@supremekiller I can a hundred percent confirm that this has not been created because of the new developer. The sounds issue has been in discussion on Discord for several weeks now.

I think it's a bit rich for the Cosmic Rage sound pack folks to claim that sounds were lifted from CR to be used in another sound pack, when I'm sure they still have remnants of the Miriani sounds left over in their own pack, which I made back in 2006? This means Cosmic Rage might not be able to talk about their own sound pack, either...

First, we hope that the scatterings of goblin type stuff will work into the story line properly.
Second, I am working to remove any sounds I find that are meta tagged. I think the use of the word "stolen," is harsh considering I have heard 95% of these sounds in other games, or variants thereof. Third, most of the files in the pack have no tag even stating who the owner is. Those that do, are being handled as we state on our website.

The developers were not reached out to privately by any moderator concerning the pack, other than a member of the CR soundpack team after this topic began to be discussed.

I think the professional thing to do, with any game developer, is to reach out to them privately and discuss the issues rather than make such a scene. This may get me in more hot water but I am trying to speak as diplomatically as possible.

While the decisions to crack down on Soundpacks should be respected, the handling of this entire situation has been shotty and, whether it was meant as such, did seem to be a target at the new guy because of the method in which this was handled.

Thanks everyone who has given feedback, and we hope you enjoy the game.

If you're going to enforce this rule, ban crazy party outright. You won't, because it's one of the most popular games in the audio games community, and doing so would be suicide for the forum.

It was an extremely poor decision on the moderation team's part to pass a judgement based on a rule in progress. Typically, you draft a regulation and place it into circulation, allow people to read it, and then you enforce it. How do you justify cracking down on what is (as of now) a nonexistent rule? Sure, you'll be thinking about it and writing it into existence soon, but you haven't yet. This is basically saying we're prohibiting you from drinking pepsy at our store, even though there's nothing on the door saying you can't drink pepsy here. We'll have the sign made in a few weeks, but even not seeing the sign, you should've known the rule anyway, even though up until now, pepsy was a perfectly allowed beverage option.
I'm going to say that, in this case, the moderation team has failed the community, and should probably be subject to the community failure clause. This is a guilty until proven innocent situation. This is a blatant disregard for your user base, by attempting to force on them a rule which they knew nothing of, had no choice to accept or refuse.
You came out swinging in what I believe was an impassioned decision that resulted in a very poor execution. I've generally always supported the moderation team before, but I also have always tried to fight for the under represented, and in this case, your entire user base is the under represented.
It is the severest form of draconian rule to pass a mandate without allowing the members' consent. Would it have harmed anything to let the rule sit for a while as you considered it, drafted it, then put it into play? Would it have hurt anything to let the user base know such a rule existed?
It definitely would've caused a stir, but it would have anyway. If this is how moderation is going to be run on this site, then perhaps audiogames has run its course and the user base has a whole needs to wave goodbye and find new grounds. Heck, I left for a while and only returned because of Say The Spire, and what do I return to? Draconian dictatorship without any degree of consideration for the users of the forum.
It's this same kind of thing that saw previous moderation staff members be dismissed. Do we perhaps need a new moderation team if the current one is perfectly ok trying to enforce a rule that does not exist?
If you were going to enforce this rule, why to this one particular developer? Why not someone else who was much more established? Because this new developer was smaller, has a smaller following, and so you probably figured you'd receive less backlash than if you were to spring it on something like Crazy Party, Alter Aeon, or, yes, Cosmic Rage.
I think the moderation team owe the folks who make this game a huge apology, as well as one to the entire user base. You need to reconsider your positions. You are not our parents or our gods, nor our potentates. You are at the end of the day still users of the forum who also have the ability to moderate things when they get out of hand, that's it. Please don't pull the high horse and think you know what's better, which is exactly what you're doing when you try to pass a rule without anyone else's knowledge, consent, or ability to refuse.
This is why companies send out terms of service updates, and until such time, cannot enforce such rules. If PayPal wanted to disallow the use of Visa, they would have to first inform their users, then provide a grace period, then put the new decision into play.
I hope you're proud of yourselves for having gone this route. If you intend to stick to your guns, I'll probably have to leave this site, but not before I send yet another strongly worded communication to the site owners. It got things changed once when the Steam situation came up, and even if it does nothing now, my voice on the behalf of the user base will have been heard by the site owners.
Moderation staff, you are not a totalitarian rule.

