Re: Flippy's video

[Minimaul]

Hey everyone,

I think this deserves a response - I'm not going to write something really PR-y and I don't have chat logs to refer to, so this is from memory.

First things first: yes, my behaviour here was *shit* and truly unacceptable. I am truly ashamed of it, and I am incredibly sorry for the damage it did to the Saints Row community, and especially to Mike personally.

I worked on three projects for Saints Row:

* The modding patch
* The saintsrow.com site to restore My Steelport
* the attempt to restore Saints Row 2.

The first two went really well! For the modding patch I made modding tools & the workshop upload tool, and wasn't paid for any work - it was all volunteer work. Restoring My Steelport was a paid project that we did after that - and this one went live and was up for several years.

For Saints Row 2, this project was a total fuck up on my part.

I never should have taken it on - I was truly out of my depth. Working on the modding patch and My Steelport gave me false confidence, and made me think I could do it - but I had no professional experience actually working on game engines or multiplayer games.

When I started on the project, we identified a list of things we wanted to fix, and some nice to haves. I started work on the initial things like getting the old code to build on a current PC, I started fixing performance, got it running at modern resolutions, fixed some crashing bugs, added Steam Cloud support, raised limits for user generated content, and replaced all of the audio with higher quality versions. Then I got to multiplayer.

Multiplayer is where everything went wrong. Like the video says, I blanked people instead of admitting I was stuck. By the time I admitted I was stuck, it was far too late. There was a brief discussion with DS about me continuing on the non-multiplayer work, but the decision they reached was for me to hand over what I'd done to someone else for them to continue. I agreed to that and uploaded the work I had so far. I don't know if it was used or not in the builds that were then passed on to the community testers - I don't have any insider knowledge about the project after I handed over what I'd done.

The way we worked with these projects was a small deposit, then milestone payments after agreed functionality was delivered. Multiplayer was part of the first milestone and I didn't deliver that - so the only money I received at all for the SR2 patch was the deposit right at the start. I did offer to pay this back to DS and Volition as I didn't think it was right for me to keep it, but they didn't take me up on this offer.

Obviously I don't expect what I've said to make things right or for people to forgive me, and nothing I've said here is going to get people the patch they should have had. Nothing I can do or say at this point will make things right. I've stayed away from the SR community since, and left the running of this site to people who were recommended by Mike himself. Please don't make trouble for them because I fucked up.

I'm in the process of finding someone to take over the ownership of the site who the community can trust - this is something I've been looking at for a while and the video only makes it more important.

Thomas

 

[CabooseSayzWTF]

Welp i'm probably gonna get yeeted after this and probably worse shit to follow but let me say my peace. I loved this site, loved being apart of the patch test group. I heavily looked up to you just as I did idol and after all that bullshit where our mouths basically had to be kept taped shut due to our nda back then. I never looked at you the same ever again. Out of respect for mike everything that happened under nda after nda expiration I kept a decently tight lid on even the drama that was stirred up. So bare minimum thank you for at least stepping up and admitting your faults. But taking down the site out of spite was a coward move. I hope you have learned from all of this, and I wish the best of luck to you and your future whatever that may be and wherever you end up. Thank you for all that you have done but forgiving you might just take a lifetime because deep down all I want to say is fuck you dude. Whoever compromised flippys acc here, fuck you and the ground you walk on. It's clear to me that this site is no longer a safe haven. I've archived what i've needed. Ban me, let me stay choice is yours. I've said what I needed to say.

 

[Admixon]

Whoever compromised flippys acc here, fuck you and the ground you walk on. It's clear to me that this site is no longer a safe haven.

