By Dexerto | Created at 2026-08-31 15:38:48 | Updated at 2026-09-06 08:00:50
5 days ago
A Reddit moderator has admitted to using AI tools to access protected files from a fan-run Star Wars Galaxies revival, claiming his actions stemmed from a dispute dating back 14 years.
SWG Legends, a community project keeping the long-shuttered MMO alive on unofficial servers, accused r/swg moderator Levarris of decrypting files containing years of custom content.
Levarris publicly admitted the accusation was accurate, claiming his actions stemmed from a dispute dating back to 2012.
Reddit mod admits targeting Star Wars Galaxies project
In a statement shared on its Discord, the SWG Legends team said Levarris, known as levarrishawk on Reddit, had “used AI tools to decrypt our client-side game asset files.”
According to the team, this gave him access to custom items, questlines and even Bespin, a location created by the Legends community after the original Star Wars Galaxies was shut down in 2011.
Legends also claimed the files had been offered to other Star Wars Galaxies projects. The team stressed that no player information was compromised.
“No player data was accessed. No personal info, no account details, and nothing tied to anyone’s identity,” Legends said. “This was strictly client-side game asset files.”
Levarris responded with a lengthy Reddit post and immediately admitted the accusation was accurate.
“I can and will freely admit that what they say in this post is accurate,” he wrote.
His explanation then went back roughly 14 years to his involvement with ProjectSWG, an earlier effort to recreate the New Game Enhancements era of Star Wars Galaxies.
Levarris accused people associated with what would eventually become SWG Legends of undermining ProjectSWG’s work by obtaining development material from a former Sony Online Entertainment developer rather than continuing to rebuild the game through reverse engineering.
He argued that Legends was therefore being hypocritical by protecting its own custom work from being taken by others, describing that as the reason he targeted the project.
“You can’t steal someone’s house, change the locks and expect to be safe and sound when someone comes with the means to pick or destroy the lock altogether,” he wrote. “It was never your house, it never belonged to you.”
Levarris later made his motivation even clearer when another Reddit user questioned his actions.
“I did this purely to ruffle the Legends staff’s feathers and take from them crap they tried to protect and give it freely to the rest of the community,” he responded.
He subsequently shared a download containing the files publicly.
SWG told Massively Overpowered that it doesn’t plan to engage in the dispute any further. “We’ve already said what we needed to say, and we are trying to move forward,” a representative said.
