April 16, 2024
Some of you may be aware that Matt Swift (a.k.a. Zynetic) has started his own PSO server at Ragol.org. While having more ways to play PSO would normally be a good thing, Matt has publicly admitted on multiple occasions that he is stealing content from Sylverant and then using it both directly and indirectly on his server. Unfortunately, this is not the first time Matt has stolen from Sylverant. This page documents the evidence of Matt's activities, so that people will know what he's been doing and whether they want to support someone who behaves in this way.
The first time this happened was eight years ago. I released my GameCube PSO quest The Twisted Towers on January 4, 2016. On May 22, 2016, Matt made this news post on the Ephinea PSO server forum:
I did not give permission for Matt to use my quest. He connected to Sylverant, used a proxy to download the quest, edited it for use on Blue Burst, and then uploaded it to another server against my wishes.
Both BlueCrab and I asked for him to stop:
Thankfully, Sodaboy is the owner of Ephinea, not Matt, and we were eventually able to convince him to remove my quests from the server (for which I am still grateful).
Things were quiet again until Matt started his own PSO server at Ragol.org, which supports PSO Ver.1, 2, 3, and Episode III via Fuzziqer's newserv project. Ragol.org has its own Discord server and discussion forum, where Matt has publicly posted the following material.
After the incident with Matt stealing The Twisted Towers, BlueCrab updated the GameCube welcome screen to ask people to please refrain from stealing Sylverant's content:
Apparently Matt considers that to be some sort of badge of honour.
Through his affiliation with Ephinea, Matt has experience with PSO BB, but Blue Burst quests do not work directly on Dreamcast or GameCube PSO. Where is he going to get content for his new server?
To recap, Matt wants to start his own server, but he doesn't seem to know how to adapt content for Dreamcast PSO. Instead of joining one of the Discord servers dedicated to discussing PSO quest development to learn how to do it himself, he simply steals from the server that's been supporting Dreamcast players for more than a decade.
Furthermore, when he hasn't taken the time to adapt a Blue Burst quest for Dreamcast himself, he simply uses our version, instead.
For those who may not know, Lost HELL PALLASCH and Fragments of a Memory are official Japanese Blue Burst quests that Cranberry and I translated into English, after which I ported them back to Dreamcast (and later on, GameCube), since they are Episode I quests.
Here is Matt's attempted justification for taking content from Sylverant without permission:
We do not "gatekeep" official content. BlueCrab does not include the official quests in the Sylverant code repository because Sega owns the copyright to them, and the repository is for code that BlueCrab wrote himself.
I made the official quests available for download years ago on the PC Downloads page, as they are included with Schthack's public server software version 2. Matt might have known this if he had taken any time to research the available resources for Dreamcast PSO before trying to start his own server, instead of relying on theft to get what he wants.
Not only is Matt stealing Sylverant's content to study how to port quests from BB to DC, he is also stealing our original content. On February 29, 2024, I posted documentation of Sylverant's various features, since it had become difficult for people to learn about what Sylverant has to offer by combing through old forum posts. In that documentation, I made mention of an undiscovered secret in Garon's Shop, a quest I wrote from scratch to implement GameCube PSO features on Dreamcast for the first time. Here's what Matt has to say about that:
The answer for how he knows this is obviously that he stole the quest and then examined it. As it happens, his examination was not very thorough, either. It costs 50 Photon Points to perform the exchange, not 4. How might he have made this mistake? Let's look at the code:
It seems he has confused the number 4 from <color 4> (which turns the text red) for the number of Photon Points you need, which is 50.
It also appears that he did not examine the code, because if he had, he would have known that you must have exactly 50 Photon Points in order for Garon to offer the exchange, which is why nobody has found the secret yet.
Since Garon's Shop has been out for four years now, and nobody was able to find the secret, I've updated the conditions to be less stringent: Garon will now offer to trade your ES Slicer for an ES J-Cutter if you have 50-60 Photon Points, rather than exactly 50, which is closer to how the original secret exchange option works on Blue Burst, anyway. I've also updated the Altimira Secrets page with the correct information. (If you didn't know, you can buy Hunter, Ranger, and Force Wall from Garon in Blue Burst for 300 Garon points, but the option won't appear unless you have 300-310 points.)
Matt didn't just steal Garon's Shop to spoil secrets for people, though. I posted my Sylverant documentation on February 29. Matt posted about the secret in Garon's Shop on March 3, and then on April 7 he made this announcement on the Ragol.org forum:
Matt implemented a feature in his quest that is identical to a feature in my quest and that nobody knew about except for Matt, since he stole Garon's Shop to find out what the secret was.
