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Phil Fish & Polytron doxxed by 4chan’s /v/, Fez & Polytron up for sale

8 months ago

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PLEASE NOTE: This post is being periodically and sporadically updated as new information comes to light. As such, you may experience some irregularities.

Update: Phil Fish’s personal twitter has now been deleted, by him.

Phil Fish, every gamers favorite person to hate on, has just been hacked by the /v/ board over at 4chan. Following an extremely thorough doxxing by the volatile group, Polytron Corporation’s website and twitter account have been taken over by the internet radicals. The terrorists over at /v/ (specifically the “head mod and leader of 4chan.org and Anonymous”,) claim this is a “public execution of Polytron and Phil Fish” that is being done in “retaliation for his attempted coverup of five guys burgers and fries.”

Yep, you couldn’t make this up.

The pastebin file includes passwords for various different email accounts of Phil’s, including various business accounts related to Polytron Corp., the company’s PayPal, and the various administrative email accounts.

Fish, who is known for his volatile personality took to his twitter with a surprisingly deep and heartfelt series of tweets that show the true nature of the gaming industry:

(tweets have been copied/pasted below, as Fish’s twitter account is private.)

“this is videogames.

this is what i get

this is unacceptable

this is not okay

terrorist

never again, you hear me? never again.

this is videogames

this is your audience

to every aspiring game developer out there: don’t. give up. it’s not worth it.

nothing is worth this.

give up on your dreams. they are actually nightmares.

just don’t do it.

RUN AWAY”

Fish finally told the world he was done, announcing that “POLYTRON and the FEZ IP are now for sale. no reasonable offer will be turned down. i am done. i want out.”

While it is unclear whether or not Phil is serious in this, the tweets are extremely disheartening.

Fish finally ended his deluge of tweets and deleted his twitter. “never again.” he tells the world.

Tonight’s turn of events are extremely sad. While many gamers go far to show that we are all family here in the industry, driving a true visionary and artistic genius like Phil Fish from the business simply because you don’t like their personality is stupid, childish, and overall shows a total lack maturity throughout the industry. It’s disgusting, to say the least.

About the author

Austin Griffith

Austin Griffith is LevelSave.com's Editor-in-Chief. He began gaming young with Pokemon Silver and Banjo-Tooie and hasn't stopped since. You can find him on Twitter @AustinG909 and on Xbox Live at iKarmakazi. You can email him directly at AustinGriffith@LevelSave.com

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Keyser Soze

Faker than the James Foley video
http://encyclopediadramatica.se/ Encyclopedia Dramatica

WTF is /V/
PZis Kahn, Sovereign of A+

Austin Griffith: You’re not a real journalist, you’re a 4th rate blogger and a tool. Do your homework before you open your mouth and say something stupid, you cancerous manchild.
- comicbookinvesting
  
  Interesting take, except i dont think they look like a Man.
the_concerned_citizen

He doxxed himself.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/815/837/bc1.jpg
http://www.nic.com/ KhornePony

(Excluding all the drama)

How much FEZ is worthy?.
FEZ as a game is anything but a valuable franchise, it received a lot of hype several years ago but it backfires because some nasty bugs.

1) Fez is an old franchise and not a good one.
2) The main character is not quite sellable.
3) The playability is not enforceable by IP.
4) And may be it could sells it to Microsoft but AFAIK, the author burned that ship.

So the question is why somebody would buy that IP?.
Eric Wells

All of this information was apparently found on Phil’s Dropbox and you can view the tweet here by Renaud Bedard – https://twitter.com/renaudbedard/status/502893355601502209
jjj0309

It all makes sense now.
ZQ and PF, they were god damn sleeper agents.
burnout02urza .

Ah, Phil Fish. Always out to stir controversy.

