The Mike Hardy Saga, Part XI: Five Year Interlude
(note: read parts I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, and X if you haven’t already)
I never actually thought I would be posting an additional part to this series. After Part X was published, I briefly collected information posted in the comment sections of all the Software Saga articles. Eventually I got tired of keeping track of it all and let it fall by the wayside, never planning to post a Part XI, as it would be.
Though it may seem that I had forgotten about this series of articles, I would like to make one thing very clear: I greatly appreciate the readers who have contributed information about this person’s activities. Without you, his actions would never have received widespread acknowledgement. Thank you.
Now, on to the purpose of this entry. A recent e-mail from one Michael Hardy spurred me to revisit this sad tale.
From: Aztec_God_Support <aztecgodgame@gmail.com>
To: <bill@youfailit.net>
Subject: From Michael
Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2010 21:06:00 -0500Remove this false information from your site. You will be hearing from my attorney.
(disparaging comment about ex-wife removed). You remove this blog or legal action will be taken.
This is not me and I stumbled upon this site by accident. Remove it or else.
This is a felony badgering someone that is innocent.
Sincerely,
Michael Hardy
I would attempt to reply to this message in a witty, sarcastic, and/or humorous way, but I am simply not as funny as Leonard J. Crabs. Therefore, the rest of this post will consist of a sort of open letter to Mr. Hardy, but not one that I plan on sending to him personally.
Dear Michael Hardy,
I take issue with your claim that I am badgering you (I am ignoring the claim of innocence for the time being). I don’t believe that any sort of harassment has occurred on my part. I have never even attempted to contact you—not through e-mail, web forums, comment boxes, or anything similar. I have only made statements about you in articles published here, on my weblog. No doubt you have been contacted by other people (who are not me), but I can assure you that we have no connection, apart from them being readers of this website. I have never told anyone to contact you; anyone who has done so has gone out of their way to find your contact information.
You state that “This is not me”. I must ask, who is not you? Are you not Michael Hardy? Or is someone impersonating you, claiming to be creating all of this software to give you a bad name? If so, what are some examples of your legitimate work (that is, do you have a legitimate reputation that could conceivably become tarnished)?
You also state that you “stumbled upon this site by accident”. Yet as I outlined in Part X, you posted an inflammatory comment on my site five years ago, shortly after the original series concluded. Perhaps you forgot about this site in the five years that have since passed. If you have bad memory, that is really no concern of mine.
In addition, all the pieces of the puzzle fit together as to your identity. When you tried to spread false information about your death, posting under the name “Brian Mitchell” in the comments for Part I, you used an e-mail address containing the name “Microworks Games Studio”, one of the many names you have used for your operations. You sent the above e-mail from an address containing the words “Aztec God Game”, one of the many games you have appropriated for your own use. The original was made by “mauge” and is posted on YoYo Games and available to download for free. Your incarnation, the website of which I will not extend the courtesy of linking to, costs $25 for the full version, and makes absolutely no mention of the original creator. Finally, the IP address(es) you’ve used to make comments here, in addition to the e-mail you sent, all point to a user of Fidelity Communications (in 2005) or Charter Communications (in 2010), both in Missouri, which matches up to the physical address(es) you have provided in your domain name(s) WHOIS information.
I do not know why you would make such comments about your ex-wife; even if they were true, I question your judgment in making such statements to other people.
I will mention that your spelling and grammar seem to have improved remarkably over the past five years. Your message is by no means a piece of literary artwork, but is indeed perfectly legible.
Internet legal threats are a dime a dozen, and about 99% of them have absolutely no merit. Happily, yours is one included in that 99%. You seem to think that making vague threats in every single paragraph of your e-mail will frighten me into submission, causing me to remove all of the information I have posted about you. That will not be the case. On the contrary, it ensures that I will make this information freely available to as many people as possible, for as long as possible.
Mr. Hardy seems to think what I am doing is either some sort of tort or a felony; I can’t figure out which. He probably means libel (a form of defamation), but never states that outright. As I explained in Part X (forgive me for quoting myself), truth is the ultimate defense against libel:
I have not broken any U.S. laws, nor have I made any libelous statements towards you or your alter ego. I have presented the facts of the case, as well as made some backup statements of opinion, but have not outright insulted your character. This series was not created out of malice, but to expose the truth.
