Chronojam

This is very true, you decided to keep it closed-source when asked by other staff. And when you rebranded it, you forcibly pushed an update to all BHP Launcher users that caused all existing players to download and overwrite their BHP Launcher with the W3D Launcher -- prompting them with a message suggesting they cannot play again if they don't get this update. Among other things, this process involved automatically re-locating game data, configuration files, screenshots, etc. to a new W3D Hub-branded folder on their hard drive (without informing them of the move or new location). Surely you realize how unethical that is?

I do recall that a few AR staff members had raised concerns over the past several months that Catalyst, our web services guy, would just inexplicably delete all of AR's files for some reason without provocation. It's all pretty unsubstantiated. Despite not personally being as active as I'd want to be for the past few months because of fairly serious real life issues, I am confident that nobody was going to just selectively delete only AR's files and related forum posts out of the blue. This unfounded paranoia over hypotheticals is perhaps is what led to these actual and highly unethical violations of trust and propriety. There still does not seem to be any reason why this rush-job was performed when there seems to have been no reason to not show more due diligence if the community's best interests were at heart, here. After stealing all the content, what harm would there have been to ask politely for a copy of the internal development posts that are purportedly the sole interest of the data breach? Why would users be invited to seamlessly log-in to their copied-over profiles using their existing credentials, if taking that account data was not part of the plan? That some users were able to stumble across all sorts of once-hidden forum threads before the site was actually ready simply speaks of a poorly planned rush-job with ill-prepared privacy configurations -- it doesn't strike me as a valid reason to throw up your hands and suddenly make the whole thing public. Again, this does not build confidence. "Just contact us if you want your own individual content that was lifted to be removed" also did not strike me as the most well-planned response to the debacle, either. It's good to see efforts being made to correct some of these missteps, but why were these missteps allowed to happen in the first place?

While setting up a new site is perfectly reasonable and a noble endeavour, I must wonder, what actually necessitated the hasty launch of the website before proper precautions had been taken? What circumstances justified taking and exposing personal information and content from so many users? Why was a new forum license not purchased and software installed in advance? Why were permissions and privacy settings not tested privately ahead of time prior to making the site public? Once the site was ready to launch, why were senior BHP staff not notified ahead of time? Why were a new terms of service and agreements not even drafted to replace those that were taken and still appear on the "new" site? These all seem like reasonable considerations that would have been trivial to address. It seems very irresponsible to prop up a page without any apparent concern for those whose data you've taken, with the thinnest pretenses to explain how it was handled. As far as I can tell there was no pending deadline, and my personal backups and offsite backups of the forum both appear intact. There doesn't seem to have ever been the "hostage taking" that was feared so much as a bungled virtual "kidnapping." At a minimum, it has been a case of profound and widespread plagiarism in lieu of providing original content to attract new users. The undeniable fact of the matter is that very little was done to shield users from the impact; this was handled in a very cloak-and-dagger manner, to everybody's dismay. I was contacted this morning by yet another user who says his Facebook details were lifted as a result of the forum breach; he claims it was done in retaliation for requesting his data be returned/destroyed under EU law, as jurisdiction for the duped site now exists outside the US. As with the other reports, he claims his pictures are being taken and used elsewhere in a mocking fashion. It is unfortunate that the launch of a new community site must be tinted by such apparent recklessness.

I think it bears repeating that the site and staffing was actually kept intact when we changed hosting in the past, even if the primary domain name and actual server configuration was adjusted from time to time; whether or not you reached the page via APathBeyond.com, Bluehellproductions.com, or Bluehell.Productions it was the same site and services provided by the same organization, with fairly consistent terms of use and licensing. Users have been very conspicuously left confused and upset-- I've fielded many complaints about the launcher suddenly changing, funneling players to a cloned site where their profiles and content mysteriously appeared, republished without their consent. A couple of very upset users confirmed to be using the FB authorization system have actually also contacted me today, alleging that some of the information disclosed by this breach has already been used by to connect their forum identity to their associated Facebook pages, leading to harassment. This is all very troubling, and heightens my own concerns about the fact that many moderators now in place at W3D Hub were former moderators that were discharged from the BHP forums for repeated misconduct.

That's a lot better; there was never any reason to copy people's forum profiles and registration/account information and history at all. I see they've removed the "Licensed to Bluehell Productions" notification from the bottom of all the pages, too. Again, I'm not against a new site at all -- but the incredibly unethical way in which a "new community forum" was birthed by directly cloning the existing BHP forum instead of simply purchasing a new installation and IPBoard license really left me troubled and saddened. If you want 68,000 posts or whatever and an active userbase, go ahead and get some users to come make content -- don't copy/paste users and content wholesale in the middle of the night and act like everything's on the up-and-up. We had actually that happen before with some crazy guy named "Sargeant" (who simply scraped the forums instead of abusing database access) and at the time, everybody mocked him; this deserves no less scorn.