I have always tried to stand behind the moderation team, but I'm sorry. This is going too far.
I most likely will find an alternative platform to announce any future game releases. I should not have to justify where every single asset in a project comes from. I'm extremely disappointed in how this is being handled.

Going to agree with the others saying this was probably a dumb snap decision.

I just want to point out that we have been floating the idea of cracking down on pirated assets for almost a year, off and on. This isn't something that should have actually come fully out of left field for any of you. I think arguing that there is no precedent for this is somewhat disingenuous, and is perhaps being enhanced by the appearance of favouritism.

That said, I respect the consensus that enforcing an upcoming rule for one situation looks like favouritism. It isn't actually going to be that way in a big-picture sense, but I hear you when you say that's how it looks at the moment. We're working on it, and I personally want to apologize for the confusion here. We do feel that change needs to happen, but it isn't our aim, and certainly not mine specifically, to hurt or target anyone. I would like to point out that I have personally not heard this sound pack and do not have experience with space MUDs; as such, this is by no means a personal grudge. While I support the findings of other members of the team in determining that this game's sound pack had problematic assets, this is not a matter of personal motivation for any of us.

No, we haven't drafted a rule for the categorization of permissible and nonpermissible use of assets specifically yet. That's what we're working on. The fact is, this is a complicated issue that has a crapton of nuance to it. If it wasn't, we would have come to a decision a really long time ago.

We know full well that it's not just a question of whether or not you own and will prove ownership of every one of the literally hundreds of sound assets you possess in a given project. To ask you to do this is extremely onerous and completely unreasonable. We know, too, that a lot of cases where sounds are used between projects are not so egregious. I want you folks to realize that if you have a menu sound, a beep, a click, a couple of footsteps, that some other game has, we're not going to shove you out the door. It's a matter of scope. It is very difficult to figure out a rule which fairly enforces this stance. "Let everything be" is not viable. "Kill everything with even one offending asset" is awfully draconian. So we're trying to work, between the five of us, on a plan that strikes that middle ground. Because this specific game was pretty cut and dried, and was in the spotlight, we took action on it.

Let me be very, very clear here.
If your project relies on copyrighted assets - whether that be someone else's code, someone else's music, someone else's sounds, etc - and this can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, we will have to take action. We're already doing this when we see unauthorized forks, and lo and behold, the number of those games which show up on the forum has been decreasing. If you are willing to replace the assets in question, then we want to work with you. We're trying to encourage people to use their own assets, or to give correct attribution where it's due. What we are not doing here is settling scores, muzzling your freedoms or trying to hurt anyone.
This will not, absolutely will not, turn into a witch-hunt. We are not suddenly going to be reaching out to all developers, publicly or privately, asking them to verify the sources for all their assets. We are not going to be looking for reasons to shut anyone down. In fact, I suspect that once the rule itself is finalized and put in place, it will affect only a few large projects at first, and from there, we hope it actually encourages people to work together. Projects will be assessed on a case-by-case basis; if you think project A being targeted is a problem because project B does it worse, then please let us know, and we'll investigate it fairly and without bias. We recognize that sound design can be a huge and daunting process. We're a small community, too, and that doesn't help. But if a thread about building Crazy Party sounds is any indication, it shows just how dedicated some people are to helping a project if its copyrighted assets are going to get it in trouble.

Look, here's the deal, okay? We truly believe that the problem of copyrighted assets has been ignored and soft-pedalled long enough, and we want to change that. But we aren't your enemies here. This isn't a power trip. this isn't fun. I've said more than once that I personally don't care when it's multi-million-dollar companies who suffer, because this won't hurt them and does bring people fun. Please, whatever you do, recognize that we're trying to affect positive change for this community, and don't demonize us. We're not doing this perfectly. I know that. We're trying to improve here, because many of your criticisms are valid enough that they cause me concern. This isn't an "us vs. you" situation. Please don't tilt it that way, because we're certainly not. Instead, please try to help us do this right. We do think it's the best thing to do, overall, but if you have constructive suggestions, we are always open to those.

Thanks for reading.

