Ok, wow. I've been writing this post for the last several hours, just coming back to it when ever I had time. So, here you go. I atempted to make sure I sounded as least harsh as possible, i'm not even angry. But if one of these points rubs someone the rong way I apologize. Also, just saying, knowing me, this is probably just in a big mumbo jumbo, but you should be able to make sence out of at least some of it. here goes.
Hi all. First, I knew it would happen and understand why your all frusterated at my decision. About the maps thing first, I meant possibly certain stores in the village, with other ways to get those items of course. It was only a thought, not even something confirmed I would do. All the unfairness, I completely understand as well. I just want to be able to hold onto most of the free portion of the game. I want people to be able to play it fairly, for free. Which is why I would have no problem making the limitations more fair, possibly even slightly lowering the price of these accounts of course giving the purchasers a slight refund, but i'd have to think about stuff. This was an extremely hard decision to make. Do you know how much I tried keeping the game free for everyone? But thanks to not just the cheaters, I had to change my mind and make paid accounts a thing. Last time, I atempted doing a purge whare people could save there accounts. I offered restores to inisent people who lost there things after I fixed the bug they were using... But everyone was just to ungreatful for me to even consider doing that again. Everyone was extremely frusterated about loosing a day of work because they submitted there characters before. I know that's how it works, and it makes sence why people were angry at me then, and I know everyone just cares about the game play. But so much more goes into this for me. I was trying to fix the cheating bugs staying up all night during my vacation, etc etc. I know, it's know excuse and i'm not treating it as such, i'm just mensioning it. Ok maybe it's a bit of an excuse, because it played a part in this decision. How these cheats work, is someone finds a bug to get 13000000 pop cans, then go around giving 250000 pop cans to every player they find. This makes it nearly impossible to just catch one cheater and make him/her go away. It's already to late. I can't just back up the char database... And we can thank the people who think it's fun to make the 2323232323232 ahahahahahahahah efefefefefef jkjkjhfkjghfkjgfkjgh characters all the time, play them for  2 minutes and never come back. More spamming and cheating. It quickly spirals out of control once 20 people have 250000 pop cans... Then start giving there friends... On and On and On. It just get's to the point whare I need to make an instand decision, to try to atempt to avoid a full purge. It keeps happening. So I had to do something to prevent it from happening. I know some of you think I can press a couple buttons and get rid of all the cheaters, but that's not how it works. Look at criticviews posts about the IP addresses. People can buypass bans. They can recreate there characters. Theres nothing I can do to stop it aside from money, the thing that is 200 times harder to hack. About the rules, I agree. I completely trake responsibility for not doing that and realize it as a huge mistake, and your statements are completely justified. However, theres more than 1 way to get information acrossed. When people get 2000000 pop cans, I try to warn them. All the time I try to warn them. They just don't listen. Rules or not, it just wouldn't matter. Theres a point whare rules or not, you know it's cheating and you know it's rong, even with out comon sence, at least if your getting warnings. Theres  a /warn command for admins for heavens sakes and they don't listen. I ban them... These cheating asses know what there doing rong. And if I can't find them? I set the motd or put out a public notification. Doesn't matter, it keeps happening. So rules or not like I said, it wouldn't have made a might of a difference anymore, at least for stopping cheating it's self. But for explinations and just general responsibility it makes perfect sence, and I'm gonna get it done. And I do, try to block cheating in the survive the wild code. But after a while... I can't just sit there fixing cheating bugs till 7:30 in the morning, then get pissed on by parents... Yeah, I do breefly wanna bring that up. The time I have on the computer is sometimes very limited. My parents are very strict about it and I avoid there strictness as best I can, but I don't wanna spend the time I have on the computer which may sceme like a lot, fixing the code. Yes, security is a big thing to be worked on and I do, but theres a point... At least for me, whare it just hardly is worth it to sit for so long and fix those bugs. It means no more game features. Thus charging for no limitations. People have loved the game and that's cool. And peoples love of a game is a very powerful motivator, but even that goes so far. How much is that worth. Because to me, it's worth quite a lot, but not all this. Not the stress I'm feeling that ends up getting offline with me while I try to think of more ways to stop cheaters, or the time I spend online trying to fix them, and restart the server another time to see that my cheat fixing code is still broken, it's just dev things of course, but I don't know about you other devs, but for me, after a while, there's a point whare i've had enough of it. Threw out everything i've been trying to keep the game as free as possible, and yeh, maybe I should list this as donationwhare though I consider me selling to players rather than them donating to me when items are bought, but that's how I power the stw server that I have. I was considering talking to players about upgrading that, but the thing is, it's utterly not fun having your own game hosted on a server that you can hardly control. If something goes crunch, I gotta wait for my server host to get up and fix it for me. Me and damion used to be working all day on little bgt servers so I could run something and get the contents of the server folder so I could view it... Uh uh, to much after a while. It just, after a while, just starts to not work. And I don't wanna be the person who's stressing on someones home machine all the time with stw's server that takes an entire thread to work. So once I got enough money from the stw store, I got this VPS. Now I use that money to pay for it. If people choose not to pay, that's not my choice and I completely respect your decision. What do do not respect, however, is when someone purchases 3 DFC's, then finds a bug that, @steve I can't find in the games code because I never know what the bug is, allows them to multiply there DFC's to 6000000. So you think i'm cash grabbing... Technacly, just, logicly, DFC's, teleporters, just those items... I've scene chars with 6000000 DFC's and once even 599000000 teleporters... i'm not lying. Loads of people can back that up. Anyway... How much money is that technacly, logicly, steeling from me? Well, based on simple calculations... Result  text  $128067800. Uh, yeah. I think I got way more royally cash grabbed then I am not even trying to do. So I see how theres no explination and the rules document would have fixed that, but how would it fix the cheating? mind you i'm going to right one up tonight, tonight, anyway so I don't forget. Back to my earlier point though, aside from like 5 inisent people, probably less, once a cheater multiplies there inventory like that, no one is going to buy them. And some inisent players have this story. Oh, I had pop cans and other stuff to trade, so I gave who I didn't know was a cheater some pop cans and they gave me death free cards and teleporters. See, there still inisent, and with out even knowing, they have cheated items. See how it uncontrolably spreads? You might say I just stop the trading of paid items, but theres a pretty compelling reason not to do that. I mean... Pay pal is banned in some countries... right? And doing purges to clear the items from the server monthly would drop my player base way farther than adding these limits. Because honestly, how else to remove those items? Now, to the reasons I did this that arn't even the real cheaters. This could sound harsh, but most of you are as ungreatful as hell. Yeah, I know how it works, and I know you want to enjoy the game and when you loose some of your work you get pissed, I would to, but if i'm thinking of your point of view, it'd be great if you could consider mine. When this cheating happened at first, I did everything I could to fix it. I knew i'd have to do a purge, so I added a /charsubmit command because I cared about your guyses time. I waited 2 days for you all to submit your characters to not get purged, and said that if your submitted char was deleted as a cheater i'd help you restore. But nope, that's not even near enough. Everyone was fucking pissed. They were all pissed because they lost 12 hours of work. You have no idea how close I was to just clicking the purge button, deleting the submitted data, enjoying the rest of my vacation and saying deal with it on your own, now you lose 6 months of work, and who gives a flying fuck. That's what the players of stw made me feel like. I know it's probably rediculis, and I only showed a little bit of that on the game, but what I posted above was what I was thinking. So what do I do then. I need an answer. I want the game to remain as free as possible, but if i'm gonna get robbed 128000000+ dollars every 3 days... Yeah, I have to do something. I understand that as it is hard for me to see all your points of view, it is probably at least a bit hard to see mine. I figured deeling with everyone getting pised all at once would be better than deeling with it slowly over time with purges. All that time not making a single sent until I run out of time with the vps and then bye bye stw. So this was my only option I saw remaining to me. And honestly, maybe I should just make it entirely paid as smoke said. All you are so mad you just say your done. Is it worth trying to make the game as playible for as many people as possible? I am starting to think not. It is a rout that I really don't want to have to take though. So I hope this clears up some issues, any more explaining i'd be happy to do, but I hope this helps at least a little bit explain why I did this.

