VPNs and our services

[TrisxoTarqSWG]

I saw his comments on this on Mobyius's channel, he sounds quite confident lol

[rease]

Man your a good Hunter however I disagree about this VPN policy
remember that VPN is the only window to the free world for residents of those countries ,People are not the issue its there governments indoctrination to keep there populations as dumb as they can , people must see whats out there to reverse this trend

But we are so few to play from those countries, so nobody matter. A friend in Cambodia is using Shadow Cloud Computer.
Without VPN, no Full Netflix, no order on amazon and many limits on youtube about politics contents and many many many other limits ...
You must live in those countries to understand what limits to freedom mean.
fortunately, technology often provide a solution at the end (if gouvernement doesn't shut down all internet).

[MrKraken]

VPN blocking is becoming pretty common place for just these sorts of reasons. Yes it affects those in certain oppressive countries, but there are probably far more people that use VPN's in SWG for nefarious purposes than those just trying to circumvent their government's lunacy.

Hell, I want to watch the Mandalorian right now, but can't due to ******+ VPN blocking and ******+ doesn't launch in the UK until March 31st 2020!!!!

[Valkyra]

I would caution people who say we didn't think about what we have decided, this has been going on literally for almost a year.

I've been building tools and doing data analysis for close to a year now.

We've been using a machine learning service to analyze registrations and cut them to 1/3rd of what they were.

In February of 2019 I built out the activation workflow, that improved the number of real email's people use now.

I work internationally, for a massive multi-national company (not hard to figure out who) and I fly just about bi-weekly, I have people in my group from China, Dubai, Australia, EU etc.. on ward..

I'm very aware of the challenges governments have applied to the internet, I donate to the The Free Software Foundation monthly.

It saddens me to think some people would accuse us of racism or having not thought this decision out.

Its easy, this game was not designed to be fun with a single person having 27 accounts (WTF 270 Characters!?) and the community has complained for years about us not doing enough.

Many times even over the last year people have complained, I bit my lip because I knew what our data was showing, I built tools to empower our CSR's to research everything.

People who were paying attention should have known something was up when I pushed this commit, gee I wonder what I was building there?

Now we have 11,187,396 records to analyze and we've built tools to leverage that data and now we're adding more to apply machine learning against the data to detect cheaters.

I am happy to learn with the community, but I will not provide anymore details of our technology "behind the curtain" and if you have valid needs I'm happy to review each case, submit a support ticket and state your case. But I will warn you, more than once this has happened and I've found cheaters trying to make up stories, we have the data, don't lie to us, be honest and discuss your situation with respect and be specific and we will do our best to help.

If this policy is too hard for you then you are welcome to play elsewhere, I have made it extremely easy with ZonamaDev to setup a home server, have a blast, we're not holding anyone back!

Here, together, in this community, we want to enjoy a deeply connected game set in the Star Wars Universe, to do that we must do our best to reduce cheating to a minimum.

LK is literally the hero SWGEmu needs, but does not deserve

[LQUser]

LK is literally the hero SWGEmu needs, but does not deserve

Agreed. I look forward to future developments.

[Loc-nar]

I would caution people who say we didn't think about what we have decided, this has been going on literally for almost a year.

I've been building tools and doing data analysis for close to a year now.

We've been using a machine learning service to analyze registrations and cut them to 1/3rd of what they were.

In February of 2019 I built out the activation workflow, that improved the number of real email's people use now.

I work internationally, for a massive multi-national company (not hard to figure out who) and I fly just about bi-weekly, I have people in my group from China, Dubai, Australia, EU etc.. on ward..

I'm very aware of the challenges governments have applied to the internet, I donate to the The Free Software Foundation monthly.

It saddens me to think some people would accuse us of racism or having not thought this decision out.

Its easy, this game was not designed to be fun with a single person having 27 accounts (WTF 270 Characters!?) and the community has complained for years about us not doing enough.

Many times even over the last year people have complained, I bit my lip because I knew what our data was showing, I built tools to empower our CSR's to research everything.

People who were paying attention should have known something was up when I pushed this commit, gee I wonder what I was building there?

Now we have 11,187,396 records to analyze and we've built tools to leverage that data and now we're adding more to apply machine learning against the data to detect cheaters.

I am happy to learn with the community, but I will not provide anymore details of our technology "behind the curtain" and if you have valid needs I'm happy to review each case, submit a support ticket and state your case. But I will warn you, more than once this has happened and I've found cheaters trying to make up stories, we have the data, don't lie to us, be honest and discuss your situation with respect and be specific and we will do our best to help.

If this policy is too hard for you then you are welcome to play elsewhere, I have made it extremely easy with ZonamaDev to setup a home server, have a blast, we're not holding anyone back!

Here, together, in this community, we want to enjoy a deeply connected game set in the Star Wars Universe, to do that we must do our best to reduce cheating to a minimum.

