Apparently a sonic fan game has some creepy pasta style stuff, but instead of being meta it actually has DRM that infects your computer with a trojan and does some shady shit.
[url]https://www.reddit.com/r/SonicTheHedgehog/comments/7iynxv/psa_fangame_sonic_gather_battle_has_a_malicious/[/url]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/182553127751254016/389578880698023949/unknown-37.png[/img]
Here's a supposed version of the game and the effects it has. Removal of the ability to type out the title and closing your browser.
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_5IS7nWKas[/media]
Here's a video detailing what the game does to your files
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6acvaLPmp-c[/media]
What do you guys think of this? Copypasta gone wrong or actual trojan?
I wanna install this on a virtual box and play this now just to see what it's like :v:
After doing some more reading apparently an update for the game installs the DRM on your computer and persists after uninstalling the game. The supposed reason was because the artist was super protective of his sprite edits to the point where he wanted to control who could and couldn't play his game.
I don't know what server this is, but apparently it does all this shady shit and has internet access allowing the creator to selectively and remotely brick the game or not.
[img]https://sonic-gather-battle.is-bad.com/4556b3.png[/img]
[img]https://sonic-gather-battle.is-bad.com/29b548.png[/img]
God stuff like this is always so creepy to me yet interesting. It really is like a creepypasta, except, you know, not fake and un-scary.
I like that this all seems to be because some dweeb was paranoid about people cheating at his shitty Sonic fangame.
A creepy pasta/ meta-game where your game goes weird with certain conditions is fine.
But this game's literally malware bundled for possible profit of the developer in the most insidious of ways.
I wonder why he did it? Did he believe nobody'd notice? His name as a game developers forever tainted if his game was in any way decent, and otherwise he's going to have to build up a new account for trust over his next work to begin with.
Even if it's for protecting his own files and his own game from possible crackers and modders, that still makes no sense when you yourself are illegally using assets from a company, let alone abuse the fanbase of that company for your own agenda.
What a weird case...
Reminds me of when Osu! got apeshit anticheat because the dev decided to go hyper-paranoid about people cheating in a single-player game, and it ended up being Baby's First Malware. Only Osu didn't install essentially a RAT to do its job.
I'm guessing the creepy pasta was supposed to be front to hide the drm/trojan, yeesh
This is some crazy stuff.
Good that people are so quick to uncover more details about this.
How fucking stupid do you have to be, to think this was a good idea?
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52966190]Reminds me of when Osu! got apeshit anticheat because the dev decided to go hyper-paranoid about people cheating in a single-player game, and it ended up being Baby's First Malware. Only Osu didn't install essentially a RAT to do its job.[/QUOTE]
osu! is not a single-player game though (you can play it offline, however), people make accounts to be on the game's rankings for any applicable gamemode (osu!standard, catch the beat, taiko, mania) and to store online the scores of the maps you play (as opposed of only storing them locally) and get performance points (higher pp = more rank), so it's understandable that there's a need for an anti-cheat, just [I]not[/I] one that screenshots your computer and sends it to peppy (the main developer), which is why it was removed shortly after the discovery and the dev apologized shortly after.
[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;52966190]Reminds me of when Osu! got apeshit anticheat because the dev decided to go hyper-paranoid about people cheating in a single-player game, and it ended up being Baby's First Malware. Only Osu didn't install essentially a RAT to do its job.[/QUOTE]
It's only singleplayer if you never log in. If you log in there's online leaderboards which already necessitate some anti cheat...
late
If it had a full disclaimer on what is it doing to your PC the whole situation could be alleviated.
...but the intend itself seemed too cynical. No way people would fully agree to this, the breach and risk is too much.
All of this in service of what seems to be just another crappy Sonic Fan Game. Who'd believe this? Hell, i can hardly believe it.
Probably should report this guy to the FBI. Something like this is incrediblely illegal, regardless of intent.
Checking Youtube, there is gameplay of this game from over two years ago. Why hasn't it been reported on until now?
[QUOTE=Crimor;52966617]Because, if you actually read the thread, it seems to have been included in an update on dec 4.[/QUOTE]
Well shit. I dunno how I missed that on the third post :v:
[QUOTE=JerryAnderson;52966612]Checking Youtube, there is gameplay of this game from over two years ago. Why hasn't it been reported on until now?[/QUOTE]
Because, if you actually read the thread, it seems to have been included in an update on dec 4.
[QUOTE=Combin0wnage;52966466]Probably should report this guy to the FBI. Something like this is incrediblely illegal, regardless of intent.[/QUOTE]
That's a hell of a response. Usually fan games just get DMCA'd.
[QUOTE=Hatley;52966674]That's a hell of a response. Usually fan games just get DMCA'd.[/QUOTE]
Usually fan games don't have ransomeware or Trojans like this though
Reading this made me, like, furious. You would have to be an absolute fucking psychopath to include a trojan of this magnitude over protection of your fucking Sonic fan game. Fuck the guy who made this. This goes well beyond INTJ territory. I'm not one to make assumptions of the developer's life, but suffice to say, if he is simultaneously a Sonic fan, able to code an entire Sonic game with proper Sonic sprite animations, whilst being incredibly protective of his totally original OC to the point of [I]being able to write code that sends user information to him so that he can protect said OC,[/I] he's clearly gone off the deep end. I take back everything I said about DeviantArt. [I][B]This[/B][/I] is this the worst thing to come out of the Sonic fanbase.
What the fuck did I just walk into. Who goes through the effort and breaking all these laws just because you don't want someone to cheat?
Based on gameplay run-throughs this game is like 20 minutes long?
All this for a shit game that you could beat in a sneeze
Don’t worry, my PC already recognizes Sonic games as malware.
Wow imagine being this protective of your shitty game where 90% of the content are stolen assets
[QUOTE=JDER14;52966706]What the fuck did I just walk into. Who goes through the effort and breaking all these laws just because you don't want someone to cheat?[/QUOTE]
retro fan games sound like the perfect space for devs to have fun and add intentional cheatcodes, intentional glitches, and other various easter eggs
I hope this doesn't affect how Sega are treating fan games.
I could see the awful press this might get make Sega more wary of letting fans do games that could hurt their brand.
[QUOTE=Tetsmega;52966110]The supposed reason was because the artist was super protective of his sprite edits to the point where he wanted to control who could and couldn't play his game.[/QUOTE]
This all does beg the question; Have the sprites been leaked already?
Oh boy, not since lostboy.exe did I see such an uproar about a RAT. What could this guy have been thinking?
[QUOTE=GabrielWB;52966773]This all does beg the question; Have the sprites been leaked already?[/QUOTE]
I don't think the sprites are even his.
[QUOTE=KingKombat;52966696]This goes well beyond INTJ territory. [/QUOTE]
What's this even supposed to mean?
So low-level calls such as the "raw hard disk access" in this game's Rube Goldberg DRM require administrator privileges? These design choices are more entertaining than the game.
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