He did this to himself to point the finger at his detractors. The hack came at a very, very convenient time for him: More, the whole ‘Head mod of /V/’ is a glaring false flag: It’s like someone scrawling – ” of killed at with a ” over a corpse.
Faggot262

“a true visionary and artistic genius like Phil Fish” You’re fucking kidding right? He’s a piece of shit, a fucking one hit wonder. “Head mod a /v/” “Leader on anonymous.” those things don’t exist. The instant upload of 1.5gig of private files points to Phil Fish doing this TO HIMSELF and blaming 4chan for everything, but “it has to be 4chan right? They’re all evil hackers over there!” You idiots eat this shit up.
oliethegoalie0041

You don’t make games for the haters. You make the games for the fans. If your fans give you constructive criticism you know what to do in your next game in the franchise. If you make the games and only care about the haters, you will hate your job developing games. But if you make games for the people who love your work, then you will love hearing what the positive things that people have to say. You do need tough skin to look at the glass half full instead of half empty but at the end of the day it’s so worth it to look at it half full.

That isn’t just how it works in game development though. Any and every job there will be people that hate or people that love what you do. In the end it just depends on your decision how to take it.
Darephony

Reminder that people discrediting the Cloudflare Theory are wrong.

When you access Polytron’s website it will always be routed through Cloudflare. That is to say, you only access Cloudflare’s IP, which hides away Polytron’s IP.

The only way to find out what Polytron’s actual IP is is by going through Cloudflare. Any lookup of the Polytron domain just returns Cloudflare’s IP. You cannot hack a server without knowing it’s IP. You can only get this IP by logging into their account on Cloudflare, which is only acessible through Phil Fish’s laptop and phone.

No one could hack Polytron because we don’t know it’s IP. Only Fish himself knows it. Fish faked the hack. The files have been proven to be prepared 5 hours before any hacking took place. The files contain stuff that wouldn’t be on the servers. No business leaves files on their server without encryption, which takes about one and a half million years to crack with normal high end PCs.

FISHDOX IS A LIE
Arcotaju

“driving a true visionary and artistic genius like Phil Fish from the business simply because you don’t like their personality is stupid, childish, and overall shows a total lack maturity throughout the industry” – ironically I find this to some up my gripe with Phil Fish: he had a lack of maturity, and acted stupid and childish. He was rude to everyone, self-centered, egotistical, etc etc. I’m actually concerned that the author views those traits as acceptable, as it’s people like Phil Fish that are dragging people down.

That doesn’t mean I support the hackers or the over-the-top things some people say, but there’s a lot of people who were justified in disliking him because he hated everyone else first. If he actually showed he cared for anyone other than himself, this would have easily been avoided. He was his own worst enemy, not the other people. He kept fueling his own fire.
Doomlord

This mostly has to do with the “Five Guys” Zoe Quinn scandal. Phil Fish and Polytron are huge factors of Zoe Quinn’s manipulation on the industry.
RadicalElation

“artistic genius”? HA.

Glad this asshole is out.
fr0sty

Good riddance.
Rashid Alam

“true visionary and artistic genius like Phil Fish”

That right there tanks your whole article.
Soul Inside

I’m just going out on a limb here… but couldn’t someone from /v/ do the hack and make it look like they didn’t by using terms like “Head mod” and “/V/” in order for it to appear fake, thus giving themselves that upper hand in defending /v/?
- Ori Klein
  
  A simple something that people miss about this is that when someone from 4chan hacks they do come forward with it, they do not try to hide it. There is also a “proper” form by which the acclamation is done. Credit is dispersed as is due and then the actual information is linearly listed alongside a finely crafted statement.
  The entire posting is done in a calm and humble manner. There are no “great leader” titles or attempts to boast one’s ego (that in itself is part of the dubious and nefarious “ethos” of this “collective” style society – everyone is equal, no narcissism is tolerated).
  
  I have been observing 4chan and the likes for many years (decades, I suppose). It is a very interesting sub-culture in terms of social dynamics.
  Makes me regret not professionalising in social studies. It is a researcher’s wet dream/gold mine.
  
