Snakey Monster - What Happened
Aylina, Numerous, and Eiriker ("Pet Cutie") coerced me to shut down the Snakey Monster project.They spent months working together to convince me to give them my source code, used it without permission or attribution, and started a smear campaign based almost exclusively on blatant lies trying to discredit my project. They went so far as to falsely accuse me of a crime (which the slither.io discord owner, Semliot, backed them up on).
How can I continue the project when they subject me to this:
... and when the slither.io discord owner/staff/moderators back that up, using heavily biased moderation. The owner, Semliot, refused to take action when a moderator accused me of a crime with zero evidence. Or maybe that isn't biased?
The final straw was reached a few days ago, when Numerous -- a moderator of the slither.io discord -- publicly made it clear that he felt the Snakey Monster project ran at a slow tick rate (a lie), was unreliable, buggy, not smooth and does not replicate the official servers well. Why? What was the purpose of that? The answer is that it is part of an ongoing smear campaign by Aylina, Eiriker, and Numerous. The only reason to call software that has all known bugs fixed "buggy" is to be malicious.
If I had written that about Aylina, the moderators stated they would have muted me for 48 hours... yet they can say it about me. So shutting this down is due to a combination of the actions of Aylina, Eiriker and Numerous, as well as the support they gained from the biased and unprofessional owner/staff/moderators of the slither.io discord.
I am now shutting down the project... but want to document what happened. The slither.io community needs to know.
Summary
In March, 2023 I started the Snakey Monster project, spent months doing a huge amount of research into how the official servers work, and wrote code for a compatible server. Aylina requested the source code shortly after I placed the server online.In October, 2023, Numerous asked if I would give the source code to a few trusted people, so they could help improve the project. I gave out the code to Aylina, as well as 15 pages of internal notes, and helped her via DMs. She was given access to use my copyrighted work in exchange for her promise to share any improvements.
In December, 2023 I found out that Aylina copied my battledome, placed it online for public use, running it as her own, telling people it had less lag and bugs. This was unacceptable, and copyright infringement: she was telling people she made improvements, but not sharing them, violating the primary condition of being able to use my work. Not only did she steal my work, she never gave me any credit (plagiarism), despite using massive amounts of my work.
After I confronted them, Aylina, Eiriker, and Numerous then started a false narrative that Aylina did everything on her own in just 3 weeks with no help, that my server is full of bugs, and that I was just upset about a single line of code (all false!). That is what people refer to as a "whopper". But lots of people fell for it.
Snakey Monster - The Beginning
I announced my Snakey Monster project on March 25, 2023 on the slither.io discord, almost the same day I started working on it.I then spend hundreds of hours analyzing the official servers, coming up with algorithms and programming. I documented my findings publicly (on the Slither Server Analysis discord that everyone has access to) and privately (15 pages of internal notes that got shared with just Aylina and Eiriker).
Competition - Phase 1: Setting the Stage
Shortly after I announced my project, Eiriker and Aylina befriended me. Eiriker friended me on April 10, and immediately suggested that I create a discord server to document my findings. I did, with Aylina joining the discord the same day, and Numerous the next day.
A few days later, I rented a server to test on. Aylina asked to test it, and she and Eiriker tested it out. A few hours later, Numerous asked to test it out. Aylina, Eiriker, and Numerous were the first 3 people to test my server.
Perhaps I was naive in thinking that the three of them were just smart people hoping to help out.
Competition - Phase 2, the Set Up
Over the next few months, looking back, with hindsight, at appears that they played the "long game".Eiriker would continually say how impressed he and Aylina were with my work, and how Aylina feels that servers being written with the community in mind (rather than the goals of the creator) is very important.
Aylina would listen to what I would say about programming (and subtly suggest there were issues), and Numerous would both provide some ideas (e.g. the starting size of snakes for the battledome), as well as subtle cues that things weren't perfect (mechanics, collision detection, movement).
Competition - Phase 3: Get the Source Code
On April 10, 2023, Eiriker suggested that I publicly document my work. I did.On May 22, 2023, Aylina first asked for the source code. I explained that I was very hestitant, given that I was involved in a complex copyright infringement case in the past.
Finally on October 5, 2023, Numerous suggested that I release the source code to several trusted people, and that Aylina wanted to "help out" and "contribute". I agreed. Numerous asked to be an admin of my discord, I agreed to that, and then he asked for Aylina to have admin access as well.
Competition - Phase 4: Aylina Needs Help
Aylina struggled at first to understand how the server worked, and I walked her through step-by-step via DMs. Lots and lots of steps.
Feeling bad watching her struggle, I gave her my "guide book", a 15-page document with my internal notes about the server that I had not made public.
Another big mistake, as it gave her a whole lot more stuff she could claim she figured out herself.
Competition - Phase 5: Aylina Takes Over
Next was "radio silence". Having what they needed, they had no use for me, so communication pretty much stopped.The first sign that Aylina was up to something was in early November when I saw that she had a server on the NTL leaderboards. She went against the protocols I set in place, by having her servers indistinguishable from the official servers (e.g. no idenfication via LB and/or map). This was no mistake: when someone called hers a "beta" version, she seemed to get upset, saying that it was perfect, and presumably thought she left in the code I wrote that referenced a beta version ("unofficial/beta").
