EME posted a recent update mentioning they will be removing XIGNCODE in the November 13th update (Elin Brawler and Enhancement Point system).  So the past 5 months of teeth gnashing could’ve been avoided had EME simply engaged a bit more with the player base regarding this and the whole DMCA takedown of some third party software which they also back peddled on (as noted in this linked message).

So this is some very poor decisions made by the TERA PC product management team; the 2nd one going back to taking the stance they had earlier regarding third party software (which goes against their terms of server) where its going to be a case-by-case scenario for those who may be potentially abusing such software.

The optics on this aren’t great at all because it does portray itself as a move which did cost them a lot of players (which even though in-game, there still a lot of players).  It also makes their terms of service come across as weak (considering they also unbanned a lot of players which they had banned from as far back as 2016).

The root issue still exists primarily with Bluehole though with addressing the optimization problems (which according to this message, is something they are working on in stages) but also dealing with the security holes in their code.

En Masse Entertainment (EME) provided an update regarding how they will be moving forward after having issued a DMCA takedown of several third-party software (against the Terms of Service) repositories around 2 weeks ago.

The whole statement they provided is vague at best since there really needs to be an official statement made by Bluehole themselves regarding their long term plans for TERA.  The game has some serious architectural flaws in terms of its server/client design which allowed this unsanctioned ability to begin with.

This is a 6+ year old title with no clear cut direction for the past few years.  So I am having a difficult time seeing how they will even be able to address some of the issues without them just being even more bandaid fixes.

It’s also no longer clear as to EME’s stand on their own Terms of Service since they alluded to “reaching out to talent outside of our organization, investigating ways to enable, empower the existing mod community to find and build their own sanctioned solutions.”

This whole thing is reminding me of PUBG Corps flippant approach to Epic Games Fortnite when they first hinted about their concerns of copyright infringement (and then later filing a lawsuit in South Korea, only to pull it a few weeks later).  It’s like they didn’t completely vet the whole thing through before pulling the trigger.

In this case (given the statement I quoted above), that EME filed the DMCA (well within their rights) and expected to be done with the matter.  2 weeks later though, they are now hinting at the possibility of allowing third-party software which given the state of TERA’s current server/client architecture, would require a massive investment by Bluehole to actually support.  That in itself is something I find hard to believe given how a lot of these core issues have been neglected for many years.

This also sets a bad precedent for other developers and publishers because EME is telegraphing they may have pulled the DMCA trigger too quickly and may not have expected the level of discourse that has taken place over the past two weeks.  For many, it will give off the impression that EME caved a bit.  There was a lot of noise regarding players quitting or starting over on EU (Gameforge).  My own take on that was it was just that, noise.  But many will interpret this as meaning that there was a large exodus of players to fit the narrative (confirmation bias) that those folks were pushing (as a way to “put a bag of hurt on EME’s version of TERA”).  In the end though, the damage is done from all the acrimony.

What has been probably happening though for a much longer time is a trend of decreasing revenues starting from around 2016.  And I would say it really accelerated when EME hired Sean “Seandynamite” Neil as TERA’s new (PC) product manager in 2017.  He had previously worked at NCSoft (and then their subsidiary ArenaNet) so I was expecting to see more cash grab style pushes.  And that is sort of what has been happening with the games monetization over the last year where I believe that less and less players are biting on that bait.  And over the last two weeks, there may have just been this vertical drop in revenues from EMP sales that they could not ignore (because those are the sort of important metrics which falls on the head of the product manager).

Using myself, the last time I purchased EMP was back during the Attack on Titan promotion during their 6th anniversary.  I bought $500 worth; 75% of that used to purchase several of the time limited cosmetics and the remaining has been what I used for minor purchases here and there (with around $95 worth of EMP still unused).  I purchased a bunch of 50% price reduced 30 and 90 day Elite vouchers but haven’t used them since my last used one expired back in June.  This Elite subscription is one of the things they really need to overhaul (along with the Rewards Emporium).  Both of these were previously discussed but has fallen off into a chasm along with further updating of the Fashion Coupon shop as well as keeping the TERA Dressing Room updated (that’s another system that is poorly designed on the backend where the database of ID’s tend to get wiped out on some updates, and requires reloading by the publisher – which in EME’s case, falls off into another chasm).

