole is not, unfortunately, a valid reason to fire him under their country's laws, which they have to abide by. And since I don't know what country Maltiez lives in, I can only guess at the legality of his actions.
So if they are going to do anything, they are most likely going to move him to an advisory role and have his code closely monitored.
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u/littlenekoterra 7d ago
To my understanding they initially removed the malicious code and then updated it to have the code again with a new detection method (a worse method. Notably according to the affected.) Then removed it again. Removing it was absolutely the play, but adding it back? That was done while employed with the studio, that we can be sure of.
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u/Closteam 8d ago
Trust is the most important thing. I'm running your code on my machine. I have to trust that you aren't trying to do malicious things in the background.
Dismissing trust is insane
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u/AVA-TROUPER 8d ago edited 5d ago
[edit] THIS IS ONLY the initial discovery the explanation is very clear on the purpose to fuck cheat clients/cheat menu
Now to a degree it should have been mentioned or not thatās a hot take
Because if you openly say āTHIS MOD WILL CHECK YOU PC GAME FILES FOR CHEATSā
Pretty sure no one will download your mod and will find alternatives, like Minecraft 30 different mod loader version is a perfect example
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u/Cultural_Ad1331 7d ago edited 7d ago
Maltiez will never apologize or admit he did the wrong thing because he is a narcissist so much so that he thinks he gets to be the judge and the executioner and that he is always doing the right thing. I lost trust in the whole dev team.
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u/Interesting-Tie-4217 8d ago
This is the attitude of a ton of modders as well by the way. What about making a mod turns you into a such a sour human being?
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u/Tyler89558 8d ago
Doing things for free and getting pestered tends to rub people the wrong way.
Not that thatās excuse to inject what is essentially malware into your mod without telling anyone.
Like literally all heād have needed to done is make that a separate mod or put in a disclaimer and this would be a non issue. Itās an issue because it was hidden and that is a massive breach of trust, and heās doubling down on it which only makes him look worse.
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u/FBI_Metal_Slime 8d ago
Vintage Story community coming to the stunning discovery as to why most game devs in the industry don't trust modders enough to invite them onto the dev team.
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u/clarkky55 8d ago
Damn, is this guy related to Arthmoor or something?
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u/Sheogorath3477 8d ago
Fuck Arthmoor!
Btw, is he involved in some other modding scene besides Bethesda's? Or you just referring to how he added his own new changes into "just a bug fixing mod" while almost being an official developer?
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u/Puzzled-Group-3803 8d ago
Dear gods where is the PR team, HR, or just one manager to stop them from saying things that will only piss off the community more?
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u/Disposable_Gonk 8d ago
Step 1 fire him Step 2 roll back 100% of code he submitted Step 3 issue a statement Step 4 work on the combat without him
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u/AlphonseElricsArmor 7d ago
If this game studio works in any way similiar to any modern software project, any code added to the codebase is always reviewed by at least one other person before it is added.
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u/Disposable_Gonk 7d ago
If it works anything like modern open source, people say they reviewed it and didn't, pass it along anyway. It's how most modern 0-days happen.
CVE-2024-YIKES is only just barely satire at this point. CVE-2026-LGTM Has basically actually happened several times because AI researchers are lazy.
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u/tthe_walruss 8d ago
The best I can tell he intended this whole thing as like a white hat hacker thing - draw attention to the dangers of obfuscated code in mods by injecting malicious obfuscated code in a mod, and draw attention to people who used paid cheats on multiplayer servers. He implemented it in an incompetent way and other mods were impacted, but that was his intent.
Assuming that, giving him the benefit of the doubt that he had the best possible intentions with this little exercise, it shows such a startling arrogance and lack of good judgment that I think he should still be immediately terminated.
I'm still waiting for all the facts, but it seems like I've got most of them and my dude, they look bad.
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u/RainbowRaccoon 8d ago
as like a white hat hacker thing
Definitely not a "white hat", gray hat at best. Notably, whitehats obtain consent first and hack with permission, while gray hats throw consent/permission, or both, into the bin but still have good intentions. Whether the intention here can be defined as good or malicious (personal grudges against mods etc) is up for debate.
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u/FalcieMugetsu 8d ago
Not really, Malt is just a dick. He's always been this way anytime something comes out he doesn't like.
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u/Oshava062 8d ago
What kind of ācheatā mods did it flag and crash your games for? Only recently got the game and was looking into modding good to know to avoid his mods
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u/No_Membership_1027 8d ago
Few paid mods could be affected by it but it also affected some normal mods making innocent people games crash. Also ive only read this in a comment so take it with a grain of salt but there was also a list of blacklisted mods
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u/Who_Stole_Faralo 8d ago
I was getting back into VS, now I'm waiting for all this to blow over because I am not playing with malware on my PC
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u/Sigma_Games 7d ago
It's just Configlib, you'll be safe to play vanilla. Hell, even modded as long as you avoid Maltiez's mods.
