Announcement and final word on the CheatHappens vs. h4x0r trainer war

[Joe Forster/STA]

Recently it has come to our attention that online is available a PDF document that contains the results of the investigation of CheatHappens concerning h4x0r's activities. Upon downloading, it turned out to be a quite full "criminal profile", with tons of h4x0r's personal data. The link to the document was posted by an individual presumably close to CheatHappens, in the form of an attachment to a long rant, quoted from Mike/CheatHappens, against the behavior of one of the administrators of that forum. After my reply to that thread, soon a PM arrived on this forum from Caliber:

Originally Posted by Caliber

someone told me, and so i see you couldn't stay out of it over there at deviated. this is the same information we sent to you guys as well as a few other trainer bits, plus the myriad number of other non-CH trainer makers who reported ripping. don't act like you haven't seen this information before. the reversal of 'opinion' by you is comical. you didn't 'examine' anything 'fully' that was sent to you by us (and posted in the fucking forums here) until it was anti-CH worthy and then you posted this myopic diatribe and stickied it. congratulations! you won't admit it, but it's clear that h4x0r was ripping (as well as many other things that were needing to be handled) and this was well over a year ago. it doesn't take a genius to look at two trainers and come to the same conclusion. at least admit what you are and quit trying to sound 'impartial'. the backpeddling and weak retaliations don't become you. i doubt deviated will leave that posting and link to the pdf up for long since it makes you both look like the stupid and wrongheaded barking dogs that you are. you can't 'explain it away' no matter how many postings you make, but i am sure you will try. no need to respond to me here about that topic since i could care less since we have accomplished what you apparently could not do yourselves. the proof and the entire history is right there in the pdf and i KNOW what happened and who did what. again quit trying to call the tar on your hands something other than black....

it's a year late but i guess someone at GCW admitting that there appears to be proof of h4x0r ripping our trainers is a positive step. until you post that fact somewhere, well then thanks for nothing (still)-

by the way, there appears to be an individual named

ROTOR

that we have seen several postings of trainers:

http://trainercheats.net/tag/rotor

at any rate, we are looking at him closely. if you have any contact with this person you can let him know that we've seen some similarities in his work, although we don't have enough to publicly start saying anything. we'd rather not have to play this game again, chasing down people in their own country/towns, etc. he apparently can do his own trainers so i'd like him to continue doing so without reversing the work of others, if he catches our drift.

good day-

Poor Caliber, he thinks we would hide this document as it proves our guilt and bias but the truth is just the opposite: exactly publishing this document proves our innocence and neutrality! You see, we never had anything to hide and we also want ourselves as well as the public to see as clearly as possible in this matter.

You can find the document attached to this post. However, please, note that this is not the original PDF we downloaded: misuse of personal data, such as publishing a great amount of h4x0r's personal data without his prior permission, would be a criminal offence. Whether or not you believe us that we only removed those particular parts but modified nothing else is, again, up to you: we wouldn't be able to persuade you so we won't bother to try. Feel free to search for the original document but don't expect help from us.

However, when we asked when exactly we were supposed to have received this document, the following PM arrived:

Originally Posted by Caliber

that 'document' was created for the spanish legal team we have circa April 2010, and comprimises all the information we had on h4x0r for a couple years, just put into legal form and a concise document with a historical timeline. it was necessary to push forth with the legal action so we had everything in order. i wouldn't take the time to write a 20 page document for you hacks at FF when looking at the two trainers should be sufficient enough for you supposed elite reversers. however, to throttle your 'suddenly vacated' memory, we sent you code snippets for these two games JUST LIKE IN THAT DOCUMENT in the file forums postings. and supposedly you 'impartial' GCW leet reversers examined the information and came to the conclusion that it's impossible to know, etc., etc.

the reason you idiots don't see anything or have anything anymore on your site(s) is because you edit postings or erase postings or remove things from postings (like you did at deviated and removed your admission of proof of h4x0r ripping) to fit your own agenda. i am sure that STN will remove the rest soon. now suddenly 'history' has changed since you have removed all 'evidence' of our postings from FF or the like. sims 3 has been out over a year ago and napoleon total war was in january of this year, well before you guys finally went totally anti-CH. i don't have the time nor do i care to 'persuade' you any longer. we've taken care of the problem and moved on. you look like idiots, and now you are lying idiots manipulating the 'truth' and 'evidence' and 'postings'.... just the sort of thing you accuse CH of.

