Project Zomboid burgled

_PixelNinja

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After the other problems they had they now get this:

Hi everyone,

Will here, the Project Zomboid writer-guy.

I won’t beat around the bush. The Indie Stone have just suffered a major set-back. The Newcastle flat where Lemmy and Binky live and work was burgled this evening, and so far the clearest things taken are two computers and Lemmy’s credit card.

Project Zomboid was regularly backed up from machine to machine, but rarely – sadly and infuriatingly – externally. We have lost an awful lot of work. Mash and Binky don’t even know this has happened yet.

Chris (Lemmy) is quite distressed to be honest – we’re still dealing with something that was discovered little over an hour ago. After his tweets on the subject we both agreed it’d be best if I wrote a blog here to calm fears. He clearly isn’t able to currently. (It’s also probably worth saying that there were no PZ player personal details etc. on the machines).

This will clearly severely delay the next update, which was very near completion. I personally only just finished my work on it today (one of the final things on the ‘to-do’ list) and had it ready for input tomorrow.

Project Zomboid, however, will come back stronger.

I was going up to Newcastle on Monday for a milestone meeting in any case, but that’s clearly now taken a much more serious turn. In the coming days we will be getting in touch with everyone here, on Facebook, via Desura and wherever else we have tendrils to let people know what’s happening.

During this time we will clearly be asking for the understanding and patience of our community. We are gutted, we are despondent and – most of all – we are sorry that this has thrown yet another bump into the road towards PZ completion. We also REALLY want to wring the neck of the arsehole that did this to us.

More as it happens,

Best,

The Indie Stone

Original post here.

Things aren't going well on Twitter either:

FX7VY.jpg
 
Hard to believe they wouldn't externally back up their source code every night. Hope everything works out for them.
 
If those thief have any heart at all, they should anonymously mail the hard disk back to them with all the data in it.:(
 
If those thief have any heart at all, they should anonymously mail the hard disk back to them with all the data in it.:(
lmfao
yeah....okay.......

Backup policies are not something to be fucked with, this is a huge slap in their face. Back yo shit up! Onsite backups are useless for this reason alone! Can't say I feel for the guys, shit happens but the data that was lost could have easily been restored had they stuck to a more rigorous backup policy .
 
Lemmy has posted about the ordeal on his blog:

First of all I’d like to apologise for my drunken rant on twitter last night. It was unprofessional of me to do so. I mainly apologise to the supporters of the game, and to my fellow devs, of whom my explosive upset on there has done great damage to.

I would hope people understand the sheer awfulness of what had just happened. I’ve lost 5 grand worth of stuff, had my bedroom violated and invaded and will have to move as I can’t face sleeping in that room any more. But moreso than any of this I’ve had everything I’ve been building up with the guys over the past 7-8 months dragged through the mud and it’s hard to see it ever recovering fully.

Of course my first immediate thought when I saw that both my laptops were gone is ‘WHY didn’t I keep the off-site backup up to date?’ of course it was. My excuse is that who who lives in a secure building with two security doors and a yale locked front door expects to be burgled? We’ve recently moved to a MUCH more secure building, and that thought couldn’t be further from my mind. Of course I still made off-site backups, but with hundreds of emails to deal with and a shit ton of work, not to mention internet that’s more down than up, it’s easy to let it slide or be lax. Even so that’s no excuse. So I apologise profusely to all our customers for that carelessness and the responsiblity of that is mine alone. But reading 1000s of posts calling me an idiot for that is the last thing I needed and it got to me, as even though it’s completely true it’s very easy to say in hindsight and given the massively traumatic experience and the fact I was the victim of a crime myself, I was kind of knocked sideways by the almost unanimous vitriol and accusations of me being a crook on that reddit. I should have held my cool and bit my lip, but being in control of your emotions is not particularly easy in that condition. Still it was shameful behaviour and that cannot be excused.