But getting back to the subject matter, I really do have a difficult time seeing how EME and Bluehole are going to manage the sanctioning of the mod community especially when that community has never had a positive relationship with EME (some being permanently banned in prior actions due to exploiting).  As I mentioned several paragraphs up, I find it difficult to envision Bluehole actually investing time/resources into the changes required (the correct way to do it would be like what NCSoft has committed to with Blade & Soul as an example with rewriting it using Unreal Engine 4) along with their other franchises.  I don’t know… maybe this might actually kick someone at Bluehole in the ass where they might reconsider their plans for not doing a “TERA 2”.

UPDATE:  One of the TERA proxy developers who was contacted by an EME community representative did a writeup and included their Discord communication.

To be frankly honest, I’m flabbergasted with how this entire situation has been handled.  The DMCA was filed for a reason since the key encryption used for the games opcodes, data center (and by extension, the packet handling) has to be cracked in order to allow the functionality that the proxy modules provided.  In the screen capture in the developers writeup, they specifically mention this to the EME representative.

This entire chat also confirms that EME reached out to the same developer which they filed the DMCA against;  the representative put out feelers gauging the interest in being an outside contractor which was declined by the proxy developer.

Furthermore, the representative noted that they (EME) weren’t comfortable with consumer data leaving their ecosystem (this was the potential problem that the holes in TERA could allow anyone with knowledge to exploit; it didn’t require the proxy or an exploitive module – that aspect just made it easier should that code have made it out into the wild).

I’ve pretty much been a bystander in this whole thing (understanding the QoL things some modules provided which to me, are things that Bluehole should have been directly addressing several years ago, while also noting that EME was well within their rights to uphold their Terms of Service when it specifically came to these third-party software).

But this Discord chat session really does put into question EME’s handling of the DMCA takedown (when it comes to those who signed off on it).  While the representative made it clear that it was just him (right now) reaching out, that decision obviously had to be okayed by a higher level manager.

In the meantime, there is no short term solution because there is no way Bluehole will be able to address such an officially sanctioned third-party mod system since TERA was never designed with that sort of functionality in mind.  As mentioned in prior postings, the overall design has fundamental issues with lack of server side data validation and trusting the client too much as a result.  The entire game code would need to be refactored (Bluehole does not have that kind of manpower nor the original design and development team that created it) which amounts to a near complete rewrite (basically the effort required is equivalent to a new game).

A big company like NCSoft with its resources can throw engineers at Blade & Soul (or to do a Blizzard like scrapping of an entire project as was the case with Lineage Eternal to start over again with Project TL).  But it also requires a vision for those franchise.  As I’ve mentioned before, Bluehole doesn’t seem to have any roadmap or long term plans for TERA.  They dismissed the notion of a “TERA 2” years ago.  IMHO, they need to seriously reconsider their plans because I do not know if it will be worth the time and effort to recode an old game like TERA as opposed to a follow-on that is built from the ground up with a modern game engine and technology.

But none of this addresses the short term when it comes to actual solutions.  The proxy developer made it clear they have no interest in working with EME after what happened and will not implement support for NA again.  EME literally comes out of this with egg on their face (given this Discord chat) and now has to prove by actual action that they will attempt to fix the communication and interaction issues with their community.  Myself, I am not deeply involved in this community by personal choice so I’ve been sort of indifferent.

Having looked at the acrimony created by this entire event though, I can honestly say that it will be a huge challenge for both sides to overcome (as the player community is obviously cynical having heard the same thing before while EME now has a bit of mea culpa to now overcome given the signals they are now sending out with regards to the third-party development scene).

This is in regards to what happened on September 28th.

I said what I needed to say regarding the situation.  The problem is there are far too many mudslinging and personally attacking others they do not agree with; there is literally zero constructive discussion happening and has pretty much turned into the following.

I understand how it is when you really like a game but have to deal with publishers that aren’t the best.  En Masse Entertainment is far from the worse; they used to be up there but that was years ago with a different leadership team for the company and different individuals handling TERA.

I personally do not have a problem with EME enforcing their Terms of Service when it comes to third party apps; as I wrote in my forum posting, the responsibility is with Bluehole to address the situation on their end with better security hardened code, working on better optimization, and designing certain quality of life features.  Considering how long they’ve left the game code in this state, I am realistically not holding my breath that they will do anything.

As for En Masse’s silence since making the announcement last week, I really don’t know what those who are really upset are expecting to hear.  They filed the DMCA takedown (that entire process was likely vetted via their corporate legal) and it us up to those folks whose repositories were shutdown to file a counterclaim if they believe it was filed in error (that process does not require hiring legal counsel).