It wouldn't surprise me if The Lab is using code directly copy/pasted from Garon's Shop, since Matt has also implemented Double Cannon, Guld Milla, and Tsumikiri J-Sword transformations that are very similar to my own, but since I refuse to use his methods and steal his quest to find out how similar it is to mine, I can't prove that he's using my code directly. I can only prove that he's copying my features by stealing my quests and dissecting them.
Not only has Matt been stealing quests from Sylverant, he's also been stealing from SCHTServ:
SCHTServ has been supporting PSO longer than any other server, but Matt seems to feel entitled to their custom content, too.
Longtime players may also be aware that I worked with Ralf on GC-Forever to create many QOL improvements for GameCube PSO. The patching programs I released are tied to the specific version of PSO GC that they are meant to be used with, in order to stop people from applying the wrong patch version to the game (which would cause the game to crash or experience other strange problems). This also has the side effect of making my patching programs incompatible with certain other client modifications, such as GameMasterPLC's widescreen hack for US Plus. Here's what Matt has to say about that:
To recap again:
...and somehow I'm supposed to be the bad guy here for not spending even more time to make my patchers compatible with somebody else's work?
I tested each of the patches eight times to make sure they worked properly on every GameCube version. I therefore assume responsibility for that work and any problems players might experience by using it. I have little interest in providing official support for other people's work, especially for a widescreen hack that:
On February 19, 2024, Matt did in fact publicly post his unauthorised edits of my patching programs. The only good thing I can say about it is that at least he gave Ralf and me credit for our work this time, which is more than I can usually expect from him.
Also, for the record, I don't hate Matt. I dislike his unethical, disrespectful behaviour.
I am not writing all of this to convince Matt to stop. He has continually demonstrated his lack of integrity when it comes to respecting other people's work, and nothing I say will change his mind.
I am also not writing this to convince people to play on Sylverant.
I am writing this so people will know the kinds of behaviour they are supporting if they choose to play on Ragol.org. PSO is an old game, and there are very few people with the knowledge and interest to create content for it. If people steal each other's work, this will reduce the motivation to create new content at all, and if the people who understand PSO decide to stop making content for it in favour of working on other projects, then the thieves will have nothing left to steal, and nobody will get new content anymore.
Please keep all of this in mind when you're deciding which server to use.
— Aleron Ives
April 20, 2024
Matt posted a response to the above information on the Ragol.org forum, which you can find here.
I extend my thanks to Matt for providing the quest files he is using. Now that I have looked at them, I can clarify a few points.
It is true that Matt is not currently using our version of Fragments of a Memory, and I am glad that this is the case. This does not negate the fact that, by his own admission, he stole our version of the quest and claimed to be hosting it last November. The fact that he is no longer hosting our version does not absolve him of this, especially since he admitted that he stole the quest (as well as Lost HELL PALLASCH) to "look at how they ported", which suggests that he either didn't know — or at least was unsure — how to port those quests himself, and thus he wanted to know how we had done it without having to ask us.
I have also confirmed that The Lab is not using my code verbatim. I am also glad that this is the case, and having been shown proof to the contrary, I retract my suspicion that The Lab contains code copy/pasted from Garon's Shop. This was, however, a reasonable suspicion to have, considering that:
I never said that Matt had definitely used my code in The Lab. I said that it would not surprise me if he had, based on the available evidence, and I admitted that I could not prove it, since I was not going to use his methods to examine his quest the way he had examined mine.
Matt has also suggested that it is trivial to examine the downloadable versions of his quests in order to provide proof that he had copied my code. This is not the case. It is not possible to open a standard downloadable quest, as PSO packets are encrypted in transit, and quests are encrypted again before they are saved to the memory card. The only way to acquire an unencrypted copy of a downloadable quest is to use a proxy to log and decrypt the packets exchanged between the server and client — a method which I explicitly said I was not going to use, as that is exactly what Matt did in order to steal content from Sylverant and SCHTServ.
The problem is not that Matt wanted to run his own server. It is also not that Matt wanted to have functionality similar to that which the established servers already have.
The problem is that instead of participating in the community — such as by joining a quest development Discord server — and asking questions regarding how to accomplish things on PSO Ver.2 in public, he decided to acquire his knowledge by stealing content from the established servers and then studying it in private in order to learn what he wanted to know. The knowledge of how to make quests is not owned by a specific person, but the quest files themselves are, and he had no right to download them without permission.
The point of the original article stands: Matt stole from Sylverant and SCHTServ, and now that people know what he did, they can make an informed decision as to whether they want to play on Ragol.org.
— Aleron Ives