On November 15, before she even publicly announced her servers, Numerous hosted a Wednesday solo event in one of her servers, even saying that the server was "written by Aylina" (which, at least at that point, was completely untrue, just a translation of a book wasn't "written" by the translator).
On December 11, Aylina wrote in a private discord server that she was creating a knock-off of my battledome but that "itll be more or less the same but less lag and bugs". Remember: she was only authorized to use my work if she shared any improvements. It is clear that by this point she intended to violate our agreement (why else advertise that hers would be better?).
Competition - Phase 6: The Lies Begin
I approached Eiriker via DMs on December 12, and said that I was disappointed, and that it seemed like Aylina was taking credit for my work and wanted to compete rather than collaborate. I got no response.On December 14, the NTL leaderboards as usual showed my battledome ("BATTLE DOME!" with a score of 50,000), but there was also a "BATTLE DOME NEW YORK" with a score of 50,000. She copied the look and feel of the battledome I created to the best of her ability, without even the creativity of changing the 50,000 score (I chose that number because it ensures that the server has at least 30,000 points total, the minimum required for NTL to remove it from the "empty servers" list).
When I posted about it, Aylina immediately responded "i made that server but it does not use any of his code" (a lie), and had a teammate write "Aylina solved the lag problem in her servers" (another lie: I am the one that "solved" lag, by discovering that it was due to Nagle). Aylina DM'd me with the lies "i wrote all of it from scratch" and "its 100% my own".
For more details, see my page on lies.
Competition - Phase 7: The Attacks
The attacks started the day that I pointed out 2 facts: that my code was being used without permission (copyright infringement), and my ideas were being used without attribution (plagiarism). Unlike them, I have never resorted to personal insults or lies.She did not immediately attack me directly, but had her minions do it: she had 3 teammates post publicly "Why are you destroying her?? Because u wanna takeover on slither?", "You all are toxic destroyers of worlds and people", and another calling me "childish".
Promise Broken Again and Again
On December 15, 2023, Aylina DM'd me "well i decided to not host any more battle domes" and had a teammate post publicly "Aylina has asked me to convey that she will no longer host her Battle Dome server. Thank you."On June 2, 2024 Aylina DM'd me "ill never touch battledomes again". A week later she had a battledome back online, claiming that she broke her promise simply because someone asked her (in reality, it was in response to Aylina telling this person that she was working on a new battledome) and she felt it was "fair".
Aylina used this as leverage: she knew that I felt there was not room for 2 different battledomes, so she kept putting the battledome online any time I countered her lies.
The Finale, Part I: Things Will Get Very Nasty
On June 19, 2024, Eiriker wrote "This server was created by Aylina", someone asked how to create a server.I responded to the person to clarify, and Eiriker wrote this:
I did not "keep it up"... I ignored him. So they escalated things again, with Aylina breaking her promise again and putting her copy of my battledome back online, knowing that it would upset me. Sadly, I took the bait.
They then convinced the moderators to "mute" me for 48 hours for starting the dispute (despite the fact that they started it and resorted to personal attacks, and I did not, and I even said I was going to stop posting before they muted me). More details on my biased moderators page.
Adding insult to injury, while the slither.io discord moderator in charge of that night's solo event (Numerous!) acknowledged the tension due to the debate Aylina and I had (when someone suggested the event be in the battledome, he said "too much drama... maybe next week"), he ended up hosting the event in Aylina's server. WTH?
They almost defeated me... I was about to leave the slither.io discord, and stupidly left a DM for Numerous ("may you reap what you sow") and a message for Eiriker (with the Goldenwings file name, of the tag he asked for my help in setting up). That apparently infuriated Eiriker.
The Finale, Part II: Crime
Eiriker went ballistic, accusing me of hacking into his browser, and accusing me of stalking him via IGNs... and was able to get a moderator (Sharknado) to fully back him up without a single piece of evidence presented:
Of course, this was a big lie... but impossible to prove in a forum. And the moderators required me to wait 24 hours to respond (due to Aylina and Eiriker getting them to "mute" me), and then the moderators deleted my response and refused to let me post any response (see the biased moderators page). After about a week, I was able to convince the moderators that I did not hack any computers, but all they did was edit a previous post they left (while not deleting the defamatory posts).
At this point, my reputation was pretty much destroyed. I appealed to the slither.io discord server owner, Semliot, to intervene -- but he refused to, accepting that his group of staff/moderators would do the right thing, knowing that I was falsely accused of a crime.
THE END
I left the slither.io discord, but kept the Snakey Monster servers up, not quite sure what to do.A week or two later, I rejoined the slither.io discord, only to find that Aylina was back to her lying:
After I put up a server with 10,000-12,000 server bots, she claimed that the numbers were fake, and there were less than half as many.
The final piece was when Numerous attacked my server responding to a comment on my team battledome:
... implying that my server has a low tick rate (false), not smooth or reliable, has bugs, and does not replicate the mechanics of the server well.
With slither.io discord moderators allowing this garbage, there just is no way I can continue running the Snakey Monster servers.