No one changed Flippy's password here, there's a chance his email got hacked and someone's controlling all of his social accounts, srmod account and discord. But it's up to you if you believe me or not

 

[Admixon]

I posted in on twitter but I'll post it here too

I've been a member of saintsrowmods since 2012. In 2018 I became a moderator/admin because IdolNinja and Minimaul trusted me. I tried my best to be good at it even if sometimes it was really hard to deal with problems. At some point I got bored of making mods, got bored of the series, maybe because of the reboot release that was a disappointment, I even wanted to quit at some point, literally delete my srmods account but then I realized I was the only active admin there so I decided to stay as long as possible. I know many people asked us for SR1 section on the forums and one day I was like "hey, let's add SR1 section" and boom, SR1 section appeared and rules have been changed. It made me happy to see the forums being alive again... but something happened recently. Me and other admins are accused of changing password of an user an using their account to write horrible posts. My questions are: why? What's the point? To make everything worse? To make people hate us? I don't understand. It's a very stressful situation and I'm literally shaking right now and probably won't fall asleep tonight. The problem is I can't even check who changed the password in the logs, it's only mentioned it was changed and when and that's all, maybe the site owner has more options but I'm just an admin. I'm feeling lost right now, don't know what to do. All I can say I did not do that. I'm not telling you all of this to believe me, I want you to help me understand or maybe tell me what should I do.

 

[Singa]

I can only join this sentiment expressed by Admixon. I was made a mod a few years ago to help with spam bots that kept showing up on this forum and was eventually promoted to a full admin. I enjoyed pitching small improvements to this forum like updates to the rules, new mod categories and the addition of a dark theme. Other than that I did the same stuff I did as a regular mod, removing spam bots and enforcing the rules, while still uploading some mods here and there. And even when the forums were pretty much dead, I didn't turn away but stayed, continuing to do those small tasks.

But today changed everything. First the forum disappeared without a warning, alongside several links to resources and tools. I thought we had lost over a decade worth of mods, tools, tutorials and more. Then the website went live again. I was so relieved when I saw the forum open up and have the majority of the content still there. But out of nowhere things took a dark turn when I was notified of a strange post made by flippy's account that had been caught by the automod feature. I was confused as to what the reason behind it was since it seemed incredibly out of character once I confirmed that the post truly came from his 10 year old, inactive account. I thought it was a new account impersonating him at first. When I saw that it was actually his account, my first instinct was that it had been hacked due to the contents of the post.
I then saw flippy's reaction to that post on twitter and the discord, where I learned that I was suspected of being behind the post. Not long after I stated my confusion, I was banned from there.

I still have no idea what exactly happened today and who's behind all of it. All I can say is that I had no involvement with any password resets and impersonations. I didn't even know passwords could be changed rather than reset until Admixon told me so after everything had already happened.
But I have no idea how I can even prove my innocence, I'm shocked and devastated over what happened today. I don't know where to start gathering my thoughts that are all over the place right now.

My deepest fear right now is that the forum could be compromised and that something like what happened earlier could happen again if it actually came from the inside. I have been a member of this forum for a little over a decade now, and never have I felt so betrayed and disappointed. I want answers. The thought alone that it might have been an inside job as suggested by flippy is vomit inducing to me. It shakes my trust in this forum to its core and I hate that so much.

 

[zidders]

This whole mess is just too fucking tragic. Minimaul...while I'm not in any position to judge you or say how people should or shouldn't react the fact you made an apology post and didn't try to absolve yourself of any responsibility gets some respect from me at least. As far as forum security goes I think it's far more likely a jaded fan is trying to hurt the community and forum. Hopefully things work out and people realize that friendship and the Saints (and Mike's) legacy are way more important than anyone's ego.

 

[Minimaul]

XenForo has audit logs - here's the admin audit log and moderator audit log for the last few days (attached). I've redacted IP addresses of the admin users, and the usernames of people whose accounts were approved/rejected/or who requested renames, but that's it. You can see I've edited myself, but no other admin has edited a user other than to approve their own requested username change in the last several days. This isn't going to convince a lot (if any!) of you, but it's all I have.