Liam, I am not alone in this, and I am not by any means the only one driving it. Yes, I'm a part of it, and I am absolutely not going to throw anyone under the bus by saying "It's his, not mine, I didn't do it". But in the case of this specific game, I saw a problem, I said it was okay to highlight it as a problem based on believable proof from someone who knows more than I do. I wasn't the one who sparked the discussion, I was just one of the people who agreed with a proposed solution. That proposed solution backfired a bit, because it looks like we're picking on this game, and that wasn't our intention. This is why I apologized.
And yes, I've come out against Crazy Party's use of copyrighted assets before, but on a five-person team, one voice, no matter how shrill you think that voice might be, can't carry the day, unless you're implying that at least two of the other four can't stand up to me. Also, bear in mind how much time passes between my occasional CP comments, and the fact that we're now staring this potential rule reform in the face. I wouldn't characterize it either as me enacting personal bias or me having an agenda. Hey, I've actually had some fun with the card-battle half of the game, and I know how much fun others have had with the game itself.
To flip this narrative for a second, I'm also in favour of dropping support for the Alter Aeon sound pack (not the game itself, just the MushZ sound pack). I say this even though I have loved that sound pack ever since I found it. I say this even though the sound pack changed the way I played that game, and even though I love a lot of the music and many of the sounds within it. My very first kneejerk reaction to someone mentioning the Alter Aeon sound-pack - and by kneejerk, I mean three seconds or so - was "wait a sec, that thing is awesome, you can't--" And then I stopped. Yes, you can. If it's using copyrighted assets - and it is, it's full of them - then it's just as bad as other offenders. It doesn't matter how much I might enjoy it personally, on an artistic level or from the perspective of a player. It's still a problem. If you believe I have an anti-CP bias and am out to get it, that may be a little harder to support when other games are also considered problematic alongside Crazy Party.

Also, revenue vs. non-revenue definitely is one aspect of this situation that bears consideration. I think that when you do it in an effort to make money, and are caught with copyrighted assets, that's way more trouble than if no one at all is getting actively harmed by this. That said, money isn't the only currency. I think popularity counts here too, and if you're using someone else's work to essentially get famous in the community, that's definitely iffy enough to warrant a look.

Your idea of investigating games on a case-by-case basis is actually an approach I favour. It's either that, or it really -will look like a witch-hunt, and trust me, absolutely nobody wants that or thinks it's a good idea. There are only two issues, but I think both are possible to solve.
The first is that if people know this, but want to go on doing what they've always done, they just won't tell us anything and the rule will hamstring us because we're unable to act on our own. I think that we'd have to phrase the rule such that will only investigate games when we have probable cause. so for instance, if I'm randomly playing a new game and I'm hearing copyrighted assets left and right, I can ask for it to be investigated by the team to see if 1. I'm reliable, 2. I'm wrong or not and 3. it's egregious enough to warrant action. My hearing those sounds represents probable cause, whereas, say, just knowing who made a game is not probable cause for investigation on its own. This would allow anyone, not just the staff, to ask that a project be looked at if there is probable cause. Again, not a witch-hunt.
The other fly in the ointment is other pre-existing projects that are clearly benefiting in big ways from copyrighted assets (there are a few of them, it's not just a Crazy Party or Alter Aeon thing, believe me, I know). I think for some of those, it might be necessary to act based on demonstrable use of copyrighted assets.

I also want you folks to keep something in the forefront of your minds when you react to what's being said here or elsewhere. This really isn't a huge deal. We can't shut down these projects, and wouldn't want to even if we had that power. We can't read your private messages, and there are tons of ways to talk about things that don't actually belong here on the forum itself. I feel like maybe some of you think these projects will die without the support of this forum,b ut they really, truly won't. Most of them are completely self-sustaining and, while they get some benefit from us, they don't need us for their continued success. As a net-negative impact, this proposed crackdown isn't actually going to impact most of you in huge ways. The trick is for us to do it fairly and equably, without bias or favouritism, without bungling the whole thing. We have not lost sight of the fact that we're all a part of this community. Please bear with us, and keep the constructive feedback coming.

As I understand it, if a legal agreement says that someone can't use assets in any shape or form, then they can't use them in any shape or form. Whether or not they're being used in a commercial project or a free project is irrelevant. It's possible that the copyright holder of some sound or another won't care and won't take action, but there's always a chance they will. That's the whole point I'm seeing here. Yeah, it sucks. It sucks especially when all someone wants to do is make something fun and thinks having those sounds in their project would be cool. Sometimes it's done with no harm intended. At the end of the day, it's about protecting the forum as Jayde's said many times.

Clash of Lightsabers, the theme packs for sound RTS and such, etc.