Thousands Of Cities: Skylines Players Infected With Malware Via Mod

3.5

The Cities: Skylines modding community has found itself embroiled in a controversy, reportedly because of just one bad actor. A modder, who has gone by the names Chaos and Holy Water, has allegedly exposed thousands of players with malware in an attempt to pin the blame on other mods. Chaos is also accused of doxing those who speak out about him.

Over 35,000 players are said to have been exposed to the malicious code, which was quietly sent their way via one of Chaos' mod updates. Valve has since banned the account - which was an alt following a previous ban for abusive behaviour - and the community is speaking out about the modder.

As reported by NME, an auto-update was hidden within the code of Chaos' Harmony (redesigned) mod. The malware would apparently harm the performance of other mods, which would in turn damage the reputation of their creators.

Further still, one of the mods would apparently harm the overall performance for particular players, and also stop them from looking at the mod's code. Chaos seemed to target both other modders and the game's developers, and the evidence can still be seen by the public.

As spotted in the files on GitHub for the mod NetworkExtensions3, there's a section dedicated to "TrollControl". In the files, Chaos writes: "Individuals who in some ways shit on the any community [sic] I am in and seed discord and division are not permitted to copy or run this software, by virtue of the LICENSE. Their primary steam ID's are listed here." Redditor arthur9094 says that the malware would trigger if any of them used the mod.

Players are urged to unsubscribe from all of Chaos' mods, which have been conveniently compiled by a fan on Steam. So far, NetworkExtensions 3 is the only one to be removed from Steam Workshop. Chaos' remaining mod collection includes: