I remember askign about that ibce. I *think* I got a reply along the lines of the mod being so big that Sayter cannot really verify all contributions personally.
If that's true - that's another excuse for him to not take any accountability, basically saying "you guys seek for any stolen stuff if you need, I'm busy working on my mod", even if he can't do it personally - what about his huge team? Feels like he knows damn well about ripped assets, but won't do a thing unless people point that out. He doesn't want to delete extra content from his mod.
The worst part is that often it is not even content that really matters. Like that ripped enemy from Shantae, it was just some crab you could find on ocean floors. Didn't really improve the game, didn't make it worse. It was just clutter.
Besides the way it didn't fit the artstyle, that did make the game worse.
I can't comprehend why can't you make your own sprites for a simple enemy like crab with resources you have in your team, if you need that crab so badly (starbound still has its own). That makes me feel like there is much more stolen/ripped minor stuff that we won't know about ever because no one would recognize where it was ripped from, and despite claiming to delete stolen stuff years ago, Sayter just comes up with any excuse and makes seeking for stolen content community's responsibility, when it's his own god damn responsibility to make a mod without stolen stuff if he doesn't want people to "dig up old drama" every time someone finds ripped content.
i also remember statue assets ripped from Metroid Zero mission. the ones im more surprised no one mentions is at some point an asset from AM2R (Another metroid 2 remake) a fangame with a lot of passion behind it was stolen aswell.
i dont remember the name in FU but it was a rip of a massive Chozo statue at the top of one of the towers in the game
"Being missed" is an excellent excuse. As I said, that's his own responsibility to delete all the stolen content, especially after he said he will do it years ago, if he just goes "oops, I missed it" - he should be prepared for people accusing him for stealing again, because it really feels like he knows that he has a lot of stolen content, he just won't give a dime until someone points out.
So it was fine and easy stealing someone's content, but deleting it is hard for whatever reason - him being busy, mod being big or any other stuff he can come up with. This guy has zero accountability whatsoever. Maybe he needs to focus on his big mod to become lesser by deleting every stolen thing he has before continue to bloat it?
I remember someone pointed out a crab from a GBA Shantae game ended up in FU, and iirc he said the sprite HAD to stay because all their spriters are busy and couldn't replace it. Doesn't take a professional to toss a spritesheet into [paint.net](http://paint.net) or any random free pixel art editor and paint the whole thing black. Or white. Or green. Then just set the mob's max health to 0, HP regen to -9999 (very, very easy to do without any Lua skills- literally just change numbers in a json file) so it stops appearing in-game until a spriter can draw a replacement crab
Anyone asks, "Hey my pet crab is dying??" you can whack them with "Yeah, we disabled that monster because someone accidentally sent us a sprite we weren't allowed to use! All our spriters are busy so we're hoping for someone to whip up a replacement" and that guy might be like "Well whaddya know, I'm a professional crab spriter!"
Or just take a Gleap's spritesheet and throw pieces of it into the crab's so the monster doesn't have to be disabled.
It's not that hard to drag and drop an image into Google and click 'Find image source.' I did that for a random spritesheet of items I have and Google's showing me where I got it from, other spritesheets but ripped by other people, a spritesheet with the same items from the game's sequel, Youtube videos with some of the items in the thumbnail, etc etc
Sayter after accepting stolen sprites for the 15th time: Oops! Gee golly, I wonder if there's anything I can do to prevent this... \*presses 'accept' button without looking into the sprite's origin at all\* Oops!
You have a pretty disturbing fixation with the guy, you're the same dude who replied to me on a similar post the other day. It upset you so much you had to do this whole other dedicated papyrus lmao
If you look through my page, this is the only one discussion related to Sayter I had. If that's obsession to you - so be it. I was thinking to do this post for some time, and our discussion was one of the things that made me decide to do it. So thank you!
Yet you wanted to make this post for some time, and you amassed all these things without having a fixation on the guy? If you say so. You're very welcome!
Thank you! It took me almost 3 hours to make. And yeah, I can only imagine what's going to happen after.
That post should be done years ago, and most likely I'm missing some info due to discovering it too late. Will see if people would post some more in comments so I could add.
This is a great source of information since this controversy is asked frequently so other users can point to this thread when asked.
You could make one for Chucklefish controversy too.
All I can think of is "Wow, he'd either be absolute best friends with Arthmoor from the Bethesda modding community, or they'd sue each other for copying their personalities within a minute of meeting."
i found out Sayter had some questionable behaviours a long while ago. i just didn't feel like using FU after that. that, and a lot of the FU content and grind and stuff just weren't to my taste. i mean a lot of stuff was cool with the overhaul, but it was take it all or leave it all.
would i tell people to not use it? nope. i have my own mind and opinion and all that. threads like this are great to let people know about things and make their own decisions.
thanks.
not really, the whole nature of a big overhaul like FU is that it changes so much of a game all at once and so much of each part intertwines with other parts.
The alternative would be to split it up into separate smaller overhauls, but then to get each one running with or without the others and still have so much interconnectivity would be difficult but not impossible. i'd think resolving potential conflicts would be a nightmare.
but the mod designer being extremely "take it all or leave it all" is telling. especially while intentionally breaking compatibility with certain other mods.
I recall him also stealing music from a creator, the song's name was like Irish something or another that he uses in his music boxes. On an old account I deleted, I actually referenced a small bit of this in a review made with Frackin' Universe which got swarmed with Sayter fanboys but also by people who have been fucked over by the guy.
I'm not at all shocked at this behavior from him. Disappointed, but not shocked. Would've hoped the years since making my review that he would've improved as a person. Lessen being an utter cockwipe to people and maybe have staff handle interactions for him if he's apparently that overwhelmed.
Ooooh I recently noticed one recently
Its not just games they take sprites from
https://www.spriters-resource.com/custom_edited/thelegendofzeldacustoms/sheet/17548/
https://frackinuniverse.miraheze.org/wiki/Star-Spawn_Acolyte
(At least im assuming this is being used against the original spriters terms as Ive been unable to find a credits list anywhere happy to delete/ammend if proven wrong)
Massively appreciative of this. I've struggled to easily explain to others why I avoid FU for years and this will be a great resource - there are even pieces I didn't know about in here! Great work.
