DavidDavidson

You think that's bad, just wait until you see the "we can ban you if you make us look silly" clause in the EULA. "section 5.2 of the EULA: “You must refrain from engaging in any behaviour that could harm NOVAQUARK’s image and/or reputation" So basically "You can't make any of our mistakes public, that would make us look silly and we can't look silly now, can we?" Even though NQ look sillier than ever right now.

That section of the EULA you quoted is so vague it essentially means that bans can be handed out for making NQ look silly. If that's the section they were banned under the person who started this thread should probably consider banning any of their non-developer player accounts, as they sure as shit have damaged NQ's image and reputation much more than Scoopy and Uber did. Scoopy and Uber also directly stated that they did not take any market terminals as to not disrupt the experience of other players. What about the player who is a solo player and got permabanned for taking Two whole voxel lamps for his house? Did that impact the community? Did any player have a hard time because those two lamps were no longer there? Also if you're going to pull an "NQ clearly said..." let me remind you that they clearly said that permission based theft is 100% the fault of the person who failed to set the correct permissions so going by what NQ said taking everything there is absolutely fine, provided it wasn't the market terminals, which neither Uber nor Scoopy took, as such the only part of the EULA under that section they could have broken is the "They made us look silly which is the most retarded thing you could be banned for, never mind a permaban. As I've said before instead of swinging the ban hammer around like a fucking toy NQ should have used this as a positive PR event. Ran with" not even our stuff is safe if the permissions are incorrectly set! " then given every player who took something a little plaque they can place ingame with "I helped rearrange market 15" or "Market 15 beta tester" written on it. Then it would headline as "Developers thank players for helping highlight an issue during beta testing" if it headlined at all. Much better than the current headlines.

First on the English language. A user is anyone who uses a system. This includes developers. The word you would be looking for is customer. As for user error and a bug being mutually exclusive, they are. If you are chopping up some onions and happen to slice your fingers off then the knife didn't have a bug, you used it incorrectly as such you aren't going to go to the knife company and demand they compensate you for your lost fingers because the knife had a "bug", if you did they would laugh you out of the room while telling you that you didn't take the personal responsibility to check that your fingies weren't about to get chopped off and that their knife was working as intended. We are not talking about autopilot. The developers forgot to set the permissions to private. Forgetting to do something is not the equivalent of an automated system failing, because there was no automated system in place, the system required the developers to set the permissions after moving the market, as such they made a mistake which caused all of this to happen. The permission rules did work as intended. To use your autopiloting car analogy it's like getting into the car, forgetting to turn the autopilot on, crashing your car then blaming it on the car company. Now before you say that user error applies to end users only and developers cannot be end users, since the developer was using a system that they had set up, or another developer had set up they still fall under the definition of an end user as they were using the system at that time. Even someone who designs a system can still fall under the definition of end user if they are using the system. Think Bill Gates using Windows back when he was still on the design and development team in the late eighties, that would make him both a developer of his product and an end user. Edit: That Bill Gates analogy isn't the best, but devs using their own dev tools are still users of the program (dev tool) they made.

But this wasn't a mistake in the program's design or source code. Forgetting to set permissions is not a mistake in the code, it is a mistake made by the person setting the permissions. What part of that do you not understand? If you left your car running overnight (assuming said car is key started and doesn't automatically turn the engine off when stopped) then found out that the fuel tank was empty would that be a bug? Or would that be user error? Or if you forget to turn off a high wattage electric heater for few days then find out that your electric bill has doubled, would that be a bug? User error: "A user error is an error made by the human user of a complex system, usually a computer system, in interacting with it. " Is English your first language, as you don't seem to understand English fundamentals very much. I could understand that if English isn't your first language but if English is then you probably need your head examined for.... bugs.

Here is the definition for a software bug: "A software bug is an error, flaw or fault in a computer program or system that causes it to produce an incorrect or unexpected result, or to behave in unintended ways. ... A program that contains many bugs, and/or bugs that seriously interfere with its functionality, is said to be buggy (defective). " But the market didn't behave in unintended ways, forgetting to set the permission means that it has the intended (as the developers stated themselves that it is intended and 100% your fault if you fail to set the permissions correctly) consequence of people being able to take your stuff. The definition doesn't say: "When Jaques has too much cheese and wine and passes out before forgetting to set the permissions, this is a bug" No definition for the word bug fits what you are calling it. I guess for you the sky is magenta and you call bicycles two wheeled unicycles.

