Back in June we saw the return of Open Fortress, and immediately jumped at getting our server up and active. This has been a huge challenge, because we've seen activity in it to a degree we haven't seen in a long time. That has brought issues which we've been working hard to solve. Our first is **hackers**. In order to help protect ourselves from hackers using cheats and exploits from the older version of Source, we have begun using a tool called StAC (Stephanie's Anti Cheat). This is a SourceMod plugin that does a fantastic job of finding players using nefarious settings + watching for suspect activity. We actually began testing this on Chocolate back in April with great success. To this date, we have not had a single person banned falsely. In Open Fortress, we are using a version we modified ourselves to better match that game's unique environment. Again, we have not had a single incorrect ban. What we have seen though is a ton of bans overall. Cheaters, hackers, duplicate accounts, and more. Duplicate accounts use stored IP addresses, and we have checked every single one so far to make sure it is not an accident that someone was banned under a similar IP. We also have more tools! I have created an "admin panel" of sorts built into our Discord, that allows admins to kick, ban, mute, gag, etc players without being in-game. To aid this whole "not being in-game" part, we've begun experimenting with SourceTV, a Source Engine tool that allows administrators to spectate the game without actually being in the server. I've also designed a panel for our admins to read through server logs / chat logs, as previously they were only kept in the server. To help ensure privacy and to comply with privacy laws, IP addresses are not stored in logs available to admins. They are filtered out. We intend to begin hosting Open Fortress events soon, we're just waiting to see how the first big update goes before we commit to events that may be shuddered by technical problems. There will also be more news this week, I thought it'd be best to space it out a bit!