The third party developers have made their decision to no longer support creating those mods for North America; from En Masse’s point of view, mission accomplished.  Sure, this does nothing to address the fact that there are individuals who will exploit the holes in TERA’s code or the fact that they may lose a portion of their player population.  The impact there is not going to be drastic as those individuals believe though because it’s a relatively small but vocal group that made use of the proxy.

There are just a lot more less than hardcore players who have little idea about this stuff.  Just today alone, the starting zone was filled with new players leveling.  That’s always been the reality with free-2-play titles where there is a continual ebb-and-flow of players and right now, there’s an influx of people giving the game a try.  Time will really tell how much of an impact this actually has and I’ll be posting about it either way.

Hi everyone, 

XIGNCODE3 was taken on for a number of reasons. One of those being cheaters and malignant hackers. Our version is custom built for us and is a work in progress, and we’re trying to improve it. 

Please know we’re working on an FAQ for those that may have issues with XIGNCODE3. If you’re having issues, please write in a ticket or if you want to bypass us, write directly to Wellbia!

https://forums.enmasse.com/tera/discussion/comment/247776/#Comment_247776

The custom built part (which is mentioned to be a work in progress) is because it does not install itself in the Windows System folder (the kernel model driver named xhunter1.sys) or into the registry.  The supporting software is installed into its own XIGNCODE folder under the TERA directory but the driver component is compiled into the TERA.exe binary.  Its implementation as of current is easily bypassed via a Javascript based TERA Proxy module (this proxy utilizes the open source Javascript interpreter called Node.js).

Inevitably, someone did ask the question I would’ve asked; “why implement something that is a work in progress?”  The answer to that is actually simple though because I believe the goal is to have XIGNCODE better integrated with the TERA application to where it can no longer be bypassed (this is the weakness with a lot of anti-cheat software which runs externally).  If XIGNCODE is better integrated, it can checksum the game files to make sure they haven’t been tampered with and it can also then detect if it is actually running to prevent the current situation where it can be easily bypassed.  As for actually detecting the use of the proxy, that is going to be difficult since the proxy alone isn’t very functional and all of the modules are simple Javascript.

Actually detecting the exploitative functionality of some modules still requires backend coding as well as an operating process to deal with information that shows potential exploitive actions (or just coding in the server side checks and validations/reducing client side trust; this part is never a high priority for most Korean MMO’s though because of the fact that they were primarily targeted for deployment in PC bangs and/or relied on the fact that any type of account in South Korea requires a KSSN).  Hacking still happens though (as what happened with Overwatch which isn’t good news for those who used exploits on a Battle.net account tied to their real KSSN) but in most non-Blizzard games deployed in Korea, dealing with it is low priority (Blizzard is pushing e-sports so they are going to go after those who have the potential to reduce their revenue generating plans).

Digressing, once (big IF) they (EME) do have that “better” foundation in place, the real objective might be to try and mitigate the most exploitive proxy based modules (with detection of a bypass attempt as an initial one).  So that is one of the primary reasons why they are implementing this work in progress since part of the whole thing could be asocial engineering to get those who rely on the proxy (and the use of the more nefarious modules) to get used to the fact that XIGNCODE itself, has been easily bypassed.

On the flipside though, it could also be that I am over reading this where the custom part is simply dialing in on processes that XIGNCODE could detect (it still doesn’t answer why there is an actual change to how XIGNCODE installs under TERA though).  I guess time will tell either way.

This is an anti-cheat software (similar to Gameguard) developed by a Korean based company (Wellbia).  TERA’s product manager eventually posted a “response” on June 5th in what has been a growing thread over on their forums.  The “response” was a post made in their announcements confirming the inclusion of the anti-cheat software.

To be frank, these anti-cheat/hack software (created by 3rd parties and licensed by many game developers) are usually circumvented and bypassed.  On some systems, their scanning and hashing of files and monitoring of memory can be felt by players (client input lag and FPS drops due to the increased disk I/O on the former is not much different with how many anti-virus software work.  I’ve played games with both of these software and some publishers set them up with some ridiculous parameters to the point where it is obnoxious.  And there are other publisher settings where their presence is barely noticeable.  In other words, YMMV as far as the performance impact.

Blizzard Entertainment created their own security system known as “Warden” which does something similar, but is obviously far more effective because well, it was written by them to work with ALL of their games.   It is also backed by an actual security team.  The actual operations is a tightly guarded secret so the following paragraph is what I’ve been able to come up with based on other information (plus my own personal experience overseeing IT operations on the networking and security side).