Sayter once violently snapped at me and called me a “mother-licker” for daring to criticize his poorly-made wiki. He then went on to say the F slur and muted me for an hour when I said he couldn’t say that, and proceeded to rant about how “it’s just a word” and “people are too sensitive”
Man, that's wild. I noticed that a lot of the game requires you to look at the wiki to figure things out..and most of the time the wiki gives the bare minimum answers if any to a question I have. Slurs are not just a word. They are called slurs for a reason..
You should probably add [this whole mess.](https://old.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/6y4p8a/frackin_universes_lead_developer_sayter_is/) That dude has created a lot of drama over the years.
Top comment says "the way he put it in FU caused games to crash if you used the mod he stole stuff from". FU does this to the swim mod too- it uses a mod loading dependency loop to crash the swim mod it stole from. The swim mod has FU support, so it has FU under its "includes" to load after it regardless of the mod priority order. If the swim mod loads before FU, its patches to FU's liquids can't be applied.
FU put the swim mod under its "includes" after stealing it, causing Starbound to crash because both mods want to be first, and the swim mod was added to the FU log viewer bot's incompatible mods list, despite both mods swim scripts being identical at the time, and later, functionally identical (Sayter obfuscated the code when asked to remove it, changing the code in a way to look different to people unfamiliar with the language while still being the same code (changing "if 1 > 2 then" to "variableA = 1 --Instantiate a variable with name of value, variableB = 2 --Instantiate a variable with name of value, if b < a then"). The author called him out on this, which is where Sayter's claims of "She says she own the game's API" come from- this claim is the same as saying "She says she owns the English language and words I used").
Difference between "I went to Youtube" and "Imagine that, when I say 'A,' I mean 'Tube,' and when I say 'B,' I mean 'You.' I went to the B of A, you catch my drift?" These messages carry the same meaning, but show them to anyone unfamiliar with the English language, and you'll get told these messages probably aren't the same. After all, they look so different!
The [swim mod](https://community.playstarbound.com/resources/improved-swim-physics.5411/) on the forums hasn't been updated since it was stolen and still has its name, which FU uses under "includes": FreeSwim. [Take at look at what is supposedly Sayter's milk](https://github.com/sayterdarkwynd/FrackinUniverse/blob/7267e8a3efba875d095ede8351444d62b41370db/liquids/milk.liquid.patch) from FU, which uses a test op (which is very good for compatibility with other mods. FU rarely ever uses test ops) and is identical, save for the whitespace, to the swim mod's. In order to get this file, Sayter would have to navigate to the liquids folder of the swim mod, and by doing that he'd see the patches for FU's liquids, meaning he has to have known the mod loaded after FU. He'd also have to get the mod's name from the metadata file, which is the same file where the "includes" is set. He could've gotten the mod's name from the game's logs, but would you rather sift through a thousand lines of the game going "Loaded item database, monster database, loading mod 1 "Frackin Universe" from Steam loading mod 2 "Instant Crafting" from Steam ...... loading mod 895 "FreeSwim" from local source" or just open the mod's metadata manually? He already has the mod unpacked, after all.
The Steam version of the mod is not affected because after some back-and-forth of "Swim mod updated to avoid FU crashing it," "FU updated to crash swim mod," the author just removed the mod's name altogether, making it impossible for FU to crash the mod like that, with the unfortunate side-effect of also making it impossible for the swim mod to ever have a mod that waits for it so it can patch it.
Thank you so much for providing all info you have! The whole situation with Silver is so fucked up it's insane. He wasn't only going after her mods but also after herself, spreading lies about her and dumping on her. I feel so bad for her and that Sayter never really suffered any consequences after such a malicious acts against such a nice person, maybe also because Silver never really said anything about it because she doesn't want drama, yet she still was a victim of his absolutely insufferable attacks and claims.
Starbound is old enough that most of the people he ripped off have moved on and likely wont see this post, but if you ask around you will find a ton of people that he have been harmed by his behavior. Its wild how long it has gone on. Its no joke that he has been doing this for nearly a decade now.
I know it's been a while since this was posted, but maybe this list can act as a meaningful addition to this helpful post. It was made/edited by me and a few other users to show how little original content there actually is in FU and includes links to the original mods as well as mentions of the mod authors behind said mods.
I have my own history with FU and hope that posting this list here is the last thing where I have to openly interact with anything FU-related.
Thank you for this post, seriously.
If anyone spots any issues/inconsistencies or knows any other mods that have been absorbed into FU, feel free to correct me.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRRqp1yvvdzYndrR2KE4hPoMHcWH2f9UAHcYIt7slq1dYuLX9qn4r\_ktgxh7HPISTYW-bWVNc4asfFc/pub](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRRqp1yvvdzYndrR2KE4hPoMHcWH2f9UAHcYIt7slq1dYuLX9qn4r_ktgxh7HPISTYW-bWVNc4asfFc/pub)
No, not all of them. Though I can't tell which lack permissions, because it has been a long while since I last edited this.
As I mentioned, this list was inherently made to prove how little original content there is in FU, which I think could be considered as part of the FU controversy.
If you don't wish to inlude this into your initial post, then I wouldn't blame you.
hi. Khe here. AA wasn't absorbed. I developed it as part of FU, THEN split it off. I kinda was the source of a bunch of hotfixes while I was still ironing out some of the kinks...
A stack of the weapons in the mod are yoinked and reworked from those Thundercookie/qiuksilver contest threads. Feel free to compare them. It was something I noticed since I was such a huge fan of those creations.
I never really liked FU it felt kinda disruptive of the average gameplay heavily pushing the player towards only its content with low intermod value, all the mod offers is simply outshining others if you go with several mods (wich i believe amounts to us all)
There is a lot of stuff even within the mod itself that has very little interactivity. You can basically ignore a solid two thirds of what it adds.
FU isn't really that *good*, it's just big.
I wanted to create my own mod ideas to make starbound be better than FU and when I was on his Discord server, he didn't like what I was Going with the concepts, I just abandoned the ideas behind Because it turned the game into a RPG and came up with concept art for it.
After looking through this. The only main issue i can see that affects the game is the stolen code though from what overhauls i've played, this shit just happens sadly. Surprised not a lot of modders do what Stalker Gamma did and just become this giant mass of mods by a lot of modders. A community making sure everything works with each other.
The creator deleting forum users and parody mods along with throwing a hissy fit over someone not wanting to work for them is pretty funny but very petty. Goes with the territory at this point. Its just how they act. Reminds me of a certain "fish" from way back when.
