Announcement Regarding the Status of Zelda Classic Development

[Gleeok]

On September the 13th, 2023, three developers and members of purezc, Connor Clark, Emily, and Deedee, perpetrated an act so brazen as to possibly be considered the worst offense in the history of Zelda Classic. These three have willfully and of their own volition betrayed the trust of Armageddon Games, ZC developers, and the entire Zelda Classic community when they executed a removal and deletion of the master codebase on github used for development of the ZQuest and Zelda Classic programs. This codebase is now located in a private repository where there is no access by anyone. In short, they stole the property of Armageddon Games and conspired to retain it for themselves for personal interests. There are really not many words I can use to express this betrayal of trust placed in them.

The investigation into this matter and into events which may of preceded it of the last two years is still ongoing, so I will not speculate as to motives as of yet; except to say that the differences between forking, cloning, or mirroring a repository from what they have done is that all past forks, subscribers, links, etc. now point to their own private organization rather than that of Armageddon Games, and the simple facts regarding the byproducts of this move allude to a motive which requires, at least in part, the appropriation of the userbase as well. I will remind everyone that ZC is not a personal project and that developers should not be making modifications to the core program for selfish reasons.

Therefore Connor Clark, Venrob aka Emily, and Dimentio aka Dimi aka Deedee, are hereby banned for life from all Zelda Classic development, including, but not limited to, access to development forums and to all code repositories used for official ZC development. Because of the nature of this offense, the confession from each of them, their refusal to return what they stole, their contempt to other developers and staff, and other reasons which will not be disclosed here, there is no possibility of appeal at this time.

Until this situation is resolved development of ZC will remain on hold for the time being. We are also in agreement with many complaints from users of the ZC community that the focus and direction the program has taken recently is not in the best interests of the average user or even the community as a whole. On a personal note, I am very sorry to have to share this bad news with you all; this is not the direction anyone was hoping for when ZC became open source almost nine years ago.

[MasterSwordUltima]

Unfortunate that this sort of thing happened, however grateful that actions have been taken to remedy the situation.

[BFeely]

Isn't their repo public now? Couldn't you just clone it and host it back in your organization?

[mrz84]

Well dang, I hope that it gets resolved. What they did is just scummy.

[James24]

Why don't we just acknowledge the blatantly obvious? Zelda Classic is dead and those guys running off with the source code is just one more nail in the coffin. Even if they returned it, there's very little chance of ZC resurrecting itself without the necessary funding and we all know how that went. So maybe you guys should just let it be??

[vegeta1215]

As an AGN member since the mid 2000s, cutting my teeth on Zelda Classic 1.84, it's really disturbing to hear what has happened. I read the threads on PureZC and the claimed reasoning for why things were done (by the named 3 people) does not follow to me - ethically or legally. Also, Nightmare posting what appears to be a document from Ohio for the dissolution of Armageddon Games, LLC by War Lord confuses the subject imo. Is there any updated news on this?

[Asuna Yuuki Nagato]

Isn't their repo public now? Couldn't you just clone it and host it back in your organization?

Yes, this is the new official repo:

https://github.com/ZeldaClassic/ZeldaClassic

This is the stolen repo:

https://github.com/ZQuestClassic/ZQuestClassic

[BFeely]

You could have forked it. Or cloned the repo in mirror mode. Both would have preserved the history.

Probably would also be good to remove the copyrighted BOTW assets from the ZC website as well as the deadnaming post.

[Asuna Yuuki Nagato]

What BOTW assets?

[Gleeok]

Probably would also be good to remove the copyrighted BOTW assets from the ZC website as well as the deadnaming post.

You know there is no such thing as 'deadnaming' right? No such thing exists in the universe, nor will ever exist.
It's your choice to make or not if you want to pander to chemically-poisoned, mentally ill, or delusional people, but a line has to be drawn somewhere and for me it is drawn here.

[BFeely]

What BOTW assets?

I was referring to the artwork on the armageddongames.com and zeldaclassic.com websites. A major part of the "other" repo is to avoid infringement of Nintendo copyrights and trademarks, especially in light of some pretty big lawsuits and numerous takedowns by Nintendo which are an existential threat to fangames everywhere.