Furthermore, the statute of limitations for defamation is two years in both Missouri (his residence) and Indiana (my residence), and no U.S. state has a statute of limitations longer than three years. This rules out my original series of articles—the last one was posted almost five years ago. As for the continued availability of web content consisting of continual “republishing”, according to the Electronic Freedom Foundation, “Most courts have rejected claims that publishing online amounts to ‘continuous’ publication, and start the statute of limitations ticking when the claimed defamation was first published.”
Additionally, I cannot be held responsible for comments made by users posting to the comment sections of this weblog. This is stated in Section 230 of Title 47 of the United States Code: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” I am indeed a “provider” of an “interactive computer service” because I allow people to post comments, their own words, thoughts, and opinions, on my articles. If you wish to pursue actions against the commenters, you will have to get their contact information… which I will not provide to you unless required by a court order.
As for the accusation of what I am doing is a felony or crime, only 17 states have criminal laws against defamation of some sort, and there is no federal law regarding defamation. I do realize that defamation is generally considered a civil matter, but as I outlined above, I insist that none of what I have posted about this whole ordeal is defamatory.
So whether your name is Michael Hardy, Hardy Spirit, Michael Brewer, or Brian Mitchell, I hope your attorney, if you really have one, knows what he’s doing. Thank you, and have a good day.
August 8th, 2010 at 4:32 PM
[…] youfailit.net blog » Blog Archive » The Mike Hardy Saga, Part XI … […]
August 29th, 2010 at 11:10 PM
The little twerp is still up to his old tricks – hacking games, claiming them to be his own and trying to sell them.
It looks like it’s going to be a never ending version of that “Sweet Licks” game where you have to hit the monsters over the head with a mallet every time they pop up.
August 30th, 2010 at 5:04 PM
I have to e-mail him about once every 18 months to remove yet another poorly hacked clone of Paint.NET v3.36 … This time I finally threatened real legal action. He was even trying to sell it for $50, bundled with a bunch of plugins he ripped off the forum.
November 4th, 2010 at 1:15 AM
Some more sites of his:
http://hardyfoundation.com
Some of the same old stuff, but with a few new things he ripped off.
http://www.hardycreations.net
“THIS GAME WAS LICENSED TO: GRAY MATTER STUDIOS IN 2000…
ORIGINAL WORK BY: ID SOFTWARE
BASED ON WOLFENSTEIN 3D BY ID SOFTWARE…”
Close but no cigar.
This game is actually Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which is still sold in stores and over the internet.
Mike is selling this for $40 USD, while taking credit for developing it. Mike’s site favicon is the game’s icon as well.
November 4th, 2010 at 1:20 AM
Just to clarify, Mike hardy wrote this about Return To Castle Wolfenstien:
“PROGRAMMING, GRAPHICS, DESIGN, IDEA AND DOCUMENTATION BY: MICHAEL HARDY”
December 31st, 2010 at 6:57 AM
I’ve gotta say, that this is about one of the best conclusions to a series I have ever read.
January 30th, 2011 at 9:28 AM
LOL….you’re beast. A serious mastery of the english language.
February 7th, 2011 at 4:20 PM
oh my god… never have i seen such a moron hahahaha i hope somebody sue his ass’ and that he will go to jail and be somebodys bitch for years…
Nice articles btw! keep up the good work ;)
February 9th, 2011 at 11:59 PM
I LOL’d….
It’s not Michael hardy… it’s Michael hardy.
February 22nd, 2011 at 3:55 PM
I’ve had run ins with this guy before. I am truly amazed that he hasn’t landed in jail for fraud by now.
At the very least I hope he isn’t sticking that retarded looking picture of himself (or whoever it is) in everything he steals anymore.
March 10th, 2011 at 4:00 PM
Hello, This is Michael Hardy here.
First off I want to start out by saying your RIGHT!
I stole others people work.
I’m sorry to everyone I’ve offended. I have finally completed two years of Online C/C++ Programming Courses and am now developing my own things. The Programs and Games that I stole now have acknowledgements to the original authors and I release the source code as well.
My site at hardyfoundation.com will be closing soon and I haven’t had a chance to remove stuff yet.
Once again I’m sorry to everyone who I offended.
I will only be developing my own things from now on.
Thank you,
Michael Hardy (Michael J. Brauer)
March 10th, 2011 at 6:58 PM
According to this article Michael hardy attempted to present a game called “Robbie Swifthand”, created by a greek developer named Nikos Larin, for his own…. twice. It is funny because in his second attempt he added his ex-wife, children, uncle, mother and parents in law in the credits, also he thanked Microsoft, Namco, ESRB, Taito και Atari who supported the project!
