ah, sorry wasn’t clear ^^
That’s a hard no and never for me. Once a cheater, always a cheater. It even happened with StatShark by their own admission! “Well yeah we knew he created and used cheats in the past. But he super pinky promised he wouldn’t do it again!”
I hope you don’t get burned “trusting” lairs and cheaters with the safety and security of your computer and War Thunder account. They could get hacked themselves, be bribed to try something more nefarious, among multiple other possibilities.
They can have their chance at redemption WITHOUT the risk to my personal devices and accounts. They deserve no benefit of the doubt now. They have already proven themselves to be severely lacking in good judgement and good moral character. The odds are extremely high that they will re-offend. I hope and pray they don’t 🙏 But liars cheaters and thieves almost always repeat their offenses and crimes. The statistics on crime (and cheaters in video games) prove it. I wish them the best and hopefully they turn a new page and never break any more rules, laws, or moral codes.
I agree and am left with no other choice: I will never even open the StatSkark website again. I already manually deleted all cookies and site data from that site for good measure, and thankfully had never logged in/created a profile/account on their site. I don’t care how neat or “special” or “unique” their site or data is. I do not care what statements or promises they make now, it is far too late. I refuse to entrust the safety and security of my accounts and devices to a bunch of lairs, cheaters, and thieves. Nor anyone who supported or ran cover for them; they are equally guilty and culpable.
EDIT/Addendum:
"Ok, I did think about something that could help redeem the StatShark team including Pluspy" :
(This is copied from my next reply below, just wanted to add it here too to have this reply be more inclusive)
Ok, I did think about something that could help redeem the StatShark team including Pluspy.
If Hadi and Pluspy were to give Gaijin ALL of the tools, information, and ALL relevant data:
- How he was able to obtain the data for the full (“corporate level”) statistics.
- How he was manipulating Custom matches.
- How he was manipulating other player’s in game chat messages
- How he was “DDOS’ing” Content Creator’s logins to force their game to log out.
- How he manipulated the Nord missiles (IF Pluspy was actually responsible for that one, I am still not 100% sure).
- Any and all other security holes that they know of. EVERYTHING.
Turn over EVERYTHING to Gaijin. I do NOT think it would be a good idea for Hadi/Pluspy to release this information publicly as it would almost certainly be used by nefarious entities to use and abuse the playerbase. But IF they were to give Gaijin EVERYTHING they have, everything they have done, even anything that they were still working on, anything and everything they have which would allow Gaijin to patch up ALL the security holes they had found and/or were exploiting:
That would be the only thing which would have even a slight chance of helping to convince me that they are trying to change their ways. But without a full and complete admission of their “guilt” and steps to provide “restitution”, I cannot rely on their words alone as evidence of a change (I consider turning over ALL of the information & data to Gaijin at least a partial substitute for financial restitution.)
Coming back to your message here: Again, I do agree with this concept. A full disclosure from Hadi and Pluspy et al. would be a very good step in the right direction. I personally would need more than just statements and promises to be convinced. Transferring all information and data to Gaijin is about the only action that could sway my opinion.
To Hadi and Pluspy et al.,
If you are reading this: I am praying for you. I pray you do what is right 🙏
I fully understand the moral hazard of appearing to endorse a website even with your mouse clicks, not trying to change your mind on that. However, as a website, just to be clear, they’re only relying on Google/Discord/Reddit/Patreon third-party verification for (slightly) enhanced login access (and most of the access you don’t need to login at all). Lots of sites of all sizes use those as their identity verifiers for login now rather than running their own username/password processes, which can be hacked, and while I don’t think you should ever validate through Discord if you don’t really have to (to pick on one of their options), Discord does tell you exactly what info they’re sharing with that other site before you say yes. (And giving me a choice of 4 is good, and atm I trust Discord or Google for this purpose slightly more than, say, Facebook and vKontakte, like the old Thunderskill used to use for this).
The only interaction they had with my Gaijin account was if I had chosen to use the XVM stuff and had to send them a DM with a code in game, the same way the old Thunderskill also used to do even for basic access btw, and as mentioned, that aspect of the site has been killed off on Pluspy’s departure.
(Also one of the things I should mention that I did respect about Hadi was that he had set it up so that his XVM version, if it had lived, auto-permabanned anyone it caught using it if they one-death left or J’d out at the start of a match, presumably because a user looked at the other players thought the match was unbalanced, even at the risk of banning supporters with false positives. The CC videos and Reddit flakeouts on this don’t mention that aspect of what he’d set up. If you were chose to use his WT-XVM while playing, you HAD to keep playing… and hope your VPN didn’t fritz out.)
Great discussion as always Mr Bruce! I often find myself having differing viewpoints/opinions than you, but I always end up with more knowledge and a greater perspective on the topic. I look forward to our next “disagreement”! 😄🫡
INTERESTING. Good to know, thank you for sharing.
Ok, I did think about something that could help redeem the StatShark team including Pluspy (also going to add this addendum to my reply above.)
If Hadi and Pluspy were to give Gaijin ALL of the tools, information, and ALL relevant data:
- How he was able to obtain the data for the full (“corporate level”) statistics.
- How he was manipulating Custom matches.
- How he was manipulating other player’s in game chat messages
- How he was “DDOS’ing” Content Creator’s logins to force their game to log out.
- How he manipulated the Nord missiles (IF Pluspy was actually responsible for that one, I am still not 100% sure).
- Any and all other security holes that they know of. EVERYTHING.
Turn over EVERYTHING to Gaijin. I do NOT think it would be a good idea for Hadi/Pluspy to release this information publicly as it would almost certainly be used by nefarious entities to use and abuse the playerbase. But IF they were to give Gaijin EVERYTHING they have, everything they have done, even anything that they were still working on, anything and everything they have which would allow Gaijin to patch up ALL the security holes they had found and/or were exploiting:
That would be the only thing which would have even a slight chance of helping to convince me that they are trying to change their ways. But without a full and complete admission of their “guilt” and steps to provide “restitution”, I cannot rely on their words alone as evidence of a change (I consider turning over ALL of the information & data to Gaijin at least a partial substitute for financial restitution.)
Coming back to your message here: Again, I do agree with this concept. A full disclosure from Hadi and Pluspy et al. would be a very good step in the right direction. I personally would need more than just statements and promises to be convinced. Transferring all information and data to Gaijin is about the only action that could sway my opinion.
To Hadi and Pluspy et al.,
If you are reading this: I am praying for you. I pray you do what is right 🙏
I got my answer… because it’s pretty much none of their business, they said…
Another thing is from the server replay of that chat clip, it appears like pluspy is reacting to things actually happening in-game with his messages. I’m not sure if that also goes beyond server side verification stuff.
Although it might only be from some kind of access to the live killfeed. Maybe war thunder assistant related?
I was wondering how else someone could see things happening in-game remotely and I found out you can start downloading server replay .wrpl parts while a game is still ongoing. To be fair they don’t populate until a few minutes after the match starts. At the very least you can quickly get the session id. Maybe that’s why the messages don’t start until a few minutes in?