Wow guys.
I'm not surprised one bit by you people. But, I can see it in 2 different points.
Sam's point, witch people keep fucking cheating on STW, and he sits on the computer working on the code, and more code, and more code.
Do you guys know how hard it is? Yeah, its a fucking living hell sometimes!
But you know what Sam? I can see it from other people's point of view. Besides, I wouldn't even bother with these players sometimes.
If it stresses you out so much, you could just say no what? You people are so ungreatful, and you all should just not play stw!
I wouldn't even try to get this payed, because its bgt! Ok? Bgt!
I code in bgt and even I myself know how easily BGT games can be hacked.
Why? Because I did that myself.
SBP? Hacked!
Not like I would do that to you, because I hardly play STW anyway, but still.
I'm pretty sure that I'm not the only one that knows how to do that, and people could just get keys and give them to their friends.
But its up to you dude, if you want to lose a lot of players or not.

Hey all, It's rusty99 again. I see a lot of bullshit and a lot of grait speeches. Honestly, why do people cheat, why are people so ungreatful. A couple of great questions that cannot be answered easily. So keep in mind, I haven't played stw ever since last year in August. No I wasn't done with the game, my computer broke. I will see you soon in June though, and Sam you know from knowing me a little in the past, that I have some pretty good ideas, like the alt space command. So, sit back, relax and listen to some ideas which you can ignore, or, you can take this in to consideration. First, I have a great idea. I know offline mode is not an option, but, take it into consideration. If people cheat offline, let them, they'll get knowwhere. Or, do it like trtr, make separate servers, or creat an stw match with your friends, and play. Now this might sound like another one of Josh's posts, but maybe think about it. Or how about a trust game. Let's say survive the wild. Sam has a huge comunity, and he has cheaters and noncheaters, he can do a trust command on the noncheaters, and delete the cheaters. Now, you have a comunity with noncheaters and no cheaters. If you creat a character, you have to be allowed. You can't creat and cheat, creat and cheat. Hard serial bann sounds great! I don't know how complicated it would be, but it would be great! Now, at the beginning of this new topic, I was like fuck this game, I'm out. But that's just not a good way to handle things! I wouldn't have been so ungreatful if my char was deleted. Stop being so addicted to the damn game, and cut Sam some slack! Seriously, stop complaining and get a life. I'm sorry that your char was deleted, but come on! I miss the pk days, because i could kill anyone I wished. Some of you guys need to relax. Don't get me wrong, I was an ass, and complained all the time, and still do. I'm beginning to realize, that you have to here both sides of the story first. Anyway, good luck Sam, and keep going, we all make mistakes, we just have to make sure we learn from them. Enough said, I'm outa here!

Wait...
  I just realized something. Sam, you see, you could do something about this, even I know that. You can't limit cheating? The flying crap do you mean! You most certainly can implement limitations:
  Make sure those store items can't be dropped.
Put a limit on how many can be had.
Make it so that people can't transfer to others.
Some people don't have access to pay pal. Oh snap. Guess we'd better figure out other payment options. Swamp is fully paid and I don't think all of those people have access to pay pal. Believe me, you could definitely make it so that store items can't be obtained without handing over cash.

lol, +1

#2079, and not only in blind comunity. All comunity has good and bad players. Just check some youtube videos and  listen how people cheat.

at severestormsteve1: the kaldobsky gamer accounts can only be purchased through paypal, so yes, Swamp and Castaways2 are paypal only. Paypal does have a few options available if it comes to how you wanna pay, but the fact that it's blocked in certain countries remains. Besides, with the eye on public usability paypal is allmost the only way to go, otherwise you'd have to add such a massive amount of paying addons that your head would ake before you even started.

I've been reading some of the ideas proposed on this topic, but the most critical thing to remember is someone can buy the game and easily give the email/username/password to friends, or anyone of that matter. For those of you that know about what happened with chicken nugget, a well-known key got black-listed. But, that was about a year after it was given out. The point is, something would have to be done to make sure one person and only that one person is logging in to the game with his/her paid account.