Forgetting to set the permissions is a retard mistake by the developers. Are you going to call every mistake a bug now? If you get drunk and piss your bed, was it a bug? They didn't need to "read developers mind" they read the TOS and it clearly states that permission based theft is totally permissible.

I've given your post 3 likes and none seem to be taking. Every time I refresh and see that your post has no likes I refresh, go back a page and like. Then a posted the URL back in and again likes don't appear. Strange that. Must be a mistake on the developers part. There seems to be a lot of that goring around lately as a bunch of my likes seem to have vanished. If it keeps happening I'll just respond with "<quote> +1" I mean I'm sure it's unintentional the developers seem mature and don't seem like the sort to try to engage in garrys incident type damage control measures. Not at all, they're straight arrows. Honk honk.

You need to wise up. Firstly vandalism doesn't apply to voxels, they didn't damage or destroy something that was goodx the fact that the developers don't have a system that makes their constructs immune to permission based theft shows that their ability to create a game is elementary at best and their reaction to their fuckup has caused so much bad press that people are cancelling subs and p others have it on their "never buy" list. Secondly the devs stated in the TOS that permission based theft is perfectly okay, if it was a player who left their permissions completely open and someone took all their stuff calling it a heist would be fine, so why is it different if its a developer construct. The whole thing is an example of abuse of power. Never did the devs say their constructs were immune to permission based theft so they are just playing the "I have the power to ban you so I will" card. Thing is, in many nations (especially EU nations) the banned players may even be able to drag the developers to court as they paid for a service which they have been denied on the grounds of "well kicking over my sandcastle is different to kicking over the sandcastle of the plebians. I'm no lawyer, but since these people paid for a service they at the very least deserve a full refund as there is nothing in the EULA or TOS that means they can be banned for what they did. Even if that doesn't happen the amount of negative press this has generated for the game means that the developers are going to lose a whole lot more. SidAlpha's discord is already lighting up with this stuff, as are other consumer rights coummication networks. If only the devs had banned and stayed silent they would have been able to say they were making sure there was no cheating going on and that was the reason for the ban, however the fact they made a thread makes them look like the bad guys and they can't take that back. You can arselick all you want, but you know the devs handled this poorly. Or you just haven't seen this happen before and are ill experienced in a true shitshow.

Sorry vandalism, seriously? Vandalism is what has been happening across the US and parts of England over the past few months. Destruction of real life property that you can't just hit Ctrl and Z to bring back. It's not like they went into the server room equipped with hammers and smashed up a server with "market 15" written on it. They changed some aspects of a video game. Aspects which can easily be changed back. They sent a message via discord at 9am French time saying that the market 15 didn't have the correct permissions set. One guy who took two whole voxel lamps got hit with a permaban, he didn't even know Scoopy and Uber. If you have to read the TOS and what you are doing is specifically stated as completely okay in said TOS then you are just covering all bases. As for the whole not scamming people in video games because you're too honest of a person, that's a bit silly. They are video games. Video games =/= real life. I'm a very honest person IRL, however I know the difference between a game and real life. You seem to think ingame behaviour in a role playing game shows what type of person you are IRL. As for novaquirk, they never even said what part of the EULA Scoopy and Uber broke, they just said they broke the EULA. People have gone through it with a fine tooth comb (myself included) and haven't found a single violation. So when it comes to being honest, it would appear that Novaquirk are the dishonest ones here, saying that the EULA was broken, that they were never informed, banning GMs that say that novaquirk was indeed informed, that is dishonesty, changing a few voxels because you can and the developers stated that you could do so is playing a video game by the rules. Oh if you're going to run with "it's a game why does it matter if they're banned then" it matters because they paid money to play the game. They should either be unbanned and apologised to profusely or refunded in full. That is honesty.

So your opinion is based on the fact that you don't like his voice? 200 IQ here guys. This man can deduce the morals and merit of a person simply by the sound of their voice. No doubt you'll be sought after by police forces around the world to tell them who is guilty and who isn't based on their voice alone, after all who needs evidence or even laws when you can condemn someone for having a voice you don't like.

