Factorio Forums

Recently I see strange downloads of my mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ingteb). First there are a lot of them, which is not bad now. But secondly the old versions are downloaded in the same way. Is there maybe a bot going on?

I've noticed something same too: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/ExpressBus/downloads

I am thinking about adding a text like this to my mod:
**This mod has seen surprisingly high download numbers in the last few days. This should actually make me happy as a developer, but it disturbs me. For example, all versions, including the old ones, some of which are buggy, are retrieved in the same way as the very latest version. So here's an appeal to all downloaders: Be fair and only do things that stand up to the Categorical Imperative. Otherwise this beautiful mod system will explode one day.**

But I'm not sure about that. It could be embarrassing and completely pointless - except to wake sleeping dogs.
What is your opinion?

ixu wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 10, 2020 11:41 am

What is your opinion?

"Don't feed the trolls."

Either they're doing it on purpose, in which case they won't care. Or it's a buggy crawler, in which case a short one-sentence message may or may not help. Or you could try contacting wube to get the counts reset.

eradicator wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 10, 2020 12:16 pm

"Don't feed the trolls."

Oh yes you are right. I had forgotten for a moment.

Another strange downloads: 12 hours and 500+ downloads.
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Biter_Hat ... /downloads

I believe Mobile Factory was hit by this: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Mobile_Factory/downloads

I've noticed this start suddenly happening since yesterday. I noticed it first on my own mods, but looking at the "Trending" tab, it's all in disarray compared to how it was a few days ago, and a lot of the trending ones seem to have a similar pattern. It seems like the mods that are most affected are simply those that have a lot of different versions. It seems like some bot is systematically downloading every version of lots of mods, which is disproportionately affecting those that have more versions.

I have noticed this on two of my mods recently. Rate Calculator got 4,000 downloads overnight, but the most recent version (released yesterday) only has 1,599 downloads. I released an update to Editor Extensions two hours ago, and it suddenly gained 5,000 downloads in those two hours. The most recent version only has 148 downloads. I went through and manually added all of the various versions' downloads together and it checks out, so someone or a group of someones systematically downloaded various versions of Editor Extensions 5,000 times in two hours.

Something fishy is definitely going on here.

Edit: Rate Calculator has received another 1,000 downloads, and Editor Extensions has received TEN THOUSAND more downloads since my original comment (six hours ago). What the actual hell is going on here!?

Edit 2: the next morning, RC has another 3,000 and EE another 11,000 downloads.

I've uploaded a new mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mod/Rohlinhea ... /downloads) 3 days ago and it already has 700 downloads which is way more than my older mods had around this age.

I've added a new version 8 hours ago. At that moment the old version had around 150 downloads. Now the new version has 140 downloads and the old one has 290!