How recent was the site cleared?

[Robyn Tact]

I'm glad this is the first post you see when looking up the game. If the current devs behind the game really are alt-right trash, I'm glad I got prior warning before wasting my time getting invested.

Sorry to hear you had so much shit flung your way.

[snon]

Has Cronus ever offered even an insincere apology?

[Agent]

2 hours ago, snon said:

Has Cronus ever offered even an insincere apology?

Yes, but not for calling me a faggot or even for anything he did, instead just for things being “messy”. Generally the message seemed to be along the lines of “not sorry for anything I did lol I would definitely do it all again lol but sorry you feel like what I did was wrong lol”.

And I have no doubt he’d do it again, it’s not like I’m the first person he’s gone out of his way to screw over.

[snon]

"Sorry you're such a bitch"
That sucks.
I still find it odd that TA finds the path of sweeping this under the rug and hoping the majority of players don't know/don't care/agree with Cronus easier than actually addressing it in some form or fashion.
Non-descript statements of "holding the game hostage." meanwhile it was partly over the repeated and prolonged bigoted comments of one team member to another. It paints TA as a clandestine sect of bigoted freelance volunteer game devs who have an agreement with Electronic Arts lol.

[Agent]

Honestly I don't get it, the only way I know how to describe is "pretty face antagonistic" where they'll use some completely random descriptors to belittle any claims (i.e: "holding the game hostage"), which is insulting, while completely ignoring any responsibility they have and completely ignoring that they're the ones in the wrong. People just go along with it. The place is a cult.

Like ffs, imagine robbing someone's house, and then the victim saying "you know what, fine, I haven't pressed charges, please stop using my stolen possessions though", and then waiting an entire year for them to take their darn time to move away from using your works. Then they point out that you said they could borrow the lawn mower and you say okay fine whatever keep the stupid lawnmower, but quit using the rest. That's unheard of levels of tolerance, which they pissed on, and they have the gall to say the DMCA notices are "frivolous" when they've had an entire year to remove those works. Then after that, they're childish and petty enough to block my home IP from the website and such? Like seriously fuck off, that's a whole different level of entitlement.

Which yeah, a year after telling them to cease using my works, which they agreed to do mind you, they're still using them. Their response to DMCA notices was to literally move hosts to one who gloats about tossing out 99% of DMCA notices, instead of just removing the works. The whole bunch is nothing but a bunch of crooks as far as I'm concerned at this point.

I even went through the effort of reading through US copyright law and quoting the actual law from 17 US Code, including pointing out that what they're doing is literally criminal. Completely ignored. They literally do not care that they're flagrantly breaking the law, and indeed go out of their way to continue getting away with doing so, moving hosts and all.

I have never in my life heard of people so resistant to just doing basic things to make things right, things which cost nothing. An apology costs nothing. Getting rid of a bigoted criminal racist costs nothing. Removing my works actually costs nothing. Fairly negotiating for those works instead of being forced to remove them, can cost nothing. None of those things are asking for much, and none of those things would be remotely close to the wrong thing to do. It actually blows my mind. They would actually rather risk going to court, losing, and consequently being forced into bankruptcy + assume criminal risk (there's easily both criminal copyright and CFAA issues at hand) + be personally liable for any civil judgement, than do anything that any normal decent person would do.

It's irrational, and it says quite a bit. I'm not exactly asking for anything unreasonable, just basic decency, any basic decency, and it's so incredibly frustrating.

[Tapulela]

What a shame is to read people treat you like this. Like for real, someone tried to make you chose which of all the bad things that happened to you are worse. Like if that even matters.

Not gonna lie. I think that if "it's childish" to "hold hostage a game" so be it. Serves them well. If  it's within your capability are doing it without breaking any law then you should do it. Not only by the fact that other people are making profit of your creation without an actual specified set of rules in a contract that allowed them to do so, but also because they're very mean. Some people just learn the hard way.

People keep talking about you not being the creator and "taking personal something that x person said", yet that doesn't really matters when it comes down to answer the question of are you entitled to something for your work and time spent on this project.

People can and WILL judge you in hilarious ways. It's not worth your time. The only person who decides if something Cronus said it's mean or not it's you (Eventually will be a judge who decides, but meanwhile, your opinion is the only one that matters).

[Iee]

Can't believe there are people here who would support someone slinging profanities and racist/homophobic/transphobic remarks like it was their mother-tongue. Y'all give us OG Renegade players a bad name.

Also, you didn't deserve to deal with that shit Agent. Immature devs like Cronus deserve to crash and burn along with their attitudes. The game be damned, but optimally you and your team would want your years of work retrieved. I wish you guys best of luck.

[Plus]

On 3/10/2022 at 10:48 PM, Agent said:

To expand on that, no reply from received for the following message; instead, a ban was issued:

 

And to expand on that, I present to you Cronus:

Who also happened to be scheming literally a month before it happened, like the day after Havoc left:

 

But apparently I'm the unreasonable one for wanting to be treated like a decent human being, as opposed to continuing to be treated worse than trash.