They did inform NQ. They state that in the video they sent a DM. What they did was relatively minor, a good dev would fix the permission system, not ban them and then make a thread talking about how "its not a quick fix" and "they broke the EULA" when they cannot cite what part of the EULA they broke, because they didn't break the EULA. As for "Most players don't have to look at the TOS at all" you must have never played EvE. I made my first few billion (back when a billion ISK was a lot of money and a month of game time would cost you about 170 million) by straight up scamming people either by selling them ships renamed to "navy issue" (like a "Megathron" renamed to "Megathron Navy Issue") for a huge markup as navy issue ships cost about 5x as much as the base model (which is what they got). Setting freeform contracts that players had to pay to accept and then could never complete. Ransoming ships by using the lofty scam (you make a shell corporation, declare war on it and then invite someone to your fleet with shell Corp A and they become an unmarked war target for Corp B, then as they take their shiny ship to help you on a mission you instead warp them to where you're waiting with your main and Corp A who ransom or destroy that guy's ship and pod). Declaring war on juicy targets and ransoming their corporation for protection money. When they released wormholes we offered to do "wormhole tours" with people then when they were in an area they could be killed with impunity (wormhole space) ransoming or destroying their ship/pod. Probing out people running missions stealing from their loot and getting them to shoot at me in a small, weak ship then coming back within the 15 minute aggro timer in a more powerful ship and ransoming/killing them. When mobile tractor units first came out (essentially a deployable mini structure that vacuumed in wrecks and looted them for you) I would attack it and that would cause their drones to automatically attack me meaning that I could then shoot back, allowing me to ransom/kill the person who just had their drones run off and attack me. I had to check whether or not this was against the TOS/labelled an exploit a lot of the time, it never was and despite many reports against me (at least 100)i never got so much as a warning. because the TOS said it was okay. Here's an EvE mail I got from someone who got told by the GM "sorry, its within the TOS" narrated by Jade Elira: https://terrusvalkingrage.ytmnd.com/ At the end of the day, what they did was legit according to what the devs themselves said. They didn't cheat, they didn't exploit a bug, they saw that the developers had made an oopsie and took some stuff. They also let NQ know, which GMs on the NQ discord backed up before NQ started banning their GMs.

That's a good video. Subbed and liked. Seems like Scoopy and Uber wanted to have some fun in a beta they paid $120 for. The pls no ban sign is an obvious joke and the fact that uber and scoopy are saying that one guy got permabanned for taking two whole lamps is kind of telling of how little the developers care for "even justice" in their game. My opinion is that Uber and Scoopy did nothing wrong, they just wanted to have some fun and leave their mark on a game. The fact that other players have gotten away with griefing by trying to make areas inaccessible or create lag and are still playing shows that this is more to to with the developers having a bruised anu... uhh... ego than anything else as it makes them look silly and they now have to do some work to fix market 15. As for actions affecting other players, which people keep bringing up, it seems Uber and Scoopy made sure they didn't grief other players, they wanted to leave a small mark on a beta game. Instead the developers have left one giant shitstain.

Finishing a sentence like that (.......) indicates that its an unfinished sentence. So let me finish it for you. "Rule of thumb, when you have to consult the TOS to see if you are doing something wrong, you probably are doing everything in your power to make sure you're not doing anything wrong." There. Finished it for you. Looks much more complete that way.

Forgetting to set the permissions on your construct is not a bug. The TOS is pretty damn clear on that front and the EULA says nothing about developer constructs being immune to player theft or that resulting in a ban. As such the OP reeks of fragile ego and limp wristed anger. The developer who was so mad and so butthurt over losing his precious market should have turned off his Internet for a few days and calmed down. Instead we have this shitshow. And if you try the "well the developers had to work to rebuild it" so fucking what. These developers are getting paid by their beta testers, monthly no less to have their game tested. Their game got tested. They should have just said "well, I guess it's time I did the thing I get paid for all the time and clean up market 15" plenty of players have lost their constructs due to permission based theft because they screwed up permissions and instead of being paid to regain what they lost they are paying RL money to regain what they lost and 9/10 times they take it like a man and realize that they should be more careful with permissions in future. They also can't just spawn in replacment items using a dev tool. As such the devs are throwing a hissy fit because they have to do their job for once instead of collecting monthly beta tester tax whilst sitting on their thrones.