The greek game developers club took action and they forced to remove the game from Softpedia and hardyfoundation.com
March 10th, 2011 at 6:59 PM
The article can be found here and it is in greek.
http://www.gameworld.gr/previews/othergames/3311–game-robbie-swifthand-#
March 11th, 2011 at 6:26 PM
George K is a lier I never had a game named that…
and was never forced to remove anything.
If your going to post about me at least tell the trueth.
I already said I was sorry you idiots leave it at that.
March 11th, 2011 at 6:27 PM
By the way, these post have made me famous. I get several emails a day
asking me hacking advice so thank you
March 15th, 2011 at 2:37 PM
check out this link!!
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=478789&st=0
May 1st, 2011 at 6:51 AM
So I just wanted to throw something out there. I know this blog is pretty damn old, but I just stumbled across it and was intrigued. I doubt these comments being posted by “Michael Hardy” are very credible, but I’d like to propose a challenge to them. If you really are little Mikey, would you mind taking the 1945 example off of sourceforge? That way you can mirror it on your site so that your download link doesn’t include “gamemaker/download/examples/1945.zip”?
Also, ~6 years or so and your English skills still look like the shit I just took in my toilet.
June 9th, 2011 at 5:23 PM
has anybody seen his latest creation, the hypersonic we browser, with MILES TAILS PROWER on the logo? still terribly bad at the whole credit thing. also staying up to date, as firefox 4.1 or 5 should be out soon, and he’s stuck on 3.6. also, if he really wanted, it should be a free add-on straight on the mozilla site.
July 13th, 2011 at 9:26 AM
Here is another.
I am a moderator from the Scirra boards, for our game creation tool “Construct”.
It seems Mr. Hardy has taken it upon himself to take the open-source project and “retrofit” it, not only stealing the entire concept of the software but also user/members work to showcase it. To top it off, he also stole our website design, almost word for word.
You can view the official Scirra site here: http://www.scirra.com
You can see Mr. Hardy’s abomination here: http://bestgamecreator.com
The administration team at Scirra are taking this seriously, and have reported him (yet again) to his host.
Personally I would take it further, but for the sake of being professional I will keep that to myself for now.
Regards,
Sol
July 20th, 2011 at 5:39 PM
Well it didn’t take long enough to get the best games creator removed thank god.
Now to shut down the other site that’s ripping off t-minus crisis.
July 28th, 2011 at 7:53 AM
Just to let everyone know this “Mr Michael Hardy” has been constantly attempting to sell our open source software and also copying a lot of our other intellectual property at Scirra.com for a while now.
I am constantly emailing various web hosts to get his websites shut down and 99% of the time they are compliant, so I suggest and actively encourage other people also do the same if he steals any of your work as it’s the easiest way to remove offending material.
I gave him good opportunity to remove offending materials, and to comply with our reasonable requests but he has lied to us multiple times and has set up even more websites distributing our work.
He has also sent me excessively abusive and foul emails as well. I am in contact with various platforms now to get him permamently blocked from using them again which should go some way to preventing his practises in the future.
I encourage anyone suffering from him to take action by contacting web hosts and other various services making them aware of his practises.
July 31st, 2011 at 3:35 PM
His Paypal has been shut down now due to my complaint by the looks of it, and he sent me a message which can only be described as blackmail back, and further threats of mass infringement. If he follows though with it I will seek legal action, I’ve sent an email off to the General Attorney for advice on how to proceed if such measures are necessary.
August 2nd, 2011 at 10:53 PM
Your a Fucking lier.
Do what you want fucker…
See you in hell Tom
August 2nd, 2011 at 10:54 PM
I’m sorry Michael, I was wrong. You ducking are smart…
August 13th, 2011 at 1:12 PM
Michael, you are a very strange individual. Please find another hobby.
August 19th, 2011 at 4:15 AM
Michael J. Hardy/Michael J. Brauer/Apparent Programmer
Your ventures in the software business have given me great hope for the future. I hope there are many more people like you in the near future for me to laugh at and feel generally superior to. The best thing about reading all of these is that it seems you used Visual Basic 6 for just about everything, and now you say you’ve taken a two year online course in C/C++ programming… What, was heading to the library too hard? And for that matter why not learn C/C++ years ago? Maybe you could’ve actually understood the source code to PrBoom… Err I mean Asylum V1.666. :P
September 7th, 2011 at 1:27 PM
you cant be so stupid, recently i discover another fraud from you Michael Hardy, you stoled my ultimate super doom 3 for skulltag and gzdoom and you are trying to win money with my work and the doomero´s team, and including doom2 and gzdoom, that is totaly ilegal man, so if you are smart, remove you web site of doom2 resurrect and related links please.
