The Java modding world woke up this week to the same old fight wearing new clothes. Team CoFH, stewards of the long-in-development Thaumfoolery Doc, published a point-by-point breakdown of what they call a straightforward breach of trust. A developer named MrSterner asked to help on closed-source Thaumcraft 7, got in, copied both legacy code and unreleased TC7 mechanics into an addon for the unrelated mod Malum, then allegedly started bad-mouthing the team once the situation leaked.
Instead of immediately nuking his projects on Modrinth and CurseForge, CoFH says they gave him the graceful exit of deleting the mod himself so he would not get a platform strike. They stayed silent to shield him from the inevitable harassment. That silence ended when he began, in their words, intentionally misrepresenting the facts to damage CoFH’s reputation.
The doc is clinical. It confirms TC7 is built for Forge on 1.20.1 first, will not be a direct port of any previous Thaumcraft, and that recruiting actually productive contributors has been nearly impossible. Teasers stopped because the community immediately stole the concepts. An API for addons is still planned. The only new revelation is the full MrSterner timeline and the explicit coordination with Sammy Semicolon of the original Malum to set the record straight.
The spark that lit the fuse this week was AllTheMods dropping version 0.11.0 of their pack on October 7 with a full community recreation called Thaumaturge already installed and playable. The official FTB Team post teasing the same mod days earlier had already sent nostalgia addicts into overdrive. By October 8 players on X were openly referencing the resurfaced drama in the same threads.
- CoFH claims conclusive proof of stolen code after investigation
- MrSterner allegedly obstructed that investigation
- Mod was removed by the author himself to avoid permanent platform penalties
- Public statement coordinated with actual Malum creator to counter misinformation
Malum: Voidbound’s CurseForge page now says total rewrite in progress, matching the timeline. Its GitHub still carries comments praising the exact Thaumcraft elements that were supposedly taken. The modding scene runs on passion, reputation, and extremely fragile trust. When that trust evaporates the only thing left is public docs and timeline wars.