HOWEVER, the one thing I will not apologise for is the general sentiment of some of those posts. It felt oddly akin to Amy Winehouse’s death and some of the reactions I read on twitter: ‘She did this to herself, I feel no sympathy’ REALLY? Even if someone makes a mistake you can’t find it in your hearts to have a shred of sympathy? I find that distressing, and as someone capable of feeling sympathy for most people who feel bad regardless of the circumstances, I despair, and that amongst the hundreds of vicious emails, tweets and reddit comments (as well as drink), as well as the violation of my home and theft of property and what looked like the destruction of my career and passion, was what started that tyrade on twitter. I hope you’ll forgive me given the circumsances. My name and face has been dragged through the mud on page one of reddit and as someone who is generally neurotic in nature and worries about ‘if this person likes me or if that person said that because they’re pissed off at me’ all day every day, this is pretty much a living nightmare for me. Having my mother on the phone practically in tears over my public humiliation didn’t help too much either. This was meant to be me ‘making it’ and now… urgh… it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Anyway this is the end of me being a public face of Project Zomboid. I’m stopping this blog, I’m keeping twitter closed, steering clear of the forums. The other guys can do interviews and deal with the emails. No one put ‘must have thick skin’ (or ‘must make nightly off-site backups, for that matter) in my game programmer job description. People assume I ‘should have thicker skin’ but there you go, I don’t. I got into this because I love making games and none of those skills relate in the slightest to being able to withstand torrents of abuse, and despite the support and the attention it’s made me scared to open my e-mails. I sit there with the ‘new email’ notification haunting me, and I’ve been guaranteed to read something that makes me want to cry every day for the past few months. This is only going to be 100x harder now, so I’m bugging out of all that. It’ll kill me otherwise.

I’ll still be here to offer my design/programming services to the project, tho I suspect a large proportion probably won’t want that but the fact is, not said in arrogance but practicality, the other guys need my continued involvement, and I made a commitment to the community and there are still a lot of people out there that shown us support and I owe it to them to continue, and that really is the only reason I’ve not opted out for a 9/5 job, to be honest.

Lemmy's blog
 
Lemmy sounds like a huge child and I bet his house wasn't burgled at all, sounds like a crock of shit to me, I bet he's hugely behind and just made up this 'omg guys my house was burgled lol' to cover it up and claim sympathy off everyone.
 
Offsite backups ftw. I bet they start doing them at least weekly, if not nightly.
 
Offsite backups ftw. I bet they start doing them at least weekly, if not nightly.

Seriously have a hard time believing they weren't doing this before, at least to an internal back up that they removed each night :confused:
 
Seriously have a hard time believing they weren't doing this before, at least to an internal back up that they removed each night :confused:

It's an obvious lie.

You can see how unprofessional these guys are. they've probs been procrastinating and spending everyone's money not writing a single line of code for months.

They had to come up with some kind of bullshit lie to justify it. Getting burgled is a great one! - Once the community starts calling them out for it they go into self defence mode. Fuck these guys
 
No sympathy from me.

They took peoples money and then did not pay for either github or the very least an S3 account.

This is why I am not a fan of this type of system. I am find with paying for a product but I am not going to give you money for some shitty other game you made so that I can get "access" to the real game.
 
It's an obvious lie.

You can see how unprofessional these guys are. they've probs been procrastinating and spending everyone's money not writing a single line of code for months.

They had to come up with some kind of bullshit lie to justify it. Getting burgled is a great one! - Once the community starts calling them out for it they go into self defence mode. Fuck these guys

I honestly felt the same way.

Shit happens but this seemed to be a little too crazy. You just bought a new laptop (probably with your fans money) and yet you do not have offsite backup....ok.
 
Yeah, I'm sure they're going to lie about being robbed.. Someone could easily just ask if they got the police involved. If they did, there would be records of the whole incident..

Very hard to believe that someone would go this far just to delay a game.
 
I'd probably be pissed if I actually bought this game.

Sucks if they actually did get burgled, though. Still, if you are an indie dev and are pulling in money for an unfinished product, double and TRIPLE off-site backups are an absolute must. Really no excuse for this.
 
Yeah, I'm sure they're going to lie about being robbed.. Someone could easily just ask if they got the police involved. If they did, there would be records of the whole incident..

Very hard to believe that someone would go this far just to delay a game.

Not really, it's all strictly confidential, do you think I could just ring the station and ask, and they'd tell me?.. He could also very easily have faked the whole break-in, and reported the crime to the police, though that is a little far fetched.