"It was meant to be but in a funny way" Why can't he just say "KICK ME IN THE TEETH! I NEED SOMEONE TO MAKE ME SUFFER!!!" It takes a lot less mental gymnastics and gets the same results. Honestly, people who take pleasure from other people's suffering should be destroyed on a fundamental level, have their entire existence removed from this world and all others, every achievement, every memory, everything that is proof to their existence erased.

Bottom line: People who think hurting other people is funny should die painfully. I'm not trying to be edgy, that's just how I feel.

[Koopak]

God checking in to see this is a bummer but if anything i feel like you shouldn't have had to face this Agent and something should have changed a long time ago. This treatment is beyond unacceptable.

 

Let me be clear to anyone who thinks this is remotely okay. The behavior Cronus demonstrates here would be an automatic ban from any community I have ever been a part of across multiple political, social, and interest groups. I don't give two shits about any of the ideas, views, or concepts of 'just don't be upset by words'. If you cant make even a token attempt to work with someone who is offended by words most people would consider offensive and are classified by most entities, social, corporates, and political, as slurs, then you are not offering basic human respect.

[Agent]

1 hour ago, Koopak said:

The behavior Cronus demonstrates here would be an automatic ban from any community

Remember, I am literally banned for apparently complaining with absolutely no explanation or clarification given. From a project I dumped thousands of hours and thousands of dollars into. It’s worse than a lack of basic respect, it’s egregiously insulting.

[Cat]

Agent, I have information that may be relevant to you and I have sent a friend request to Agent#0001 on Discord

[Agent]

Got bored made funny

 

[Mora]

After 4 years I wanted to return and I see drama.
Some tldr for what happened? (And why my account is gone?)

[Gex_str]

About account info: entire forums was moved to a different domain due to what happened. It's now branded under Totem Arts.
As for what happened: best advice I can give is to listen to both sides of conflict, one side is here, another side can be found on TA forums/Discord.

[Agent]

On 9/20/2022 at 1:31 PM, Gex_str said:

About account info: entire forums was moved to a different domain due to what happened. It's now branded under Totem Arts.
As for what happened: best advice I can give is to listen to both sides of conflict, one side is here, another side can be found on TA forums/Discord.

Their “side” is to literally hide posts and ban anyone who talks negatively about them, and to never own up to any mistakes. It’s a joke.

[BrokenArrow]

15 hours ago, Agent said:

Their “side” is to literally hide posts and ban anyone who talks negatively about them, and to never own up to any mistakes. It’s a joke.

You are describing exactly your behaviour and your character and how you treated others. You shouldn't be surprised that others are now doing the same to you.

[Agent]

Ah yes, hiding posts and banning people without explanation, things I’m definitely well known for /s

If you’ve been upset by past bans I’m really truly not the person you should be upset with.

[Narimos]

On 9/20/2022 at 8:31 PM, Gex_str said:

About account info: entire forums was moved to a different domain due to what happened. It's now branded under Totem Arts.
As for what happened: best advice I can give is to listen to both sides of conflict, one side is here, another side can be found on TA forums/Discord.

Edited September 29, 2022 by Narimos
What other side? Kronos explaining why bigotry and harassment are actually ok?

[xweert123]

I decided to check in on Renegade X again after years of not being active in the community and come back to this.  Very strange and very crazy situation.  It's also really disturbing to see how people can see all of those screenshots and entirely dismiss them as "out of context".  Not only did you provide context, but those behaviors wouldn't even be acceptable regardless of what the context was.  I'm seriously sorry you dealt with such absurd abuse.  It feels like internet culture nowadays is awful; things like racism, homophobia, etc. are treated as casual jokes in any context and that it's just totally okay to violate people's boundaries whenever you want in any situation.  It's one thing to make jokes like that with a group of people who are comfortable with it, but if somebody is being abused, and it is entirely at their own expense, blaming the victim for being upset is just ridiculous.  Being a decent human being gets you places, man.

With that being said, I don't really know what contributions you made to the project and how much you actually did for it, and although I find that specific individual's behavior very disturbing and truly horrifically reprehensible, I don't really know how fair it is to demand that the entire project halts and that everyone's work gets put on hold, until they create sufficient replacements for your contributions.  If you did extensive work and added significant contributions over thousands of hours of work then that demand would be a very unreasonable expectation (and would be unfair to everyone working on the project), but if you only did very little, then it really wouldn't make sense for them to have to shut everything down in order to remove your contributions.  I also feel like, considering it's a project where people volunteer and pay out of pocket to manage it's development, it would be absurd to create the expectation that every member who no longer works on the game anymore or is banned from it retains the rights to those creations and that the rest of the team needs to remove everything that individual worked on in order to continue development.  That's just not reasonable.  I've chipped in on numerous projects and have had serious falling outs with some of them including being horribly abused by a psychotic project lead and stepping down as a result, and, although it's true that I worked on specific assets for that project out of my own pocket, and I can argue that those assets I made are my own property since I made them, the fact of the matter is that I made those assets for that project specifically, and the project isn't my property.  If I wanted full rights to my assets I wouldn't have literally developed them to be used by a game or project.  I'm a 3D Artist and I deal with this issue a lot; sometimes people I don't like use my assets.  I can't just go around saying they can't use my art.  That just isn't how it works.  People can't claim what I made was made by them, but they have the right to use it, because it was made for that purpose.

