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It all began with a quite innocent joke - one of my friends had an idea about creating a false CoC leak - and this involved creating a legit-looking installer, but if it got posted just like that without any warning, it could create a lot mess - so first I consult this with the others in TeamEPIC and nobody in there had anything against doing that for laughs. Most of all that time we've all been like big trolls so, one more time won't harm.

 

I gave that friend a few pictures as well as texts with credits and disclaimers, and with all these assets he did a very realistic clone of the installer, which later has been posted on 4chan's Stalker general. People have been genuinely surprised because woo, much leak, such CoC, very stalker, wow. When everybody downloaded it, they had an obstacle on their way - a password which had to be put in during one steps of the installation and people have been told to guess it. It took them quite a lot of time to figure out that the password was actually "I said come in, don't stand there!" - Thus this thing has achieved maximum hype.

 

Once they've installed it, the thread went up in flames - because the installation folder contained nothing else but three gigabytes of dolphin porn. While they've been flipping shit, TeamEPIC had lots of fun which can be even confirmed by Alundaio himself ("but why the dolphins") even if on 4chan it was me who got all the shit for that because, you know, Koma is Koma. And no, that's not how almost all of the testers got kicked the fuck out. The reason will arrive soon enough.

 

The real problem has arrived when someone posted >this< ( http://anony.ws/i/2015/08/01/Untitled9eaa8.png ) - at first nobody paid any attention to it at all and thus, it was ignored, but the other tester swiftly recognized that something's not right with that. I figured out that this gibberish was actually part of the link to CoC's MEGA archives. In itself it pretty much meant nothing and did nothing, even if you paste "mega.co.nz/" in the beginning of it, nothing worked - which made it useless, but I've taken it to the higher-ups regardless. Alundaio and Bangalore have been told to remove and replace the links, and the deed has been done in about less than five minutes.

 

Regardless, this has pretty much led to a truly autismal overreaction from Alun/Banga's side and instead of letting it go, he kicked out almost every single tester from his team and banned me and Darryl. Then we got kicked out of the TeamEPIC group on ModDB and all of our posts on CoC page got deleted, including my lengthy news post I wrote which is about what CoC is and how it plays (but thankfully someone did a >backup< ( http://pastebin.com/7Gyda5Vu ) and then they started damage controlling on 4chan and their forums which got them lots of critique mainly for purposeful repeating of the LA fiasco where dezodor posted false LA leaks on the internet so that he could shit on his tester team.

 

One of the leading theories about this whole shitfest is that Alundaio/Bangalore posted the incomplete links on 4chan to find an excuse for kicking out his testers and those he didn't like from day one, and this can be proven by a few things - first, the hashes for the MEGA links seemed to be incomplete and posted just like that without any hints wouldn't make any sense. If someone wanted to do a full leak, he'd post full links instead of letting people fiddle with ciphered gibberish. Second, the bannings after we figured out that something is not right and told the higher-ups about it, and this can be easily compared to a situation of a man who witnesses and reports a crime, and then gets arrested for reporting it. Third, Alundaio's post on TeamEPIC's forums, which can be seen >here< ( http://anony.ws/i/2015/08/01/Untitled58edd.png ).

 

The lack of a large testing team will not hinder the rest of the progress

 

Which is considered to be further proof that the "leaks" have been false-flagged - testers had much more to lose than the developers. The logic behind this post is just made of iron - "We kicked out like 80% of our team, of course this way we'll have much more control over our mod because nobody's gonna complain about what's fucked!" Another theory which is less conspiracy-theorist, is that another tester is having "fun" on the cost of others.

 

Until now, the truth is that Call of Chernobyl did NOT leak. First "leak" was a joke, and the second "leak" was something that wasn't even enough to be classified as a leak. And there was no indication that anybody was playing it - there were barely any screenshots, stories or greentexts. Anyway, 80% of the team got its asses kicked out and the relations between testers and developers are pretty much screwed. TeamEPIC damage controlled itself into a corner and the people who actually cared about CoC got either kicked out or banned.

 

There have been some conflicts. I asked Alundaio what's gonna happen with further development and with the testers. He said, the development will continue, but without any testers. The entire team has been cast out and there's no reason for them all to come back, and people who use 4chan - I, Ardias, Darryl and of all people, Beacon - lead developer of Wormwood are banned from the forums. Of course to avoid any further conflict, I told Alun - if he really believes that this is the way he can ensure safety of Call of Chernobyl then I am fine with it, and to guarantee that safety I will also delete everything from my computer that has anything to do with CoC-exclusive files to prevent anything happening from my side. And so, I did.

 

I was sitting around and tried not to think about it, because after all there has been no real and legit leak yet, so I assumed everything is relatively alright and there is nothing to worry about. There have been conflicts with other testers for this and other reason, everyone had his own reasons and theories but in the end we concluded that it was none of us. Then Swartz (Radium head dev) popped in and tried to talk some sense into Alun which thankfully resulted in him calming down a bit and then he unbanned us all. Darryl asks if we can enter the beta-testing phase again and Alun says no, everyone is out and nobody comes back. He insists on reinstating us but I say, there's no sense in pleading for it, because "no" obviously means "no". I say that at least we still belong to the Radium group and for now that's the only thing that matters.