And believe me, they would go this far, they've probs made a nice 100k from this little venture already, it's a perfect excuse this is. And I don't believe a single bit of it. Even more so after reading their reactions.
 
Not really, it's all strictly confidential, do you think I could just ring the station and ask, and they'd tell me?

Local papers don't seem to have any problem getting police reports about crime. Contact their local paper, or get a lawyer, and I bet they could get one without a problem.
 
Having no external backup for such a big project sounds like BS. It appears that this was bound to fail anyways with such "quality planning" from the creators.
 
You might want to read the part where he mentions they do have an external backup, granted not updated with their latest progress.
 
Feel bad for them but :

Project Zomboid was regularly backed up from machine to machine, but rarely – sadly and infuriatingly – externally.

If you run a business and your data storage is critical to your product then even despite the thief's intervention , its not good business to NOT have some kind of external storage that's regularly updated.

Also feeding trolls on Twitter? Not a smart move. His business should be on a media black out entirely until they figure out the next step. Seems like there are some other issues at that company besides the recent theft that need to be addressed.
 
Lemmy said:
My excuse is that who who lives in a secure building with two security doors and a yale locked front door expects to be burgled? We’ve recently moved to a MUCH more secure building, and that thought couldn’t be further from my mind.
Offsite backups are for disaster recovery. Obviously, this guy doesn't count on home fires, natural disasters, and common mishaps/accidents ever happening. Why should he? He has a couple of locked doors...
 
Meh, I'm sure he knows now the importance of off site backup. So he was naive, big deal, he's not now and I feel sorry for him. Even if nothing important was lost and the only cost was financial, being burgled is an extremely stressful experience and people can be fucking douchebags for not realising that.

If I crashed my car and cracked my head open because my brakes failed and my airbag didn't go off the last thing I'd want to hear is some know it all arsehole telling me "tisk tisk, you're an idiot, should have checked your airbag 2 years ago", my response to that would be "fuck you".

This guy has gone through a stressful experience through no fault of his own which has been made more stressful through a silly mistake like not frequently backing up. I dont see how its remotely helpful for random know it all douchebag forum dweller number 236 to tell him "well you're an idiot for not backing up externally" Really, Einstien? I think he fucking knows that now, how about saying something constructive like... "Damn, sorry mate, I hope you didn't lose anything else that was important, shame you didn't have external back ups, I'm sure you will from now on, I'm sure you'll get back on your feet soon though".
 
Meh, I'm sure he knows now the importance of off site backup. So he was naive, big deal, he's not now and I feel sorry for him. Even if nothing important was lost and the only cost was financial, being burgled is an extremely stressful experience and people can be fucking douchebags for not realising that.

If I crashed my car and cracked my head open because my brakes failed and my airbag didn't go off the last thing I'd want to hear is some know it all arsehole telling me "tisk tisk, you're an idiot, should have checked your airbag 2 years ago", my response to that would be "fuck you".

This guy has gone through a stressful experience through no fault of his own which has been made more stressful through a silly mistake like not frequently backing up. I dont see how its remotely helpful for random know it all douchebag forum dweller number 236 to tell him "well you're an idiot for not backing up externally" Really, Einstien? I think he fucking knows that now, how about saying something constructive like... "Damn, sorry mate, I hope you didn't lose anything else that was important, shame you didn't have external back ups, I'm sure you will from now on, I'm sure you'll get back on your feet soon though".
Apparently, this person took their money already, and is not delivering the product as promised. Then on top of that, he is blaming his own incompetence on the buildings security. There is no excuse to not exercise a disaster recovery plan when your livelihood is at stake.
 
Meh, I'm sure he knows now the importance of off site backup. So he was naive, big deal, he's not now and I feel sorry for him. Even if nothing important was lost and the only cost was financial, being burgled is an extremely stressful experience and people can be fucking douchebags for not realising that.

If I crashed my car and cracked my head open because my brakes failed and my airbag didn't go off the last thing I'd want to hear is some know it all arsehole telling me "tisk tisk, you're an idiot, should have checked your airbag 2 years ago", my response to that would be "fuck you".

