WonderGamer.net

YouTube creator aids Steam trolls in spreading misinformation

Blacklists Boycotts Downloads Games Reviews

Disclaimer:  This article was not written by WonderGamer himself, but by one of the helpers of the site.  The article was reviewed, edited & added to by WonderGamer prior to being published.

WonderGamer.net had already been receiving mass attacks from the Steam community (in addition to targeted attacks over multiple profiles for WonderGamer himself) for months in retaliation to a comment left by our webmaster on a game review for an indie game called Don't Scream, that review being nothing more an than attempt to be funny (these types of reviews flooding the Steam review system).  The head of WonderGamer.net is very passionate as to how this degrades the review system on Steam & makes it nearly useless in finding actual reviews that can be used in making a decision as to whether a game is worth buying or not.

While these attacks had died down for a bit (at least in the Steam thread where this all started), our webmaster started noticing new people joining his Twitch channel through his IRC logs, at the time these were expected to be a different group from the Warframe community that was attacking a video calling out an individual for leeching in the game while a rare reward was available through Invasion missions (later that video was used in a report against them after a mass of abusive comments on that video that didn't make it past moderation & abuse of the rating system across his YouTube channel).  We only became aware of what the cause of the influx in views, abusive comments & abuse of the rating system was when a new comment was left in the original thread on 1/2/2024, giving a link to the video in question (previously getting statements dubbing the name of "Gravyman", which at the time didn't make sense to us, not until we saw the content of that video).

This video was published on 12/27/2023 by YouTube channel CutCafe, apparently choosing to become a willing contribution in the spread of misinformation through their channel.  Not only was this individual playing a part in the contributing to the spread of misinformation, they also got another site involved (CastingCall.club according to description on the video), making them willing participants in this spread of misinformation through their contribution to that video.

So what was in that video that was so slanderous?  For the sake of not giving additional ad revenue to a 25-minute misinformation publication via web crawling spiders, we won't be giving any direct links to the video itself, however we have provided a link to the channel & are giving the option to the reader to find the video itself, however we have to warn against clicking on any links on the channel itself or videos published by the channel to avoid possible malware from them (we haven't personally confirmed the sites that are linked off of this channel, but given we don't trust the channel after the publication of the misinformation against WonderGamer.net, we don't particularly trust the links that are provided on that channel either; this is why we are also not supplying a link to the site previously mentioned either).

In starting to break down what was stated in that video, we are going to start with the title of that video itself.  The title states "DON'T SCREAM FAN", which in itself is inaccurate.  Nobody who works on WonderGamer.net owns this game & we definitely aren't fans of the game, nor do we have any intentions on purchasing it.  WonderGamer himself can't even run it, given he is still running Windows 7 (being unable to obtain a copy of Windows 10 & the updater from the Microsoft website not working on his PC).  In addition to this, WonderGamer also has not purchasing anything Steam since it became public knowledge that his OS was going to be cut off by Steam & no longer functional after January 1st, 2024 (opting to purchase PC games from other sites or on Nintendo Switch instead), fearing that he was already going to be out well over $6000 of purchased games over 2 accounts & unwilling to put any more money into Steam until he could determine he'd still be able to access what was already purchased.

As we have already stated, WonderGamer is VERY passionate in preserving the functionality of a system that is degraded by users that have no interest in contributing to it as it was intended, instead only trying to be funny & get laughs from other like-minded individuals.  This was an argument that was in the thread, but quickly dismissed by the trolls that were attacking him in it.  The fact that the review system itself is not used as intended on Steam, which makes finding actual reviews with useful information on whether to make a purchase near impossible, it is further exacerbated by the fact that mostly the funny reviews are the ones that get the most helpful votes (something Steam tried to rectify several years ago by adding a funny vote to the previous 2 options, but was primarily ignored by those that insisted on continuing to make certain that useful reviews were always lower priority in being shown over dumb comments that didn't contributing to review functionality on Steam).