If you are at the point in thinking so many people are incorrect and that you must be right that you're now confusing people with others you might want to go back and think about whether you're right. It's like the old saying "If someone says they've got one crazy neighbour they're probably sane, if someone says all their neighbours are crazy, they're likely nuts" I have repeatedly asked you to quote the clause in the EULA where it states that interfering with developer constructs is forbidden. You have always come up empty. So have the developers, they just said "this is against the EULA" they couldn't be more nonspecific regarding the EULA. Their silence on the matter means that they're probably reading the EULA line by line looking for a reason to make the ban look like anything more than a ten year old throwing a tantrum because Timmy stood on his sandcastle. "All press is good press" Oh dear my man. Oh dear indeed. This is what the underlings of rich people tell them when they fuck up and the press gets wind of it. Its a consolation statement. It's not a fact. If you want to look at the amount of games that have tanked because of bad press and the amount of games studios that have gone broke because of bad press be my guest. Day one, Garry's incident comes to mind, that's at the top of the 'dev fuck up scale' but it's still an example. There have been plenty of other games that have got this "good bad press" and unless they were AAA titles they all flopped unless the devs did something to rectify the situation and did it fast. As for beta testers not being pen testers you couldn't be more wrong. The job that these people are paying to do is to test a game for bugs. If they happen to find a game breaking bug and it breaks the game a little (how many people were affected by this? Did the game servers go down? Did the developers lose any revenue over this?) then they did their job. Especially considering they sent a DM to let a GM/Developer know long before putting that reddit thread up. "The developers made a human mistake" Wouldn't it also be true to say that if the original 4 did anything wrong it was making the human 'mistake' of reading the rules and assuming that since the rules said that wrong permissions mean you can lose whatever somebody takes is a human 'mistake' if you could even call it that. They read the rules and they assumed they were in the right to take what they want. Nowhere does it say developer constructs are protected. As for making a 'human mostake' you've just gone on to basically say mods = gods they can do what they want with impunity then "EULA, EULA EEEEUUULLLLLAAAA" like the 4 letters are some sort of fucking magic spell that allows developers to act like complete and utter imbeciles. If anyone is doing mental gymnastics and jumping through illogical hoops it's you. What part of the EULA did they break? I'll be waiting with baited breath while you actually go and read the document.

You're the one who started using RL analogies talking about barring your door, et cetera. I felt you might be able to connect with those or understand them, so I used them. Reading through your post you seem to have me confused with someone else. You should read the username of the person you quote before posting. It's usually a good idea. Why should I ¿brush it off? I literally have nothing to do with scoopy other than agreeing that the reason he was banned is spurious and based off of butthurt rather than rules or the EULA. I've kept up a bit of a dialog with uber as he seems like a decent guy caught up in something he didn't deserve. As for the EULA, you are twisting it a EULA is an agreement between players and the [/b] developers[/b] not a set of rules for all players to abide by but a license agreement. Find something in the EULA that says that players can be banned when a developer fucks up. The OP reads like a straight up whine from the developers with the "this isn't a quick fix" line being the icing on the cake. That reads, to me as "thanks to what you did we needed to fix things rather than keep collecting your money every 3 months" As for it being a "developer owned construct" maybe the developers should have put in some code so that these developer owned constructs can never be tampered with by players. How's that for an amazing idea, its almost like what the developers should have learned from this, rather than getting their game negative publicity on multiple sites for childish behavior. As for the "no sign" the sign is that you can interact with the item. That is the sign. It doesn't have to be a giant neon billboard. "There is no bad press surrounding this" sure there isn't. A video from a popular YouTuber with nearly 100k subs is no bad press. Keep living in your own little world. You also keep referring to me as someone who took part in this, one of the 4 players it would seem. I'll state again, I am a third party. You're saying that people do not need thanked to beta test then are saying that beta testing is a job in the very next paragraph. Have you ever had a job? A job isn't paying someone to use their unfinished product. As for beta testers and pen testers, they are one and the same. This flaw was known about for a long time before this incident made the developers have to do something. In fact (from what I've heard) this was reported in discord DM to a GM before they decided the developers didn't care and as such they showed what happens when you snooze; you lose. Finally (thank god) just because it doesn't say something in a EULA doesn't mean the developers can do what they want then cite said EULA for the reason they dished out bans. That just further weakens their position. An EULA is like a set of demi-laws or rules and as such it must be throrugh. You don't just get arrested for "you were breaking a law that isn't a law yet but you made me work so you're goin to jail buddy". Now I'll be going to bed, I've had enough of your tirades and verbal valium to practically put me into winter hibernation. One last thing though, why do you keep saying "mental gymnastics" you've said it at least once per post. It is extremely repetitious.