This guy has gone through a stressful experience through no fault of his own which has been made more stressful through a silly mistake like not frequently backing up. I dont see how its remotely helpful for random know it all douchebag forum dweller number 236 to tell him "well you're an idiot for not backing up externally" Really, Einstien? I think he fucking knows that now, how about saying something constructive like... "Damn, sorry mate, I hope you didn't lose anything else that was important, shame you didn't have external back ups, I'm sure you will from now on, I'm sure you'll get back on your feet soon though".

Guess you missed the part where he was going off on Trolls on Twitter. Regardless feeling sorry for him is about as useful as telling him what he already knows now that he has felt the sting of not taking seriously enough the proper storage of his private business finances and intellectual property. I'm sure he feels like total shit and I know how he feels , its an experience that I don't relish at all either except I didn't lose anything that could damage my business or pose a threat to the jobs of my employees.

But again feeling "sorry" for him is about as useful as pointing out his fuck up so regardless if its "douchebag forum dweller number 236" or the pity party committee in the form of "douchebag forum dweller number 237" in the end he can recover from the event.
 
Guess you missed the part where he was going off on Trolls on Twitter. Regardless feeling sorry for him is about as useful as telling him what he already knows now that he has felt the sting of not taking seriously enough the proper storage of his private business finances and intellectual property. I'm sure he feels like total shit and I know how he feels , its an experience that I don't relish at all either except I didn't lose anything that could damage my business or pose a threat to the jobs of my employees.

But again feeling "sorry" for him is about as useful as pointing out his fuck up so regardless if its "douchebag forum dweller number 236" or the pity party committee in the form of "douchebag forum dweller number 237" in the end he can recover from the event.

I never said people should be giving him the pity party or feeling sorry for him, my point was more if you're gonna say something why say something that's only going to make him feel worse? If you dont have anything useful to say, say something that'll be helpful to him or just shut the fuck up. The dude clearly has issues enough as it is.

Also, saying "I feel sorry for you" IS far more useful than pointing out his fuck up. One is thoughtful and shows support and compassion, the other is being a fucking insensitive douche. If you had something bad happen to you, what would be the most useful...

a) A mailbox full of "bad luck mate", "you'll be right", "hope you're back on your feet soon"
b) An empty mailbox
c) A mailbox full of "you're an idiot, this is all your fault, your game is shit anyway"

Yeah, it may only be useful from an emotional support stand point rather than actually a physically useful thing, but that's still a big step above actually being detrimental.

But either way, I dont think people need to feel compelled to feel sorry for him or send him pity messages, I'm sure as fuck not going to :p I'm more trying to say.. if you have nothing nice to say then shut the fuck up. As I mentioned before, even if you ignore the whole PZ issue, being burgled is a stressful situation, some people can take it their stride but many (if not most) people will take a bit of an emotional hit after they've been robbed.
 
If I crashed my car and cracked my head open because my brakes failed and my airbag didn't go off the last thing I'd want to hear is some know it all arsehole telling me "tisk tisk, you're an idiot, should have checked your airbag 2 years ago", my response to that would be "fuck you".

That is absolutely retarded, furthermore this man is running a business there is NO excuse for his inability to keep an offsite backup up-to-date. Plain and simple.
 
That is absolutely retarded, furthermore this man is running a business there is NO excuse for his inability to keep an offsite backup up-to-date. Plain and simple.

Yep, I'm sure he knows that without you telling him, we all know that without you telling us, but thanks anyway for letting us all know
icon14.gif
:p Continue the pointless nerd rage.

All I'm saying is by going around blaming these 2 guys for not backing up as regularly as they should is nothing but detrimental to guys who are already clearly frustrated, stressed, emotional and a bit shaken up by the fact they were burgled. By doing that you aren't educating anyone, you aren't helping anyone, you aren't showing support. If it were Sony who fucked up and lost the account details of thousands of gamers, yeah, sure, that's one thing, but I can't bring myself to get angry at 4 dudes working away on an indie game.

Also, I haven't really been following PZ, but "this man is running a business"? Is he really? He more sounds like an enthusiast who is working on an indie game in his basement, is he actually part of the "running" of it?

But either way, I think all that needs to be said is "shit happens" and move on. Its not like they didn't have any backups at all, they just fell behind in their backups at a bad time which is gonna set them back a bit. As they've said on their main twitter page "well, the Newcastle devs are still shaken up, but we're all physically fine :) And you'd better believe lessons were learned!"
 