September 7th, 2011 at 3:08 PM
@doomero i’m helping trying to tell from many sites that distributes the doom 2 ressurected telling what is this and talking for remove the links
September 8th, 2011 at 5:13 AM
I have the strangest boner after reading this whole saga
September 10th, 2011 at 12:16 PM
@ibm5155
The Link
http://www.doom-game.com/index.html
September 26th, 2011 at 4:04 PM
This is fucking ridiculous, is there any progress on shutting down the Doom 2 resurrected site and his blatant theft of ZBlood?
September 28th, 2011 at 10:54 PM
A great read on this low-life scumbag. You’re not above IP law, Mr. Hardy.
October 4th, 2011 at 12:28 PM
Lol! I like how he uses Microsoft and Id Software as a “supporter” as-well as claims that it was “patented”
October 4th, 2011 at 12:47 PM
That being said, it also appears that the ESRB logo image also has a watermark on it :P
October 9th, 2011 at 9:49 AM
Use this to report his plagiarism of your “ultimate super doom 3” game to the web host’s “hostmaster”:
http://www.whois.net/whois/doom-game.com.com
I’m sure THIS’ll help you get justice.
Glad that I could be of help (if my advice did help, although you could’ve already done that yourself if you researched how to contact him :P)
December 5th, 2011 at 9:06 AM
Hi,
I am another victim of this Michael Hardy with our game “Fairy Island”. Thanks to another developer it came to our attention that this guy applied the Hardy treatment to our game. We managed to close his homepage where he was presenting the game as it was made by him. Now, more than 6 months later, he added the game once again on a lot of download portals :)
We’ve filed an FBI complaint and I hope he gets the treatment he needs.
I guess now we can only talk to the download portals and hope they remove the game :)
Personally, I really think that he has a diagnosed mental illness and that he is some kind of hacker wannabe, because he isn’t even capable of covering his own tracks. His first website we managed to close was registered under his own name…
Hardy, if you are reading this, you should know that we really pity you and you should get some help!
M
January 7th, 2012 at 3:29 PM
Found another website owned by this guy:
http://thefpsgame.com/
I trying to figure out who the real creator was, and what the original title for this game is.
Took a guess that it would be from Quake 4 because it looked similar to it but was somewhat wrong.
January 13th, 2012 at 11:59 AM
another ripoff http://creativecpp.com
January 25th, 2012 at 11:58 PM
The game at thefpsgame.com looks like Doom3 to me. The source code was recently released, like this past year sometime I think(not sure). Likely someone can confirm, but hopefully id would get notice of this, and finally shut this ass down for good.
January 29th, 2012 at 12:14 AM
He’s doing it to us again.
I successfully previously had his Paypal shut down, and am happy to raise a dispute with any other payment provider he uses.
If people could join in, contacting his webhosts and payment providers whenever something crops up it would help everyone a lot. One well phrased email to his webhosts is usually all it takes to shut down his websites. Any help is appreciated.
Tom
January 31st, 2012 at 9:51 AM
Hi guys,
Sol here from Scirra again.
Tom was right, he is up to his tricks again. I have since contacted his latest online banking service, WePay.com, and asked to speak to them regarding Mr, Hardy’s antics.
This guy really needs to grow up and stop being a massive douche-bag. With all the time and effort he wastes on being a constant pain in the ass, he could instead be a productive member of society. Everyone needs a clean toilet and garbage removal services, for example. Surely if he feels that unskilled to have a professional job, he could at least do that with a clear conscience!
Regards once again,
Sol
February 8th, 2012 at 7:58 PM
http://the fpsgame.com/source.html – $10,000.00 for stolen source code!
upxtool @ gmail.com – The email used for the PayPal account created for bilking people out of 10 grand.
http://my sharpstudio.com – Yet another rip-off.
