What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?
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@Jennkryst
Your headstaffer, VASperder. -
There is some shady stuff going on with this Age of Heroes game.
The ‘very strange coincidence of taking someone else’s name’ is part of it. Last night we also discovered that Age of Heroes is using “Look for RP” code developed by @Trashcan, without credit or attribution. A representative of Age of Heroes in the Ares discord became defensive and buckled down on ownership, saying that this LFRP code is their coder’s and was entirely coded by her, despite several obvious and distinct indicators within the code that this isn’t true.
When we pointed this out and requested to be credited with having written the original code, Trashcan also said he’d make a plugin for this code. Within a few hours, the AOH “coder” produced an AI-coded plugin. Faraday, aware that there was some controversy over authorship of the LFRP code, notified Trashcan so we could compare the code to ours. The AOH “coder” is claiming again that it is her code and she made it from scratch, crediting him only with the “idea” for it.
Our best guess with this situation is that the AOH “coder” used AI to request a similar feature to the one Trashcan wrote, and the AI scraped his code. Then as soon as he said he’d make a plugin, this person used AI again to try to get ahead of him and quickly produce a plugin first. The plugin itself bears the hallmarks of AI coding, which Trashcan can elaborate on if anyone’s wondering why we’re certain the plugin is AI.
These Age of Heroes people are never going to own up to lying, failing to credit where credit is due, or using AI to steal other people’s work. However it’s pretty uncool behavior in this small community, it is obvious behavior in this small community, it is rude, and it is shady.
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This is so unnecessarily dicky one feels that the dickiness is part of the point.
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@Ashkuri See… I knew shitfuckery was going to happen. Hence the need to delineate between the two.
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They used AI imagery on their home page so them vibe coding their way into this pickle is honestly unsurprising.
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Since there are two games with the same name and one of them is displaying some dubious behavior so far…
Can we get some links to these games? Like this url is the ‘good’ one and this one is the ‘bad’ one?
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@catzilla This is the one that I referenced in my post above.
Honestly if they had just asked “hey can we use this is that cool” at the start, or said at any point “my bad, I think the AI scooped it and I didn’t know,” there wouldn’t be an issue. It’s the obfuscation and weird refusal to credit a coder with his code beyond the “idea” that frustrates me.
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@Ashkuri said in What's up with the two Age of Heroes games?:
@catzilla This is the one that I referenced in my post above.
Honestly if they had just asked “hey can we use this is that cool” at the start, or said at any point “my bad, I think the AI scooped it and I didn’t know,” there wouldn’t be an issue. It’s the obfuscation and weird refusal to credit a coder with his code beyond the “idea” that frustrates me.
Totally agreed. Like, character wiki code ‘stealing’ is common and nobody bats an eye (rightfully so). So if this person was like, ‘oh I thought this was in the same guidelines, my bad’ or whatever, then no problem. Or even offering to put a ‘inspired by Trashcan’s code’ credit or something.
The double down denying is always so weird.
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FWIW, the Age of Heroes that is not copying anything and appeared to have the name picked out on an aresmush.com domain before anyone knew Ages of Heroes The Bad One existed is called Superheroes MUSH now https://superheroesmush.com/
The name thing seems shittier and shittier (and more deliberate) as more stuff comes up and must’ve been a bummer as gamerunner trying to get their own project off the ground.
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