Just recently, a whole website dedicated to fangames got shut down due to a DMCA notice. Nintendo has become highly litigious and not something that should be brushed off as nothing.

[Asuna Yuuki Nagato]

I was referring to the artwork on the armageddongames.com and zeldaclassic.com websites. A major part of the "other" repo is to avoid infringement of Nintendo copyrights and trademarks, especially in light of some pretty big lawsuits and numerous takedowns by Nintendo which are an existential threat to fangames everywhere.

Just recently, a whole website dedicated to fangames got shut down due to a DMCA notice. Nintendo has become highly litigious and not something that should be brushed off as nothing.

Well if you are worried about that you should reach out to Games Radar and Zelda Dungeon too, because they use the same artwork:

https://www.gamesradar.com/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wilds-climbing-is-the-secret-ingredient-that-finally-adds-real-adventure-to-open-world-gaming

https://www.zeldadungeon.net/who-did-it-better-zelda-dungeons-staff-joins-the-breath-of-the-wild-vs-tears-of-the-kingdom-debate

[Tim]

classic middle of the night unhinged gleeok post

[vegeta1215]

The way it sounded like things went down was that 1) the now banned developers copied the original GIT repo into their own account, cutting off other AGN ZC team members, and 2) after doing so went back and deleted the original GIT repo, so it appeared their copied repo was the one and only ZC. Is that correct? I totally missed when all this happened and tried to catch up, but I didn't get a reply to my December post, so I wasn't sure.

Based on the posts from the last few days, am I right we were able to get the original repo back? If so, I'm so glad :smile-new: Though since the now banned developers took the ZQuest Classic name (which Zelda Classic was changed to at some point) when they copied the original repo, we had to revert back to the original name of "Zelda Classic" right? (which I actually prefer).

But yeah, if the now banned developers weren't happy with the way things were going with ZC, they could have done a fork, which is the whole point of forking software! I don't remember seeing an explanation as to why they didn't do a fork, so to me their actions came off as really pretentious and without regard to the history of ZC and all the developers that came before them.

[BFeely]

Actually it had been renamed to https://github.com/ArmageddonGames/ZQuestClassic for a while, before the repo got transferred to the ZQuestClassic organization.

What happened recently was Gleeok downloaded a source snapshot of the ZQuestClassic repo then uploaded it as an "initial commit" to ZeldaClassic/ZeldaClassic repo.

He could have easily just pressed the Fork button on the repo and automatically got a copy under his full control preserving the commit history in the process, as their repo is still fully public.

In addition, after forking, you can "detach" a fork by going to https://support.github.com/request/fork

[Gleeok]

The way it sounded like things went down was that 1) the now banned developers copied the original GIT repo into their own account, cutting off other AGN ZC team members, and 2) after doing so went back and deleted the original GIT repo, so it appeared their copied repo was the one and only ZC. Is that correct? I totally missed when all this happened and tried to catch up, but I didn't get a reply to my December post, so I wasn't sure.

Based on the posts from the last few days, am I right we were able to get the original repo back? If so, I'm so glad :smile-new: Though since the now banned developers took the ZQuest Classic name (which Zelda Classic was changed to at some point) when they copied the original repo, we had to revert back to the original name of "Zelda Classic" right? (which I actually prefer).

But yeah, if the now banned developers weren't happy with the way things were going with ZC, they could have done a fork, which is the whole point of forking software! I don't remember seeing an explanation as to why they didn't do a fork, so to me their actions came off as really pretentious and without regard to the history of ZC and all the developers that came before them.

Sorry for not responding, I figured the next update would help explain the situation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
Unfortunately, no. They just stole (transferred) the entire repo and still have possession of it. It had nothing to do with being unhappy with ZC since they were the only ones working on it at the time.They simply wanted nothing to do with agn, so they made their own website and misappropriated the entire project. It really is that bad, and we have all the receipts to back up these assertions. Even now, you will not find any mention of www.zeldaclassic.com or Armageddon Games from any of their links either at purezc, github, or any of the rest of it. Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years! purezc is entirely complicit in this act of betrayal.


Actually it had been renamed to https://github.com/ArmageddonGames/ZQuestClassic for a while, before the repo got transferred to the ZQuestClassic organization.