AR and TSR were both brought on later in each project's development. My right hand(s) were PointlessAmbler and TruYuri; that this was done in secret appears to have been fueled by some sort of paranoia about retribution. When I first heard about this whole thing (my phone buzzing incessantly), I thought it was fine to see a new W3D project site start up with some fresh blood and new ideas, and did not understand the concern players and testers and staff were expressing. If you may recall your C&C modding history, we previously had Reborn join with us at a point in the past during an uncertain period for that project, and when they had found their footing, we split them off without incident -- so, I thought there was no cause for concern here and that there was an overreaction. I didn't realize that the "New Thing" was announced by suddenly redirecting users via the game launcher to a direct clone of the pre-existing site, or even that the BHP site itself and all user content and personal information had been taken. And I didn't find that out until late last night, and it wasn't from OWA. e: I suppose I can see why, if you were planning to do something so unethical, you would not want to announce it in advance. This doesn't suddenly make it become ethical, though. I'd like to see all of that content removed immediately, and this includes all user-created data and account information.

Actually, without prior discussion or announcement, the database was indeed copied over; including content from before the inclusion of Apocalypse Rising or the more recent acquisition of Tiberian Sun: Reborn. I am dismayed this was done without even warning users or other BHP staff ahead of time. This "new site" include all sorts of "old" things; private messages, contact e-mail addresses, birthdays, moderator discussion, staffing and recruitment, even things like my own wedding planning process from an older hidden subforum that apparently became exposed. When I was first informed that W3D Hub was going to be "a new place" for W3d mod discussion, I didn't anticipate it would be literally grabbing the old place in the middle of the night before rehosting it and handing the keys over to unknown parties. Considering that I am actually in charge of BHP, let me make it officially known this wasn't done "legitimately" or with any discussion. If you're going to discard all of the user data, all of the previous posts, all the private messages, all the passwords, all the IP logs -- why go through the trouble of taking and rehosting all of it in the first place? This was a serious breach of trust among fellow modders and a serious breach of trust of our fanbase.

It may seem a bit unorthodox at first, but Pyryle has been very involved as a tester and more recently as a moderator (which are generally testers who we have come to really appreciate). The development of this patch went through the normal feedback process with our full test team during its creation, so it's not just some collection of loose changes being blindly deployed or anything. In the past we've often done concurrent development of different versions of different projects. As One Winged Angel points out, this particular branch/flavor of APB was not being actively worked on, and Pyryle was able to step in to address some common feedback. Some of the changes coming in the next big version increment have been slid back to this version. Likewise, many of these changes from this branch can be reflected in the next big version increment, which is taking some time to come together because it changes many gameplay mechanisms and deep engine capability. So, rest assured, we fully endorse this version and hope you will enjoy it. Give it a shot and give us your feedback.

Sounds like it was just a bad game, a storyless piece of crap with a dancing minigame for no reason.

I guess because they were already entrenched for years and making money. Not everything was pulled, just newer titles. It's pretty much a given that Generals 2 won't appear on Steam at this point, though, given the trends over at EA. From what I remember there were also legal concerns, again, that only applied to newer stuff. Speaking of Bioware Victory and Renegade, that new concept art for the Generals C&C FPS-that-also-got-canned is quite interesting, isn't it? Battlefield 3 also uses Frostbite 2 so I half wonder if they actually sat down with it there and when the FPS aspect was killed, they went for RTS on the same engine. I'm not sure what them playing or not play Renegade has to do with anything though.

Steam won't take Renegade X unless policy has changed, we've already had fans check sometime last year on behalf of Renegade X and APB as well. Not only that, a bigger deal is that unless EA's policy has changed, they also don't want C&C standalones going on Steam or Desura because of a conflict of interest with their Origin platform-- and the fact that, even if it seems tangential and petty, they see that Valve is running a for-profit service that pushes advertising and thusly EA legal doesn't want it also pushing their IP for free at the same time that Valve benefits. Especially at a time when EA is pulling their own content off Steam, negotiating to get any fan projects up there has a bleak outlook, I'm afraid. We're still sitting in the aftermath of negotiations with the big boys breaking down and both BF3 and ME3 failing to launch on Steam. Would it be great to see Renegade X on Steam? Absolutely. Would it be a benefit to fans and developers? Damn right. Are there substantial legal roadblocks in the way? Unfortunately, many, and they aren't going to be resolved soon or through fan action.

I have an LG model, and the biggest problem is that you must be sitting and viewing it from slightly "below" for best results. You cannot just put on a pair of glasses and stand there looking over somebody's shoulder. Takes some getting used to.

I have to admit, for boss fights and the bamboo game, often I'll stand up. For Red Steel 2 I actually get up, too, and the same for Wii Bowling. Controlled motion is vastly preferred to flailing wildly though.

Big credit goes to Darklord42 who played around with getting this to work right! I know a lot of friends who prefer a Macbook for their mobile needs even if they have a PC back home, and fans have always been curious about getting a Mac version, so this is pretty slick to have available. The transfer speed on the disk image download is a little slow right now, but once the ModDB mirror is authorized that'll be the preferred download source.

****, can you blame people after C&C 4? Steering away from multiplayer seems important to avoid them trying that again anytime soon. I think people still have that in mind, and are voting that way. Plus, Frostbite 2? Quality C&C? I know this kind of social media drivel's driven by marketing but way to make it apparent, damn. What I really would not mind is more fun little alternative modes for singleplayer (or multiplayer, sure) like the C&C RISK that came with Kane's Wrath, the old General's Challenges and Uprising challenges. Even this new C&C Alliances browser game feels like it could've been much better as a fun little metagame diversion in a new traditional-style C&C; hell they could have tied it into their C&C 4 style persistance bull**** if they wanted to insist on going down that path and it would've made more sense instead of unlocking things in the actual C&C 4 campaign.