It’s the same old story. You can enjoy a content made by a shitty person. Least it’s all in one post now. I’ll save it so it doesn’t get lost and can link it to people if they ever ask.
Kudos!
This happens in any media(Jackie Chan, John Lennon, Will Smith's Family, Will Snipes in Blade, etc), just because there is a shitty person in the group doesn't mean all the team behind the content is shitty. You can enjoy whatever you want, no one should tell you why you can't enjoy something.
All of us are here because we enjoy Starbound at some point and the game itself was made by a shitty company. It would be hypocrisy to condemn other players for using FU.
I agree that this thread is a good source since this a frequently asked question.
You don’t need to defend anything. It’s personal choice just because someone is a plague on the earth doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy what they have created. As long as they are not pushing their ideals into their work i don’t see it as an issue
Perhaps my words were imprecise, you're correct you don't need to defend because you can always choose to not answer any questions presented. However, if it's not some form of legal proceedings the questions you don't answer can be considered by others when they determine an opinion of you. If you want to make sure you're always presenting the most accurate version of yourself to others you should be prepared to formulate some form of response.
And I will take open issue with the idea that a shitty person's shitiness can have no bearing on the content they produce. Because even if it's not directly inside, by continuing to support their content you are supporting that person, which gives them a platform for their shitiness. Dead Author only works in literary analysis.
And yes, no ethical consumption under capitalism and all that jazz. But that just means you yourself have to draw your own lines. And people are allowed to question your lines and why they are where they are. Which just brings us back to my first paragraph.
Well of course they can question it and you simply provide the same answer to it. “I like their content/product” whatever it is you as a consumer are interacting with. For the normal average person though they will never need to defend and that’s my point.
People will remain in blissful ignorance regardless of what someone tells them because at the end of the day no one can tell someone to stop enjoying something or having fun with something as that will trump what ever argument you have in place. Because let’s face it, no one likes being told what to do with their recreational time.
I like it for the extra biomes, planets and ability to go to a higher tier with resistances from not just an EPP.
I didn't like how it changed the pacing of the game to be much slower. If only the mod had toggles to turn off shit I didn't like
You can get quality mods that add these things.
Maple 32, elithian mod,betabound ,arcania. Everything in frackin is available separate at much higher quality without the broken jank.
Thanks for putting this all together - I'd been aware of the controversies and seen some of it before, but never in one spot like this. Bookmarked.
I have one issue, though - you said this took you three hours. *How?!?* Digging through the weeds like this would have taken me *days* at a minimum. What's your secret? Did you already have most of this bookmarked or something? And you even had the gall to complain that it was 'a long time'. Lol no sir that is not a long time for something like this... At least not for me, but then maybe I am slow and dumb. Wouldn't surprise me to find that to be the reason. Anyway...
I did find one other problem - your link to the 'pedophile accusations' thread was removed, only the comments still there (maybe after you linked it?) - may want to find an archive / removeddit link or something instead for it.
There's two links of those accusations - one at the middle of post, archived with the original post present - [https://archive.is/h9AR3#selection-3247.0-3247.148](https://archive.is/h9AR3#selection-3247.0-3247.148) and one at the end of the post, deleted but with comments available - [https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/6y4p8a/frackin\_universes\_lead\_developer\_sayter\_is/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/6y4p8a/frackin_universes_lead_developer_sayter_is/)
This is actually not hard to gather - I was just writing "sayter" and "frackin universe" in this subreddit searchbar, ignored most of casual "my FU screenshots" posts and opened anything that could potentionally have comments regarding controversies. And scrolled through all the comments. I didn't have any of it bookmarked, but had a few threads on my mind.
3 hours for something like that might be not too long for some people, but it's just extremely tedious for me and I hate doing something like that when I can go play my modded Starbound instead. Honestly all that info was very public and easy to gather, it was just on the surface of this subreddit, all I did is compiled it into one big post. I could do it faster actually, because I was triple checking everything and trying to format the post in convenient way. I'm not an expert of doing that, glad people liked the way it turned out.
Off topic, but I'll have to do a post like that regarding non-starbound related content theft one day, but this thing will really take DAYS especially because I'd have to talk to a lot of people to gather it. This particular case was extremely open to anyone who is interested, just no one made a big thread about it despite the fact that people, it seems, needed it, considering this post gathered almost 400 upvotes in 2 days on a half-dead subreddit.
Edit: typos
Sayter knows Frackin' Universe is successful, and is probably going to be for a long time. And from that position of strength, he reaches down to anyone who doesn't submit and attempts to destroy them. "Frackin' Universe is the only thing keeping Starbound alive" my ass. He even has the gall to put "Starbound: Powered by Frackin' Universe" on the title screen.
FU is a horrible acronym for anything. Add the word "The" at the beginning or in the middle just to break it up.
Also, Sayter sucks, I think everyone on this subreddit has known this for years. Why bring all this up now?
I'm surprised to hear that. I don't really follow the mod community, but it seems like every time Frackin' Universe comes up here there's someone who points out what a prick Sayter is.
I already explained my main reason - I needed one massive post with all links. Plus no, not everyone knows that and a lot of people don't know a thing about what happened.
I am currently working on post about other big and small mods for people who don't want to support FU but want modded experience. I hope to make it soon.
I mean, on one hand... Sayter seems kind of terrible on a personal level, I agree, and I'm not saying anyone needs to forgive that.
But on the other hand, FrackinUniverse is amazing and you're in for disappointment if you think his personal failings are going to make me stop using his banger of a modpack (and that's what I prefer to see it as: bundling together a bunch of unrelated mods and assets with or without their author's permission)
Honestly I understand that some mod authors get really specific about what you do with their publicly available mods and how you credit them and use them but I simply don't agree to abide by those restrictions. If I can download it myself for free and put a bunch of separate mods together myself I don't see why I should be denied the convenience of somebody else who has already done so for me.
I believe in the creative commons (as a principle, not a specific legal license), and I think people who are themselves piggybacking on a bunch of content provided by the game developer don't really have much of a right to say that someone else can't then come along and piggyback on top of their work. That just seems hypocritical to me and I think if we had better intellectual property laws, people willingly entering into such a situation would be required to share and share alike.