What happened recently was Gleeok downloaded a source snapshot of the ZQuestClassic repo then uploaded it as an "initial commit" to ZeldaClassic/ZeldaClassic repo.

He could have easily just pressed the Fork button on the repo and automatically got a copy under his full control preserving the commit history in the process, as their repo is still fully public.

In addition, after forking, you can "detach" a fork by going to https://support.github.com/request/fork

Let's not entertain too much speculation please. ;)
We have multiple repositories in the background you are not aware of yet, and two have full history. The repo in question was made public for vetting and various purposes; it is branch-specific and gigabyte+ of unwanted and unused cruft were simply left out of it. If you are interested in making sure we maintain the history I'll be happy to send you a message and a link when this happens in the next week or two. I do believe it is important as well. Thank you for your concern.

[vegeta1215]

Sorry for not responding, I figured the next update would help explain the situation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
Unfortunately, no. They just stole (transferred) the entire repo and still have possession of it. It had nothing to do with being unhappy with ZC since they were the only ones working on it at the time.They simply wanted nothing to do with agn, so they made their own website and misappropriated the entire project. It really is that bad, and we have all the receipts to back up these assertions. Even now, you will not find any mention of www.zeldaclassic.com or Armageddon Games from any of their links either at purezc, github, or any of the rest of it. Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years! purezc is entirely complicit in this act of betrayal.

Wow, that is really terrible. I just don't understand some people :shakehead: I tell you what, Raichu86/Wild Bill (RIP), a friend and long time member of AGN who originally founded PureZC, would never have stood for it. He loved AGN and loved Zelda Classic. In my opinion everything they did is a betrayal of him as well.

Anyways, thanks for the update. I'll be curious to hear more later on.

[BFeely]

GitHub is based on Git which means getting possession of your own repo from it is completely trivial.

[Moosh]

Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years!
Do you have some examples of these sites? I've heard nothing about any such effort, and find it unlikely given how little outreach the ZC community has had. We're pretty isolated and have barely put in any effort to advertise the program to the greater internet or even other Zelda fan sites lately despite declining interest. So I'd be surprised to hear if someone did put in that effort.

I'm also kinda surprised that PureZC actually removed the AGN link on their about page. Pure is one of the slowest moving sites I know and they got on that change with unprecedented speed. I'd have figured they'd just forget it was there. There's probably more links buried in the forum's many old pinned topics that they have forgotten. In fact...Yup (https://www.purezc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=76767), there we are. :spin:


Sorry for not responding, I figured the next update would help explain the situation, but we haven't gotten there yet.
We have multiple repositories in the background you are not aware of yet, and two have full history. The repo in question was made public for vetting and various purposes; it is branch-specific and gigabyte+ of unwanted and unused cruft were simply left out of it. If you are interested in making sure we maintain the history I'll be happy to send you a message and a link when this happens in the next week or two. I do believe it is important as well. Thank you for your concern.
Are you at liberty to share anything about the planned direction for the AGN repo and what cruft is being done away with? Understandable if it's all being kept hush-hush for the moment, just curious how the two versions will differ and why users would want to pick one over the other.

[BFeely]

Perhaps AGN ZC will be more about emulating Zelda 1 and ZQuest Classic will be more about being a fully-featured game engine that happens to run quest files made for ZC 2.55 and below?

By the way, git history doesn't necessarily take up gigabytes of space as the git system compresses the differences. I personally have in the past migrated a self-hosted SVN to GitHub, at first using a hook to sync the two before retiring the SVN in favor of Git. All history was maintained, except for some extremely early revisions that were lost when my first VPS provider suddently went under.

Git repos are designed to be cloned as I said multiple times. The ZQuestClassic repo can be cloned using any Git tools you want.

[Russ]

[QUOTE=Gleeok;924024Even now, you will not find any mention of www.zeldaclassic.com (http://www.zeldaclassic.com) or Armageddon Games from any of their links either at purezc, github, or any of the rest of it. Moreover they have been going around to Zelda sites and removing or altering the history of the zeldaclassic project even though AGN has been the home of Zelda Classic for 25 years! purezc is entirely complicit in this act of betrayal.[/QUOTE]

Hey Gleeok, hope you're doing well. Speaking on behalf of the PureZC Staff here.