 

I thought, yeah whatever screw this, I'm gonna go to sleep, maybe in this time things will calm down. Time passes, I get up and freshen myself a bit and since it's holidays already I have nothing really special to do. I get on my PC, check ModDB and my day is already screwed by a PM from Alundaio with a totally informative text: "You little piece of shit". Assuming something went on when I was asleep, I wanted to check the TeamEPIC forums but yikes - IP is banned, so I think shit got truly serious. I check 4chan and the first bunch of posts shows me a real leak of CoC. There was even a few posts about a stream which shows how CoC is being installed on a PC. There was also >a pastebin< ( http://pastebin.com/LigpwKXp ) from the people behind the leak.

 

I check out other forums and on Facepunch I could see that Alundaio is pinning all the blame on me and Darryl - that I did the stream, I leaked everything about CoC, blah blah this and that. I of course explain him on ModDB that I was asleep during this entire shitfest - and I guess this is where I screwed up because I started a discussion with him about that - and he starts shitting on me that it's all my fault, I leaked everything and that Darryl helped me in all of this. Well, let's say that both sides insisted on pulling punches. He tells me to admit to the leak because there is proof that I did it but instead I tell him that his proof is garbage in light of recent postings and occurences, and then told him to fuck off. Meanwhile I am looking up western forums like ap-pro and vkontakte and notice that this fiasco made its way to some forums and thus, got a bit sensationalized. I'm thinking - for what purpose. It's not really worth of all this attention but since it's happening, I'm gonna sit and look at what people have to say. Everybody had his own theories, people discuss, share screenshots and experiences from Call of Chernobyl. In this all, I see a chance for me to have people listen to how things looked like from my perspective, and... I used it wisely.

 

During this entire drama around CoC, I have also assumed probably the most pragmatic stance on it all - instead of standing around, doing nothing and pretending that the leak didn't happen at all, I sat down on the forums and helped other people with CoC - diagnosed problems, shared useful gameplay tweaks, shared tools for working on CoC, exchanged my experiences with others and gave advice on modding it as well as merging other mods with it. Since I am, well, I was CoC's beta-tester and I had more or less practical knowledge about how it played and worked, I told myself - why not help people with it? Time passed and I gained some new friends. I tried not to pay attention to any drama that was occurring in meanwhile but I shifted my focus on making sure that people who play the leaked CoC build will at least have fun with it, though of course something just HAD to pop out of nowhere, namely a >Facepunch post< ( http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1446291&p=48357617&viewfull=1#post48357617 ) where people behind the real leak are introducing themselves.

 

Judging by the post and the flagdog, the leak has been done by two script kiddies from America who regularly visit 4chan's /mgg/, Metal Gear General. They also didn't have anything to do with Call of Chernobyl's testing or development and claimed to be different people altogether, and they said that they've gained access to CoC's archives by exploiting TeamEPIC website's security flaws to access one of the tester's accounts long before the entire affair has begun, because they've been impatient about CoC not being released already. And the leak has been done because they were furious about how the dev team treated its testers. Well, good intentions but you know what? That's just fan-fucking-tastic. What if maybe MY account was the compromised one to rip off the links from there? Since my ban is still standing, I cannot even get in to change my bloody password.

 

A longer while passes and my ModDB account's PM indicator does a ding. And now, here's an absolutely hilarious question for you. How do you turn from a respectable albeit crazy scripter and modder into the most heinously pathetic, biggest fucking disgrace to the entire Stalker modding community?

Try to use scare tactics on your former beta-tester by sending him an archive which contains pictures of him, his family, his personal data as well as his e-mails ( http://anony.ws/i/2015/08/05/topfuckingkek.png )

And brag about it on 4chan some time afterwards ( https://pp.vk.me/c628728/v628728587/14d69/g7mYaI89kxM.jpg )

Yeah, you're reading it - Alundaio doxxed me.

 

Naturally I am mature and self-controlled enough not to stoop down to his already super-low level so I simply didn't care about it and kept doing my own thing. Of course I didn't let this go entirely unnoticed, so I talked to a few people about it and they told me to do what I think is the best for me and for CoC, and so I did, although my patience was slowly running out, because this went from slightly unsettling to absolutely infuriating. Eventually the story has been told on that too. At the moment, the support from the easterners, friends and other Stalker modders is kinda big, though the shitstorm also made its way to AP-Pro and let's say that there's been some fighting going on there.

 

Honestly I don't think anybody should care about this drama at all - I have no time nor willpower to fight with these crackpots any longer. I want this shit to end for good and I also want no more losses for both sides, because what's currently happening is pretty close to becoming one of the biggest unneeded shitstorms in the entire history of Stalker modding which is gonna haunt everyone who had anything to do with it like a stench of soiled diaper, until we are dead.

 

Well, pretty much the entire thing has gone to shit. And you know who or what has been harmed the most during the entire course of this shitty drama? No single people, no groups of people, no full communities of them, but - Call of Chernobyl itself. If people find out that people who made it are acting like that, they'll regret that they played it and will try to throw further amounts of shit at both the mod and the team behind it.

 

And before you ask, my loyalty to the entire development progress was unquestionably undying. I gracefully embraced CoC and everything it stood for, I contributed efforts to its further development, I even liked the way TeamEPIC did things so much that I donated a symbolic amount of money to keep it going. And this is how I get paid back. Perhaps somewhere or even here, are still people or groups who deserve my loyalty much more than they did.