Hey everyone, I'm sad that it had to come to this, but it's finally time.
Due to an even higher volume of harassment and slander that I've been met with in the past few weeks, I am entirely quitting modding.
Some people might've realized already that the Discord link is missing on the website, I am scheduling my Discord account for termination.
I have released new, final versions of every mod I still actively support, from NFS to Midtown Madness, just to make sure nothing is left unfinished or inconsistent.

It turns out the people who have been harassing me non-stop for the past 3 years were not stopped by me simply quitting GTA.
I have recently heard that they were trying to pin the GTA V leaks on me, and considering they're willing to go THIS far, even putting me into the crosshairs of Take-Two, and also considering people are believing it wholesale, I am not going to risk anything this serious. I quit.

Before that though, I'd like to make a final statement about everything that I've been put through over the years. Basically a warning about ever interacting with the GTA modding community.
If you haven't read my previous post about quitting GTA, go read it now. It'll put a lot of things into context.

For some additional context, we'll have to go WAY back. I've already said that these people are willing to use years-old out of context screenshots to discredit and slander me, so we're going all the way back to 2020, when I was 16.
At that time, I was part of a GTA IV multiplayer community. We were basically the main group of people who still played MP, organized events, etc. My Discord server was originally a place only for this community.
In fact, this is where both ZPatch and ZMenu initially came from! ZPatch being a fork of XLivelessAddon with compatibility for Games for Windows - LIVE, to make features such as the intro skip work in multiplayer, and ZMenu being a replacement for Simple Native Trainer for messing about in freemode, since patch 1.0.8.0 removed the separated lobby system between modders and non-modders but broke compatibility with Simple Native Trainer, so we had to find or create an alternative, which is where I stepped in and ZMenu was born.

It was a tight community, we took care of our own and self-moderated the Peer 2 Peer matches, so we could play in public lobbies and not be bothered by the countless cheaters.
For context, it was remarkably easy to just go on Google and install a mod that allows you to crash the games of entire lobbies of players. We were trying to counter this in any way possible, and were mostly successful in doing so, although there were some really sophisticated tools that could crash lobbies in a single frame after the player joined in.
I was one of the main people who helped with this anti-cheat effort, I created ways to auto-kick and auto-ban cheating players if you're the host of a match, first based on player name, then based on XUID (the Xbox Live user ID), PCID (an Xbox Live generated unique ID, completely random) and IP.
All of this information is in plain view as the game's multiplayer is Peer 2 Peer, which makes this rather simple. If I recall correctly, a part of this still lives on in a similar community called GTRF, where they are using a special script to ban cheaters on an XUID blacklist if the community is hosting a game.

This is the context for where screenshots like this come from:

(I apologize for some of the wording, I wasn't exactly as progressive when I was 16 as I am now)

All of which were in the community Discord, in which we were updating each other's ban lists, and lists of people to look out for. You don't even have to look elsewhere for context, most of it is right there in the screenshots, talking about people crashing lobbies and how we had to IP-ban them. To clarify even further, none of this was ever part of any version of any mod I've ever released, this was a strictly private moderation tool, just for the community.
The only thing I did wrong here was not clearing all the old logs earlier, as soon as my server became more than just a small GTA IV multiplayer community, which I do admit was a bad move, but it didn't occur to me until it was too late.

Some time passed, and GTA Connected came out. We were still the main group of people who still played multiplayer, and so we were giving advice to the developers on how to make it as good as possible.
One of the ideas was having advanced moderation tools, such as being able to see what mods/scripts each player has installed. These were later added, which made things a lot easier in terms of moderating a GTA Connected server.
I also cooperated on my end, by adding specific support for GTA Connected into my trainer, allowing server admins to "limit" ZMenu on their servers to prevent cheating, making only the harmless features be available. (what I referred to as a "killswitch")

As shown above, being a well-known and respected figure in the community, I was given admin access to some official GTA Connected servers, allowing me to get rid of anyone causing trouble.

