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BKalion

Newbie
Dec 23, 2019
37
56
Zimon logged into his main account using the same IP as one of the alts 40 minutes after the fact. His main accounts last activity on that day was 1:36AM UTC, the last of the spam reviews was posted at 12:58AM UTC.


It's a residential IP, and the cross over between accounts is less than an hour.


We can only promote a thread when we are notified about it. If he updates the thread and then doesn't report the OP, we don't know about the update, and so it doesn't get promoted.


Unfortunately devs using alts to post fake reviews is actually quite a common occurrence. As long as the developer owns up to the "mistake" and promises to not do it again then we're fine with giving them a second chance and not posting a public message. However, it's clear that in this instance, from the messages posted on Discord, that there was zero remorse plus a denial of wrongdoing, so we no longer felt comfortable giving him the benefit of the doubt that this was a one time thing, and enforced our rules more stringently.


This is the first time I've had any interaction with him, and I haven't even played this game. Do you seriously think I randomly go around targeting innocent developers just for kicks? In the past 5 years we have banned reviews on 3 games including this one. This is an incredibly rare occurrence and an action we do not take lightly.
I'm not taking sides in this just want to point out that it's possible a hacker with a grudge Against a Dev could easily manipulate IP address logs to punish them indirectly by Making Administrators unwitting proxies. I'm not sure what security F95Zone uses or if they have hackers on their side to make sure there was no foul play by a third party aka a dissatisfied ex supporter, a previous creative partner, or even a rival Dev attempting to get rid of the competition.

In my experience as a former amateur hacker, It would be for the best of all known parties to be 100% sure by having some more cyber sleuthing by an expert make sure none of the evidence was tampered with before it came to the administrator's attention resulting in the ban.
 

Kitsune241

Member
Aug 25, 2017
257
696
I'm not taking sides in this just want to point out that it's possible a hacker with a grudge Against a Dev could easily manipulate IP address logs to punish them indirectly by Making Administrators unwitting proxies. I'm not sure what security F95Zone uses or if they have hackers on their side to make sure there was no foul play by a third party aka a dissatisfied ex supporter, a previous creative partner, or even a rival Dev attempting to get rid of the competition.

In my experience as a former amateur hacker, It would be for the best of all known parties to be 100% sure by having some more cyber sleuthing by an expert make sure none of the evidence was tampered with before it came to the administrator's attention resulting in the ban.
That seems like an excessive amount of work and expense, both for the hypothetical hacker and for the mods to prove/disprove it, that wouldn't be worth it considering it's not even a ban. Zimon's not banned, he's still literally posting in this thread, the mods just disabled the reviews.
Personally I really doubt it was some disgruntled hacker, cause if they bothered to hack F95's systems just to spite Zimon (or "CoR Bot" as he's oh so cleverly named himself now) they would have done a lot more damage than just getting him a slap on the wrist. It just wouldn't make sense, like the fake reviews were apparently going on for months and he was only caught cause he slipped up once, that's way too much of a long con just to mildly spite a random indie H-game dev.
 

Pr0man

Member
Jul 23, 2017
408
823
That seems like an excessive amount of work and expense, both for the hypothetical hacker and for the mods to prove/disprove it, that wouldn't be worth it considering it's not even a ban. Zimon's not banned, he's still literally posting in this thread, the mods just disabled the reviews.
Personally I really doubt it was some disgruntled hacker, cause if they bothered to hack F95's systems just to spite Zimon (or "CoR Bot" as he's oh so cleverly named himself now) they would have done a lot more damage than just getting him a slap on the wrist. It just wouldn't make sense, like the fake reviews were apparently going on for months and he was only caught cause he slipped up once, that's way too much of a long con just to mildly spite a random indie H-game dev.
On that note, I'm not even entirely sure you could just mess with IP logs to show a residential IP, at least not in the short timespan concerning the last review and his accounts' access. A "residential IP" is after all handed out to customers of a specific Internet Service Provider (who get a whole range of IP adresses assigned to them, to then hand these out to their customers) and the DHCP lease on such an IP adress (which is the standard, the so called "dynamic IP") can last anywhere from 1-14 days - depending on country and ISP - meaning you'll be stuck with this specific adress for that amount of time as what one might call your "online fingerprint".