Well guys, I just saw these posts.
Honestly, why don't we all just shut up already. It looks very clear to me that Sam doesn't give a shit what we say, so just don't waist your time writing these long posts because, well, Sam doesn't care.
And Sam, we were in a call once, and you told me that you had a lot of money from people buying things on STW. Ok?
So, don't be putting server payments in to this, because I know, and so do others, that you get so much money from the STW store. So, yeah.

@post 2,087 Believe me. If people are determined to hack, and they want to annoy people that baddly, yes, they will spend money, even if it means getting caught just so they can do it. This cheating and hacking problem is not just in the blind community. 2 exampples spring to mined. The playstation network hack of 2011, then the take down of psn again along with xbox if memory serves me correct in christmas 2014. The moral of the story is, and yes, I know people will differ with me on opinions about this, is that hackers, trolls, cheaters, you name it. They get their pleasure out of seeing others annoyed and ticked off. Its about the same thing to them as being adicted to a game is for you. For them, it doesn't matter weather their being caught or not, even if it means losing a few dollars because in the end, all they wanted to see was the angry rants and for them it was worth it, because as long as you've given them a reaction, it was well worth the money they spent on a game that they know a lot of users are on. You can try to eliminate at least a lot of the hackers, but their is no 100 percent solution to get rid of them and unfortunitly, this is just one of the downsides to managing an online game and one the mainstreem community has had to cope with for years, despite charging subscription fees and whatnot. I agree, its sad, and in a perfect world, we'd have no hackers. But if we're going to be in an era with online games, a lot of understanding has to take place. And this problem doesn't apply just to the hacking sanario. If people are desporit enough to play a game, they will make all attempts too play said game, even if they have gotten band.

Alright, I have stayed silent on this topic for a while, but I think a few things need to be stated. First, the huge reason why this game is plagued by hacking and cheating is because it is quite inconsistent in its design. This is very much the same thing that affected Ultrapower and ultimately brought it down. I can't begin to give examples of players who have hundreds of a particular item and I only have a handful. I might have three grenades, while someone else has over a hundred. The issue here is that half of the items in the game cannot be crafted and I've stated this before. So, it is only natural that people will be desperate to get gifts. Speaking of gifts, they are quite an annoyance because most of the time I end up with items I already have. Furthermore, items like marsh don't have any practical uses. So, the should either be redesigned or thrown out altogether.
The second issue is gathering items in the first place. How many times have I wanted to build a net and had to spend over two hours collecting grass. I can only pick up one item per second, unless I use an item which can only be used once, like an energy drug, or food item. Then, I can pick things up faster, but that is probably some kind of exploit, which I don't really care about at this point. I don't cheat, but the game can feel slow at times, so I happen to just use it to my advantage every now and then. Increasing the speed at which items can be picked up can make the game more exciting. One suggestion is that the rate would depend on the weight of an item. Grass is light for instance, so you could pick lots of it quite fast. However, would, rocks, metal, and other heavier items would take longer to pick up.
The crafting system itself is also quite frustrating. Imagine you have 100 dead rabbits. You want to prepare them, so you have to gut and skin them, which is actually the reverse of what you would really do. You have to spend a few minutes taking both steps, which results in opening your bag, hitting escape, and pressing t 200 times. It would be much easier if I could select a rabbit and repeatedly press t and do it all in one step. 100 rabbits sure can take a while, but at least I don't have to keep opening my bag as often.
So, the best thing to do is to offer players a way to craft more items, allow them to complete objectives, or quests that could earn them coins, gifts, and other items, particularly ones that cannot be crafted, and perhaps get rid of randomly spawning items in the village shops, but that is up to you. I hope that this doesn't come off as too harsh, but it needed to be said, especially now that the game essentially has to be bought to unlock the more advanced features.

Salute. And here goes another suggestion.
The ability to cutt a tree by sword;
("In fact, it is unlogical that you can't cutt a tree down by a sword")
Although, I've told Sam about it, and he said he will do it soon. But I don't know; what about another player's opinions.
Have a great time. Hope to see your inv full of items, not lazy like me.
Cocoa