And this is where screenshots like this came from:

If the fact that server admins can check if you're cheating and see & ban your IP is something that bothers you, never play on any community server for any game. This is really basic stuff.
The last screenshot also debunks itself, as it can clearly be seen that I was talking about my own self-hosted GTA Connected server.

Another method we were using later on to weed out cheaters was finding out which players spawned which objects. I made an option in ZPatch to log vehicle/ped/object spawns into the GTA Connected console and tie them to players (still there by the way! DebugPrintSpawns=1 and you won't have to wonder who spawned those disco balls on your head) to help trace down any griefers and crashers.

This is where screenshots like these come from:

To further elaborate on this console, only the spawn logs are printed by ZPatch. Any claims of my mods printing IP addresses in this console are untrue, and you can likely still enable and view this console in the current version of GTA Connected, and see the (fake, as the mod routes traffic through the server) IP addresses of players joining/leaving, without having any of my mods installed.

In fact, here's someone pointing this very thing out at the time, to the rumor spreader's face. (Memorize his name, it will come up later!) Didn't stop him from using this to slander me all the way up to now, though.

I'm sure it doesn't need to be said on top of all this, but claims of my mods "leaking" your IP or any other personal information are blatantly false, and these previously out-of-context screenshots are the closest thing people can get to evidence for it. In fact, I have only recently even started looking into how network connectivity works in late 2023 for Chaos Multiplayer, before which I had no idea how to do anything like that even if I wanted to.
Yet this non-existent drama from 2020 is still being perpetuated to smear me, some of these screenshots even being present in the newest bit of slander.

But now that that's out of the way, we can fast-forward a bit. I quit the aforementioned GTA IV multiplayer community due to toxicity, (looking back, I can't believe I was okay with them in the first place, but hey, I was there from roughly age 14 til 17, kids can be dumb) and moved on to singleplayer modding.

ZMenu and ZPatch were both in their heyday at this time, with tons of updates every week, major features being added and bugs being fixed. I also started branching out into other games such as FlatOut and NFS.
None of my mods supported the newest version of GTA IV though, as they removed multiplayer, which I still saw as the main reason for my mods' existence. (not to mention the instability and countless laughable issues with the newest version, even moreso at the time)

This almost immediately caused issues with petty people, and the drama and slander started. All of the above started coming back, out of context of course:

They also likely used these claims to spam staff and attempt to take down ZMenu from GTAForums, which lasted about 12 hours.
The only evidence I can still find of this is here:

Around the same time, I started seeing FusionFix get suspiciously similar features to ZPatch, fixes which I never shared to anyone.
For example, the bike phonecall animation fix and vehicle reversing lights fix:


As you can clearly see, both mods patch the exact same code in almost the exact same way, and it was committed to FusionFix by one of the initial main spreaders of this rumor, who has self-admittedly reverse engineered and looked through my mod's code (see the forum posts above), mere weeks apart from the initial accusations starting:

I continued to just ignore it, as there was no reasoning with them. Although I actually did manage to talk with one of the initial spreaders, and see eye to eye on things:

This did not stop the rumor mill though, and things got way worse over time.
In 2022-2023, roughly after I added pride flags to ZMenu, I started randomly seeing people in forum threads and Discord bringing up the same claims and screenshots, using them to tarnish my reputation:

One of these forum posts was incredibly vile, and tried to masquerade itself as a "no-rainbow" version of my trainer:

Which, if unzipped, was the latest version of my trainer with the pride flags intact, but a new readme added, containing some deranged ramblings and an attempted dox of my real name:

I also had a similar thing happen on Discord roughly around the same time:

There were also posts attempting to decompile my mods and claim that there was something malicious in them:

(There is nothing remotely suspicious about this, I obfuscated the link to my Patreon so script kiddies couldn't hack the mod to get rid of credits. You can even piece the text back together from the code screenshots, "This will open a browser window. Are you sure?")

Almost all of these came from dummy accounts with Russia-Ukraine or Wagner Group related usernames, made the same day as the posts.

