michaeldcullen

Server files ARE private. They execute only on my box, and nobody else's. Hence the problem.

Sorry for the delay replying here, I was completely exhausted last night after I posted this, had been up for like 20+ hours sorting through the shitstorm on Reddit. Just felt like I should probably clear up a few things and clarify the reasons behind all of this. Firstly, I'm not "a dodgy guy who tries to make money off Arma"; the community I manage has no donator rewards, no item malls, no monetization of anything. Our two dedicated servers are paid for out of the pockets of our community members, who donate if and when they feel it's appropriate to keep things running. I've been in that community for about a year, but it's been going since 2001 doing other (non-BIS) games. Our Arma servers are PVE, not PVP, so "pay to win" or anything like that would be completely pointless. I'm project lead of the DayZ Evolved team, which is a fork & continuation of DayZ Epoch, with the intention of creating new assets, re-writing old code, and optimizing performance to keep it playable and keep the DZE community alive now that the Epoch developers have moved on to bigger and better things (Arma 3 Epoch). Through this project, I work closely with several prominent mod creators in the DayZ Epoch community, all of whom would LOVE to work on new features for DayZ Epoch, but are shut down at every turn by the restrictions the developers' have put in place. From a pure development standpoint, I can understand their point of view; they want a vanilla mod so that if any issues are reported they can be sure its with THEIR code and not with a 3rd party script. However, from a community point of view, it doesn't make sense. The majority of players have zero interest in submitting bug reports, they simply want to play the game. And if every server is exactly the same, then what's the point in paying £40 a month to run one? Out of all the existing DayZ Epoch servers (using it as a benchmark because there's some 4000+ servers out there), hardly any of them run a completely vanilla setup. They range from complete easymode to ultra-hardcore survivalism, with everything in between represented somewhere in the community. This diversity is enabled by the fact that the server and mission files can be modified. And its this diversity which has made the mod so popular. By preventing people from changing the server files, it stops people from changing even the most basic of things in the mod. For example, one of my players asked me the other day if I could change it so that their UAV spawns more than 3 AI; I had to tell them no, unfortunately I can't change anything like that. There's also a project ongoing to add an AI mission system to Epoch, but they're stymied at every turn by the restrictions which the developers have put in place (http://epochmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/29191-ai-missions/). It's things like this which are pissing off the Epoch modding community, and the reason for all of the discontent at the moment. I've tried to talk to the developers about this with varying success; had a nice conversation with Kiory last night, although my attempts to communicate with Awol, Axle and Sequisha have just been met with insults (as you can see on Reddit, EpochMod forums and the Twitch recording I posted); all I'm trying to do is get them to remove the restrictions which are upsetting server owners and the players in these communities. They've got their own Official Servers which they can keep stock and get bug reports from; but under the terms of their own licence, 3rd parties must be allowed to make changes to the mod for private use. Even supplying a non-restricted DLL as a separate package would satisfy pretty much everyone, and then we can all go back to modding and playing. The argument between the Epoch developers and infiSTAR is no concern of mine; if they have a problem with him, then they're well within their rights to refuse to work with him and make whatever statements they feel fit regarding his code. What irritated me was the fact that they then started banning anyone who used his Antihack on their server from their forums, including one of their official hosts. The people who use his product are innocent of any sort of wrongdoing towards the Epoch developers, and surely as server owners they should be allowed to run what they want on their server. That's pretty much a summary of the complaints at the moment, I hope this has cleared some stuff up for everyone. Any further questions I'll be happy to answer either here or via PM :)

I'm not here because "one of you pissed me off", the entire way that the A3 Epoch development has been done has pissed me off. You have shown nothing but contempt for the entire community, stating on numerous occasions that you're doing this "for yourselves", that it's "your mod" and you'll do things "your way", and anyone who wants to change the way it works on THEIR servers can forget about it. Everything else is just icing. The fact is, you've breached the terms of your own licence, and that's against the law. The MANW says that any submissions must not break any laws, therefore you're eligible for disqualification unless you rectify the breach in license. You can do that by removing the CRC check. We're not asking for a lot there. You can even provide the a non-CRC checking DLL as a separate download for use only by server owners who are willing to waive any form of support regarding bugs and other issues from yourselves, and include the vanilla-enforcing DLL in the default server files package. By preventing adaptations, you're in breach of the license, it's as simple as that. And worse than that, you've illegally enforced these restrictions with complete disregard for the community. If this wasn't such a big problem, why are so many people complaining on your forums? Why are you continually locking and/or deleting threads with concerns from members of the community, and why are you banning people who are bringing these concerns to light? You and the rest of the developers keep trying to make this personal, but it's not. This is about the project and the way it is viewed by the community. I have attempted all throughout this process (via PMs, waiting in your TeamSpeak, and posting everything in a public forum) to engage the development team in frank, open and honest discussion about these issues and resolve them amicably by reaching a compromise, but have been met by nothing but refusals, personal attacks and sarcasm. If you respect the Arma community so much, why would you go out of your way like this to alienate them? Or don't server owners and their playerbase count as part of the Arma community? I suppose after all, it was AWOL who said "GSPs first, official hosts second, public last." Is that the approach your team has decided to take with EVERYTHING, as opposed to just the release of server files?

