00:00So, I've been holding off on this video for a while now because I have been so focused
00:05on Bloons Cardstorm with all the hype that came with it and… oh, that happened.
00:11Yeah, actually not that many people were hyped for the game really.
00:14I will at least give Ninja Kiwi credit for this game as it is an interesting concept,
00:19more so than that Bloons Adventure Time TD crossover that they released in 2018,
00:24although that was also a sight to behold in its own way,
00:27and I've got more of it coming soon, so stay tuned.
00:30Anyway, Bloons TD Battles 2 just came up to its 3 year mark,
00:34and it has yet to really see a single mod make its way into the public.
00:38Bloons TD Battles Steam got its first mod just 4 months into its release,
00:43though to be fair, if I included the time before that where the game was only for mobile,
00:48it would be 3 years and 1 month in total, so more or less the same amount of time as
00:53Battles 2 currently.
00:54Before I explain the monster that is Bloons TD Battles 2 modding,
00:58let's talk about how we got here first.
01:01The earliest video that I could find for Bloons TD Battles mods dates back to August 24th, 2016.
01:08Back in the day, Bloons Reborn was at the helm, brought to you by none other than BTDBlazit.
01:14It was a rather simple mod with lots of tower balancing, but not that much in the way of reworking
01:19the towers, and was made with the idea that the game isn't going in the direction that he wanted
01:24it to go in. And I mean, this is pretty much how all modding starts off. It was how I
01:30was inspired to
01:31make my Bloons Monkey City mod as well. I missed the closed beta days with actually difficult tiles,
01:37with all the newer content being added, and so I sought to create a mod that brought back the
01:41harder tiles to level the playing field. I haven't forgotten about that Bloons Monkey
01:45City video that I promised a few videos ago, and that video will actually be about a new BMC mod
01:51that I have been working on that has at this point been spun off from its parent mod, BMC Remastered.
01:57Due to technical issues with the mobile version, I decided to switch the format to something that
02:01is much more fun than scaling up tile difficulty, and I think you guys will enjoy it.
02:07Anyway, back to Bloons TD Battles mods again. 2017 was the year that mods for Steam games really
02:14started to take off as resources for modding became available to a wider audience, and iSab
02:19and Aliens Rock really thrusted modding into the spotlight. It wasn't limited to Bloons TD Battles
02:24either, but at this point, that could be saved for a whole other video that covers the topic more
02:29extensively. It got so big that Ninja Kiwi could not ignore it any longer and went after some of the
02:35videos, mainly from VanAlk and BTD Blaze It, but I do remember iSab was also hit from a couple of
02:41them.
02:42Yes, back then modding Ninja Kiwi games was frowned upon by the higher ups, and to an extent still
02:47is to this day as I will explain in just a moment. Hell, I even found myself in hot water
02:52during this
02:53time as I made that expose in July that year even though I wasn't directly involved in Steam modding
02:58at the time. So yes, Ninja Kiwi was very protective over their games, so far as it threatened suing Arcade
03:06Prehacks for hosting a hacked version of their Bloons CD games on their website, which was a
03:10popular website for hacked games way back in the ancient times. Eventually, they gave up their
03:15crusade to stop every person who posted the video either of modded Bloons CD Battles content or
03:20criticizing Ninja Kiwi outright since the pressure became too overwhelming to contain it. The Bloons
03:25Reborn community was big, commanding 5,000 members at its peak. I couldn't find any screenshots
03:30of how many members Ninja Kiwi Discord had at the time, but it was basically a rival Discord server
03:35to this with its incredibly fast expansion. New legendary modders entered the scene, such as
03:40Jambite, David the Superior, and Mekrom. And while most of the Bloons Reborn content has been scrubbed
03:46from the internet since, its legacy still carries on to this day. The server ended up shutting down in
03:52August 2017, barely reaching the one year mark. Since then, the modding community has split into
03:58several Discord servers, with the most active to date being the Mekrom server, as they are still
04:02producing mods for this game. Ones that only BTD Blazid could ever dream of making. But overall,
04:09the modding community has become very quiet. And it doesn't seem like that will change anytime soon,
04:15as we venture off to Bloons CD Battles 2. Initially, results seemed promising, as there were no security
04:20measures put in place, so hackers easily took over the game making it less enjoyable for everyone.
04:26And while some mods were made for the game, they didn't last long until Ninja Kiwi would add new
04:30security measures to make them unusable. Not to mention these mods also had a high chance of
04:35flagging your account. So that meant if you wanted to use these mods, you could only go up against
04:41other flagged players. What about trying to play with mods in private matches? Sorry, but you'd have to
04:47check to make sure your account wasn't flagged. Otherwise, private matches would actually work
04:52the same way as a normal match. Later they changed it so you couldn't do matches at all on a
04:57modded
04:57version of the game, no matter what, even if you weren't ever flagged. So that killed a lot of the
05:02motivation to do any sort of modding. However, that still didn't stop one group from trying to hack into
05:08the game's files to figure out a way to make it possible to play a match with mods turned on.
05:12In November 2022, interest in Battles 2 modding picked up again since Update 34 and BTD6 broke
05:19Melonloader, the main program used for BTD6 modding, for a few weeks. Enter the Ninja Kiwi Mafia Group,
05:26a highly dedicated team of elite Ninja Kiwi hackers who have tinkered with just about everything Ninja
05:30Kiwi related and not just limited to the games either. They were able to do some stuff on the
05:35Ninja Kiwi forums back when that was a thing on the main Ninja Kiwi site shortly after it launched.
05:39I could go on, but you get the point. They are the top of their class. They were able to
05:44get a hold
05:45of the games files, even as Ninja Kiwi kept changing them every major update and adding new encryption
05:50and obfuscation layers. Ninja Kiwi really did not want a repeat of what happened in Battles 1 to play
05:56out here. There was a brief period of success in Update 2.2.1 to actually be able to play
06:01private
06:02games with a modded client, but no actual mods were made during this time and it was simply a proof
06:06of
06:06concept that it could be done since they removed an encoded signature check to see if the game was
06:10being played on a modded client, but it only lasted for a few days before Ninja Kiwi released the Clans
06:16Update by surprise. From this point, Ninja Kiwi really put their guard up and applied new security
06:21updates in every update, even simple patches. At this point, the updates became more frequent,
06:26and each time a new update came out, it effectively meant starting from square one over and over again,
06:31and at one point I joked about how Ninja Kiwi would eventually spend more time trying to encrypt and
06:37infusate the game than actually adding new content to hide Ninja Kiwi Mafia's efforts to expose how bad
06:42the game is on an internal level. Well, Ninja Kiwi figured out the solution to that problem with
06:48Update 4.2.1, Over the Air Updates. No need to do any further security measures to the game because
06:55this
06:55change means that all the updates are now fully controlled by the game servers, which might not seem like
07:00much since that was already done for the most part from the start, but the thing is, they changed how
07:05the encoded signature check was done. When the game starts up, the first thing it does is send the game
07:11files over to a server and check to see if there is a more up-to-date version available on
07:15the server.
07:16If the server finds that the build number on the server does not match the one that is in the
07:21game
07:21currently, then the game will overwrite the modded game data from what is available from the server.
07:26This build number is not visible to the player in this game, but it can be seen on Bloom's CD6
07:31and
07:32Bloom's Card Storm with this number right here, and it's the same idea. Then, it checks each file
07:37separately to make sure the signatures match. If there is a mismatch anywhere, then it immediately
07:42flags the account. Remember that all of these checks are done through the servers, so there is no way to
07:47change any of this on your own and avoid getting flagged like in the past. Normally, if an account
07:52gets flagged for the first time, the flag remains in effect for 24 hours before coming off, and the
07:57second occurrence will permanently flag the account. But, in the case of modding, it is permanent for
08:03a first occurrence, and talking to NinjaQui support came back with the reason being tampering with the
08:08game files, and that this action is against NinjaQui's terms of service. Do you know what this means?
08:13It is now IMPOSSIBLE to mod Bloom's TD Battles 2 without basically breaking your account. And again,
08:21modding Battles 2 makes it so you can't do public or private matches at all, so there's no point in
08:27modding the game whatsoever. If there is a silver lining to this, the community isn't quite as big as
08:33it was in Battles 1 when the controversy started there, so starting a new discord server for the
08:38purpose of revolting against Battles 2 isn't going to be effective. We've already had the NinjaQui
08:43blog for the purpose of protesting back in 2022, and that didn't really work either. NinjaQui did
08:50get around to making the changes that were demanded, but it was far too late to have a meaningful impact.
08:55This sets an interesting precedent for BCS modding. With both NinjaQui Europe and New Zealand working
09:02on this game, it's hard to tell which direction they will actually go since they clearly have conflicting
09:06viewpoints on games having mod support. With all the interest in making custom cards, personally,
09:12I believe they should. And having a game editor of sorts like BTD6 is going to receive soon would be
09:18quite fun here.
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