  And as Darephony notes above, Polytron goes through Cloudflare proxy. It is as yet unknown for Cloudflare to have had (ever) been compromised.
  And one cannot remotely hack a website if one has not its open location on the Internet.
  It is possible, however, for hackers to have managed to outsmart Phil and ‘fish’ access onto his computer. Although most unlikely (to assert so would be to vastly underestimate Phil and his knowledge in computers, their security and how the Internet at large function as well as the situation he was in).
ChatWraithUpsilon

It’s at times like these when I ask myself if I care about a dude with bad facial hair and his seemingly self-afflicted drama.

Nope. I don’t seem to. I am interested in following this story though, because the prospect of watching an idiot get arrested for pretending to hack himself is too gloriously funny to pass up.
Muadiib

I like Fez a lot, I dislike Phil Fish a lot, I’ll be glad if he sells the company and ip, then maybe we can get a sequel, that is all.
John

common anyone could make a FEZ game the art in the game is not that great even the game mechanics are dumb.
- Max
  
  but no one did except him…I don’t think anything has come out that only the creator could have made, as if anyone has such unique perspective or experiences that they could introduce us to something that doesn’t hold at least a passive resemblance to some other game
gordo100

I have no time for this man anymore, this whole farce just elevates his hypocrisy I’ve never seen so much attention given to a single developer who has made 1 game which game out 2 years ago yet there’s others developers working there arse off for an ounch of attention on there game
lmao

there are no mods on /v/
you don’t spell /v/ “/V/”
obvious troll/scapegoating
Pomfins

Phil Fish needs to be held accountable. He hacks himself and blames others for doing it. Isn’t that illegal?
BinaryMind

This guy tries to act like his experience is somehow representative of all game developers. It’s not like being an arrogant, loud-mouthed, self-righteous asshat had anything to do with it.
Jessika S.

LOL!
phar0ahad3

We lost an opinionated individual in the games industry today people mightve hated him for that but i thought he was just pissy and kept it real the more people like this we lose the more sketchy things happen in the background of gaming thank you internets smh …………….
https://www.facebook.com/TheGamingAlcoholic The Gaming Alcoholic

Absolute comedy gold.
Jason Mounce

I miss the good ole’ days when there was less self-entitled ‘gamers’, whining, drama and bullshit. I miss the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s before it turned to ‘this’.
lassenwolf

You use terrorist and suggesting head cutting is naive. There are us Soldiers and Us civilians having there heads cut off maybe the dude needs to join the military and see just how bad life can be. good riddens
Flint

Sure the gaming industry is becoming filled with bullshit and bullshit personalities but I cant help but get the vibe that your article is biased towards Fish. The moron knew what he was getting into when he joined gaming. There is ALWAYS going to be trolls and critics. If he couldnt take it, he should have left gaming after finishing Fez.

Why does anyone care what a toxic childish moron like him thinks or feels if hes just going to be a coward about it? He can tweet and email from the shadows and pretend hes got a spine but he really, really doesnt. If he wanted something to change then he should have taken anger management classes, grown up a bit, and dealt with everyone in a respectable manner rather than being disrespectful back.

And yes, he has artistic ability and of course Fez was a great game but lol…he is ONE guy. Toxicity and a poor personality can only take you so far before you destroy yourself. Look at CliffyB. That ass ran his mouth for years against PC gaming and anything except Xbox and now his pretentious ass is trying to pull a fast one and come back like hes the savior of PC gaming. No lol. Fish tried the same thing. Ducked out like a coward, came back when the attention was at its peak and then ducked out again because hes too spineless to really make it.
Dirkster_Dude

Your last comments about maturity is why gaming will remain a niche market despite the earning potential. The level of stupidity and childish behavior leveled at this individual especially in the way it is done is not something you see leveled at a director of a movie or creator of a television show as examples. Sure you have an opinion, but it is rarely personal to individuals.
Eagles83