I just spent the last hour reading through the entire series of articles and getting angrier by the minute. I read on another forum where people were saying there’s no point suing the guy. Why not? Honestly, what *will* it take for one of you developers who’ve been ripped off from growing a pair and taking this guy down *once and for all*? Sorry for being crass, but as you can plainly see, he is *never* gonna stop unless someone *makes* him. Running after him and sending mails to shut down his sites is not only a pathetically emasculated response, moreover it’s like cutting off the Hydra’s heads, and look what that has accomplished so far. Given that he has been ripping off people (both developers of original code including well-known companies and unfortunate customers/suckers) for *years* now, all I can say is that it makes my blood boil (and I’m not even one of the ripped off) not only to see this not rotting in jail, but merrily making a fool of you all on a continuing basis. In fact, if this state of affairs continues I’m only gonna stop feeling sorry for you guys whose code/money he has stolen, because clearly you lack the balls to do anything about it (lack of money’s not an issue – there’ll be *many* who’ll be willing to contribute to ensure he’s sent to jail). Rick Brewster’s response (and I don’t blame him completely) was to make what was an open-source project now effectively closed-source. Is that what all you developers are gonna do – hurt every legit user in the FOSS community by yanking the source code, then put blinders on and do absolutely *nothing* to hurt the actual perpetrator of these crimes? What a joke. Must say I’ve lost all respect for you guys, and it’s sad to see the thieves win but I guess that’s what happens in this day and age. A real lesson for all the kids and especially budding programmers out there – don’t waste your time actually learning anything, for it’s *much* more easy and lucrative to rip off others and there’s no danger of (legal) reprisal or justice either.
February 9th, 2012 at 12:12 PM
All well and good to say James, but we don’t know who this guy is or how to find him! We don’t even know if Michael J Hardy is even his real name (which, it’s probably NOT).
I’d love to find this guy and drag him through the shit-pile. I probably have enough money to do so… if you would kindly point me in the right direction, I’ll be more than happy oblige.
He’s already made yet ANOTHER site, to rip-off our software here:
http://www.gamedesignerpro.com/index.html
We got his WePay account shut down, but apparently WePay is run by a bunch of clowns. It took over 10 days and 6 emails to get them to finally shut his donation page down, to have it literally recreated AGAIN not 5 minutes later. This is beyond frustrating. Personally if I ever met this guy I’d probably squeeze his neck until his head popped off. Now off we go to shut down his NEW PayPal account.
Holy crap, it’s like I’m stuck in a horrible movie that just repeats over and over.
~Sol
February 9th, 2012 at 8:31 PM
@James: +1
@Sol: His ISP-provided email IDs are known, so if you ask your lawyer to send them a court summons, I’m sure they’ll be obliged to give him up. Also, I believe I saw his address mentioned somewhere in conjunction with his site registration details. You can’t honestly tell me that with the combined resources of so many ripped-off people, there’s nothing that can be done to bring this guy to book?
February 9th, 2012 at 8:34 PM
http://support.google.com/mail/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=abuse
upxtool@gmail.com
hardycreations@gmail.com
February 10th, 2012 at 12:23 AM
@James, the problem is we are a small 2 man company based in the UK. We do not have the funds, legal expertise, or time to sue him. We are also based in the UK, which makes it logistically difficult to take legal action in USA.
If we had more money and time we would be more inclined to take action against him. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before someone does. Until then, our best course of action is to keep shutting down his illegal websites when they crop up.
March 24th, 2012 at 11:51 AM
You guys and anyone else ripped off should talk to the EFF about Mike Hardy https://www.eff.org/about/contact
The EFF will probably help you take action against this opensource troll
May 19th, 2012 at 10:42 PM
He’s still trying to sell Super Mario War -.-
http://www.mariowar.com/buy.html
May 19th, 2012 at 10:42 PM
And there’s a free one to download too
June 16th, 2012 at 11:06 AM
I believe a 30-06 round is around 20 cents. That seems like the most cost effective solution to me.
September 3rd, 2012 at 7:43 AM
Just discovered this thing which seems to be rather new or at least a new attempt to sell one of his earlier “creations” (date says something about August 2012):
http://www.doom-games.com/index.html
September 5th, 2012 at 10:25 PM
Wow. When I saw the dates in the earlier articles I had hoped this guy might have been stopped by now, however I just found a half dozen sites selling more ripped products, just with a google search for Hardy Creations INC.
I’d like to mention to anyone from Scirra who’s still keeping tabs on this site, I have just contacted the hostmaster for doteasy.com, the host for the latest ripoff of Construct. I told them in brief that the product on his site is an illegal copy, and that Scirra owns the property, I recommended that they attempt to contact Scirra to resolve the issue.