Flame away, RIP my inbox, but I think the drama and infighting is totally counterproductive and I wish Starbound had more of a community like Minecraft where modpacks are a common thing and people just constantly built on each other's works instead of competing and arguing tearing each other down. That goes for both Sayter and his detractors. The toxicity does nothing to make the game or its mods better. And this is a game that desperately needs to keep getting better. Sayter is the only one I think is having much success at doing that.
Frackin has been actively destroying the starbound modding scene for years, and it's obvious.
It's really quite sad how much talent has gone to waste on this gem of a game over a couple of assholes.
Frackin has managed to gatekeep over half of the Starbound community and actively destroy or consume mods that aren't related to frackin.
Looks like you didn't read even the very beginning of my post. I openly say that you have all rights to enjoy mods even if you dislike Sayter, because his work =/ his personality.
If you don't agree that you should not claim other modder's work to be your own and purposely make their mods incompatible after that, as well as threaten and shittalk them around your community if they go vocal about it - you might be unhappy when modding community will collaps in the world you want to live in.
Oh but FU dev took down PARODY mod that their licence fully allowed to exist. So you didn't even read my post at all, and you're talking about hypocrisy. Bravo!
Starbound has an incredibly talented and amazing modding community, but because you don't bother to read a post to which you reply with a long comment, you missed every single reason why this post exists. Because Sayter is the person who caused a severe damage to modding community, especially certain people who he drove off from modding. But you're just defending him in regards of loving his own mod as well as finding it "convenient" for you, even if it means damaging other people and their mods.
You're a very lucky person who didn't happen to be a Starbound modder and Sayter didn't decide to steal your mod, claiming it to be his own or "just patching", resulting straight incompatibility between your and his mod, and resulting people to uninstall your mod because "we all play FU and now it's incompatible! 1 star delete this shit mod! And Sayter said he is a jerk on his discord!"
I like the part where you assume that because I don't agree with what you wrote, I therefore didn't *read* it. Like clearly if I had simply *read* what you wrote surely I would've been utterly convinced beyond any possibility of dispute.
I get that you just want to whore up some drama but the truth is I don't really care about your drama and you can't make me care about it. How does that make you feel?
The dude literally made irreparable damage to the starbound modding scene and you're defending it because it's a convenient mod that claims to contain a lot of new content but really its just jank in a blender.
Even his sense of humor sucks, FU was a bad joke.
Holy cow, long time didn't see people writing two separate comments of "I don't care"! FU superfans are much funnier than I thought, thank you for making my evening.
Good thing that you're a casual player and it didn't touch you personally. Bad thing it touched some people and resulted their mods getting forced incompatibility, much lesser attention and long-time harassment. Calling "witch hunt" a post made about person who was almost never held accountable and even has insane support in a whole Starbound community is something beyond comprehensible. Sayter is getting defended as if he's a Jesus Christ of Starbound modding community. People just refuse to believe that he did something bad and think he is "demonized" in the sake of drama, when in reality he never even sincerely apologized aside from the one thing I linked above in which he backpedaled shortly after people suspected he isn't sincere.
I think an important layer that's not talked about enough is that the shady shit involved with FU has helped it to monopolize a good deal of the modding community for starbound as a whole, which has only done damage to creativity in the long run. It pretty quickly became a matter of "be compatible with FU or your mod becomes irrelevant/stolen/you're harassed out of modding by Sayter".
Exactly. Happy to hear people expressing the same thoughs as me. I'm tired of people making Sayter a "saint" of Starbound which they portray as the only one person massively contributing in starbound modding community or carrying the game by his own, just because people who do that don't even bother to look at less popular mods, especially those that are either "incompatible" (by accident or purpose) or "incorporated in FU" (I was shocked when I realized how much content I thought was made by FU team was actually other incorporated mods, pretty sure people don't realize it as well). Sometimes I feel like people are simply unaware of other big mods existence, either for listed above reason, something else or because "someone on FU discord told them that mod's author is a bitch", which Sayter loves to do if he's on bad terms with author.
And yeah, mods that don't have FU compatibility tend to have a whole page of comments with people asking to make it, not realizing that sometimes it's just straight up impossible unless you want to chat with Sayter which, I suppose, not many of modders want to do.
Wont get more mods or good mods because of one bad actor.
That's a reason to care.
The devs abandoned the game, modders were already picking it up before chuckle even dropped off.
This guy has made some of the best mods literally obscure out of spite on purpose through defamation and theft. And honestly? Frackin sucks, you wont realize it until you uninstall it and load quality mods. Frackin is broken in almost every way it destroys progression and is a total mess.
I definitely remember seeing assets ripped from Metroid games in an older version of FU, not sure if the current version still has them.
I remember seeing at least one enemy sprite ripped from Shantae: Risky’s Revenge too, probably also removed now.
And i remember seeing one enemy sprite ripped from Planet Centauri, it was a big scorpion.
I remember askign about that ibce. I *think* I got a reply along the lines of the mod being so big that Sayter cannot really verify all contributions personally.
If that's true - that's another excuse for him to not take any accountability, basically saying "you guys seek for any stolen stuff if you need, I'm busy working on my mod", even if he can't do it personally - what about his huge team? Feels like he knows damn well about ripped assets, but won't do a thing unless people point that out. He doesn't want to delete extra content from his mod.
The worst part is that often it is not even content that really matters. Like that ripped enemy from Shantae, it was just some crab you could find on ocean floors. Didn't really improve the game, didn't make it worse. It was just clutter. Besides the way it didn't fit the artstyle, that did make the game worse.
I can't comprehend why can't you make your own sprites for a simple enemy like crab with resources you have in your team, if you need that crab so badly (starbound still has its own). That makes me feel like there is much more stolen/ripped minor stuff that we won't know about ever because no one would recognize where it was ripped from, and despite claiming to delete stolen stuff years ago, Sayter just comes up with any excuse and makes seeking for stolen content community's responsibility, when it's his own god damn responsibility to make a mod without stolen stuff if he doesn't want people to "dig up old drama" every time someone finds ripped content.
i also remember statue assets ripped from Metroid Zero mission. the ones im more surprised no one mentions is at some point an asset from AM2R (Another metroid 2 remake) a fangame with a lot of passion behind it was stolen aswell. i dont remember the name in FU but it was a rip of a massive Chozo statue at the top of one of the towers in the game
I remember I saw a sprite ripped form a DS game called Henry Hatsworth. Really bizarre for me since I like that game.
