Challenges ahead

[STN]

Hello friends

This post serve as an informational post for how things operate at FRF especially things that I notice users have confusion about and what the culture is at FRF rather than announcing anything major.


Let’s start off with Group X decision that I announced last year [viewtopic.php?t=25564]

Group X in simplistic terms is a way to generate funds and content for FRF. You help fund FRF in return for getting some rules eased and be allowed to have paywalls/advertising your site/discord/whatever. FRF also gets content even if it is limited content. Both are things which FRF desperately needs.

Group X members (who I don’t mention so they don’t get targeted ) of which there are few get allowed to have paywalls or advertise their sites/discord/Patreon without being enforced to the FRF rule of “Post a full free functional table and then you can post about the updated table hidden behind paywalls”.

I know some don’t agree with my decision and that’s fine. But there are many people who criticise my decisions who have no issue with FRF not having any cheat engine tables for so many games because they can just go to weboobs or CH with big trainers for those games. It has helped bring content even if it is limited content - to some it is worth nothing - but if some people get to use cheat engine and find it useful and come to FRF instead of those paid apps, it is a big victory.

They also don’t want to understand that despite my easing of rules and making FRF a welcoming place for all table makers, I can’t force anyone to post free tables. Anytime I try to enforce something they don’t like, they just leave to continue their paywalls on Patreon/Discord or elsewhere. So if I want to have any chance of competing with the “big sites” I need to take tough decisions to bring content to FRF and hopefully encourage more table makers and even those that left in past due to not being allowed to come back. FRF needs to be a welcoming place for everyone - free table makers and those that have paywalls/some strings attached too.

FRF will always be about free cheat engine tables and indeed, whenever someone posts a free cheat table, it always gets more popular. If you don’t like this decision, what I encourage you to do is post your free table. That is infinitely times better and helps FRF.

I have gone through the many reasons in detail that led me to make this decision last year and I recommend reading it just to get an idea of how desperate things had become


About banned sites/word censors

There are some sites that are banned/censored and not allowed to be mentioned. Some of them have tried to directly attack FRF and harm it, some have stolen content and some are just deemed bad sites. There is a lot of history and the banlist isn’t arbitrary. If you mention those sites, it will get censored which is fine, edit your post and don’t mention them.

But don’t bypass the word censor. When you bypass the word censors, it just equates to giving us a middle finger and it makes us angry. We don’t want some sites mentioned on our platform.


Drama/Public theatrics/fights/debates

During the initial days of FRF, FRF was known for drama and heated arguments. That was 8 years ago and things change so much. The hour(s) spent engaging in pointless arguments, moderator actions and “babysitting virtual manchilds”, I would rather spend it with my family, play a game a little extra, make a cheat engine table, watch YouTube, learn something or do any of the things I don’t get time to do anymore. The same goes for rest of the staff.

FRF is a cheat engine tables, trainers and tools/mods forum. Nowhere does it mention debate/politics or discussion forum. People including staff come here to find cheats for some game they are playing or share cheats for that game.

I understand it is quite entertaining to you because it is novel but the staff has “been there done that” and there is no novelty, no fun anymore just annoying mess we have to clean up.

There are dedicated sites where people with nothing better to do just discuss, debate and argue all day. Go there.


FRF is a friendly site

This goes in the same vein as above. I have had to make super difficult decisions in the past where if I side with one table maker, another leaves and I want both to be happy. How do I not put myself in this precarious situation? Create a friendly environment and stop things escalating to this point.

We and unsurprisingly most people also don’t want to deal with negativity. It is immense hard work and time consuming to make cheats and seeing some random poster come and insult it isn’t the greatest feeling in the world.

Be friendly and nice. It isn’t that difficult. If you don’t like something, PM the staff or practice the art of silence - monks swear by it if you could hear them. Don’t be abusive or insulting.

It is yet another change that has reduced moderation time and made FRF a nice, chill place to be.

Things used to be different at original CE forum

Yeah and my best friend Marco was alive too. But you are experiencing the Mandela effect and things weren’t so perfect at CEF either.

CE allowed multiplayer cheats, did you know that? Then it was outlawed. CEF had a particular moderator that was so strict he would randomly delete posts and give warnings.

You bring me back all the things that were there in 2017 and before that and I will make FRF the same. CE didn’t have a Patreon, table makers just made free tables without asking for donations or discords. My fucking ex-girlfriend was still mine and I was far more happier and undamaged not scarred by an online mob slandering me.

But one of the essential difference is Cheat Engine gets its revenue from cheat engine the program itself. I have to generate funds from Fearless forum which is front facing. CE forum could be shitfest 4chan trollzone spammed to death, heck there could be no CE forum and it won’t hurt cheat engine as program. FRF turns into anything of that and you will be the first to never look back.

Nostalgia is great but realise that I am not working with the same factors anymore. I was stuck in the past for so long and FRF suffered, when I tried to get on with times and what everyone else is doing, FRF is improving.


Imposter sites

I can’t believe there is a loser who has made imposter sites of FearlessRevolution but it just shows that things are getting better. Do not dare mention them even if you want to warn people because you will be sending visitors to those wretched sites distributing malware and all kinds of nasties. Just report them to legal authorities or PM the staff but we know about most of them.

The only official FRF sites are fearlessrevolution.com, .net (empty) and .app (empty). Anything else is an imposter trying to trick you.

Because of how serious this is, I also want to mention that even my competitors have several of these fake sites, they always had imposters but yeah don’t visit these fake sites. They are with weird domain endings instead of .com, .net etc

So what next?

I wish I could say that the changes I introduced last year were such a great success, there are no problems and all is great. I wish.

It just seems harder and harder to compete with all these big paid apps because they have endless funds to poach table makers from FRF which they did recently of note being Recifence and GreenHouse and spend on advertising. They also don’t suffer from the threat of any community backlash over any change because they don’t rely on a community as witnessed by the recent change where they are limiting users to just 1-2 hours of trainers usage and forced to pay.

They can silence anyone who dares speak bad about them and get featured in news articles. What does FRF have? Just slander from users who get banned for breaking rules and news articles feel FRF is too small and unremarkable to mention.

All I can really do is work hard and strive and think of ways and introduce changes that will bring net positive effect.

What else is there than to strive? If FRF goes down then it’s game over. Not just the immense amount of content gone but we will be forced to use those spyware 1 hour limit apps or pay a premium and it’s a messed up scary future to look forward to.

FRF has become my chill place, a part of my life. I love cheat engine and the community that exists, that shares for fun and has really fucking cool people and I will continue to provide a platform that hosts cheat engine tables indefinitely.

I wish next year we can have massive giveaways like my competitors do or celebrate some ginormous numbers ( 10 million registered users or blah blah ) or maybe where I don’t have to endlessly justify and explain the decisions I make. One can dream