I’m not sure I agree with the genius part of your argument for keeping Phil in the business. It was a platforming with a spin mechanic similar to echochrome. Sure Fez’s version of this mechanic was different from echochrome but it wasn’t dissimilar enough to be considered a visionary. I also don’t think it is childish for people to really dislike this guy after all of the vitriol he would throw out verbally and in written form. I personally can’t wait for the day that we don’t hear anything from this guy.
http://www.mc2w.com mc2w

Besides, there is no /V/ on 4chan. Clearly this stands for /Five/, or /FiveGuys/. Boycott their restaurant.
http://www.mc2w.com mc2w

HIDE YOUR KIDS, HIDE YOUR VANS, AND GET A DOG
Kerrian Walker

Terrorists! Run.
d0x360

Doxxed you say?
RyanShutup

Visionary? You mean by ripping off paper mario? Common bro, FEZ is an ok game but it’s nothing revolutionary.
Abort Mission

Lol, he “doxxed” himself just to garner support and discredit 4chan.

No one on /v/, as far as I’m aware, did this. Most are under the consensus to not do anything retarded like this that would shift attention away from the scandal.

Also

“Head mod”

“/V/”

“Anonymous”

This sounds like retarded bait from a tard who spent maybe 10 minutes on 4chan and googled /b/tard culture on knowyourmeme. Absolutely disgusting
Chronos Chris

“simply because you don’t like their personality is stupid, childish, and overall shows a total lack maturity throughout the industry. It’s disgusting, to say the least.” Err yes.. one person decides it’s a good idea to hack him so let’s blame the entire gaming community!.. Please stop jumping to conclusions. Anyway, he bought all the hate upon himself really. He was his own worst enemy.
Chronos Chris

Phil Fish… A true visionary and artistic genius? He made one indie game. One trick pony more like.
Kamille

phil deserves all the hate is coming at him. The guy’s a pretentious prick that thinks that only his opinions are valid. He often complains about gamers being man children yet half his twitts are nothing but insults and rants. Hypocrisy at its finest.
Dakt

Quality journalism
Heinzy

“While many gamers go far to show that we are all family here in the industry”
Incest is illegal in most states you know.
Patrick Bateman

>/V/

Get fucked
Nami

Copypasta time!

Polytron was hosted on Cloudflare. The changes made to the page can only be made by the owner.

Phil and his cohorts have obviously arranged a staged event in which several high crimes were committed.

1) false accusation of a felony
2) Breach of contract with industry giants Sony and Microsoft
3) Felony corruption for divulging usernames and passwords of his employees to the public

Phil is going to prison. Everyone involved in this scandal is going to prison. These people aren’t even celebrities, they’re middle class American and Canadian brats. They do not give a fuck about the law, the law does not give a fuck about them.

The file on his “hacked” site contained private figures from Steam, Microsoft, and Sony. In Microsoft’s case, the archive also contained source files for Fez on 360. We’re talking about a product that generated six figure sales for a Fortune 500 company. Their lawyers are going to demand an investigation, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

Also, this “attack” implicates that Cloudflare has weak encryption, which it objectively does not. This “attack” will also be investigated by Cloudflare, whose security specialists will review the server logs.
- Krister Berntsen
  
  Polytron is not hosted on Cloudflare… Nothing is. Cloudflare is CDN. A series og mirrors of a source-host. Polytron is hosted at TekSavvy. (Username and password for control-panel was doxd at pastebin)
- bigevilworldwide
  
  You should probably actually know what your talking about first instead of copy pasting someones already wrong information from a facebook post, reddit post or something you came across in another article, it makes you look ignorant….Perhaps you just don’t know how the internet works cause nothing on earth is hosted on cloudfare, and even a simple 1st grader knowledge of networking tells you that IF something is hosted in one place and mirrored at other places IF you control the host you control the mirrors……But your a lawyer/networking genius I’m sure, you’ve probably played all the phoenix wright games to get all your legal knowledge
  - Nina Illingworth
    
    So that’d be a no then. Thanks. (no sarcasm, I really had no idea if that made any sense at all)
  - Nami
    
    It’s spelled “you’re”. Don’t berate others when you screw up a five letter word. Say all you like, but words without backing proof are just words. :^]
ImOnaDrugCalledSheen

I dont have any issue with the guy personally but from the general consensus of the gaming community I dont think anyone will care if he gets out of gaming.
Nina Illingworth

Warning: Not a huge gamer, I play stupid mass market titles and I play them poorly.