November 23rd, 2012 at 12:44 AM
Wow, and I thought I was the only one… The amount of software he’s ripped off is utterly jaw-dropping…
His most recent target has actually been software of my own. Me and some friends from around the world are co-developers of BetterExplorer, a Windows Explorer replacement… Imagine how we felt when we saw him post a clone of our software on his own website, and, just like everything else, he’s replaced all of our credits with his own. We had him remove the first site, but now, only a week ago, it showed up again.
This guy is utterly unbelieveable. If I see his name anywhere online again, it’ll be too soon.
November 24th, 2012 at 4:52 PM
[…] youfailit.net ( as he already posted a comment. Funny somehow.) […]
December 23rd, 2012 at 9:41 AM
It seems as if Hardy is active again:
Michael Hardy’s WinDos! – A Professional, Ultimate MS-DOS Emulator For Microsoft Windows! (original: D-Fend Reloaded and DOSBox)
Michael Hardy’s Media Player Classic – Home Cinema!: (original: Media Player Classic)
Creative Paint: (original: Paint.Net)
January 12th, 2013 at 10:17 PM
Heh… he just started hanging out around the Apple II USENET groups asking loads of questions about recompiling stuff and protecting it from use, and released “his” latest program… of course, lifted from someone else: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.apple2/nif_NhNNq5E/HrINVMBdC6wJ
I find the pathology of someone doing this really fascinating. I knew someone in school who I realized was a pathological liar, and couldn’t figure out what motivated him to do it. I guess it goes beyond any sort of motive to get ahead, and comes down to some sort of need.
January 20th, 2013 at 4:45 PM
Hi, I came here from the comp.sys.apple2 usenet newsgroup. Nice series of articles. I even went to the kitchen and made popcorn especially for this.
I’ve got to confess: as a 12-year-old, I once deprotected an Apple II game (on a real Apple II, mind you) and plastered my name on the title page to make look like I had written it. I even fooled a few people. Then I grew up a bit, and realized the stupidity of it all. Made some money from software I wrote myself and sold to local dental clinics. Not much, but even a few thousand bucks was a lot of money for a kid in those days. Then discovered girls and, well, spent less time programming.
You’ve got to feel for the guy who spends years of his adult life doing things I grew out of before puberty.
July 29th, 2013 at 2:15 PM
And recently, this appeared:
http://xtremeapple.com/
The BlackJack game is a mostly-BASIC program that was one of those type-in things from Nibble Magazine, with his name and “copyright” replacing that of the original author. It’s the one referenced by “Someone Else” a couple of posts up.
Not sure where he swiped the Blockade game.
LemminGS is stolen directly from the French programming group Brutal Deluxe. I wonder if ol’ Mikey knows how popular they are in the community, and how many people will immediately recognize his theft.
The graphics he posted for the 8-bit Apple II and the 16-bit IIGS emulators don’t give enough detail to tell us from where he stole them. I’m sure we’ll see soon enough.
What a scumbag…
October 2nd, 2013 at 12:13 AM
He has dropped another steaming hot pile of backspaceware on us- Paint.NET is being sold again under the name “Creative-Paint” (dot com). The interface is truly a marvel of modern engineering; specifically, how anyone survived using that, much less making it. It’s like someone rubbed clown vomit all over it and drug it through a cotton candy machine.
February 21st, 2014 at 1:22 AM
In November 2013, he reappeared in the comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup asking about the source code to System 6.0.1, the system software for the Apple IIgs. Apparently, he was thinking he could rebrand software written by Apple and no one would notice.
Hardy claimed his last name was ‘Cain’ but he was quickly exposed. His xtremeapple site disappeared shortly after, but soon reappeared at http://xtremeapple programming.com, still claiming to have written several well known pieces of Apple II software obviously authored by someone else. Maybe he’s hoping a naive new Apple collector will stumble across his stolen wares without realizing his duplicity.
