Does he know?
Following on somewhat from my post about Mod Literacy Disparity.
I was browsing through the recent mods on Lethal Company's ThunderStore page when this mod happened to catch my eye.

I saw the thumbnail and couldn't help but feel that it looked familiar. I wasn't sure what it was at that moment in time but the moment I saw the first screenshot I immediately recognised it and ended up going down a rabbit hole.
Buckle up. This is gonna be a long one.
"Sargus" - It Begins
This is "Sargus", called "Sargas" ingame for some reason.

And this? This is rp_HomeTown1999. A Garry's Mod map created by F. Kalkman (a.k.a Smartzenegger) in the good year of 2005.

To say that the resemblance is uncanny would be... an understatement. It's the same map, of course. "G7Exid" has ported the map almost wholesale (with the wrong scale! It's become a rats map!), labelled it rather vaguely as simply being an "inhabited planet" resembling "20st century" [sic] Earth and slapped it up onto Thunderstore.
Of course nowhere is rp_HomeTown1999 mentioned on the Thunderstore page for this mod. In fact the page is quite sparse - it repeats the description, shows some screenshots, mentions that "Item Dropship Floating" is a known issue1 and states that bugs can be reported via the linked website.2
This... did not sit right with me. It's one thing to port assets from other games and such. After all, I myself have ported both Oatmeal and Tattletail wholesale into Lethal Company complete with sounds.3 But it's another thing to not only poorly port someone's community created content as-is but also fail to credit them or mention the original work in any capacity.
When I say the port is poor I do mean it. The map's scale is completely wrong - this means the main entrance (placed on a random door in the map) is a very very far distance from the ship's landing spot up some stairs that are so big you've got to jump up them. No idea where the fire exit is, or if there even is one. Also, as you can see from the screenshot, they've not even bothered with adjusting materials to make them transparent.
On top of all this I'm pretty sure that one of the screenshots on the Thunderstore page shows an area that you can't even access. In the original map the computer shop was accessed via a teleport behind some sliding doors but in the port the doors are static and I'm pretty sure the teleport wouldn't even be implemented anyway.
Now I'm curious though.
What are this person's other mods like?
"Kastra" - Uh Oh
Examining their Thunderstore profile, most things seem fairly inane. There's a chunk of Los Santos that they added as a moon, Bikini Bottom, South Park. All probably similar rips/ports but at least we can easily assume these are all assets ripped from games (though South Park I'm not clear about) that actually existed in those games by default and not community created.4
However, it did not take long for something else to catch my eye in a similar way that Sargus had. An earlier mod named "Kastra."

People who've played certain Source games may immediately see what I'm talking about - the textures, those wrecked car models. It's another goddamn Source map. Presumably, another Garry's Mod map.
However, this was a map that I was unfortunately not familiar with. It's a Source map for sure, recognisable by various props and textures. So it's an almost identical case to rp_HomeTown1999 - a community made map has been ported wholesale into Lethal Company with zero credit or acknowledgement of the original source.
But I take even more offense to this. The full description for Kastra reads:
"Adds a Post-Apocalyptic Planet! (Inspired by The Last of Us)"
Now it may just be me, but with no acknowledgement of this being a port of an existing map, "Inspired by The Last of Us" very much carries the implication that this was created by our friend Exid. At any rate it's a straight up lie because, spoilers, this map existed 8 years before The Last of Us.
I haven't tried "Kastra" in-game but I suspect it suffers from all the same problems as "Sargus." You can already tell from one screenshot that the scaling is just as bad and I can't quite tell from the screenshots but I'm sure it also has similar problems with transparent materials (or lack thereof.)
Finding "Kastra"
I ended up showing all this to my friend @bekoha. He knows very little of Lethal Company but we do discuss Source and related topics quite a bit and given that we both know of rp_HomeTown1999 so I thought we'd get a good laugh out of this.
Of course I also showed him Kastra and that's when things started getting interesting because we began to talk about it a little bit more. I mention that I have no clue what the original map for Kastra is. I didn't plan to dig into this anymore. There were several unanswered questions of course - what's the original map for "Kastra"? Did Exid port these themself? Why?
At this point though, Bekoha does something that for some reason I hadn't thought to do at all - he checks the bundle manifest.
See, when Unity asset bundles5 are built a .manifest file is also produced. This manifest lists a bunch of interesting info such as the full paths of every assets shipped in the bundle. It's here that we can get a glimpse into the structure of the mod author's files when they made the mod and it's also here that we can actually discover the original name of the map!

"rp_deadcity" is the name, preserved in filenames and filepaths. Finally we have Kastra's true name! Bekoha does some searching and finds two things. First, here's a Steam Workshop re-upload of the original "rp_deadcity" map. You can confirm that while Kastra has had its lighting changed drastically it is blatantly the same map.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2853930724
If you're wondering who made Dead City, that'd be one Alex Royce who originally created it as a CS:S map. Mr. Royce now works as a designer at Infinity Ward and in the past was responsible for several maps in CoD Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. It's very awesome that someone who used to make CS:S maps has worked on such games. Real shame his early work is now stuffed uncredited at the wrong scale inside a Lethal Company mod with 6587 downloads, though.
Alright, getting back on track. That's one question answered, but the other thing Bekoha found was... a little bit more interesting.
A SketchFab link, featuring the entire map ripped as a standalone 3D model. Ah. Exid did not port these themself. Who could have guessed? Two questions answered.
Richard "DigitalExplorations" Mandel
So, it quickly became clear what had happened here. Exid had somehow stumbled upon model versions of these maps as assets and had made the decision to port these models in their entirety into Lethal Company. Even if these weren't Garry's Mod maps, this means that Exid had still failed to credit these. Even if that SketchFab model wasn't just a model version of someone else's Garry's Mod map, it's still under CC-BY which is being violated here.
The strange thing is - rp_HomeTown1999 is not on Sketchfab. And the title of the rp_deadcity upload is a bit weird, isn't it? "Rp_dead_city__v1__by_digitalexplorations_ddmznuy". Bit of a word salad and definitely seems like it was pulled from elsewhere. But where? (Note that there's a similar rip of gm_bigcity on the same user's Sketchfab page. This'll be relevant later!)
Checking the manifest file of "Sargus" we can find a naming scheme identical to that of "Kastra"'s files - and that applies to both Exid's "Kastra" mod as well as the Sketchfab upload of rp_deadcity. So these models are definitely from the same source or at least ripped using the same tools.