I can see someone logged into Flippy's forum account from an IP that is a known VPN IP around the time of the post, and changed the password at the same time. If it was a really old password, I can only suggest that it might have been someone trying to stir things up even further trying leaked old passwords to get in - most of us have had old passwords leaked over the years, just look at https://haveibeenpwned.com/, and how many of us use unique passwords everywhere?

I don't think for a moment that Flippy wrote it or that any of the admins here wrote it. It doesn't make any sense - none of them have anything to gain from it. Flippy's already made his point with his original video, and for any of the admins here it just makes the current shitstorm worse. Plus it was such a bizarre message.

Flippy said on twitter to archive the mods that are here - that's a good idea anyway. Please do archive the mods you care about!

edit: and re: the site being down for a few hours. Yes, I temporarily took the site down to give me some time to think about what I wanted to do and say without a shitstorm of comments & posts being posted in the mean time - it was never intended to be permanent. At the same time, I took the opportunity to move it to a different hosting provider, so it's separate from all of my other stuff - that's why some people have had DNS issues that took a little while to shake out. This will make it easier to hand it over to another admin team, if one steps up.

 

[Minimaul]

Welp i'm probably gonna get yeeted after this and probably worse shit to follow but let me say my peace. I loved this site, loved being apart of the patch test group. I heavily looked up to you just as I did idol and after all that bullshit where our mouths basically had to be kept taped shut due to our nda back then. I never looked at you the same ever again. Out of respect for mike everything that happened under nda after nda expiration I kept a decently tight lid on even the drama that was stirred up. So bare minimum thank you for at least stepping up and admitting your faults. But taking down the site out of spite was a coward move. I hope you have learned from all of this, and I wish the best of luck to you and your future whatever that may be and wherever you end up. Thank you for all that you have done but forgiving you might just take a lifetime because deep down all I want to say is fuck you dude. Whoever compromised flippys acc here, fuck you and the ground you walk on. It's clear to me that this site is no longer a safe haven. I've archived what i've needed. Ban me, let me stay choice is yours. I've said what I needed to say.

Thank you for being honest. You won't be banned for this post - and nor will anyone else, as long as they keep the personal attacks to me.

 

[Möyh Mäyh]

I was a bit uncertain of what's gonna happen to the site with you gone for years, so this post is welcome.

I'm in the process of finding someone to take over the ownership of the site who the community can trust - this is something I've been looking at for a while and the video only makes it more important.

What's the site running on? Not to take over the ownership, but I can volunteer for server maintenance, if there's a need.

 

[3rdStreetSaint 212]

I think the worst part about all of this is that the fate of the Saints Row franchise is left in Deep Silver's hands. We'll never get another Saints Row like SR2, and due to the unfortunate outcome of the SR2 PC Patch, it may just get lost to the ages.

The way of the gaming industry nowadays, seems to be a free base game with little to no content, but lots of in-game micro-transactions, and the content itself is all streamlined to attract the younger gaming communities, therefore gaining fans and consumers for decades to come. But the content is so mundane and repetitive that we "the older gaming communities" find it difficult to stay interested.. And ultimately we get left behind.

If games like SR2 don't get preserved or maintained, then the future of gaming is going to get very bleak... I myself haven't played on a video game for more than 5 minutes without getting bored, for the last 10 years... I would still be playing on SR2, or even SRTT, but unfortunately I need to manage my mods better. SR2 crashes too often, and SRTT simply won't get past the start up screen before shutting down.

But as for Minimaul, I'm not gonna hate on him, or say whether or not he deserves forgiveness, because it won't change anything. And it definitely won't magically fix SR2's PC Port. All I'm gonna do is hope and pray that Deep Silver do the right thing and hand the franchise over to someone who can do it justice. Because let's face it... I don't want another SRTT, I don't want to fight super powered aliens... And I definitely don't want to start a criminal empire just because I couldn't pay my student loans, while sipping mugmosas with Urkel, Waffle Boy, and cat named f***ing Snickerdoodle!