I reported all the GTAForums messages to staff, and it turns out it was all coming from a single person, namely UnitedMel:

But no actions were taken aside from the posts being removed, and it continued, and got even worse.

This was also around the same time that the frequently linked video was created, containing all of the above out of context screenshots and deceptive code snippets, by UnitedMel. (I mean come on, it was uploaded by WagnerPrivateModdingCompany, it couldn't be any more obvious)

Further proving that this was just a desperate attempt to slander my image, the video description is beyond parody:

The last time I saw one of UnitedMel's posts was him attempting to leak where I live, and threatening to kill me:

This kept festering for months, but there was a breaking point, when I added support for loading shaders into IV Tweaker, my GTA IV modloader.
I thought this was a completely innocent feature, since shader mods started becoming popular, and my modloader was meant to make almost all mods work without any game files having to be replaced.
I was wrong.
It immediately caused a massive uproar of people claiming I am somehow stealing fame from FusionFix for daring to make my mod able to load shaders, and that I'm looking for clout:

Of course, the same slander once again started coming up, about my mods somehow leaking private data:

And here's some thinly veiled threats to make me open-source my mod so this slander stops:

UnitedMel also joined in, making me very suspicious of his involvement (as usual, brand new account created the same day, WG = Wagner Group):

(Notice the constant usage of the term "savior of GTA IV modding" to describe me. Seems like an attempt to make me look egotistical so they can make their attacks come across as more righteous)

During this and after it blew over, I always made myself clear: I was willing to talk, as long as it was on even ground. This led to a development.
Ash_735 messaged me on Discord, we had a friendly talk, and we tried to work something out. It was rather obvious that there was a lot going on in the background during that bit of drama, and I tried my best to clear it all up.
Afterwards, I came to a conclusion: I'll try to make peace, and work on a port of FusionFix to 1.0.7.0/1.0.8.0, and sending them ZPatch features they can port back to the main branch.

I did a quick port of it in an afternoon, and made a PR. It had a few minor issues, but the features were fully functional. I then tried to distance myself from IV for a bit, mostly to clear my head of everything that just happened and focus on myself and my health, but also because it's quite difficult to trust the team that had been openly attacking me just days prior. I did still talk to Ash on and off, sending him some info about ZPatch he could pass on and see what their reaction is, how certain features work, etc.:

After a few days, I get an angry DM from Ash, with a bunch of baseless claims and out-of-context screenshots framed to make me look like I've backstabbed them:

I explained this and provided context, which he understood:

A little while later, a mention of ZPatch gets suddenly deleted from a GitHub issue managed by people from the FusionFix team:

The next day, we get a response as to why, and I have a frankly quite understandable reaction:

This means our "peace deal" was off, I was not going to give any of my code or features to the people who are actively trying to ruin the reputation of me and my mods.
I kept maintaining my fork though, for the sake of having the great fixes on good versions of the game:

Initially due to technical reasons, my fork required ZPatch. This was later resolved, as evidenced by these chatlogs (I added the required DFA patches to my fork of FF, as shown in the last message), in which there was also some discussion of absorbing FusionFix features into ZPatch, but I was against the idea:

(Notice how I was bringing up licensing issues, this'll come up later. Also as far as I can tell, Ash is a true neutral party here, and was just genuinely misinformed. He does not seem malicious)

About a month later, I was watching YouTube and saw a GTA IV related video, with comments like these:

Take note of one specific person replying to these comments:

This might be a bit of a weak link, but after what follows, it should be a hint that this is organized.

In September, I released a new mod called GTA IV Extra Options, adding various additional tweaks to the game, such as an Always Run toggle, an FOV slider, toggling pickup glow and cinematic cameras, and a few more.
To make this compatible with FusionFix, I created a shared API that both mods could use for adding menu options, which my Extra Options mod requires, and my fork of FusionFix can optionally use if the API is installed.
This immediately triggered the horde, and the first reply on the GTAForums thread was from ThirteenAG himself:

After the second reply being someone understandably confused at this, look who the third one is!