Granted, we have looked at what was stated in the video regarding the thread of comments on Steam & have determined that while the channel that published this video was a willing participant in the spread of misinformation, it is debatable as to whether they were a knowing participant in it.  This comes down to a point mentioned earlier in this article, the fact that the owner of that channel was taking the comments of trolls in that thread at face value & dismissing any validity from WonderGamer's statements.  There are details that were skewed by the trolls (such as the doxing comments, which became a primary scrutiny point after WonderGamer made the mistake of telling them he was going to list them on his Steam Troll blacklist) & a lot of other details that weren't even brought up in the thread, so it's likely those details were never taken into account when this video was created.  While we still retain our stance that they were willing in their spread of misinformation, we are at least giving the benefit of a doubt that the slander against us may not have been intentional (of course if they read this article & stand by their statements made in the video, we will know it was intentional at that point).

As far as WonderGamer.net is concerned, this is where things get messy & slanderous comments are being thrown about like candy on Halloween in their video.  The blacklists on the site (domain, IP, people, phone & users) are meant to inform the public of threats that we have personally ran into (or confirmed through others that requested we publish a review for them, as was the case with a few individuals on the Steam Scammer blacklist in particular) & give them a heads up on how to protect themselves against them.  As far as IPs are concerned, I don't believe there is a single hardware/software firewall out there that would allow you to consecutively add all the IPs confirmed as threats at the same time, but it can be used in site configurations to block them from attempting to hack another site (most of those IPs being hacking attempts to WonderGamer.net).  At one point WonderGamer.net provided raw access logs of attempts to access the site to show what hacking activity was done that warranted they were banned from accessing the site, as well as the publication of their IPs to the Hacker IP blacklist; these public logs were later retired (although a few still remain on the site & have yet to be removed) after the raw access logs stopped giving IP addresses for a year or two, giving domain names instead (which lead to the addition of the domain blacklist).

It was mentioned in a update on the WonderGamer.net home page (since moved to the news archives, but remains linked in the home page marquee) that we would be banning IPs under the belief of being a part of the targeted attacks from that thread on Steam using the site in doxing attempts against WonderGamer, something CutCafe clearly noticed prior to collecting data to be used in his video (it was mentioned in the video later, meaning they made a backup of that statement before they got banned), but ended up getting banned anyways because they were doing the same thing that was expected when the decision was made that we needed to start banning IPs to slow down the harassment.  So the owner of that channel was rightfully banned from the site in this case, being banned under the same terms that the decision was made, to stop the attempted doxing that was (more or less) proven in that video (or at least the degradation of information so he could make ad revenue off of verbally trashing a website & it's owner through their misinformation publications).

Aside from CutCafe being banned from the site, we don't actually know who's IP belonged to who (we were blocking an average of about 20 a day until the harassment died down in the thread on Steam where this all started), so while we have a IP for when the ban was placed, we don't necessary know what his IP is.  Also note that while there were a few IP addresses that got added to the Hacker IP Blacklist each day (on average, this really isn't any different from any other day, aside from some attempts going as far as to DDoS the website), bans that were put in place under the believe of being a part of what WonderGamer is calling the "Don't Scream Harassment Team" were not added to any public lists.  Even if we wanted to make this ban of CutCafe from the site permanent, we couldn't actually do it because we don't know what IP address belongs to him (outside of going through raw access logs & determining what pages they went to look at that were outlined in their video), but because of their actions in publishing that video, a permanenet ban would be warranted.

In regards to the World of Warcraft ban (Blizzard boycott) that was mentioned in their video, CutCafe conveniently left out the details about how the account got banned in the first place.  They did mention that this was related to a WoW epic mount scam, what they didn't mentioned was that I already knew this was a scam & was doing my part to make sure other people didn't get hit by it by reporting it to Microsoft, Google & Norton (which requires you to go to the site to be able to report it).  Despite having high security on my browser already & believing it would block any potential threats, the site had malware on it that allowed it to pull my active session details from memory & therefore acquiring my login details while on the site.  So in attempting to be a good samaritan & preventing others from becoming a victim to this scam, I in turn became a victim & was unable to retain access to my account after the malicious group that put up this site had their way with it.  If there is any silver lining in this, it's that they didn't have access to it for long, given I had already canceled my subscription during the pre-event for the upcoming DLC Wrath Of The Lich King ruining the game (the limit time they had to the account before the subscription ended still wasn't enough to stop them from getting it banned).