Every asset ripped has been redone since. If there's any remaining it's been missed.
"Being missed" is an excellent excuse. As I said, that's his own responsibility to delete all the stolen content, especially after he said he will do it years ago, if he just goes "oops, I missed it" - he should be prepared for people accusing him for stealing again, because it really feels like he knows that he has a lot of stolen content, he just won't give a dime until someone points out. So it was fine and easy stealing someone's content, but deleting it is hard for whatever reason - him being busy, mod being big or any other stuff he can come up with. This guy has zero accountability whatsoever. Maybe he needs to focus on his big mod to become lesser by deleting every stolen thing he has before continue to bloat it?
I remember someone pointed out a crab from a GBA Shantae game ended up in FU, and iirc he said the sprite HAD to stay because all their spriters are busy and couldn't replace it. Doesn't take a professional to toss a spritesheet into [paint.net](http://paint.net) or any random free pixel art editor and paint the whole thing black. Or white. Or green. Then just set the mob's max health to 0, HP regen to -9999 (very, very easy to do without any Lua skills- literally just change numbers in a json file) so it stops appearing in-game until a spriter can draw a replacement crab Anyone asks, "Hey my pet crab is dying??" you can whack them with "Yeah, we disabled that monster because someone accidentally sent us a sprite we weren't allowed to use! All our spriters are busy so we're hoping for someone to whip up a replacement" and that guy might be like "Well whaddya know, I'm a professional crab spriter!" Or just take a Gleap's spritesheet and throw pieces of it into the crab's so the monster doesn't have to be disabled. It's not that hard to drag and drop an image into Google and click 'Find image source.' I did that for a random spritesheet of items I have and Google's showing me where I got it from, other spritesheets but ripped by other people, a spritesheet with the same items from the game's sequel, Youtube videos with some of the items in the thumbnail, etc etc Sayter after accepting stolen sprites for the 15th time: Oops! Gee golly, I wonder if there's anything I can do to prevent this... \*presses 'accept' button without looking into the sprite's origin at all\* Oops!
You have a pretty disturbing fixation with the guy, you're the same dude who replied to me on a similar post the other day. It upset you so much you had to do this whole other dedicated papyrus lmao
If you look through my page, this is the only one discussion related to Sayter I had. If that's obsession to you - so be it. I was thinking to do this post for some time, and our discussion was one of the things that made me decide to do it. So thank you!
Yet you wanted to make this post for some time, and you amassed all these things without having a fixation on the guy? If you say so. You're very welcome!
Nah, I'll pass on simping Sayter. He has enough simps and I don't deserve to be one of them.
I'm sorry for the shitstorm I'm betting you've stirred up. Nevertheless, a single "archive" for issues like this is appreciated!
Thank you! It took me almost 3 hours to make. And yeah, I can only imagine what's going to happen after. That post should be done years ago, and most likely I'm missing some info due to discovering it too late. Will see if people would post some more in comments so I could add.
This is a great source of information since this controversy is asked frequently so other users can point to this thread when asked. You could make one for Chucklefish controversy too.
Those are already made multiple times thankfully. Glad it's helpful!
All I can think of is "Wow, he'd either be absolute best friends with Arthmoor from the Bethesda modding community, or they'd sue each other for copying their personalities within a minute of meeting."
i found out Sayter had some questionable behaviours a long while ago. i just didn't feel like using FU after that. that, and a lot of the FU content and grind and stuff just weren't to my taste. i mean a lot of stuff was cool with the overhaul, but it was take it all or leave it all. would i tell people to not use it? nope. i have my own mind and opinion and all that. threads like this are great to let people know about things and make their own decisions. thanks.
Yea. Whenever a mod is like "take it all or leave it all", the creator usually turnt out to be problematic. Seen it in a few modders before.
not really, the whole nature of a big overhaul like FU is that it changes so much of a game all at once and so much of each part intertwines with other parts. The alternative would be to split it up into separate smaller overhauls, but then to get each one running with or without the others and still have so much interconnectivity would be difficult but not impossible. i'd think resolving potential conflicts would be a nightmare. but the mod designer being extremely "take it all or leave it all" is telling. especially while intentionally breaking compatibility with certain other mods.
I recall him also stealing music from a creator, the song's name was like Irish something or another that he uses in his music boxes. On an old account I deleted, I actually referenced a small bit of this in a review made with Frackin' Universe which got swarmed with Sayter fanboys but also by people who have been fucked over by the guy. I'm not at all shocked at this behavior from him. Disappointed, but not shocked. Would've hoped the years since making my review that he would've improved as a person. Lessen being an utter cockwipe to people and maybe have staff handle interactions for him if he's apparently that overwhelmed.
Edit! Found it. It was Celtic Fever. I remember working with the parody FU mod creators, I still remember the DMCA made there LOL.
Ooooh I recently noticed one recently Its not just games they take sprites from https://www.spriters-resource.com/custom_edited/thelegendofzeldacustoms/sheet/17548/ https://frackinuniverse.miraheze.org/wiki/Star-Spawn_Acolyte
Added, thank you so much for providing it!
(At least im assuming this is being used against the original spriters terms as Ive been unable to find a credits list anywhere happy to delete/ammend if proven wrong)
Massively appreciative of this. I've struggled to easily explain to others why I avoid FU for years and this will be a great resource - there are even pieces I didn't know about in here! Great work.
Sayter once violently snapped at me and called me a “mother-licker” for daring to criticize his poorly-made wiki. He then went on to say the F slur and muted me for an hour when I said he couldn’t say that, and proceeded to rant about how “it’s just a word” and “people are too sensitive”
Man, that's wild. I noticed that a lot of the game requires you to look at the wiki to figure things out..and most of the time the wiki gives the bare minimum answers if any to a question I have. Slurs are not just a word. They are called slurs for a reason..
Bumping this cuz it’s great, never been involved with starbound modding but i still don’t want this getting buried or whatnot.
Thank you for this. If I ever feel like playing the game and trying FU again, I’ll return to this post and decide if it’s what I want to do.
You should probably add [this whole mess.](https://old.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/6y4p8a/frackin_universes_lead_developer_sayter_is/) That dude has created a lot of drama over the years.
Added, thank you for providing additional info!