So, if Sam is correct in that one of the fake reviewers IP-Adresses matches the residental IP adress of Zimons account at that time and given there was only a 40 minute time difference, then that basically tells me that this one particular review was sent from the exact same machine that he uses to log into his forum account.
Sure, if Zimon shares his machine and/or account with x amount of people, there is totally the possibility of someone else doing this and basically fucking him over, even if just by accident - yet such a matter would not absolve the owner. after all, if you share online profiles to whatever platform, you also automatically share any responsibility that befalls you with the other person in question. If one person takes any action with this shared profile, then all people involved have to fear the same consequences since you can't just easily determine who's at the end of it all.
 

Ralkey

New Member
Nov 10, 2020
12
8
Alright, so the story is telling me to face Izanami.

But I have no idea how to do that.
Like, where do I need to go?
The last time I got there I talked to Heramael, but I can't do that now so how do I get to Izanami?????
 

Sam

Sysadmin
Staff member
Administrator
Dec 22, 2016
2,728
18,911
Alright there is one way to settle this once and for all!!!

Like this post if you think Zimon did it.
Do you have some kind of poll fetish? I keep seeing you starting them in every thread I've been active in lately.

Let me just give a rundown of events here to try and make it crystal clear for everyone.
  1. We noticed a series of suspicious 5 star reviews all from 0 post accounts, who registered and then immediately left a review. When looking back through the reviews we noticed a pattern of similar 0 post accounts who registered, left a 5* review, then never used their account again. As we regularly purge IP logs for privacy reasons, we only had logs for the most recent series of suspicious reviews, which all used the same VPN IP.
  2. We deleted the obviously fake reviews that shared the same VPN IP, and kept an eye on the situation, suspecting that it was either the developer or more likely, an overzealous fan.
  3. A couple of weeks later there was another review left by a suspicious account at 12:56AM UTC, this review was left using the same VPN IP as the previous reviews. However, 2 minutes later at 12:58AM the same session was used by Zimon's residential IP. Said residential IP had been used to login to Zimon's account multiple times in the past, and was his normal ISP.
  4. Zimon then logged in to his own account 40 mins later at 1:36AM UTC, using the same residential IP.
  5. Once we saw this, the review was deleted again, thread ownership removed from Zimon, and an official warning given to Zimon for review manipulation. That would have been the end of it as far as we were concerned, as long as we didn't see any further manipulation.
  6. Later Zimon opened a ticket disputing the warning. We explained that we have irrefutable evidence of manipulation from either him or someone who used his connection and either way, we would hold him responsible if he allowed others to abuse his internet connection at 2am. We explained that no further action would be taken as long as there was no further review manipulation, and he could ask for thread ownership again after 1 month "probation". Again, this would have been the end of the matter for us, as long as he acted in good faith going forward. Reviews were still allowed, and we wouldn't publicise the fact he had been caught manipulating reviews at this point.
  7. However, Zimon then claimed on his Discord that we were being unfair, insinuating that we had an agenda against him, and basically whipping up drama amongst his fanbase.
  8. From his actions, it was clear to us that he had no interest in acting in good faith, and any relationship between us had completely broken down. As he could no longer be trusted, we banned all new reviews and published our findings in the thread.
Now, there can be a number of explanations for this series of events:
  • We made it all up
    • I have had no prior contact with Zimon, whilst I'd heard of this game I've never played it, I had no prior opinion of Zimon before dealing with this situation
    • We gave him multiple chances, if he didn't keep pursuing it further and causing drama, he would have the thread back in a couple of weeks, reviews would still be allowed, and nobody would have known about his manipulation
    • Why would we piss off a developer just for the sake of it?
    • Why would we risk splitting the fanbase of a game and potentially turning them against the community unless our hand was forced?
    • We've only banned reviews on a few games in 5 years, this isn't a regular occurrence
    • If we were truly this corrupt, why wouldn't we just ban his account in an attempt to lock down discussion and exercise maximum control of the narrative?
  • 1337 Hacker
    • How would a hacker know that we were keeping a close eye on the thread for suspicious reviews in the first place?
    • The only way to fake IP logs would be to gain root access to our servers, or SQL injection. Our servers are firewalled and not accessible over the public internet. It would have to be via a private 0day, or infecting me.
    • An attacker could do far more damaging things than just altering a single IP log in the remote chance of maybe damaging the reputation of Zimon. Plus, how could they foresee all the events above?
    • Likewise, if Zimon's computer was hacked, I'm sure there is far more an attacker could do than just leave fake reviews.
  • Or... we're telling the truth
Regardless of if you're a fanboy or not, try to approach the situation with an open mind and think critically, what is more likely?

