But the fact of 6.2-7.5 is you need to set up a Docker RAS server.
We’re monetizing the access to your car’s engine, transmission, tires and interior, not the rest of your car
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wtf i knew there was something up with escargot but i couldn’t fully put my finger on it…
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Yeah, everything felt different since… I don’t know… like 2022 or so?
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yeah exactly
nice that they’re still trying for the sake of the users at least, imo. but the reputation may be a bit damaged. and still no proper information on the escargot site.
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and now they say they’re never gonna shut down huh http://archive.today/e4CpM
Development credits for walkingphasers (@OhHelloThereImTheGuy) were scrubbed from the website circa September:
https://web.archive.org/web/20250813152924/https://escargot.chat/about/ - Before
https://web.archive.org/web/20250924152151/https://escargot.chat/about/ - After
For the uninformed, he worked on Windows Live Messenger 2009 support, Yahoo! Messenger support, and was basically the only consistently active developer for the Escargot service from 2018 - 2020.
Before:
After:
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i remember when i talked to walkingphasers when i was around… 11? dude was really nice
hope he isn’t mad at the fact they’re scrubbing him of the service he helped create
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speaking of “we have never said that we were shutting down“ (animadoria is no longer involved with escargot or nina btw, so this isn’t targeting him)
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Lame as fuck that they just entirely scrubbed Valtron and WP from credits
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Valtron was good at the time, but corrupt staff replaced him eh?
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i wouldn’t be surprised if this was per his own request. kirk distanced himself from escargot a few years back.
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What has me suspicious is that there’s been an evident dislike of the former Escargot administration team ever since the migration initially happened.
Here’s some limited excerpts from Tony in a private chat involving a few select trusted staff in Escargot (at the time, including me):
Greetings (@)everyone and welcome to The Bunker, where we are to discuss things surrounding the displacement and ultimate destruction of old Escargot without worrying that some mods like Campos and possibly others, will puss out and go whining to everyone about the progress we’re making because they insist things should stay a little club of guys with fur suits and waifu dolls
So even here, on this other server, we keep people from seeing staff logs of edits or anything, it’s off the record
but there’s still a record here
Whatever is said here, stays here, and if you don’t want to be in on this project then please leave, but I assume already you’ll all still be here after reading this
So no more Java server [early Escargot 2.0] discussion, nothing at all; for now the project is basically dead to the world with no outward updates, even to mods and other developers outside these projects, aside from ones that are announced directly to users or in the announcements channel. I don’t want to have to fend off a fourth WP freak out because someone else decided they don’t like how I run things and then have WP tell me yet again he was about to tell valtron to “cut it off”, i.e. the DNS
The biggest issue he has is that “we said you could run it, not take over everything” basically the point I’ve been making since the beginning that the old guard is always afraid of changes being made that they don’t like only because they aren’t making them, even when they wouldn’t do a damn thing otherwise. That’s why to keep his going we have to get away from the old domain in totality, beyond old backlinks we can’t update, because I’m certain there’s a time that will come where valtron will just want to remove it totally, even if for some classic stupid ass reason like “I just wanted to remove some old DNS records I wasn’t using”
Much of the discussion centered around 1. the paywalling of development-related news, and 2. the closed-source model that Escargot switched to under Tony’s control. I can tell you with utmost certainty #1 happened (and so could any donator, for that matter). The OSS situation is interesting - because they did finally start open sourcing part of NINA, but only after the pressure was on. And they still haven’t open sourced Escargot itself. (Also part of me wonders how far Escargot development is even going to get without Animadoria, who was the one doing pretty much everything on that side, but that’s a different story.)
The OSSing of parts of NINA happened only very recently - and up until about a week or two ago, it was mostly only infrastructure that was open sourced, none of the actual “meat and potatoes” of the server itself. Arguably, it was only to save face - when everything else was released, shutdown was imminent on NINA’s side, and then later on people started getting wind that the “OSS release” was practically useless lol.
The sudden resurgence of NINA also makes me wonder something - what is going on there? Most of Escargot/NINA has been completely decoupled from Level Leap to the public eye, to the point of removing the majority of donation methods just because they were associated with the company (which definitely surprised me - you know Tony is all about that $$$). We also know that Animadoria left the Escargot team at some point. My personal opinion is, knowing that WLM development might be practically abandoned at this point, Tony has brought back NINA since OSCAR (AIM’s protocol) is what he knows best - despite any legal threats that may beam his way. I also think that’s part of why mentions of Level Leap started to get scrubbed.
Here’s some footnotes for you. Firstly, the first known development media of Escargot 2.0, back when it was still written in Java and I was spearheading development in March of 2021 (vaporware, much?):
(Keep in mind that all Java development halted within about a year - I was not involved with any Escargot development projects from about mid-late 2021, until I started work on Skype in April of 2025.)
Also, I think this screenshot of a Skype-related discussion sums up Tony perfectly:
He only cares about the money and the media coverage.
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Last time I’ve contacted him, or really seen him anywhere was 2 years ago; this is very likely not the case.
Also makes sense when you consider the hostility towards the previous team that existed since the takeover first happened, as epicness pointed out.
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Java? Very evil..
That explains the information blackout on any new development. part from as I remember there were mainly stuff about aim even though most of the people in the escargot discord server was there for msn/wlm 
. when I became inactive in escargot and wlm community around 2022 time, I would sometimes check in on the server see if there any new developments and it was either them begging for money or news about nina.
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what is the context of the money that was made “just today” in that screenshot? does anyone know?