We just wanted to touch base around a few things you have stated around PureZC's involvement - and us being "complicit" around the ZQuest Classic devs and their moving of the repo.

First off, an apology - while we did scrub most links to AGN at the time, removing acknowledgement of AGN's contributions to ZC development was a mistake. We have decided to restore those acknowledgements on our About page.

In the days after the repo pull, you approached us regarding the status of the repo ownership - David and I agreed with you about moving it back. We began conversations with the ZQuest Classic dev team to try to intermediate and facilitate a return.

In the meantime, you posted the "Announcement regarding the Status of Zelda Classic Development" thread on PureZC. This thread served nothing more than to agitate the community further in the wake of the monetization proposal from the ZQuest Classic devs, as well as deadnaming several of the ZQuest Classic developers in the process. The handling of the entire situation by the AGN devs was disappointing and frustrating to say the least.

You declared us "complicit" after the PureZC staff held a poll in regards to pre-emptively banning you from the website - a poll that ended with the majority of PureZC staff voting *against* the ban. You had access to the moderator forums as a show of good faith courtesy of being a ZC dev, and in response you leaked remarks around your own ban poll, as well as other internal discussions. As a result, the website was DDOS'd out of spite for three weeks by another member of the community.

While the work they have done should be recognized, PureZC does not agree with everything the ZQuest Classic dev team have done. Frankly, we've had our share of frustrations with them. However, our priority is the community; one that is currently in a state of decline accelerated by the entirely unnecessary monetization proposal from the ZQuest Classic devs, the repo pull, as well as the fallout between them, AGN, and the wider community.

Finally, for the sake of clarity, while PureZC will not platform accusations of malicious intent toward the current developers, we maintain our stance as a neutral party regarding ownership and the status of the repo. We acknowledge AGN's contributions towards Zelda Classic, as well as what is now ZQuest Classic. We just want to grill, man.

[Gleeok]

Do you have some examples of these sites? I've heard nothing about any such effort, and find it unlikely given how little outreach the ZC community has had. We're pretty isolated and have barely put in any effort to advertise the program to the greater internet or even other Zelda fan sites lately despite declining interest. So I'd be surprised to hear if someone did put in that effort.

I'm also kinda surprised that PureZC actually removed the AGN link on their about page. Pure is one of the slowest moving sites I know and they got on that change with unprecedented speed. I'd have figured they'd just forget it was there. There's probably more links buried in the forum's many old pinned topics that they have forgotten. In fact...Yup (https://www.purezc.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=76767), there we are. :spin:


Are you at liberty to share anything about the planned direction for the AGN repo and what cruft is being done away with? Understandable if it's all being kept hush-hush for the moment, just curious how the two versions will differ and why users would want to pick one over the other.


Ask and ye shall receive Moosh, ask and ye shall receive:

https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Zelda_Classic

To further show that intent is clearly evident we don't even have to look further than the initial correspondence after the incident:

PAGE 1 (https://postimg.cc/8jKJjTRh)
PAGE 2 (https://postimg.cc/MnfTHVKS)
PAGE 3 (https://postimg.cc/RWW3t2d2)

So who is this Connor fellow anyway? Does anyone even know? He is the only one that refused to even have a conversation at all, and couldn't be bothered to give me or anyone else the time of day when confronted. If any past dev contacted me for any reason, even one I have never personally talked to before, I would reply and give a helping hand if need be; it is simply common courtesy. What kind of sociopath commandeers a 25-year project like this after just over a year of working on it and claims that "it's for the greater good" while the actions in and of themselves create more toxicity and division than what he perceives based on 3rd-hand information of past events he has no direct knowledge of (and I assure you he doesn't know the half of it). In his mind he thinks to be a giant, but only by standing on the backs of others - such as Phantom Menace, Dark Nation, DarkDragon, to name a few - has anyone been able to enjoy the view from that height. These people, and many others, have done more for this community than he ever will. By claiming "because Zoria" and throwing everyone else into an "all of agn" box, he can then just point to this lowest common denominator 'box', which is nothing more than a projection of his own ego, and justify his actions to turn himself from a villain to a hero. It is absurd!!! What nonsense! And here too I shall remind people that words have meaning: 'justify', from Latin means to 'make just', or 'make right'. In other words, in this context it can not be, as to 'make just' something which was unjust in the first place is impossible.

