Allegations of Targeted Harassment Raised for Competitive Age of Empires IV players.
By: Sebastián, Adico
Tags: Age Of Empies Iv, Esports

From the source of Allegations: They have provided a google drive folder with over 30 screenshots and three videos across the alleged 2017 to 2019 period to reinforce their claims. Beyond that, they’ve cooperated with me to understand the timeline of their allegations better.

What is True

This article will show the evidence as it sits on a spectrum of truth. Some of it can be verified, partially verified, or unverifiable. The following section details the extent of my research into the contents to figure out where in that spectrum the materials sat.

Search Methodology & Verifications Acknowledgements

The main issue with the following material is that I have no way to verify if it’s true, and the people who would, have no incentive to do so. For one, if the material is real, then they could delete it, and it would be as if it never existed. If it’s false, then they could never prove they didn’t delete it beforehand or that it didn’t exist in the first place.

The Google Drive: I can verify some parts of it though. To start, The Google Drive’s metadata could not have been manipulated. The activity of which shows the folder was created in 2017. Starting with the contents that showed the Dutch Republic discord and alleged Direct messages sent to John. Then activity again in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. The past two years mainly as re-organizing the material that is there and some sporadic updates on perceived attacks.

Discord IDs: Another piece is the Discord Snowflake ID system, which assigns any activity or entity within the platform and ID, similar to Twitter. The first set of 64 numbers was the date when that occurred (UNIX date), after the ID of the element in serial, then again for particular details within the set.

Taken with the Discord.id tool.

Of the IDs provided in John’s evidence, they were all valid and matched the timeline of events. The alleged ID for the Dutch Republic server is seen here, which is shown as existing in April 2018. Other IDs for messages and emojis also fall within the same timeframe.

Taken with the Discord.id tool.

Unfortunately, the ID carries no other information. It is also important to note that the ID could be manufactured, as there is no way to verify it unless someone in or invited to the DR server copies its ID for comparison. That is, if the server exists in the first place.

Here is the result for another ID in the list of evidence, Adne’s. There is also ZertoN’s, another person’s, and the previously shown alleged DR server ID. The document that held these IDs was uploaded to the Drive-in 2018.

Screenshots: The bulk of the materials put forth by John is in the form of screenshots. This means they could have been manipulated or manufactured before or after being taken. Using standard tools such as Gimp, Photoshop, or the element inspections tools present in the Desktop and Browser version of the Discord app, they are both Chromium-based. However, this is not necessarily true for the mobile screenshots if they were taken from the app, as Element inspection is not present in the same capacity.

The “most realistic” results would be those from doctoring the elements on screen before taking the screenshot. From my testing, it would be easy to change the elements on the screen to display whatever one would like to see and would remain edited in one’s client until moving out and back into a server or chat.

The videos

Three videos make up the bulk of the allegations against Adne. To protect the identity of John, I won’t be showing them, just screenshots of them showing their title and that they have been uploaded to Adne’s Youtube Channel. I have also made backups of these videos.

These videos are genuine and authentic to the contents shown here.

This video shows an apology video made by John. They claim this was created after Adne had told them they would delete the emojis from the DR discord if they made the video.

This second video is a “Remix” of voice clips from John’s voice calls with Adne. It uses voice clips from previous interactions between them and potentially from John’s live streams.

This third one shows one of Adne’s streams before moving to a different Twitch account. John alleges this was after he attempted to pay $100 USD to take down the DR server. In the video, Adne laughs at an aggravated John who pushes him on his alleged fraud. These videos are real, and they are in Adne’s YouTube Channel, all be it hidden from its subscribers.

The Screenshots

The following goes into the realm of hearsay, and I have no way to verify the claims thoroughly. As such, I will be censoring most of the participants’ names in the screenshots except those directly mentioned in this article. Some are alleged private conversations and others in the alleged conversation in the DR Server. Some emojis have been blurred as they are the ones John alleges were taken without his permission. They are in roughly chronological order.

They were presented to me without blurring names. I have only modified them in that aspect and cropped them when sensitive information would be present otherwise.