TERA – En Masse Entertainment Sends DMCA Takedown Notices

After researching a bit, this seems to be directed at individuals who had been maintaining the TERA Proxy and associated modules.  On its own, the proxy performed no actual function (it just sat between the TERA game client and passed through instructions to the game server).  The modules itself is where the actual functionality occurred (some of them were quality of life enhancements while the more extreme ones ventured into actual exploitive behavior).  The entire thing was based on Javascript utilizing the Node.js runtime environment.  Most of the repositories seemed to reside on Github.

This takedown resulted in a spawn of forum threads by angry players with many essentially threatening to quit and/or move to Gameforge (EU).  I recall back around the 2016 timeframe, something similar happened (related to this proxy) where players went into a tizzy when some folks (associated with the development of some modules) were banned for using an exploitive one for the Valkyrie’s Dream Slash skill (aka memeslash).

Root cause wise, some of this is a result of Bluehole’s (more specifically, Korean MMO development) poor design practices with trusting the client too much (poor server side security and data validation) as well as the abysmal optimization and poor netcode.  This is why several other Korean MMO’s besides TERA also have similar third party tools that operate on the same principle (inserting themselves between game client and game server, intercepting commands, and then sending the modified result).

The proxy (via a module as well as a standalone version) was also used to bypass XIGNCODE3 (which also caused an uproar when it was ninja patched into an update).  It took several days for EME to post an announcement about the inclusion of this “anti-cheat” software.  As I noted before, most of these anti-cheat modules do not work or are easily circumvented and depending on configuration, some can be far more intrusive.  In most cases, I’ve had no issues with them (the worst configured one to date has been Webzen with MU Legend where in some setups, requires disabling Intel virtualization).

The end result was some modules that actually improved the game play experience (work that honestly Bluehole should be doing by default).  Still, a fraction of proxy users also used more suspect modules that went well beyond the quality of life aspects.  Regardless, from EME’s perspective, proxy and those modules were considered third party tools.  Since the entire thing is Javascript based though, XIGNCODE is unable to detect or even properly validate the presence of proxy and whatever modules are used.  Thus, there seems to have been several months of EME following the developers of the proxy and associated modules before they dropped the DMCA takedown notices on the repositories that stored the scripts.

What isn’t really known is exactly how many players were actually using the proxy.  From my cursory perusal of some discussion threads, some of the most vocal individuals are stating their starting over on EU.  I’ve written in the past that publishers tend to take these sort of threats with a grain of salt since it requires a pretty large percentage (35% is a good estimate) of players who actively spend money on the game, to leave en masse (pun intended) where the effect can be felt.

Furthermore, the most vocal are pretty much venting and not really offering actual constructive criticism/feedback where EME can parse that feedback to send back to Bluehole.  It doesn’t help when EME (like many other publishers nowadays), does not have community management teams that have decent working knowledge of how their titles work (not just game play beyond the basic questing but also how various game systems function).  Added on top of this, many companies now tend to spread their community management personnel thinly across way too many social networking platforms (many which are not conducive mediums for gathering detailed feedback).  IMHO, chat formats like Discord aren’t conducive for providing detailed feedback.

As much as I have not been happy with EME’s handling of TERA for the past 9 months (or whenever the current producer who came from ArenaNet/NCsoft took over), they are well within their rights to enforce their terms of service/rules of conduct.  Players can make their own personal choice of whether to stay, quit, restart on another region.   My take is if you really are not happy with the service that is being provided, to vote with your wallet.  I also firmly believe that not logging in is paramount since logins and concurrency are an important metric which publishers/developers use.  But dropping revenues is really the only way to make publishers take real notice.

I already see misinformation that makes it look like the grass is greener with Gameforge.  I gave them a chance with SoulWorker and learned how much I didn’t agree with their methods of monetizing the game (limited energy at the beginning as well as ridiculously priced cosmetics to name a few).  I know that since launch, they’ve made changes but I stopped playing long before then (and only time I can play the JP version is when back there given the latency dependent the combat is).  While I do believe they have been handling EU TERA better than EME over the past 1.5 years (Gameforge does have more competent community management when it comes to understanding how the game works), it’s not necessarily that much better when it comes to how it is monetized.  Furthermore, while they’ve been tolerant in the past with less egregious modifications, they do taken action against folks who do make use of 3rd party apps that exploit the game.

Myself, none of this really affects me so I’ll remain playing on NA even though I know come October and November, my play time will be shifting into MapleStory 2 and then LOST ARK OBT in Korea with much more casual play in TERA (concentrating on awakening 2 for my ninja and gunner).