Anyway, this will be my last post on the matter, there's nothing more to be said from our perspective.
 

Burgh917

Active Member
Dec 20, 2019
564
824
Alright, so the story is telling me to face Izanami.

But I have no idea how to do that.
Like, where do I need to go?
The last time I got there I talked to Heramael, but I can't do that now so how do I get to Izanami?????
1st you have to talk to Asmedia and Heramael for "training" then go to the forest and find the sword.
 

Soulpuppet

Active Member
Sep 10, 2020
673
2,078
I'm glad that all the admins here put all their sources into seeing a couple 5* reviews from 0 posters but let big name games slide with with no content or updates without marking them as abandoned or on hold. Smaller games get marked that way faster than a fat kid on a slip and slide.

I didn't know saying someone was being unfair on their private server was against the rules. You heard it here first people. Don't say anything on your discord server or in a crowd of people, if you do you're going to get smacked harder for complaining about being treated unfairly. I'm pretty amazed how far a Pirate site will go to punish someone.
 

ZimonColdres

Active Member
Game Developer
Nov 7, 2019
600
2,510
you also automatically share any responsibility that befalls you with the other person in question. If one person takes any action with this shared profile, then all people involved have to fear the same consequences since you can't just easily determine who's at the end of it all.
In fact, the only thing I apologized for and take responsibility for is that and nothing else.

However, Zimon then claimed on his Discord that we were being unfair, insinuating that we had an agenda against him, and basically whipping up drama amongst his fanbase.

From his actions, it was clear to us that he had no interest in acting in good faith, and any relationship between us had completely broken down. As he could no longer be trusted, we banned all new reviews and published our findings in the thread.
The thing that's funny by now is that you keep repeating the same thing, the same conclusion "he did misinformation, he was punished."
If I were to make a scale, on my plate would be your accusations of manipulation and misinformation, in your sending random people to check me out, apply your rules on a platform that is not yours, applying rule 1.6 as you see fit, "database error" of two months, showing screenshots from July when the problem started in May, no real interest in figuring out what happened, saying I'm doing misinformation and it's not true that the thread has been abandoned for two months, when there are even screens from other users showing it. And continue to pretend nothing is wrong with your "database" problem or it's me that I didn't report anything.

Then you got attached to this thing of me talking bad about you on Discord, but even if it were true, what do you care? Image damage? But what, in my server there are 6,000 people with at most 1% who have an account here, compared with your users who today are more than 22,000 logged in.

<-------------------->

Sincerely, by now it is a waste of time, I say things, you say others, in the end you are right since you have the upper hand.
You keep saying I'm misinforming when apparently "you have a broken database and I don't report on it."

This is the last message from me in this forum, partly because of all this stuff, very nice to see people react in certain ways after more than a year I have always helped, instantly corrected bugs, or corrected saves.
On the other hand, a week has passed, no one has said anything about the 0.59, not even if you liked the summer event, it is now a lost cause.

The clown that comes here looking for likes can go somewhere else, this is the CoR thread, not your stage.

I'm not asking you to have respect for me, I don't care about that anymore, but at least for the game, stop continuing with this story and talk about CoR for once.
Last thing, then I won't write anymore here, unless there is some impossible phenomenon, from now on another guy will post instead of me base news, avoid to take it out on him or send him messages or anything else, also because I already told him not to answer to anyone and he has nothing to do with all that stuff.

If anyone needs help, corrections of anything, errors to fix or report, you know where to find me.

[Zimon]
 
3.80 star(s) 35 Votes