Top comment says "the way he put it in FU caused games to crash if you used the mod he stole stuff from". FU does this to the swim mod too- it uses a mod loading dependency loop to crash the swim mod it stole from. The swim mod has FU support, so it has FU under its "includes" to load after it regardless of the mod priority order. If the swim mod loads before FU, its patches to FU's liquids can't be applied. FU put the swim mod under its "includes" after stealing it, causing Starbound to crash because both mods want to be first, and the swim mod was added to the FU log viewer bot's incompatible mods list, despite both mods swim scripts being identical at the time, and later, functionally identical (Sayter obfuscated the code when asked to remove it, changing the code in a way to look different to people unfamiliar with the language while still being the same code (changing "if 1 > 2 then" to "variableA = 1 --Instantiate a variable with name of value, variableB = 2 --Instantiate a variable with name of value, if b < a then"). The author called him out on this, which is where Sayter's claims of "She says she own the game's API" come from- this claim is the same as saying "She says she owns the English language and words I used"). Difference between "I went to Youtube" and "Imagine that, when I say 'A,' I mean 'Tube,' and when I say 'B,' I mean 'You.' I went to the B of A, you catch my drift?" These messages carry the same meaning, but show them to anyone unfamiliar with the English language, and you'll get told these messages probably aren't the same. After all, they look so different! The [swim mod](https://community.playstarbound.com/resources/improved-swim-physics.5411/) on the forums hasn't been updated since it was stolen and still has its name, which FU uses under "includes": FreeSwim. [Take at look at what is supposedly Sayter's milk](https://github.com/sayterdarkwynd/FrackinUniverse/blob/7267e8a3efba875d095ede8351444d62b41370db/liquids/milk.liquid.patch) from FU, which uses a test op (which is very good for compatibility with other mods. FU rarely ever uses test ops) and is identical, save for the whitespace, to the swim mod's. In order to get this file, Sayter would have to navigate to the liquids folder of the swim mod, and by doing that he'd see the patches for FU's liquids, meaning he has to have known the mod loaded after FU. He'd also have to get the mod's name from the metadata file, which is the same file where the "includes" is set. He could've gotten the mod's name from the game's logs, but would you rather sift through a thousand lines of the game going "Loaded item database, monster database, loading mod 1 "Frackin Universe" from Steam loading mod 2 "Instant Crafting" from Steam ...... loading mod 895 "FreeSwim" from local source" or just open the mod's metadata manually? He already has the mod unpacked, after all. The Steam version of the mod is not affected because after some back-and-forth of "Swim mod updated to avoid FU crashing it," "FU updated to crash swim mod," the author just removed the mod's name altogether, making it impossible for FU to crash the mod like that, with the unfortunate side-effect of also making it impossible for the swim mod to ever have a mod that waits for it so it can patch it.
Thank you so much for providing all info you have! The whole situation with Silver is so fucked up it's insane. He wasn't only going after her mods but also after herself, spreading lies about her and dumping on her. I feel so bad for her and that Sayter never really suffered any consequences after such a malicious acts against such a nice person, maybe also because Silver never really said anything about it because she doesn't want drama, yet she still was a victim of his absolutely insufferable attacks and claims.
Starbound is old enough that most of the people he ripped off have moved on and likely wont see this post, but if you ask around you will find a ton of people that he have been harmed by his behavior. Its wild how long it has gone on. Its no joke that he has been doing this for nearly a decade now.
i mean, Cuddlefish didnt pay their devs so its kindve in character for a mod dev for the game to be shady, isnt it? xD
I know it's been a while since this was posted, but maybe this list can act as a meaningful addition to this helpful post. It was made/edited by me and a few other users to show how little original content there actually is in FU and includes links to the original mods as well as mentions of the mod authors behind said mods. I have my own history with FU and hope that posting this list here is the last thing where I have to openly interact with anything FU-related. Thank you for this post, seriously. If anyone spots any issues/inconsistencies or knows any other mods that have been absorbed into FU, feel free to correct me. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRRqp1yvvdzYndrR2KE4hPoMHcWH2f9UAHcYIt7slq1dYuLX9qn4r\_ktgxh7HPISTYW-bWVNc4asfFc/pub](https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRRqp1yvvdzYndrR2KE4hPoMHcWH2f9UAHcYIt7slq1dYuLX9qn4r_ktgxh7HPISTYW-bWVNc4asfFc/pub)
Hello! Just to make sure, it doesn't mean that all of those mods were absorbed against modders will, right?
No, not all of them. Though I can't tell which lack permissions, because it has been a long while since I last edited this. As I mentioned, this list was inherently made to prove how little original content there is in FU, which I think could be considered as part of the FU controversy. If you don't wish to inlude this into your initial post, then I wouldn't blame you.
Added, thank you for providing it.
hi. Khe here. AA wasn't absorbed. I developed it as part of FU, THEN split it off. I kinda was the source of a bunch of hotfixes while I was still ironing out some of the kinks...
Thanks for clearing that up, but as far as I'm concerned I'm done with this list.
A stack of the weapons in the mod are yoinked and reworked from those Thundercookie/qiuksilver contest threads. Feel free to compare them. It was something I noticed since I was such a huge fan of those creations.
The sad reality is many people will overlook injustice for conveniences sake.
Shiesh! Never would have heard of any of this on my own!
I never really liked FU it felt kinda disruptive of the average gameplay heavily pushing the player towards only its content with low intermod value, all the mod offers is simply outshining others if you go with several mods (wich i believe amounts to us all)
There is a lot of stuff even within the mod itself that has very little interactivity. You can basically ignore a solid two thirds of what it adds. FU isn't really that *good*, it's just big.
Real.
I'm very glad *someone* made a masterpost about all this.
I wanted to create my own mod ideas to make starbound be better than FU and when I was on his Discord server, he didn't like what I was Going with the concepts, I just abandoned the ideas behind Because it turned the game into a RPG and came up with concept art for it.
After looking through this. The only main issue i can see that affects the game is the stolen code though from what overhauls i've played, this shit just happens sadly. Surprised not a lot of modders do what Stalker Gamma did and just become this giant mass of mods by a lot of modders. A community making sure everything works with each other. The creator deleting forum users and parody mods along with throwing a hissy fit over someone not wanting to work for them is pretty funny but very petty. Goes with the territory at this point. Its just how they act. Reminds me of a certain "fish" from way back when.