'we've never seen this information before'.. 'when did you actually e-mail us any proof'.. 'i've never seen postings about this sort of thing'...

really comical joe... christ man, i think even YOU believe this shit yourself....i would have more respect for you if you would just admit it and quit trying to pretend you are impartial.

encourage theft, persuade others it didn't happen, erase history, deny ever hearing about it... it was bush's fault and evil america and cheathappens..

you would be the perfect OBAMA voter here in the US.

good day-

After the second PM, we finally understood where the turning point of all that happened was. When we considered CheatHappens' first proof as inconclusive (see the "2009-04-17" entry in the first post of this thread), they probably at once took us for idiots, incompetent hackers or whatever and unworthy of further proofs. From then on, we were waiting for (more) acceptable proofs in vain as none arrived, until the fake trainer package, a year (!) later.

We're sure that CheatHappens still has the false assumption that they made us a favor by sending proofs, that they gave us several chances to accept their opinion but we failed to do so. However, the truth is just the opposite: we gave CheatHappens several chances - for a whole year! - to send proofs that we can accept but they failed to do so. Let us remind you: it was CheatHappens who requested help from us, not the other way around. The document lists multiple examples, some of them showing not only similar but downright identical pieces of code, including the duplication of bugs and bugfixes. If we didn't accept CheatHappens' first proof - which was only similar code and, therefore, an inconclusive proof - then why didn't they later send us another sample, with such identical code? We have no idea other than the "these people at GCW are idiots" reason.

Yes, we had our conditions about helping CheatHappens. Caliber states that code snippets - parts from this document that were already compiled very early - were distributed to multiple trainer/cheat-related sites and individuals and, if we understand it properly, they accepted CheatHappens' proofs without hesitation, although whatever this document - or a quote from it - states, that is only a description of the proof, not the proof itself. (Do you understand the difference? CheatHappens, apparently, doesn't.) We have the strong suspicion that, on the PC trainer scene, CheatHappens has such a great influence, not all of which can be attributed to the unquestionably high quality of their releases, that it makes people blindly believe in whatever CheatHappens tells them. That would be quite sad as, on a side note, accepting statements without any doubt is also the best way to become a puppet under the constant reticences, half-truths and blatant lies of today's capitalistic-consumeristic society.

Fortunately, we never suffered from such a mental state and we wanted to really make sure that CheatHappens is telling the truth. Why? Because, with legal terminology, we wanted to give h4x0r a "fair trial", with us being the "impartial court" and we wanted to make absolutely sure that we make no mistake by condemning him when he's actually innocent. In case you don't understand the difference between "direct evidence" and "circumstantial evidence" then you're probably living in a dictatorship which is what CheatHappens is trying to establish via their great influence - however, unlike most others, we're not going to become their accomplices. (See a very similar example of this at the New anti-warez forum rules? thread. The poll ended with the result that suspiciously looking CD's/DVD's may simply be the user's own compilation - e.g. while making a backup of the original CD/DVD, he or she adds the no-CD/DVD patch into a directory logically called "Crack" -, therefore the authors of posts showing such directory lists, screenshots shouldn't be banned on sight for warezing.) Also, we had the strong suspicion that CheatHappens wants to use us as a tool, weapon, sidekick or whatever in killing off h4x0r and we were reluctant to be manipulated that easily. If our condition was that CheatHappens runs around the park naked, farting the national anthem, that would've been unreasonable. But we hope you agree that requesting actual trainers with (allegedly) identical code inside them is not unreasonable and neither is rejecting a not completely believable proof and asking for another, better one.

Let us repeat: out of the four possibilities - 1) similar code fragments quoted, 2) similar code fragments inside actual trainer executables, 3) identical code fragments quoted and 4) identical code fragments inside actual trainer executables -, we would've only accepted the last one, and h4x0r's trainer executable preferably not sent to us by CheatHappens - as it could've been previously modifed, like the fake package was - rather a download URL from his site - which surely is the original. (Had CheatHappens acted fast and communicated with us via PM's, E-mails or similar non-public way, h4x0r couldn't have been suspicious of either of us and would've left his trainers in question on his site.) And they cannot tell us that they had no such proofs as there are such examples in their own document. Yeah, they would've had to wait for another couple of weeks or months until such proof is found and then send that to us. However, CheatHappens sent us no such proofs so we didn't help them, what's the surprise?

By the way, Caliber's accusations of us retroactively modifying history is false. That particular thread with their first (inconclusive) proof was permdeleted but you could read that already above; yes, I did that, yes, I was mad and, yes, it was a mistake. However, as you can read above, several threads were restored (from their invisible state) so that then public can follow the events. As for my particular post at the DeviatedHacking forum, I previously wrote STN in a PM to not hesitate to delete any of my postings on his forum if he finds them inappropriate - well, he deleted the whole thread which is his damn right. Also, if CheatHappens accuses us of editing posts/threads to our own liking then that obviously means that they never censor anything on their own forum, right? Yeah, completely believable...