Does anyone know if that Cloudfare thing is true? That you can’t actually “hack” it the way being shown?

As an outsider this story just keeps getting weirder. I appreciate the author’s attempt to unravel the puzzle but if Phish was a visionary I never saw it on his Twitter. All my hardcore gamer friends have been RTing crazy things he’s said the past couple of weeks and I honestly though he was a homeless drifter who did video game reviews on youtube for a living or something. I had no idea he’d even made a game no have I ever heard of the one he made.

This story is crazy – do people REALLY fake Doxx themselves to win an internet fight or to further their career? And that… works somehow?

#ConfusedInCanada
- markjohns
  
  No, the “fake doxx” thing is stupid. it’s obviously not fake.
  - Patrick Bateman
    
    Explain why the number led to a fucking gas station on hawaii then you prick
  - Nina Illingworth
    
    Yeah – I mean look I have no clue, but that seems REALLY out there. Is that copypasta above true? Wow – I had no idea the world of Indy gaming could be this savage. #EyesOpened
Andrew

can’t wait for cloudflare’s report on this
Aggy

Artistic genius? I didn’t know stealing random ideas from a game here, and a game there, slapping a new coat of paint on it and calling it FEZ, qualifies as “Artistic genius”
- http://mfdawes.com Mixel
  
  All games are made that way though. Fez was pretty great, either way.
Dave

Yeah. The “head moderator” and “/V/” part, and the fact that this happened right after Phil started raging about the Five Guys thing, and IMMEDIATELY after he made a tweet about “going to sleep,” and the fact that he immediately offered up Polytron within minutes of it happening, AND the fact that it’s a 1.5 GB file for some fucking text, and the fact that there was literally nothing about this on /v/ anytime recently? Pretty obvious fake. Funny that someone actually fell for it.
Paul

Because they don’t like his personality?

Are you serious?

It was FAR worse than that. This guy was a psychopath and has some serious mental health issues. He needed to leave the industry a long time ago and get some help. I am not even trying to troll, I’m being very serious.

He was extremely toxic to the gaming industry and community.
- Paul
  
  I also highly doubt /v/ or Anonymous did this
- https://plus.google.com/u/0/114994124650840583731 Phil D.
  
  Hell yes – http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/quinnspiracy
Dickbutt

>>Austin Griffith is LevelSave.com’s Reviews Editor.<<

You can tell on the first glance whether you are reading an article written by someone with journalistic degree or whether it was written by a blogger.

Because bloggers dont even feel the need to verify the source.

Phil Fish might as well have made up him getting hacked, just like Zoe Quinn did. If 4chan really hacked him they would show it around like a trophy and blame it on Reddit/9gag because there is a running a joke about blaming such things on Reddit.

Yet you see none of this.
Try to factcheck next time if you want to be a reporter like the big boys.
Sherlock

Found this little tidbit.
- Guest
  
  Funny thing is that Cloudflare is not a hosting provider, but a CDN. CDNs mirrors a website from an source-host. If you control the source-host, you control the mirrors. John Smiths argument is flawed.
  - bigevilworldwide
    
    Shhhhhh…The little mindless idiot script kiddies IF that get their fact from facebook posts, reddit posts and 4chan. Didn’t you know that means you know everything if you get your “hacking” info from those places
    - Guest
      
      http://themundanematt.tumblr.com/post/95440805149/so-adam-sessler-alex-lifschitz-and-zoe-quinn-walk-in
  - Aoi Warai
    
    The problem is, all likely scenarios require insider knowledge. You can speculate about how, through a betrayal or leak, but it required insider knowledge, that’s the highest probability. Think about for a second. How did the attackers, if it wasn’t insider threat, find the primary servers if they’re behind Cloudflare? It’s a CDN — what does that entail?
    