Again you are wrong. You cannot seem to comprehend that real life and video games are not the same thing. This actually worries me. They the developers should be held to a higher standard than players, so when they drop the ball and screw up they should brush it off and act like adults. They didn't. In fact: As for it being against the EULA, which is the claim of NQ. Let me quote the EULA for you: "We can not get involved with permission based theft, whether as an individual or an organization." It seems that they, as an organization have gotten involved. They have violated their own EULA while quoting their EULA as reason to ban. That is the textbook definition of trying to throw a mods=gods hissyfit and you are enabling them. As for your final paragraph, you are either distorting facts intentionally or are too much of a smoothbrain to understand what you are saying. Your analogy once again does not fit. Instead it would be like placing a sign on or beside the back door saying "this door is open, feel free to come in and see the buffet inside" with the "free buffet" sitting just inside the back door. To sum up. The developers have it in their EULA themselves that permission based theft is fine. This is like a developer alt getting scammed then banning the person who scammed them because they wield the banhammer. Childish and liable to get them bad press (which they are now getting in spades). They should have said "oh, well its a beta, we screwed up, we will amend the EULA, fix the problem, thank the people for paying to beta test our game (not sure how old you are but when I grew up you got paid to beta test, in cash or a free product or at least got to play for free for the beta duration) and start fixing things from there. That would have been an adult move to make. However they didn't do that. Also on the fact that the game is filled with beta testers you don't seem to understand that the job of beta testers is to find out things like this. We have real life beta testers for both cyber and real life security. They are called penetration testers. They are literally paid to break into buildings, steal employee data, engage in corporate espionage by the corporation they are stealing from, on the grounds that they (obviously) give what they take back. They are paid generously for their work, they don't get fired for exposing a flaw, unless their employer knows about it and wants to ignore it. Novaquirk have been ignoring permission issues for quite some time, so I see this as ingame pen testing by beta testers, kind of like the difference between an IRL pen tester breaking into Joe the Janitor's office, helping himself to Joe's lunch and sitting in his seat, but instead breaking into the CEO's office, using the exact same method and sitting at their desk sipping a glass of $20,000 per bottle wine. I would liken it to (but not compare it directly to) fallout 76 and the developer room. I liken it to that as players found a problem. Only difference is they hacked their way into that dev room. It wasn't like the developer room was sitting around for all to see. I'm sure you know the amount of shit Bethesda got for their reaction to the dev room saga and that was legitimate hacking into a room that should have been removed. This is a group of players discovering that an area wasn't under the right protections and under the game rules and EULA they proceeded to help themselves. Nowhere in the EULA does it say "developers should be immune to all player acts" so your analogy is wrong and the EULA backs what I'm saying.

Your analogy is entirely flawed. What the developers did was akin to leaving their door open with a big sign saying "mi casa, su casa, you can take what you want" permissions aren't locks but permissions to do what you want with the stuff, the developers are clear on this themselves when it comes to friends taking your stuff and running. They have said they will not treat that as an offense as you gave them permission to interact and do what they want with your stuff. Much like how in EvE online some of the biggest losses have been because someone gives roles (permissions) to the wrong person (such as a spy) NQ set their rules out in the same way, however when it's their stuff that they forget to put a "This is my property" sign on they cry and ban because the other players now have their toys. Video games =/= real life. However the best way to phrase open permissions for anyone is eating from a buffet in the middle of a public area (with CCTV) with a sign that says "free buffet, help yourself" then the cops are called for theft after you eat some and the owner of the buffet saying "well I never fully filled out the sign there, it should have said;" " gluten free buffet help yourself if you are me, or a close personal friend of mone " If that were the case you might be detained, but when the CCTV (the logs) show that you followed what the sign said you would be released and more than likely the owner of said buffet would be in trouble for wasting police time. Also you might want to bare in mind that with your real life analogy there is a judicial system IRL and police who are (or should be) a neutral third party. This is more akin to finding said person eating from your signposted free buffet and taking that to mean you can now kidnap them and hold them prisoner indefinitely.