Here’s the current registration info, for anyone still paying attention to this sordid little tale. Note the new variation on the ‘Brauer’ alias:
Domain Name: xtremeappleprogramming.com
Registry Domain ID: 1845550936_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.melbourneit.com
Registrar URL: http://www.melbourneit.com.au
Updated Date: 2014-02-06T00:20:06Z
Creation Date: 2014-02-05T23:53:38Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2015-02-05T23:53:38Z
Registrar: Melbourne IT Ltd
Registrar IANA ID: 13
Registrar Abuse Contact Email: .au
Registrar Abuse Contact Phone: +61.386242300
Domain Status: ok
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: Michael Brower
Registrant Organization: xtremeappleprogramming
Registrant Street: 525 fletcher rd
Registrant City: leasburg
Registrant State/Province: MO
Registrant Postal Code: 65535
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5737325924
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email:
Registry Admin ID:
Admin Name: Michael Brower
Admin Organization: xtremeappleprogramming
Admin Street: 525 fletcher rd
Admin City: leasburg
Admin State/Province: MO
Admin Postal Code: 65535
Admin Country: US
Admin Phone: +1.5737325924
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax:
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email:
Registry Tech ID:
Tech Name: YahooDomains TechContact
Tech Organization: Yahoo! Inc
Tech Street: 701 First Ave.
Tech City: Sunnyvale
Tech State/Province: CA
Tech Postal Code: 94089
Tech Country: US
Tech Phone: +1.4089162124
Tech Phone Ext:
Tech Fax:
Tech Fax Ext:
Tech Email:
Name Server: NS01.000WEBHOST.COM
Name Server: NS02.000WEBHOST.COM
DNSSEC: unsigned
URL of the ICANN WHOIS Data Problem Reporting System: http://wdrprs.internic.net
February 26th, 2014 at 5:26 PM
if anyone finds a good way to get ahold of Michael hardy will you please let me know cause I need to get my daughter away from him an he keeps hiding from me
October 7th, 2014 at 10:14 AM
He has also been stealing from Shareaza, http://www.galaxy-sharing.com/download.html
October 7th, 2014 at 10:19 AM
Oh and per the request of Kara, this is the WHOIS info from that particular site, its not much but its plenty (if it’s still valid)
Registry Registrant ID:
Registrant Name: MICHAEL HARDY
Registrant Organization: –
Registrant Street: 525 FLETCHER RD
Registrant City: LEASBURG
Registrant State/Province: MO
Registrant Postal Code: 65535
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: 2053978
Registrant Phone Ext: 573
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email:
December 7th, 2014 at 7:54 AM
Kara(ex-wife) is a child molester. She lost her daughter because she molested her with her
sick boyfriend Matt Garms. There is legal proof of this. That’s why she doesn’t have her
daughter. By the way. I no longer program. I now own a business in Springfield Missouri.
Oh an by the way for those who stated that ip addresses don’t lie. Anyone can fake their ip address
as well as their location and where there sitting at. They make special software for that type of
stuff.
Good Day.
April 1st, 2015 at 11:17 AM
This goes to keeping it going. I have never hurt my daughter in any which way. He has lied to the courts just like he has lied about all these games he has supposed made. I have proof of this now. As a matter of fact as soon as we go back to court for me to take my daughter from him he will most likely end up in jail and/or prison. For lying on the stand, having false statements, and for making false cps reports. So yeah if he’s not going to go down for lieing about these games he is going to go down for lying about me. And the knife company he is talking about is suppose to be out of Rolla, Mo but when you look up the address for the shop there is no such address in Rolla Mo. The address is for a shop in utah. He does not live in leasburg any more he is in sullivan anyone that wants to find him can find him on face book under Michael James Hardy. He needs to be hung for all these lies he keeps coming up with.
April 1st, 2015 at 12:59 PM
Michael Hardy is Located in Sullivan , Missouri. 63080… His Last name used on Face book , was James Michael Hardy, adopted name cain…
April 3rd, 2015 at 5:38 PM
Under the NAME ERIK FRANCIS SCHRODY ON FACEBOOK !!!!
Erik Francis Schrody
5 hrs ·
REST IN PEACE LITTLE BROTHER (MICHAEL JAMES HARDY)
BORN: DECEMBER 17TH, 1976
D.O.D: MARCH 15TH, 1997
THANK YOU JAMES AND SHARON HARDY FOR OPENING YOUR HOME AND LIVES TO ME FOR DEALING WITH THE DEATH OF MY BIRTH BROTHER MICHAEL J. HARDY.
‘REST IN PEACE LITTLE BROTHER (MICHAEL JAMES HARDY)
BORN: DECEMBER 17TH, 1976
D.O.D: MARCH 15TH, 1997
THANK YOU JAMES AND SHARON HARDY FOR OPENING YOUR HOME AND LIVES TO ME FOR DEALING WITH THE DEATH OF MY BIRTH BROTHER MICHAEL J. HARDY.’