Warden utilizes metrics (known only to Blizzard) to determine when to automatically issue a temporary ban or in other cases when it thinks there is cheating happening, logging data that their security team can look out where an account can be flagged for more detailed (human) inspection.  The reason for that is to have a long document trail of evidence (plus also to reduce false positives) because this information is then passed on to a review team which has several people who look at this documentation independently to determine whether or not it should warrant a permanent ban (game or total account closure).  No system is perfect and some false positives do still get through (this document trail is what is consulted when dealing with players who petition a ban).  Blizzard can afford to do this but many other publishers can’t afford that level of support. Just search this blog for “warden” as again, I used to have this blog dedicated solely to D3.

The larger concern though is how some of these anti-cheat software is installed, the elevated permissions they run at, their inability for all traces of it to be easily removed, their ability to be potentially misused for malicious intent (including privacy concerns).  Privacy is a hot potato topic when it comes to anyone who used the Internet though given the amount of data tracking that goes on.   I recently installed a new HP printer and the setup software attempted to contact no fewer than 3 data tracking/analytics services (I use a network tracking software on my Mac where you can explicitly tell it to inform you of each network request at which point, you can perform an allow/deny action for that address (it acts like a more granular firewall).

Ad blockers have become much more ubiquitous now that many sites have had to add detection code in order to ask the user to whitelist the site (some sites like Forbes completely prevent the user from viewing an article unless whitelisted).  My greater point in bringing this up is that there is no true anonymity on the net and that all of us, are tracked in some form or another (primarily for monetization purposes for targeted advertising).  But as the whole Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal showed, all it takes is a bad actor to misuse that personal information data.

These anti-cheat software utilize what can be defined as “rootkit technology” since they do tend to hide and protect themselves (to the extent where remnants of them remain when the game that installed it has been removed through the usual software removal process).  So there is real concern for the potential misuse which is what folks are in a frenzy about.  On top of that, it seemed like EME was not going to announce ahead of time the implementation of XIGNCODE and seemed to do so after enough noise was made.  Not announcing anything is well within the boundaries of the terms of use we all agreed to.  However, transparency is a much better option and EME did the bare minimum by making the announcement on their forum only.  Also to be fair, Wellbia also provides a separate uninstaller.

As noted up top, these anti-cheats are mostly ineffective with what they are tasked with since there have always been means to circumvent them.  Those who use the Javascript based proxy for TERA, will be able to bypass XIGNCODE for example with a proxy module that is being developed (showing the entire irony of the situation).  K-TERA (as well as J-TERA) have always been using XIGNCODE and it has not stopped exploits from being used.

Cheaters and exploiters will always continue unabated because it has always been “whack-a-mole” dating back to when software actually used copy protection on floppy disks.  It remains to be seen what type of settings EME uses for XIGNCODE with TERA (like if it just a file check at launch versus continuous monitor looking for stuff like memory injection as one example).  Myself, I’m on the fence about this since there have only been a few anti-cheat setups that were going a bit too far (like Webzen with MU Legend where it flagged some setups for those using VM’s for their development).  I mean I just played the LOST ARK final closed beta and it uses Gameguard (and had no performance issues).

UPDATE:  There’s a huge amount of overreaction in the forum thread linked above which is only going to fall on deaf ears.  The whole “I am going to quit” threat tactic has never worked with any game publisher/developer EXCEPT when those folks do make a big mistake and/or they actually do see CCU’s and logins drop drastically (and remain that way).  The reality is that it is always a smaller vocal minority making these threats to quit.

Again, I’m no fan of these anti-cheat software primarily because they fail at their intended function and depending on publisher settings, can cause issues with other software.  I would prefer that the game remained clear of it but this is what has unfortunately been decided.  The best thing for players who are really against this decision to do is to truly “vote with their wallet” by not logging in and playing (since if it happens in larger numbers, that will have a potential impact on revenues they could have derived from those players).  Myself, I’m going to continue to play but I also won’t be spending any new money (I still have nearly 16K EMP left and have enough discounted Elite vouchers from the prior months sales promotions).  I know the newer product manager (seandynamite) came from NCSoft and I see the monetization of TERA looking more and more like it is with some of their titles there.

UPDATE2:  An EME representative finally made an official statement regarding why XIGNCODE was implemented.

UPDATE3: Original topic locked and another thread created…. there are several folks in that thread who are beating a dead horse and need to just quit playing because EME aren’t going to remove it.