Well if they are using an illegal copy without having the "go" word of the creators then they are violating a law.
I have personally talked with developers and higher up people. They have stated on more than one occasion that yes, we don't have permission but there's nothing damaging being done. There's no negative for them, no reason for them to go after us. We are simply keeping THEIR game alive. Their values, their ideas, their work. We aren't taking credit for the work. Sure, some of it had to be decompiled and we have added our own code but the majority of the game is unchanged and I believe as long as it stays that way, they have no reason to pursue us. However, if tomorrow they do decide to give us a cease and desist, we'll comply. We're not trying to fight the system or go against anyone, we simply wanted to keep this game alive. They benefit, the users benefit and we get something fun to do. Win-win-win.
I'll close this statement with a direct quote from one of the people I've talked to;
To be frank about it, I feel honored that you guys work as hard as you do - I'd love to see stronghold recreated in assist [identifyable information removed]. I think we owe you guys a great deal, and it's a shame that legally we can't come out and formally support what you're doing.
I've gotten enough of a feel for what your group's philosophical approach to the effort is - I have full confidence in what you're doing, so I don't think there's any real danger of crossing lines. Until there's nude models and swastikas and zombie dogz, I don't think we'll have any problem with where you're taking assist...so do what you think is best - you're putting in the work, after all.
I am serious on this.
They are earning money through Vortexservers, this website is registrered to Paulo Sergio who has ties to vortexservers.com
We all have ties to Vortex Servers. We don't earn money though. Nick, one of the owners, bought out our previous hoster, James (low ping servers). Vortex Servers hosts our website, AAO25.com and hosts several game servers with Assist. The only thing we give him in return are banners on our website, out of respect (he didn't even ask for them). He doesn't pay us, we don't pay him. Any money he's making from selling servers is purely to compensate for the bandwidth/disk space/support that they are using up.
And Spanky = Natenkiki2004 (http://natescomp.com/ Free advertising for you there:P) also linked to Assist and moderator on this forum.
Oh no, you cracked my identity!
In all seriousness, let's discuss this like adults rather than subtly threatening people and scaring others. There's nothing to hide and nothing to broadcast. It's all been outlined in the TOS, nobody should be outraged. Whether the TOS is legal or not, that doesn't matter. The whole point of it is to outline what Assist is and what it does. If you don't agree with it, you can uninstall. It's that simple. If people don't read it, they can't be mad at us, we tried to tell them. It comes up as a big box when you install and every time we update. It's not like we're hiding it. I personally spent a lot of time trimming the TOS down to essentials and to cover everything that happens.
I can't think of a website or other example where real personal information would be exposed. Even e-mails, you just see a list of topics, it's not like it's interactive and you can go digging. Same for financial websites, they don't supply you with information that can be used to compromise your identity. They only give you partial information like the last couple of numbers (if that) and don't give any personal information away. Any critical websites that deal with financial or personal information also don't show you passwords, they come up as little dots. As remote as the possibility is, I don't see anything to be gained. Besides, if our goal was to steal information and identities, we would have already done it.
So, we're not bad guys and maybe you agree. Then let's talk about the data. It is stored on the auth server, somewhere (I don't even know the exact location, IP or whatever). It is not publicly accessible. There's no web interface that can be hacked, nothing vulnerable. The data is only linked to users via BTID. We can only say, this screenshot belongs to this account. As you can imagine this is valuable from the standpoint of anti-cheat. It's very easy to see if there is a hack or exploit program running. We have banned users on this information when no other proof was available.
This feature is a far cry from what happened before. That had to do with being able to pull files off the computer. This is taking a screenshot. Most users will never have this happen to them. It is something that is only done when there is significant suspicion or partial evidence. It's not like a screenshot is being taken every 5 seconds on everybody's computer.
With all that said, if the community feels better with that feature removed and understands that our ability to keep the game clean will likely lessen, we can remove it.
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