All this and didn't you at one point get pushed out of this project?

[Praxi34]

All this and didn't you at one point get pushed out of this project?

Be great if you could contribute code instead of contributing your opinion to be fair. Would be vastly more helpful.

[Walking carpet]

VPN blocking is becoming pretty common place for just these sorts of reasons. Yes it affects those in certain oppressive countries, but there are probably far more people that use VPN's in SWG for nefarious purposes than those just trying to circumvent their government's lunacy.



Hell, I want to watch the Mandalorian right now, but can't due to ******+ VPN blocking and ******+ doesn't launch in the UK until March 31st 2020!!!!

your right on that point but still , I think blocking whole countries is bad.
My guild is international , we welcome everyone from anywhere as long as theres no politics or religion discussions, Games are for people to disconnect from reality and everyone is equal.
@LK and Lolindir, i dont think any of the staff is racisit I never did , im just french Canadian that may not use the right sentences typing in english
but who cares what I think

[Misk Brebran]

So weve hammered to death the opinions, but what about solutions?

Now most of you are much more tech savvy than I. Ive only used a vpn to watch the the summer olympics, lol. From what i understand, ppl will be banned for using a vpn when they login, by an algorithm. Then they will need to contact customer support to be considered for “unbanning”.

Without getting into the weeds at all about any plans what-so-ever, will there be any processes in place to allow for users who are required to use vpns due to their location? Could there be a self-declared option, static ip or some other method that would allow them to connect by vpn but limit the number of connections to the server?

Staff, thx for all your hard work! Community, stay calm and Star Wars on! We’ll get over this speed bump as well. We always do

Caio.

—edit—One more question for the staff. Is there, will there be anyway to prempt the banning, i.e. let CS know ahead of time or something? Thx again!

[lordkator]

All this and didn't you at one point get pushed out of this project?

I had real life things to deal with as many people on the team have over the years.

I've been up front about my history with the project.

I've never been pushed out, banned or had any disciplinary action against me.

[captjackharkness]

So can we still log on 2 players at same time or No? Just asking I use to back in the day. You guys are doing amazing stuff...

[Lolindir]

So weve hammered to death the opinions, but what about solutions?

Now most of you are much more tech savvy than I. Ive only used a vpn to watch the the summer olympics, lol. From what i understand, ppl will be banned for using a vpn when they login, by an algorithm. Then they will need to contact customer support to be considered for “unbanning”.

We have done the same thing manually for some time, and do so still (not all tools have been implemented yet). If we see someone with multiple accounts, they get banned. It is very tedious and time consuming work. I personally have almost retired from the team over it. Sitting hours at end searching and banning. Some of this will be automatically when all tools have been implemented.

Without getting into the weeds at all about any plans what-so-ever, will there be any processes in place to allow for users who are required to use vpns due to their location? Could there be a self-declared option, static ip or some other method that would allow them to connect by vpn but limit the number of connections to the server?

I don't think we will be able to have a self-declared option. Cheaters will exploit that easily and to be honest, there are a lot of cheaters here, evident from all the bans that have been handed out over the years and not only multiple accounts.

—edit—One more question for the staff. Is there, will there be anyway to prempt the banning, i.e. let CS know ahead of time or something? Thx again!

As far as I understand, when everything is implemented and you try to log in to our services with a known VPN, you will get an error. If you get in to our system and others have the same IP, all on the IP will get a ban. Thats when you would have to come to support to have your case looked at. We will not manually tell people they are breaking our TOS. It is any persons responsibility to read the TOS, with any service they use, so that they are aware of the rules they have to live by.

So can we still log on 2 players at same time or No? Just asking I use to back in the day. You guys are doing amazing stuff...

You can still log on 2 characters on the same account, as Basilisk have always had the ability to.

[Surrena]

Here come the whiners who used VPN to make multiple accounts. Why the hell would you need VPN to play games? Played games my whole life only used VPN to unlock some games that were open in USA before EU. If you are at work, work not play swgemu.

Good job staff, more measures to ban multiple accounts owners to come, I hope!

PS: dont know how swgemu staff is structured but I hope LordKator gets in charge, because hes aces. Project is finally moving in the right direction for once.

[Lolindir]

This isn't a discussion about characters or ADKs and numbers of characters and ADKs that have been mentioned isn't set in stone and 1.0 isn't here yet. The thread is about VPN, so lets focus on what this thread is about and let the other stuff be for another thread.

[WohenForgotHisPassword]

I use a VPN, virtually always, on both my phone and PC. I started because I don't have a data plan on my cell and I use a lot of wifi hot-spots around town. However, I've been under the impression, for sometime now, that it's recommended in general that everyone use a VPN.

I only have one account but I can understand how VPNs would present a challenge to monitoring that.. not looking forward to having to choose between a VPN and SWG.