More than likely he would. It's already up on the SidAlpha discord too, sid is a little less well known than Jim Sterling, but the devs really put their foot in it this time. Also the EULA states: "We can not get involved with permission based theft, whether as an individual or an organization" This kind of renders their "You broke the EULA" claim moot. I assume what they mean when they cite the EULA is the whole "we can terminate anyone's account if we want to" part which is in pretty much every EULA and is never used unless someone did seething really bad that the rules or EULA never covered, or you want to get your game a whole heap and a half of negative publicity. This could have been a quirky beta event, the developers could have taken everything back and said it was unintended for developer constructs to be 'stolen' from and given everyone took something/interfaced with the construct while it was public a little "I was at Market 15" commerative plaque that would always be set to private permissions for said user to place in/on whatever they build. Edit: I mean I could even understand banning the 4 involved for as long as it took the developers to make an investigation (or that being the excuse for "Sacre bleu, le Marché! Bannissez-les!" in a fit of wine and cheese fuelled rage) as to whether or not it was a mistake on their end, or a the 4 players found a way to change permissions of constructs and items. I couldn't see this taking longer than 24 hours and after the investigation an apology and a free week of game time could be handed out. However since they made this thread that would be totally impossible. The only thing the devs could do now to salvage things, slightly would be to unban said players and give them the minimum buy (3 months) of game time each for free, write an apology to each person banned (without it being a Ctrl C ctrl V job) as well as an open letter to the community then discipline whatever utter moron under their employ thought that banning them, then making a thread whining about them was a wise idea in the first place. At this point NovaQuirk need to hire a PR agent. It's clear that nobody working for them understands the monumental fuck up they've just made.

Is bragging about playing the game by the rules a violation of the EULA though? Seems more like a violation of a fragile ego to me.

Wow. Dual universe had me interested a few months back as I had heard it was a bit like Space Engineers with an MMO element making it a while lot like a voxel EvE, seemed to have some promise though having to pay monthly to beta test put me off. I heard about this 'incident' through TheYamicks and now this is a game I will never, ever subscribe to. Let me get things straight. First, according to your own rules if permissions are set incorrectly, or if a 'friend' decides to infiltrate and heist you, then it's your fault. That's much like the corporation system I remember from EvE (before a lot of changes got changed to appease the carebear) yet when you incorrectly set permissions on your stuff you permaban people for exposing a flaw that you previously ignored? I'm sorry but these people were beta testing your game. Not only that but they were paying you monthly to do so and in the course of their beta testing they found a problem, allegedly tried to contact you and then when there was no response posted this to reddit. Your response was to hit them with a permaban. You essentially banned one of your own paying beta testers in a childish fit of rage over the fact that you fell victim to your own game mechanics, which seem to be poorly implemented, there should be a person by person permission system and moved assets should default to private. If you wanted more complex access systems you should go down the route of Eve's corporation roles system (which is also present in many other MMOs) where certain members get certain permissions and a log is kept of who took what. Essentially you poorly implemented a system and when you became hoist on your own petard by it instead of thanking the beta testers for testing your game and maybe taking back some things which are dev only items you acted like a group of children and said that your toys cannot be touched and therefore you are permabanning the people who played by the rules, citing the EULA as the reason, yet you never said which section of the EULA they broke, personally I assume that you're using the part in almost every game EULA where "Novaquirk reserves the rights to deny a player access to the game" which basically translates to "if our fefes get hurt we will ban you" as such you've lost a potential customer. I assume you, or someone else (if this post even goes through) will say "potential customers don't matter" in which case I would like to know said person's opinion on piracy. Finally, these actions are almost certainly grounds for you to end up in SidAlpha's dirty devs Hall of shame. I've got in touch with him. No doubt others have too. -Dave