Chat Hack/Exploit to Harass Players

[MegnaGaming]

Hello,

Tonight during our game we had someone join who managed to impersonate the other players in the game and type as them (it was there username, but it wasn't them typing). This person used this as a way to say several terrible things ranging from hate speech to pedophilia. We found out at the end who is was.

I have both video of this and the steam profile of the individual who did this. I already reported to Steam but since Steam TOS disallows public shaming I have opted out of posting their profile here. If a dev would be so kind as to get in touch with me, that would be great!

[JTB]

I was one of the people that i was playing with megna and was also impersonated, he said a lot of different things that were very offensive and maybe (if other people didn't know there was a hacker) could of gotten me banned. I'm hoping that this gets fixed soon.

[Wheel]

There will be a fix for this in 0.0.99 Experimental 3 and next public build to fix line break exploits and to add a bold to usernames.

Really sorry about that guys.

[MegnaGaming]

What about the person in question who did this? Will they receive a game ban? I'm willing to bet they're the same person that did this in the other post about this issue.

[Gizzy]

I know who it is and am going to speak to him to tell him to stop. As Wheel mentioned the bug is getting fixed in the next update. However, if you want this to not happen again then i reccomend playing in experimental as it is not possible to linebreak in there.

[MegnaGaming]

I know you know who he is - he's a member of your clan. If the devs aren't willing to ban does this mean they support toxicity and racism?

[Wheel]

Originally posted by MegnaGaming @ Twitch:

I know you know who he is - he's a member of your clan. If the devs aren't willing to ban does this mean they support toxicity and racism?

Woah, why would anyone support that?
We have no way to ban people and it would take up all our time going through reports and claims.

All we can do is try to mitigate the impact on other users.
We are doing this by fixing exploits like this and adding in more options to censor and hide chat.

[MegnaGaming]

Valve actually provides all games on their platform with a way to apply bans, including temporary bans.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6899-IOSK-9514&l=english

I'm just surprised none of the developers have actually reached out to get further information (such as who the player is, the content of what was said, what evidence there is, etc.) which leads me to believe they either already know who it is and are aware of the situtation, or just don't care enough to deal with it. That being said, I do appreciate the effort to push forth a patch and fix the issue.

[Wheel]

Originally posted by MegnaGaming @ Twitch:

Valve actually provides all games on their platform with a way to apply bans, including temporary bans.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6899-IOSK-9514&l=english

I'm just surprised none of the developers have actually reached out to get further information (such as who the player is, the content of what was said, what evidence there is, etc.) which leads me to believe they either already know who it is and are aware of the situtation, or just don't care enough to deal with it. That being said, I do appreciate the effort to push forth a patch and fix the issue.

I don’t know who it is and usually the only evidence is screenshots or text files which could be made by anyone to get someone unfairly banned.

VAC bans are very serious and if done wrong could make us look very bad, a few games have done this in the past, a friend of mine still has a vac ban warning on his account from a game that gave VAC bans to the wrong people, these would also need to be reviewed and people need to have the right to challenge them if they feel it unfair.

We are a team of 3 guys and we don’t have the time, I wish we did because I don’t like these people either and have been in a few other games over the years with this problem.

Thanks for supporting us, we'll just need to keep making it harder for people to harass others.

[MegnaGaming]

Not to beat a dead horse, but game bans are different and seperate from VAC bans. VAC bans are automatic and happen when Valves Anti-Cheat system detects something it flags as a hack.

The evidence I have is actually video as this happened during a live-stream. This person is apparently an active member of your community and mentioned in a number of places associated with your game. This unfortunately also impacts the image of your game and how current owners and future prospective buyers see it and the community surrounding it.

It's clear there isn't a desire to remove this person from the community so I'll stop pushing the issue here but I'm rather disappointed in the response.

Biggoted Racist:1, GWYF Community:0

[Doubtful Detective]

Locking this thread.

As said by wheel

Originally posted by Wheel:

There will be a fix for this in 0.0.99 Experimental 3 and next public build to fix line break exploits and to add a bold to usernames.

Really sorry about that guys.

At this point in time, you must remember that anyone can change their steam name at any time, so it could have been someone impersonating him. However, since you singled out a specific group in your complaint, I'm locking this thread before it proceeds further.

Any more posts about issues that give out details other community members (regardless of how much or little info there is, or who was in the right and wrong) will be locked immediately. While I sympathise with the point you have made, under no circumstances I will allow singling out a group of players or an individual as it violates the steam rules of "Post personally identifiable information" and/or "Threats of violence or harassment.".

-Doubtful.