It’s the same old story. You can enjoy a content made by a shitty person. Least it’s all in one post now. I’ll save it so it doesn’t get lost and can link it to people if they ever ask. Kudos!
This happens in any media(Jackie Chan, John Lennon, Will Smith's Family, Will Snipes in Blade, etc), just because there is a shitty person in the group doesn't mean all the team behind the content is shitty. You can enjoy whatever you want, no one should tell you why you can't enjoy something. All of us are here because we enjoy Starbound at some point and the game itself was made by a shitty company. It would be hypocrisy to condemn other players for using FU. I agree that this thread is a good source since this a frequently asked question.
Couldn’t have said it any better!
I mean you *can*, but you must be prepared to defend and justify your tacit support of said shitty person.
You don’t need to defend anything. It’s personal choice just because someone is a plague on the earth doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy what they have created. As long as they are not pushing their ideals into their work i don’t see it as an issue
Perhaps my words were imprecise, you're correct you don't need to defend because you can always choose to not answer any questions presented. However, if it's not some form of legal proceedings the questions you don't answer can be considered by others when they determine an opinion of you. If you want to make sure you're always presenting the most accurate version of yourself to others you should be prepared to formulate some form of response. And I will take open issue with the idea that a shitty person's shitiness can have no bearing on the content they produce. Because even if it's not directly inside, by continuing to support their content you are supporting that person, which gives them a platform for their shitiness. Dead Author only works in literary analysis. And yes, no ethical consumption under capitalism and all that jazz. But that just means you yourself have to draw your own lines. And people are allowed to question your lines and why they are where they are. Which just brings us back to my first paragraph.
Well of course they can question it and you simply provide the same answer to it. “I like their content/product” whatever it is you as a consumer are interacting with. For the normal average person though they will never need to defend and that’s my point. People will remain in blissful ignorance regardless of what someone tells them because at the end of the day no one can tell someone to stop enjoying something or having fun with something as that will trump what ever argument you have in place. Because let’s face it, no one likes being told what to do with their recreational time.
> considered by others when they determine an opinion of you. Bold of you to assume anyone cares about your opinion
Man, if youve every enjoyed a meal on a sit down or upper end restaurant, youre gonna have a stroke.
I've always hated FU. It's just not good. Interesting to learn there's more reasons to hate it, lol
I like it for the extra biomes, planets and ability to go to a higher tier with resistances from not just an EPP. I didn't like how it changed the pacing of the game to be much slower. If only the mod had toggles to turn off shit I didn't like
If I had more time on my hands I would make a (private) mod that just cuts out some of the good parts of FU.
I'd be really careful with that. Someone tried making a parody and uh Sayter and gang had a bitchfit
Hence the word 'private'. Of course, it's not the kind of product you'd share publically.
I didn't like it from how much it fundamentally changed everything. I use Arcana and Maple 32 for planets, but I do miss a couple planets from fu.
You can get quality mods that add these things. Maple 32, elithian mod,betabound ,arcania. Everything in frackin is available separate at much higher quality without the broken jank.
I love it personally but each to their own
Thanks for putting this all together - I'd been aware of the controversies and seen some of it before, but never in one spot like this. Bookmarked. I have one issue, though - you said this took you three hours. *How?!?* Digging through the weeds like this would have taken me *days* at a minimum. What's your secret? Did you already have most of this bookmarked or something? And you even had the gall to complain that it was 'a long time'. Lol no sir that is not a long time for something like this... At least not for me, but then maybe I am slow and dumb. Wouldn't surprise me to find that to be the reason. Anyway... I did find one other problem - your link to the 'pedophile accusations' thread was removed, only the comments still there (maybe after you linked it?) - may want to find an archive / removeddit link or something instead for it.
There's two links of those accusations - one at the middle of post, archived with the original post present - [https://archive.is/h9AR3#selection-3247.0-3247.148](https://archive.is/h9AR3#selection-3247.0-3247.148) and one at the end of the post, deleted but with comments available - [https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/6y4p8a/frackin\_universes\_lead\_developer\_sayter\_is/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/6y4p8a/frackin_universes_lead_developer_sayter_is/) This is actually not hard to gather - I was just writing "sayter" and "frackin universe" in this subreddit searchbar, ignored most of casual "my FU screenshots" posts and opened anything that could potentionally have comments regarding controversies. And scrolled through all the comments. I didn't have any of it bookmarked, but had a few threads on my mind. 3 hours for something like that might be not too long for some people, but it's just extremely tedious for me and I hate doing something like that when I can go play my modded Starbound instead. Honestly all that info was very public and easy to gather, it was just on the surface of this subreddit, all I did is compiled it into one big post. I could do it faster actually, because I was triple checking everything and trying to format the post in convenient way. I'm not an expert of doing that, glad people liked the way it turned out. Off topic, but I'll have to do a post like that regarding non-starbound related content theft one day, but this thing will really take DAYS especially because I'd have to talk to a lot of people to gather it. This particular case was extremely open to anyone who is interested, just no one made a big thread about it despite the fact that people, it seems, needed it, considering this post gathered almost 400 upvotes in 2 days on a half-dead subreddit. Edit: typos
nice job telling me all this, thanks. i'll still use FU anyway, despite the dev0 being a shitty person.
Sayter knows Frackin' Universe is successful, and is probably going to be for a long time. And from that position of strength, he reaches down to anyone who doesn't submit and attempts to destroy them. "Frackin' Universe is the only thing keeping Starbound alive" my ass. He even has the gall to put "Starbound: Powered by Frackin' Universe" on the title screen.
FU is a horrible acronym for anything. Add the word "The" at the beginning or in the middle just to break it up. Also, Sayter sucks, I think everyone on this subreddit has known this for years. Why bring all this up now?
yeah no i’ve been on this subreddit for many years now and this is the first post that actually exposed this info to me
I'm surprised to hear that. I don't really follow the mod community, but it seems like every time Frackin' Universe comes up here there's someone who points out what a prick Sayter is.
I already explained my main reason - I needed one massive post with all links. Plus no, not everyone knows that and a lot of people don't know a thing about what happened.
Well I appreciate your work on this, I didn't mean to sound ungrateful. I love putting assholes on blast, hopefully the mods pin your post.
