Small indie space game modding meltdown results in the developer having to explicitly ban adding malware to mods (Starsector)

In addition to following the above rules regarding illegal activities, hate speech, and sexual content, mods that are posted on the forum should not intentionally crash the game, or otherwise intentionally render it unplayable or intentionally degrade the player experience due to the presence of other mods, based on factors other than technical incompatibility. Mods may not also be used for direct harassment of other community members. Violators of this rule may receive punishment up to a permanent ban from the forum, with no preliminary warning, at moderator discretion.

How did this happen? It all starts with a mod called Take No Prisoners.

Starsector is an indie 2d space game about customizing and blowing up spaceships that has been in development for over a decade. These ships can be piloted by officers that make them more effective. Take No Prisoners was (past tense) a mod that lets you occasionally capture enemy officers after you explode their ship, developed by a guy named presidentmattdamon and released under a license that allows for forking and modification.

It's important to note at this point that the main developer of Starsector, Alexander Mosolov, is a bit of a low-level shitlib. Half of the officers generated by the game are women, the characters in the main storyline are overwhelmingly women and minorities, and you can select the pronouns your character is addressed by separately from their actual s*x determined by their portrait. So there are a lot of women in the vanilla game. Modders for Starsector are also consistently on the shitlib spectrum and are very artistic. That is, they have very high levels of artism. So there are a lot of female characters in mods, including anime women and big booby train self-inserts.

Enter R*pesector, the Take No Prisoners fork that lets you handhold and romance your officers. That's not a euphemism, there is actual handholding and romance in the mod alongside the r*pe, breeding facility planetary industry, and robosex. It deliberately ignores the "important person" flag used to mark a character that shouldn't be allowed to die outside of scripted story circumstances, which the original TNP respected, and also includes the ability to capture and r*pe non-officer NPCs like planetary governors. This mod has been causing low level drama and freakouts since it first came into existence.

Presidentmattdamon hated that his perfectly wholesome mod about capturing prisoners of war was turned into a degenerate coomer r*pe fantasy, but he couldn't do anything about it except seethe because he released TNP under a license that explicitly allowed modification and nobody actually cares about code licenses anyway. He completely discontinued development of Take No Prisoners because of this and removed the whole thing from the internet. In a resounding victory for coomers , R*pesector is now the only available, functional, and updated version of the mod. Matt began work on Take No Prisoners 2, a story mod with handcrafted officers, conversations, quests, blackjack, and no r*pe at all! Keen eyes will notice that this mod doesn't actually exist in downloadable form and is likely a spite-induced pipe dream.

Presidentmattdamon also recently began updating some old mods that had their original developer stop working on them. Starsector has been in development for an incredibly long time and modders enter and leave the community constantly for whatever reason, be it simply no longer being interested or having more real life stuff they need to do that precludes spending lots of time updating a mod for an unfinished video game. One of these mods is Diable Avionics, an ancient and beloved mod that has been passed down to new authors multiple times. Out of severe butthurt, Matt added code to this heirloom mod that if you were also using R*pesector, would wait for a R*pesector-specific trigger - the capture of an important person - and then completely and irrecoverably shred your save file. This is, no bones about it, malware. Literal malware, the distribution of which may be an actual crime depending on your jurisdiction. Alex was forced to act. Matt was banned from the official Starsector forums and links to his mods were deleted. R*pesector takes a final victory as the only functional and available TNP version for now and forever more.

The moral of this story is that video game pornography mods are the most powerful force in the universe. Coomers always win.

Banning malware in mods has also had knock-on effects; a different author has been adding code that crashes the game to force incompatibility between their mods and a long defunct and banned Nazi mod called New Galactic Order Rather than remove this code, the mod author chose to have their mods removed from the forum.

The Starsector subreddit is, of course, aflame with discussion of these events.

Diable Avionics has malware in its code

Diable Avionics 2.8.1 and newer versions have the following code in them. The purpose of the code is to stay hidden until a condition is met and then make your save unplayable. Matt Damon has confirmed on Groomercord in his own words that it will "devour your save" https://i.imgur.com/a/rlvHZmx

Unofficial Starsector Groomercord damage control

Just so you are all aware the largest groomercord server for star sector is currently attempting to shut down discussion of the latest drama. Presumably because the moderators there have also previously put crash code in their mods. One other modder even put an ip logger in the mod. You will be banned for even asking if particular mods are safe. How can a community be controlled by a group of power trippers? The fact that they help normalise and cover up people putting malware in mods is disgusting. This should be discussed as it threatens the integrity of the whole modding scene, how can I trust installing a random file on my PC if it's casually accepted that modders can do this and be defended by their groomercord buddies? Thankfully Alex is stepping in so they will probably back peddle soon

Redditor calls the cyber police

Just got off the phone with the AFP's Cyber crime unit after making a detailed report. Submitted all current evidence, they seemed quite interested, also gave links to the groomercords that seemed to be downplaying this and covering it up. For the malicious frickers out there. If you have Evidence towards the maliciousness of these moders and groomercord owners attempting to cover this up, please report them to your Country's cyber crime authority.