    To do a defacement behind Cloudflare, you need to change the DNS, so they would have had to either:
    
    1.) Compromise the Cloudflare account, which would require a previous compromise on Phil or his staff = insider threat, or attacker with insider knowledge.
    
    2.) Know the location of the primary Polytron servers, and compromise an account = insider threat, or attacker with insider knowledge.
    
    Also, if they were so skilled, why didn’t they backup the defacement with their own Cloudflare accounts? If they can hack DNS — which is how a Cloudflare defacement would go down — why didn’t they take that simple step? Why leave it there for the site admins to take down in 30 minutes?
    
    Not very pro — not even as pro as other parts of the attack. An attack is one level of skill at the beginning, but ends with a lower level of skill, and looks noob at the end?
    
    So you have two scenarios:
    
    A.) someone working with or under Fish gave out that info to a skiddie on 4chan, or is framing them,
    
    B.) Fish did it to himself, or asked for help, like in insurance fraud.
    
    After you consider those aspects, NOW look at the evidence floating around. Evaluate motive. Then ask yourself what is the most probable scenario.
- Viper
  
  To add to what sherlock added, check this out.
  
  http://i.imgur.com/E3o94Se.jpg
  - http://encyclopediadramatica.se/ Encyclopedia Dramatica
    
    You have to set up and activate 2 factor authentication in cloudflare.
- InfernoFlameZERO .
  
  http://themundanematt.tumblr.com/post/95440805149/so-adam-sessler-alex-lifschitz-and-zoe-quinn-walk-in .
- http://encyclopediadramatica.se/ Encyclopedia Dramatica
  
  Cloudflare is not a host.
- babeuf
  
  The Cloudflare thing is totally wrong. Wrote this on it:
  
  http://www.babeuf.net/about-cloudflare/
Chardo

there is no “head mod and leader of 4chan.org and Anonymous”, no such person exists, whoever was responsible of this hack obviously means no good for 4chan at all, they are just trying to put the blame on /v/, hell, go check /v/ right now and see how everyone is disturbed and speculating over who couldve orchestrated all of this.
- Guest
  
  http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/quinnspiracy
killian long

“driving a true visionary and artistic genius like Phil Fish” Keep choking on his dick. I’m sure he appreciates it.
Sherlock

There is photo proof that Adam Sessler, Zoe, and random dude were at a bar at /v/ prior to the attack on Phil. Does that mean Zoe hacked Phil!?
- Guest
  
  Here it is
  - Abort Mission
    
    What kind of a loser looks at 4chan while at a bar? Jesus…
- Sherlock
  
  Here is the pic
Guest

“hacked by the /v/ board”
Nope. By someone claiming to come from there.
Dale

You are the most needlessly over-dramatic excuse for a “writer” I’ve ever seen. You seriously think there’s a leader of Anonymous? Just don’t. Give up. Run away.
- Mr. Menace
  
  That part about the leader of Anonymous is in quotes.
S10TH the robot

nobody believes /v/ actually did this do they?
- Jay
  
  As far as we know. Somebody *claiming* to be from /v/ did it. Obviously, /v/ itself did not organize this.
  - Andrew
    
    they traditionally blame it on sites they don’t like as a false flag
- http://encyclopediadramatica.se/ Encyclopedia Dramatica
  
  It was obviously ebaumsworld.
SkinnyAssGamer

good dooche bag got what he deserves. I hope the hackers get an award for their great service, they shall eat like kings tonight and get free food, wine, etc.

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Austin Griffith