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Shit happens, no shit. The fact remains, he is getting money for a product. He dropped the ball big time, and looked like a complete moron on Twitter.

I've never even heard of the game until this thread. I just stated my opinion as this is a public forum, if that bothers you. Big Whoop.
 
Shit happens, no shit. The fact remains, he is getting money for a product. He dropped the ball big time, and looked like a complete moron on Twitter.

I've never even heard of the game until this thread. I just stated my opinion as this is a public forum, if that bothers you. Big Whoop.

Like I give a fuck what random forum dwellers have to say, just stating my opinion too, mate ;)
 
I've first heard about this game on reddit where it originated. I even applied to help them program the game. Sorta glad I didn't accept now as this project seems like a train wreck.
 
I am going to add my voice to a long line of people who call bullshit on the whole story and say they are just out for pity handouts such as new computers, money, etc. Not having external backups on fucking gmail if nowhere else is completely unbelievable.

Fake story to get attention/cash. Fuck them.
 
I am going to add my voice to a long line of people who call bullshit on the whole story and say they are just out for pity handouts such as new computers, money, etc. Not having external backups on fucking gmail if nowhere else is completely unbelievable.

Fake story to get attention/cash. Fuck them.

It might be a publicity stunt, maybe, but by how Limmy acted on Twitter I seriously doubt that. They also specifically said on their gmail they aren't looking for handouts, someone offered and their official response was "...words of support and being positive is all we need right now :)".

Fake story to get attention? Well maybe, but if that was the case they would have gone about it differently I would think.

Also, they DO have external backups, they've specifically said they do, they just got lazy with them recently. So all they've lost is the most recent update, for a team of only a few guys I could find that a believable story. Losing a week or two or three of work is both believable and could be a bit of a set back for a small team of developers.
 
encrypt drive, offsite backup, problem solved?

this whole story is stupid. idiots should not be producing anything.
 
It might be a publicity stunt, maybe, but by how Limmy acted on Twitter I seriously doubt that. They also specifically said on their gmail they aren't looking for handouts, someone offered and their official response was "...words of support and being positive is all we need right now :)".

Fake story to get attention? Well maybe, but if that was the case they would have gone about it differently I would think.

Also, they DO have external backups, they've specifically said they do, they just got lazy with them recently. So all they've lost is the most recent update, for a team of only a few guys I could find that a believable story. Losing a week or two or three of work is both believable and could be a bit of a set back for a small team of developers.

Despite them having old backups, Limmy is whining like it's the end of the project & life isn't worth living anymore. Seems like a fishy sob story that doesn't quite add up.
 
Offsite backups are for disaster recovery. Obviously, this guy doesn't count on home fires, natural disasters, and common mishaps/accidents ever happening. Why should he? He has a couple of locked doors...

LOL

As a systems administrator I plan for the worst, and yes that includes natural disasters, fires in the building and even ex-employees and hackers targeting our data. Offsite backups to secure locations are absolutely required and with today's global infrastructure there's no excuse not to.

If it absolutely has to remain on site then a decent sized fireproof safe would have done it :)
 
Despite them having old backups, Limmy is whining like it's the end of the project & life isn't worth living anymore. Seems like a fishy sob story that doesn't quite add up.

Yeah, no doubt, I haven't been following PZ but from the outside it seems Limmy has been increasingly unstable and stressed out even before this event. From the group's and other members' twitter and blogs it doesn't sound nearly as bad as all that. They had external backups, just not to do with the most recent update, so it hardly seems like an end of the world thing. I think Limmy's outburst (again, just from what I've read, which is not a lot) sounds more like someone who is cracking.

But hey, maybe it is all just a ruse to hide their own incompetence or as a publicity stunt. I guess I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt before accusing them of being liars/lazy/incompetent/deceptive/etc. I know what its like to feel like you're breaking under months of accumulated pressure and I've seen friends go into some hardcore depressions after months of too much pressure followed by a couple of really stressful events.
 
You try having someone intrude in your home and tell me you aren't stressed out and pissed off.

I still want to get 5 minutes with the sonofabitch who stole my Jeep this summer and just break every bone in his body before handing him over to the cops.
 
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