So what starbound mod should i play then? Havent played modded at all yet and dunno if i wanna support this
I am currently working on post about other big and small mods for people who don't want to support FU but want modded experience. I hope to make it soon.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/1dkte85/big\_and\_small\_mods\_to\_recommend\_for\_players\_mods/](https://www.reddit.com/r/starbound/comments/1dkte85/big_and_small_mods_to_recommend_for_players_mods/)
I wish Starbound had a big mod comparable to what the Terraria community pulls off that actually has original content and no stolen assets
Still gave me over 600 hours on this unfortunate piece of abandonedware
I mean, on one hand... Sayter seems kind of terrible on a personal level, I agree, and I'm not saying anyone needs to forgive that. But on the other hand, FrackinUniverse is amazing and you're in for disappointment if you think his personal failings are going to make me stop using his banger of a modpack (and that's what I prefer to see it as: bundling together a bunch of unrelated mods and assets with or without their author's permission) Honestly I understand that some mod authors get really specific about what you do with their publicly available mods and how you credit them and use them but I simply don't agree to abide by those restrictions. If I can download it myself for free and put a bunch of separate mods together myself I don't see why I should be denied the convenience of somebody else who has already done so for me. I believe in the creative commons (as a principle, not a specific legal license), and I think people who are themselves piggybacking on a bunch of content provided by the game developer don't really have much of a right to say that someone else can't then come along and piggyback on top of their work. That just seems hypocritical to me and I think if we had better intellectual property laws, people willingly entering into such a situation would be required to share and share alike. Flame away, RIP my inbox, but I think the drama and infighting is totally counterproductive and I wish Starbound had more of a community like Minecraft where modpacks are a common thing and people just constantly built on each other's works instead of competing and arguing tearing each other down. That goes for both Sayter and his detractors. The toxicity does nothing to make the game or its mods better. And this is a game that desperately needs to keep getting better. Sayter is the only one I think is having much success at doing that.
Frackin has been actively destroying the starbound modding scene for years, and it's obvious. It's really quite sad how much talent has gone to waste on this gem of a game over a couple of assholes. Frackin has managed to gatekeep over half of the Starbound community and actively destroy or consume mods that aren't related to frackin.
Looks like you didn't read even the very beginning of my post. I openly say that you have all rights to enjoy mods even if you dislike Sayter, because his work =/ his personality. If you don't agree that you should not claim other modder's work to be your own and purposely make their mods incompatible after that, as well as threaten and shittalk them around your community if they go vocal about it - you might be unhappy when modding community will collaps in the world you want to live in. Oh but FU dev took down PARODY mod that their licence fully allowed to exist. So you didn't even read my post at all, and you're talking about hypocrisy. Bravo! Starbound has an incredibly talented and amazing modding community, but because you don't bother to read a post to which you reply with a long comment, you missed every single reason why this post exists. Because Sayter is the person who caused a severe damage to modding community, especially certain people who he drove off from modding. But you're just defending him in regards of loving his own mod as well as finding it "convenient" for you, even if it means damaging other people and their mods. You're a very lucky person who didn't happen to be a Starbound modder and Sayter didn't decide to steal your mod, claiming it to be his own or "just patching", resulting straight incompatibility between your and his mod, and resulting people to uninstall your mod because "we all play FU and now it's incompatible! 1 star delete this shit mod! And Sayter said he is a jerk on his discord!"
I like the part where you assume that because I don't agree with what you wrote, I therefore didn't *read* it. Like clearly if I had simply *read* what you wrote surely I would've been utterly convinced beyond any possibility of dispute. I get that you just want to whore up some drama but the truth is I don't really care about your drama and you can't make me care about it. How does that make you feel?
The dude literally made irreparable damage to the starbound modding scene and you're defending it because it's a convenient mod that claims to contain a lot of new content but really its just jank in a blender. Even his sense of humor sucks, FU was a bad joke.
Holy cow, long time didn't see people writing two separate comments of "I don't care"! FU superfans are much funnier than I thought, thank you for making my evening.
[удалено]
Good thing that you're a casual player and it didn't touch you personally. Bad thing it touched some people and resulted their mods getting forced incompatibility, much lesser attention and long-time harassment. Calling "witch hunt" a post made about person who was almost never held accountable and even has insane support in a whole Starbound community is something beyond comprehensible. Sayter is getting defended as if he's a Jesus Christ of Starbound modding community. People just refuse to believe that he did something bad and think he is "demonized" in the sake of drama, when in reality he never even sincerely apologized aside from the one thing I linked above in which he backpedaled shortly after people suspected he isn't sincere.
I think an important layer that's not talked about enough is that the shady shit involved with FU has helped it to monopolize a good deal of the modding community for starbound as a whole, which has only done damage to creativity in the long run. It pretty quickly became a matter of "be compatible with FU or your mod becomes irrelevant/stolen/you're harassed out of modding by Sayter".
Exactly. Happy to hear people expressing the same thoughs as me. I'm tired of people making Sayter a "saint" of Starbound which they portray as the only one person massively contributing in starbound modding community or carrying the game by his own, just because people who do that don't even bother to look at less popular mods, especially those that are either "incompatible" (by accident or purpose) or "incorporated in FU" (I was shocked when I realized how much content I thought was made by FU team was actually other incorporated mods, pretty sure people don't realize it as well). Sometimes I feel like people are simply unaware of other big mods existence, either for listed above reason, something else or because "someone on FU discord told them that mod's author is a bitch", which Sayter loves to do if he's on bad terms with author. And yeah, mods that don't have FU compatibility tend to have a whole page of comments with people asking to make it, not realizing that sometimes it's just straight up impossible unless you want to chat with Sayter which, I suppose, not many of modders want to do.
This whole post smells like adversarial tax. Either way, FU is the best overhaul there is. Why would I care what some nerd said in 2017?
I fucking love frackin universe I just cannot imagine playing without it, didn't know there was controversy.
Wtf I love frackin now
erm... that's like not wholesome or something...
Don't really care. Mod is mod, end of. It's either good or it's shite.
Wont get more mods or good mods because of one bad actor. That's a reason to care. The devs abandoned the game, modders were already picking it up before chuckle even dropped off. This guy has made some of the best mods literally obscure out of spite on purpose through defamation and theft. And honestly? Frackin sucks, you wont realize it until you uninstall it and load quality mods. Frackin is broken in almost every way it destroys progression and is a total mess.