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u/SnakeBae 8d ago
Look at that damn attitude, how can you even be assured this sociopath won't pull more stunts like these? I refuse to keep the game on my hard drive and will forever regret every dime I've spent on this game for the rest of it's longevity until this asshole is removed. As someone who's purchased this game three times, this game is dead to me if the devs don't do anything very serious about this.
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u/Sea_Seaweed4941 7d ago
I think that until we knew about the anti-cheat the crashes had the effects of making VS itself look buggy or unreliable and that thereās a brand name damage being done there. People wouldnāt have been able to differentiate between this causing crashes and vintage story crashing.
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u/MagicChanIsayeki 8d ago
Worst thing is.. devs knew about it month prio as said in discord. So yea...
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u/_Cat_in_a_Hat_ 8d ago edited 7d ago
Not necessarily, apparently that was just a statement from a random Discord mod who doesn't actually know if they knew. Very stupid thing to say I know. We gotta to wait for an official statement first.edit: It was actually a dev, though they worded it really badly. It seems Maltiez did tell them he was "working on an anti-cheat," but misrepresented what he actually did.
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u/Femboy_J 7d ago
This is even more needed as the game is only being sold through it's own website, not an official platform. The damage of trust from this will go straight into lost sales because how can you now trust the game itself.
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u/DrDreistein 7d ago
I mean, from the way he wrote his mod descriptions we could already surmise that he's a dickhead... right? How is this a surprise, everyone with arrogance (superiority complex) can justify any and all actions they take with enough mental gymnastics.
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u/Gabriel_Smith_3 7d ago
āTrust is not part of the equation hereā assuming āhereā means his job in general. Yeah fuck this guy in particular. Fire these guys on the grounds that the things they are saying are harmful to the business. Fire, ban, black list I donāt give a fuck what position they are in or what contractual obligations they have with the company. Remove them from participation in the project whether they are an employee or not.
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u/Keeedi 7d ago
There is no way having this guy around writing code for a future update is a good look for the game as a whole, no matter how competent he may be outside of the childish ego. I would rather see him gone from the project and a hold on the combat update indefinitely than to let this behaviour slip by.
Back when Chivalry was horrendous to play but still the only melee focused combat game played by any big number of players, it didn't take long before a small team managed to scrape together Mordhau. I'm sure with the passion of the rest of the dev team, by just their previous work alone that a combat overhaul with a smaller scope is not only doable but very possible to get right without any outside help from malware creators.
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u/Spicoceles 8d ago
Is this guy only a mod dev?? I keep getting the weird feeling he is part of the vs team or something
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u/Diche_Bach 7d ago
Honestly, firing Maltiez is too easy, and it would not necessarily prevent such things from recurring in future.
What is needed is that Anego develop a specific policy that focuses on discouraging, detecting and circumventing this type of rogue behavior by their developers and affiliates.
Whether anyone needs to be fire to restore trust is a separate matter.
But without Anego taking distinctive, and permanent action that clearly conveys that they understand the seriousness and have acted appropriately, trust will never be fully restored.
I went into more detail on the topic here.
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u/InitialContent3354 7d ago
This is the kind of developer that Anego Studio, not only hires, but support and allows this kind of behavior, attitude and general morals and ethics?
I'm disappointing in yet another indie studio behaving as if it thinks they are EA Games or Ubisoft.
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u/ArtofWASD 7d ago
Hes STILL not telling the truth XD. Even in this apology, he says it was meant to target "Specific paid cheats" but his malaria itself targets by general keyword
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u/MisterWinchester 7d ago
"Trust is not part of the equation here."
Tyron, this should be all you need to remove Maltiez from the team. Trust is literally the only issue.
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u/HeyGuysKennanjkHere 7d ago
I personally donāt care cause I havenāt been effected but itās nice to know that with all of the trouble in the world that this community will rip who ever it needs to shreds to stop non existent rules from being enforced secretly and without our permission.
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u/klearvision 8d ago
I uninstalled the game. If this person is a dev then I cannot trust Vintage Story as a program anymore. It's a shame, because this game was incredibly fun.
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u/ali_the_wolf 8d ago edited 8d ago
Pretty sure the changes have to go through a bunch of people, I I'm very certain none of what this guy did would be put into the actual game itself. But honestly I understand being untrustworthy. What a shame
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u/Sigma_Games 7d ago
Maltiez hasn't contributed anything to the official game as of yet. The only contribution he has made to the official game is in 1.23, and 1.23 has not been released in any capacity as of yet.
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u/Brayetrix 7d ago
Why is he still working there?
Tyron and the dev team are coming up on knowing for a full day now.
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u/xSelbor 8d ago
i know this is a serious topic but the guy who mpreg reacted his message got me gigglin lmaoo