So yes, we are not hiding anything as anyone can plainly see. So who is hiding then? Maybe it's time to bring everything out into the light and cast out the darkness.

[Gleeok]

Hey Gleeok, hope you're doing well. Speaking on behalf of the PureZC Staff here.

We just wanted to touch base around a few things you have stated around PureZC's involvement - and us being "complicit" around the ZQuest Classic devs and their moving of the repo.

First off, an apology - while we did scrub most links to AGN at the time, removing acknowledgement of AGN's contributions to ZC development was a mistake. We have decided to restore those acknowledgements on our About page.

In the days after the repo pull, you approached us regarding the status of the repo ownership - David and I agreed with you about moving it back. We began conversations with the ZQuest Classic dev team to try to intermediate and facilitate a return.


I do appreciate you putting Phantom Menace and AGN back in the credits, and I will take that as an olive branch. But unfortunately this matter is not settled. While I am glad you realized you made a mistake and saw fit to remedy a part of it, on the purezc main site "Zelda Classic's Homepage" still links to zquestclassic and AGN is no longer an affiliate even though VG music and spriters resource is? It's a joke. Also your account of events is disingenuous still (see below):



In the meantime, you posted the "Announcement regarding the Status of Zelda Classic Development" thread on PureZC. This thread served nothing more than to agitate the community further in the wake of the monetization proposal from the ZQuest Classic devs, as well as deadnaming several of the ZQuest Classic developers in the process. The handling of the entire situation by the AGN devs was disappointing and frustrating to say the least.


I came to you and the other site admins on September 14th after every effort to reach out to the other devs was met with failure, or worse, as was the case when War Lord and Emily were on the agn zelda classic discord discussing the situation when Tim "decided to break ties with agn completely" and deleted the zc server.

This correspondence ended on your end on Sep. 19th, where I showed a bit of urgency and tried to get you guys to get somewhere in the next two days, and yet I waited a whole week until Sep. 25th for you guys to try and effect what you said you were wanting to help with. I initiated additional messaging to the zquest devs during this time after the 21st, and again was met with no desire to negotiate, or respond in the case of Connor. So whatever intermediation you did at that time was obviously a failure.

Then Sep. 26th came which was two weeks after the incident and we decided to make it public so the community could be informed. You see Russ, that was the last-ditch effort to try and get someone to come to the negotiating table. We don't go around banning users willy-nilly and threatening devs. We always try and treat everyone working on the project as family. Personally, I think half of the zquest devs would of rather preferred to stay on agn going forward and eventually working with new and old devs had they not been forced to deal with the aftermath of the Connor repo transfer, even though some might of dealt with it badly as a tribal sort of thing.

So again, Sep. 19th was the last I ever heard from you or another admin on the topic. And my last three messages went by with no response. To claim this was "in the meantime" and it interrupted anything you were doing cannot possibly be based in reality. How can you even claim this?



You declared us "complicit" after the PureZC staff held a poll in regards to pre-emptively banning you from the website - a poll that ended with the majority of PureZC staff voting *against* the ban. You had access to the moderator forums as a show of good faith courtesy of being a ZC dev, and in response you leaked remarks around your own ban poll, as well as other internal discussions. As a result, the website was DDOS'd out of spite for three weeks by another member of the community.


I just have to say first and foremost that your "pre-crime" staff threads are a step too far by any accounting. This is simply me speaking as staff myself and hoping you will try and end this type of behavior.

That's a nice story, but unfortunately it's just that, a 'story'. I'm not some random staff member that gets triggered by trivial matters such as getting "hurt feelings" from drama or anything of that nature. Look at every single one of my posts on purezc since 2007 and find me a single one that will give credence to any such claim. It doesn't exist.

And again, for the DDOS I had nothing to do with that. If you don't know why purezc was 'attacked' then I don't know what to tell you. You might want to try and talk to some members or even ex-staff outside purezc. I'm sure they will be happy to tell you. Someone might even be so kind as to post it in here for you to see.