As a result, I feel like it's only this specific member of the team who needs to be held accountable.  And that's the part that upsets me; it's very frustrating that this specific member isn't being held accountable for their actions and I'm not entirely sure why they seemingly aren't being held accountable.  It feels like there's a big part of the story that I'm missing, but I'm not exactly sure where I would have to go to see the other side of it.

[Agent]

I think there's some major differences between art assets you made for a game being used in the game you intended, and a group of people you never gave permission to distribute your work taking your work from your computers you own and you were previously the distributor of, as well as works which were never distributed, just taking those works and using them without your permission, and spitting in your face while they do it. Some works never meant to be used by anybody other than yourself, to maintain your own servers & systems. Then also deleting those works off of your servers you own, your computers. Stealing accounts you own and are in your name. Then they go out of their way to rub salt in the wound by slandering your name, stealing credit for your work, and stripping credits to your own work.

There was a lot of work stolen. There was a lot of infrastructure I put a lot of work and thousands of dollars into which was just outright directly destroyed by them. They copied and deleted files which were meant for much more than RenX. They took user data. Even in a criminal complaint I made recently, which I signed/swear to as being truthful, I noted a lot of it down but I'm pretty sure I missed some things:

Quote

Items stolen by Taylor Stewart (and possibly Zack Loveless) include but are not limited to:
    * renegade-x.com website and databases, including user data for tens of thousands of users
    * wiki.renegade-x.com website and databases, including user data
    * svn.renegade-x.com subversion version-control server, including user data
    * devbot.renegade-x.com "Jupiter Bot" proprietary software instance and databases
    * serverlist.renegade-x.com nginx HTTP Proxy server providing HTTPS functionality for devbot (above)
    * gitlab.glitchware.com GitLab Enterprise instance, databases, and repositories, including user data
    * jenkins.glitchware.com Jenkins continuous integration and build system, including user data
    * vcs.glitchware.com Virtual Machine hosting gitlab.glitchware.com, svn.glitchware.com, and related infrastructure
    * ipa.glitchware.com FreeIPA LDAP account management system instance and databases, including user data
    * redmine.glitchware.com RedMine ticketing system for internal issue tracking, including user data
    * vpn.glitchware.com SoftEther VPN Server instance and database
    * build.glitchware.com Windows build machine used to build Renegade X and other Windows-only Jenkins 

And that's just purely the IT / server stuff. That's not even about the copyright issues, and the DMCA notices they've outright ignored. It doesn't touch on them outright circumventing DMCA notices by changing hosting services to a DMCA-ignored hosting provider. That doesn't touch on the formation of a potentially fraudulent LLC. Doesn't touch on defamation. Doesn't touch on the creepy comments that make Cronus sound like a predator. Doesn't touch on the slurs. It's a pretty limited scope initial complaint: they literally robbed me.

 

On 12/5/2022 at 5:20 PM, xweert123 said:

People can't claim what I made was made by them

This is more or less what they're doing. They removed my name from the credits, and still use my work which I still own and never consented to them using. They chose to do that as a group, just like they supposedly chose to rob me as a group. If they had never gone that far, things would be different. I love my works being used to enrich everyday people's lives, especially people I've never met. I don't like being robbed though, or my works being used to enrich people financially, or my works being ripped out of my own hands and distributed against my will, without ever getting my consent.

 

What they did, it wasn't just rude or mean, it wasn't even some ambiguous legal gray zone. If it were ambiguous, I wouldn't really bother trying to fight it at all. I'd honestly just take the loss if there weren't realistic legal recourse. It was criminal though, and many of them deserve to be brought to justice, most especially Cronus.

[Agent]

And I guess I’ve alluded to this before but it’s more than even just a moral outrage about my work being used against my will: I have real liability concerns about what it means for my works to be distributed unlicensed against my will. These are illegal copies they’re distributing of my work, there’s no license agreement for them to protect me from liability and such.

What if a hacker uses a remote code execution exploit using some fault in some code I wrote, to do anything, say install ransomeware, and they cause millions of dollars of damages somehow. Without a license agreement there’s no waiver of liability. I’ve never used a software license that didn’t waive liability for that exact type of reason/scenario. But these works aren’t being distributed with any license. They’re stolen works, there’s real potential consequences there that I’m not consenting to.