Both sides made mistakes but, please, note the differences in the magnitudes. CheatHappens asked us to help, we answered okay. We requested proofs, CheatHappens sent us one. We found it inconclusive. That's the first mistake although it can be debated whose mistake it is: CheatHappens' as they should've sent us a better proof or ours as we should've accepted it right away? However, we didn't tell CheatHappens to fuck off, we requested better proofs but CheatHappens provided us with none. That's the second mistake: as written above, they had proofs, showing obvious blatant copying of code fragments, but they chose to not send them to us. We kept waiting and stood against the tide. If doing nothing and waiting for the other side to make its step is a mistake then this is the third mistake; we should've probably told them to fuck off right away and continue with our life. However, in the meantime, CheatHappens started their propaganda against us, spread that we don't want to accept their proofs - which is false because we wanted to, had they sent us one that we could. That was the fourth mistake and, as you can see, the mistakes are ever more escalating. After a whole year, for some unknown reason, CheatHappens sent us a complete package that could've been a lovely proof. However, it turned out to be fake. That was the fifth mistake, again, on CheatHappens' side, which made us really mad and made us think that, perhaps, all the proofs previously sent to us were also fakes, trying to fool us. And, to top all of this, "someone not related to CheatHappens" hacked our site multiple times. That was the sixth mistake and the timing and the contents of the abusive posts, sent to the forum by random users, make it obvious that the hacking was directly related to our stance towards CheatHappens. To sum it all up: we were reluctant and hesitant about helping CheatHappens - we didn't accept not completely obvious proofs - which may or may not have been a mistake; on the other hand, CheatHappens tried to discredit us with their propaganda all around the scene, sent us false evidence - which is, by the way, a criminal act - and had someone hack our forum.

It is obvious who the bad guy is and whom you shouldn't trust in the future. Stay away from CheatHappens and don't get entangled into their suspicious actions and manipulations because you can very easily become their enemies, in which case you can consider yourself finished. You see, we did nothing against them - until this announcement thread when we've had enough of their bullshit -, our only "sin" was that we did nothing for them either, and even after a year, they're battling against us. That's what they truly are.

In the light of all this above, we have to sadly but firmly announce that this document has no effect whatsoever anymore on our stance towards CheatHappens. We now accept that they were/are most probably right about their claims but their disgusting ways of trying to "persuade" us cancels this, to put it mildly. As a result, we don't give a fuck anymore about what h4x0r did and we're happy to hear that CheatHappens also gave up trying to prosecute him, with his new site reportedly carrying no trainers with stolen code fragments. However, similarly to us, you should give a fuck about CheatHappens' tactics as this document could've been (could be? is?) also fake, like the trainer package was: it seems that whether they're right or wrong doesn't matter, the CheatHappens war machine would roll on anyway, trying to ram anyone not agreeing with them into the ground. Mirroring the conclusion of Caliber's PM: CheatHappens owe us a public apology, although we're sure they won't try, but we couldn't care less. I personally would prefer banning their trainers altogether from GCW but Empire insists that it is in the visitors' interest to be able to find as many trainers here as possible so my wish won't be granted. However, their and their accomplices' (you know who you are) accounts have been permbanned and now they are persona non grata on this forum.

We are also amused by Caliber's boasting, announcement, warning, request, or whatever it is meant to be, concerning this trainer maker called Rotor because we can assure CheatHappens that we won't lift a finger to help them in any way for any reason. With their constant paranoia and vigilance towards other trainer makers, the great amount of time they spend with analyzing the code of their competitors and investigating about and prosecuting competitors whose actions they find endangering to their own business makes them just as pathetic as game publishers that also spend a great amount of their resources to develop (or have developed by others) copy protections, instead of improving the quality of the game they publish, and their pointless crusade against pirates that they're bound to lose most of the time. (Good luck to both, though.) And all this exclusively for what? Little colorful pieces of paper known to most as "money" and "profit" - the times of striving primarily for pride, fame and grateful users are long gone. And especially when cracks, whose development entails efforts more by an order of magnitude or more, are given away for free - at least, to us, mortal end users -, selling relatively (!) small and easy-to-make pieces of code called "trainers" is laughable but, hey, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However, if you choose to sell stuff of this small scale then also get prepared for the price (pun intended): becoming a target of criticism, ridicule and distaste...

This is the very last time that we communicate, directly or indirectly, with CheatHappens about this topic - or, most probably, at all. Whatever further announcements we would make, they would consider it again and again as an attack against them and the battle would never end. We don't have time for this as we have a lot of other, much more constructive goals to spend our time with. If they have any problems with us, we don't care and don't bother to contact us with anything related to it. For us, CheatHappens reached the very bottom of their grave of immorality, that they have been digging for themselves, so let them rest there in peace.