As for the kangaroo courts you run, well it's already a meme at agn! and I wasn't even around during those years for any of that.



The handling of the entire situation by the AGN devs was disappointing and frustrating to say the least.


I don't know about anyone else, but I was nothing but friendly and cordial to yourself and the purezc staff. If you want to make up stories to try and make yourselves look good then you can only fool the low hanging fruit. In reality you are not fooling anyone.

The lies have to stop. Seriously. The community deserves better than this tit-for-tat bullshit he-said she-said nonsense. You're not going to make everyone look good on the purezc side, and I'm not going to make everyone look good on the agn side either. The sooner you understand that purezc is not as innocent as you make it out to be, the sooner we can make progress on any front.

The lies must end Russ. The lies must end.

[Moosh]

Ask and ye shall receive Moosh, ask and ye shall receive:

https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Zelda_Classic
Ah yes, it's this. Someone else also sent me this page after I asked, so I figured that'd be one of the sites. Your post indicated there were multiple. Anyways, if you take a look at the edit history, this page was both created and edited by the other dev team in the past prior to the removal. So it fits the pattern of removing the link from their other sites. Fortunately for you, it is a wiki page. You can uh...you can edit it back. Or better yet, instead of starting an edit war, you could dispute the changes with ZeldaDungeon and have their moderation make the call and lock the page from further changes. I'd recommend doing that if this is something you actually care about.

I'm ignoring the email exchanges as it's all old news at this point, however...

So yes, we are not hiding anything as anyone can plainly see. So who is hiding then? Maybe it's time to bring everything out into the light and cast out the darkness.
Is the AGN development server not private while the other one is open to all? I'd love to see what progress you've all been making, but when I asked Nightmare (only AGN member I'm in any sort of contact with currently) about the dev server, he made it sound like I wasn't welcome there. Fair enough. I've made no friends over here. I dare say our relations are casually hostile. But what I care about most is ZC. So I'm asking again: Why not sell me on what you're doing? What kind of program are you developing here? What are your features, what's your focus, and why should I care? I would gladly cooperate with my worst enemy for the greater good of the program. What do you actually think the greater good looks like?

[BFeely]

Is the AGN development server not private while the other one is open to all? I'd love to see what progress you've all been making, but when I asked Nightmare (only AGN member I'm in any sort of contact with currently) about the dev server, he made it sound like I wasn't welcome there. Fair enough. I've made no friends over here. I dare say our relations are casually hostile. But what I care about most is ZC. So I'm asking again: Why not sell me on what you're doing? What kind of program are you developing here? What are your features, what's your focus, and why should I care? I would gladly cooperate with my worst enemy for the greater good of the program. What do you actually think the greater good looks like?
Yes, in fact the ZQuest Classic repo is completely public, and can be cloned by anyone, and forked and PRs submitted by any GitHub member.

As for the Zelda Dungeon wiki, I created the Talk page for the wiki page and made a few edits.

[Gleeok]

Finally, for the sake of clarity, while PureZC will not platform accusations of malicious intent toward the current developers, we maintain our stance as a neutral party regarding ownership and the status of the repo. We acknowledge AGN's contributions towards Zelda Classic, as well as what is now ZQuest Classic. We just want to grill, man.

Look Russ. I'd really just like for this to be settled so we can move on. I'm sure everyone here has better things to do, and I know I do. I really meant it when I said the community deserves better than all this nonsense that should of been avoided with some simple common sense, and I meant it.

I don't see what the problem is. If you want to support the zquest devs you just put up links to their stuff on your site. I already told you in September that we like people working with forks, and we also have no problem with the zquest devs working on a parallel project, and as matter of fact I already wished Emily best of luck with their project. What does this have to do with removing all the Zelda Classic and AGN links? These are two separate things. If you were really 'neutral' as to Zelda Classic you wouldn't have removed them in the first place and just added new zquestclassic links as I already stated. So again, what is the problem? It's really not that complicated. If any new ZC fan site popped up I'm sure it would do the same. Can you please just fix your mistake honestly so we can be done with it. This has been dragging out for far too long already.