For someone who supposedly has no connection to the FusionFix team, they sure do know a lot about the exact excuses ThirteenAG is trying to use to take my fork down! Notice how he even used "we" to refer to the team, wonder why... (The irony of one of the original spreaders of this slander being the same person saying that I have a "history of shady behavior" is not lost on me either)
Turns out they changed the license of their mod right around the same time they became aggressive, specifically to make this happen:

And then they all go straight into the usual, even posting the same video from UnitedMel:

Though some of this is new, actually. I haven't seen anyone say I "encrypt" my code yet:

Here's what the actual source code is for this section by the way:

This is a deceptively framed screenshot of compiler optimizations making the code look funky when decompiled, nothing more, nothing less.

Also, since VirusTotal sandbox behavior scan results were brought up so many times, here's an example of how unreliable that is:
I was surprised that I apparently had "Anti-VM strings targeting VirtualBox" in my mod, so I looked into it, and found the closest match, "bm_tvbox" in my list of GTA IV model names.
I removed it, and guess what? It disappeared.

You can try this on your own, build a program that outputs bm_tvbox into the console, and it will likely get flagged as being Anti-VM.


In my case, it also had a comparable amount of AV detections:

(Here's the code to this test app along with the compiled binary, if all that wasn't enough)

I also saw the claim that I contributed nothing, which is pretty ironic:
After this, I started noticing something weird. FusionFix was releasing new updates without sharing the source code. I looked into this a little further and found the reason: They added experimental 1.0.7.0/1.0.8.0 support, and it wasn't as clean as people would like to think.
The source code is now public, and in plain view, there's exact patterns taken from my fork:

It's similar and all, but with just this, it could be coincidence, right? Well, I also added brand-new code specifically for my backport, to fix some issues that came up because of differences between versions. Guess what I found when I looked through the code? My additions, same exact patterns, same exact location, with slightly different logic:
Talk about irony.

For someone who doesn't want to associate with me, and now tries to deny my very existence, as well as calling my fork "unofficial" and said that it "will never work properly", they sure were fine with taking all that:

Also as a side note, here's some examples of the kind of "joking negativity" I meant in my previous post:

No joke, this is something they got mad about. Me saying that ThirteenAG has "major driving issue".
Here's the mentioned clip as context to that:

They also got mad at me comparing my widescreen fix for FlatOut 2 to his:

(How this is even slander in any way, when all I'm doing is pointing out the objective differences by showing comparisons? We'll never know)

And here's a plain-written statement that FusionFix is intentionally incompatible with ZPatch:

And here's them going through with that, clear as day:

While there was a (frankly poor) attempt at hiding what this code does, all it's for is making every single one of my mods (yes, even the ones that are fully compatible with CE, see: VRadio, VWeapon) not work on purpose if FusionFix is installed.
Here's the actual list of blocked files:

There is no possible excuse for this, and it was clearly targeted.
(So much for transparency and open-source, too, there was a clear attempt to hide this, and it's never mentioned anywhere except in a reply to a random buried GitHub issue after someone called them out about it! Just because a project is open-source does not mean there can't be shady, unwanted code in it.)

Shortly after the aforementioned attacks, I publicly announced that I'm quitting GTA modding with the aforementioned blogpost, and simply cut all contact with the community for my own good. It wasn't worth it having to worry about slander being thrown at me every few months (or weeks in some cases) every time I release or update something.

Turns out this wasn't enough. It's been almost half a year since then, and I made the grave mistake of joining and interacting in a GTA related server for a whole 2 days before leaving. Immediately I was met with the same exact people trying to get my attention and smear me with the same exact "proof". (and some random Discord screenshots from completely unrelated people, apparently...?)

These people likely started screenshotting and taking things out of context immediately, and that's where we are now. Them trying to frame me for leaking the GTA V source code, right alongside long-debunked screenshots from when I was 16 years old, with people like Ben videotech liking the posts. I think it's understandable that I am quitting altogether for my own physical, mental and legal safety.

While I absolutely expect another wave of slander to "counter" this statement, I sure as hell am not going to be online to deal with it.
Goodbye everyone.