Like · Share
Claiming to be dead !!!! What a fake ##########**************************************************************
April 12th, 2015 at 9:44 PM
He says he don’t program any more but here ya go here is his latest http://watchdigitalcinema.com/
October 24th, 2015 at 9:34 AM
That particular title appears to be based off of Popcorn Time, an open source streaming movie player mired in controversy regarding BitTorrent piracy…
January 16th, 2016 at 3:36 AM
I just found out about this story thanks to a Doom gameplay mod called Terrorists! which had a reference to Hardy in the help menu. Holy shit, what a sad sack of crap. I just want to say thanks for exposing this person and showing what utter scum he is. Hopefully he won’t be pulling such stunts in the future.
February 15th, 2016 at 11:04 PM
Doubt he’s going to stop considering he’s been going since 2005 (!!!!)
I must admit that despite his misdoings it’s pretty entertaining to see everyone band together combatting him. I wonder where the writer of this blog went.
March 3rd, 2016 at 4:37 AM
I just saw this over on the Doomworld forums. Looks like he’s decided to start ripping of Id games now.
http://www.papermare.com/
And he’s got Doom and Heretic on the Microsoft store
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/final-doom/9nblggh39vgs
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/games/heretic/9wzdncrd2909?cid=appraisin
I can’t prove it’s him of course, as he cleverly disguised his name as Mike L. Now maybe it’s just me, but that’s awfully close to Michael. Grammar seems to be the same, and the changing of title screens, butchering of the games, charging money for cheats, putting ads in the unpaid version seems par for the course.
I ran the doman through a tracker, but it’s using a domainbyproxy located in Arizona, all user info is private.
The Twitter is enjoyable as well: https://twitter.com/papermare .
It’s almost like he actually thinks that he’s the one making these games.
Anyway, I emailed all this information to Zenimax/Bethesda. It doesn’t seem like all the smaller or individual developers he’s ripped off over the years have been able to get much done. Maybe Zenimax will.
March 27th, 2020 at 1:00 AM
According to public records, Mr. Hardy has been on parole since November of 2017. He was sentenced to five years for possession of controlled substances, which was immediately suspended. See 16AB-CR02044-01 in Missouri’s CASENET. (https://www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/caseNoSearch.do)
Actually, it appears that he is being prosecuted for violating parole. See 18CF-CR01207-01 in CASENET. A hearing is scheduled a week and a half from now.
There really was some sort of child protection legal stuff involved. See 02FC329044 in CASENET, where a judge granted a child protective order for a few months in 2002. Mr. Hardy has been paying [ex-wife] $19.00/month in child support since 2006. See 06AB-AD00051 in CASENET. The name of this ex-wife matches.
There was also a woman who obtained a protective order against Mr. Hardy in 2004, on the basis of adult abuse or stalking. See 04AB-PN00317 in CASENET. A man tried to obtain a protective order against Mr. Hardy in 2015, but the judge did not grant that request. See 15AB-PN00713 in CASENET.
The man has been through at least three marriages now. Aside from the woman who has been mentioned here and in Mr. Harding’s “creations”, he was also divorced in 2002 and in 2017. This means the middle wife, the one referred to here, must have left with the kid being very young. The 2017 divorce appears to be against Mr. Hardy’s will, since the court records indicate difficulty serving Mr. Hardy with relevant legal documents. See 02FC330029 and 16AB-DR00468 respectively.
All of this is based on simple public records available for free through the Missouri court system. Each court record provides Mr. Hardy’s address at the time, which match the various WHOIS queries provided here. The ex-wife’s story checks out. I am fairly confident that I have the correct Mr. Michael James Hardy. This thread and the court records tell a pitiful tale of a plagiarist and stalker, thrice divorced, who has since turned to drugs. I hope he turns his life around.
March 27th, 2020 at 1:16 AM
Re: ex-wife and kid, bad on me for missing this before. Sole custody was awarded to Mr. Hardy in 2011, case 08CF-DR00209-01. Ex-wife was ordered to pay child support of $271 per week. I suppose that voids the $19/mo payment mentioned above.
March 27th, 2020 at 1:17 AM
… poor kid …
March 27th, 2020 at 1:36 AM
Last post, promise. Whatever the relation, if any, there really is a Matt Garms who pled guilty to statutory sodomy of a fifteen year old girl in 2002. Barring some mental disability, that can’t be the child Mr. Hardy won custody of in 2011. https://www.mshp.dps.missouri.gov/CJ38/Offense?page=0&column=name&id=1025073