I'm not in "cahoots" with MGT, they're just yet another community which you have betrayed. I'll think you'll find that on Reddit, the vast majority of people were against your practices, although they weren't particularly happy with infiSTAR either. The core of the argument got diluted a bit by that; frankly what you do or don't do with regards to infiSTAR means nothing to me, your treatment of server owners' and their communities does, however. And from what I can gather from the person who replied to you on Reddit, MGT apparently added a donator shop because you banned them from the EpochMod forum and proceeded to nuke their Arma 2 server. Not particularly mature behaviour, is it? Do we REALLY want people like this to be profiting from the MANW contest?

Unfortunately, the Epoch developers have failed to understand the scope and limitations of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It clearly states that adaptations are expressly permitted under the terms of the license for personal use, without redistribution, and any measures employed to prevent this cause a breach of the license. I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that by licensing material under the CC 4.0, the licensors (Epoch Mod) waive the ability to exert the "moral rights, publicity rights, personality rights, or privacy rights" except where to enforce the terms of the license; terms which SPECIFICALLY allow adaptations for personal use to be created. I suggest that the fact that the development team seems determined to refuse to abide by their own licence shows a contempt for legal practice, which is incompatible with Bohemia Interactive's policies, and the rule in the MANW contest which states all entrants must abide by any relevant laws.

Taken from our post on the Arma 3 Subreddit: While the shady goings on at Arma 3 Life have been capturing the Arma 3 community's attention recently, something less well-known - and possibly worse - has been going on behind the scenes at EpochMod.com. What started as an interesting evolution of a DayZ mod, updated and re-envisioned for Arma 3 - most likely in order to move away from the DZML-SA which prohibits porting to A3 - has developed into one of the most controversial projects I've ever seen. The behaviour of the developers with regards to behind-the-scenes deals to provide exclusive "early access" to Game Server Providers for a percentage of the profits; adding CRC verification preventing modification of server files for personal use, contrary to the terms of their own CC license; theft of licensed code from third parties such as infiSTAR; and the attitude of the developers when asked numerous times by myself and other members of their community. Add to all of that the fact that the entire project is essentially a way to profit from the Make Arma Not War contest, with zero regard for the very community which made their Arma 2 mod so popular, and it becomes clear that they have no regard for the community-orientated ideals behind the Make Arma Not War campaign. With that in mind, I - on behalf of the wider Epoch community - hereby propose that they be disqualified from the contest under the following points: Reasons for exclusion from the Contest: c.do not comply with these official rules The Organizer reserves the right in its sole and unfettered discretion to disqualify any Entry that according to its beliefs contains obscene, offensive or inappropriate content, or that is not consistent with the spirit or theme of the contest. By completing and confirming the registration the Participant: agrees to comply with all applicable laws and regulations The specific law which they have broken is the terms of the CC license which they have chosen, by including CRC checks in their redis connector, they prevent adaptations of the distributed material for personal use. The relevant section can be found here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_Versions#Adaptations_of_NoDerivatives_material_permitted_when_not_shared We believe that this is not in the spirit of the contest, and against the relevant licensing laws, and therefore request that their submission be re-evaluated by Bohemia Interactive. It is with deep regret that I choose to bring this to the wider Arma community's attention, but I have attempted to resolve these criticisms with the Epoch developers on numerous occasions but have been met with insults and generally negative attitude towards myself and anyone else with a concern by the development team, both privately and in public (on Twitch etc). ---------------------------------------------- In addition to this (updated for clarification purposes) post, there's a wealth of further evidence of violations, offensive behaviour, and just generally going against the spirit of the Arma community on the Reddit thread. I hope this will be taken seriously and addressed by Bohemia Interactive. Thanks, Michael

You MAY have to take your query to Valve themselves; I'm not sure how they deal with key validation but it's definitely worth contacting their support in addition to BI's. Arma 2 OA can ONLY be updated to 125548 via Steam.

Howdy! Apparently I can't create a new thread on here until my post count is higher (not sure how high), so figured I'd say hello in here. I'm Michael, 28, and currently project lead for DayZ Evolved (an Arma 2 modification). Been working with Arma for about a year, and love the openness of the platform :)