In regards to the game enhancer uncensor codes for games in The Sims (1 section of limited EA boycotts) series, they actually mentioned the reason why this code was used in their mockery of the statement, they just bypassed it to target another point in the comment.  Censoring in The Sims games are EXCEPTIONALLY bad & causes me a migraine attempting to play the game.  So the point of using those codes was not to see what was underneath, it was to remove an aspect in the game that was making me ill if I did attempt to play them.  The point of the matter in not purchasing those games on console systems was I wasn't knowingly going to put money into games that were going to make me ill based on a recurring trend in the game (excessive mosaic censorship).  As for what's under the mosaic filter?  It's not like you're going to get detail on those characters simply because you disabled the mosaic filter (not without a texture/model replacement), it's just a singular-colored skin with no additional details (and no illness).

There is nothing dangerous on this website & the claims of doxing it's readers are baseless.  When looking at the IP logs, you will see what constitutes an IP address going public & being a troll isn't one of them.  None of the IP addresses that were banned for this reason have been made public, those that were confirmed as hacking attempts were (a select few out of what was banned when expected doxers were misusing the site) & as we started tracing the IPs a few days into it, we started logging confirmed VPNs/Proxies so those bans would not be removed when the new ones of expected doxers were removed (of course the attacks picked up again, so the 2 year timer any unbans has been reset).

When WonderGamer became aware of this video, he attempted to file a report against the video for misinformation:
WonderGamer edit; screenshot added by WonderGamer, article from this point forward written by WonderGamer.
Additional details above this point added by WonderGamer include details about the World of Warcraft account ban
and regarding the uncensor codes through game enhancers for The Sims games on console systems.

Screenshot added by WonderGamer, article from this point forward is wriitten by WonderGamer

We waited a few days to see if YouTube would do anything about the video, monitoring the report history for my account to see if anything was going to be done.  Unsurprisingly, nothing happened to the video after 3 days, at which point it was determined that it was time to get a new publication up regarding the slander & willing contribution to targeted Steam troll attacks against WonderGamer.net & myself.  One thing I noticed when I was looking at the report history (something I don't think was a thing back when I was reporting videos), was that I hadn't reported a video on YouTube in nearly a decade (not reporting any videos on YouTube since 2014, it had to be something significant to get another report filed).

At this point the CutCafe channel is considered untrustworthy as a result of their publication of that slanderous review, as is the site that aided them in providing voiceovers (if not possibly dangerous/malicious).  Aside from an obvious blacklisting of comments from this channel from my own YouTube channel, I also made it a point to go through some of the comments on it & start blacklisting other users that were leaving supportive comments of the video or abusive comments against me (needless to say, I haven't left a comment on it, although there was a consideration of it until I decided a publication about it on here was a better route).

And additional step in response to the continuing harassment from the Steam thread, the increasing harassment on my own YouTube channel & even people who had watched this video leaving comments on my own shared content on Steam (dubbing the term "Gravyman" when they did comment, promptly resulting in a block & deletion of the comment), I decided I needed to tighten up my policy on when comments would be allowed to go public (meaning they made it past moderation) on my YouTube channel, leading to this publication on my Twitch/YouTube blog.  Not only has this escalation of events resulted in new content to be published to this site, it is also going to start affecting even civil responses being published and/or responded to on my own YouTube channel as the harassment continues.

It may be debatable as to whether CutCafe was a knowing participant in the spread of misinformation, but I agree with the beginning of this article, they were definitely a willing participant in it.  While their statements in the Community section of their channel states "Reminder not to seek out anyone involved with the Gravyman Saga!", from a troll's perspective, a troll is going to do what you tell them not to, so this only brought additional heat into the already burning harassment I was dealing with prior to the publication of there slanderous video.

Last updated 1/4/2024

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