Speaking of the rp_deadcity Sketchfab upload, a file stood out of me for its unusual name of "prev.png" which doesn't fit in with any of the other image files. This image appears to actually be an image that serves as a preview for the map/model and we can find some interesting text on it that brings us down to another layer of this whole mystery.

"Ported by Richard Mandel", huh? Well, at least Richard here has actually stated that it's a port of a GMod map and has even bothered stating the name of said map. (And he even did it without falsely claiming that it's "Inspired by The Last of Us")
A quick Google search of this name with "GMOD to OBJ" does indeed take us to a DeviantArt account called "DigitalExplorations" and from there we can find more useful info from searching "DigitalExplorations GMOD to OBJ" instead.
That leads us to a post on DeviantArt in which Richard explains his future plans for his "GMOD to XPS/OBJ" project.
To summarise, he explains the effort that this process takes and elaborates on his future (well, future relative to 2019) plans for this project. He states plans to "fix up" and "re-release" some "old RP and zombie maps ... left over from 2019". Interesting. One wonders if rp_deadcity was amongst those.
Another post from a few days later confirms that on the day this post was made, Richard uploaded his conversions of the 3 maps "rp_destruction," "rp_hometown1999," and "rp_townsend". Hey! HomeTown, old friend! Nice to see you!
Overall, these posts pretty much just confirms beyond a doubt that we almost certainly have our man here, even if we can't seem to spot any of the original download links. But at least he did a better job of giving credit than Exid. Right?
November 2nd, 2021. "I'm done with 3D model releases for good."
In this post, Richard explains that he'll not only be stopping his 3D model uploads but he will also intentionally be breaking all existing download links. Why? Well, in his own words, he doesn't want to "worry anymore about some egomanical 3D artist raving on about how I've "stolen" his work". Because according to Richard, "there's no law that says I can't post a picture of whatever 3D model I happen to like or use for something. There's also no law that says I have to credit the original creator when I do it, always I always try to do that or at least credit my source just as a common courtesy. It's the right thing to do, if you know what I'm saying. It's not required or mandated."
Richard stopped uploading 3D models because he was using 3D artist's assets without permission and got mad when they asked him to stop. In Richard's world copyright simply doesn't exist. (You know, the law that does in fact state that you can't just use other people's work without permission.) In Richard's world he doesn't need to credit the people whose work he uses and you know what, he's technically right! He doesn't "need" to give that credit because he never fucking asked for permission in the first place!
Richard is plagiarist prime.
A Chain of Theft
And now it becomes clear what has happened.
Richard Mandel converted various Source/GMod maps to full 3D models. He also seemed to be doing this with some other assets though I'm not sure which. His quitting post implies that he actually removed all his GMod conversions a year prior to the rest. He at least did state what the original map was, and made it clear they were conversions of existing maps to begin with. I understand at least that the fact that Richard was not indirectly passing these conversions off as his own work means that when it comes to the GMod maps at least he was not technically plagiarising. Although, based on his post, he at least seems to believe that crediting people is optional which is certainly in my eyes the attitude of a plagiarist.
So in 2020 Richard removes his GMod conversions but they're still out there. rp_deadcity was on Sketchfab but rp_HomeTown1999 wasn't. However, with some searching, we can find rp_HomeTown1999 reuploaded on other sites6 including the fucking Roblox store (Hey look! There's BigCity again too! We'll get to that.)
From this we can understand Exid's modus operandi when it comes to Sargus and Kastra. They found these 3D models somewhere and decided for whatever reason that they would make for good ports into Lethal Company. When doing so they decided to give them new names and, perhaps most interestingly, make up descriptions based on their content. While their new names seem to be pulled out of thin air, these descriptions were loosely based on the actual names of the maps. (Intentionally obscuring their origins)
rp_HomeTown1999, being explicitly stated to be modelled after 1999, has its description state that it resembles "Earth in the 20st century".
rp_deadcity meanwhile is described as being "post-apocalyptic". The strange thing about this one is that Exid also felt the need to state that the level is "Inspired by The Last of Us". I don't know why they felt the need to add this extraneous detail that only serves to indirectly imply that they authored the map and make their plagiarism worse.
It is in-fact entirely possible that Exid has no idea that these maps even originate as GMod maps. We've got zero way of knowing which site they downloaded these from. Don't get me wrong though, just because they couldn't have known the true origins doesn't really change anything. They still didn't bother crediting wherever it was they downloaded these assets, not bothering to include their original names and even just making shit up about them. I think even if they did know the original source, they would not have bothered.
After all, this is the same person who's uploaded 4 full episodes of actual real TV shows to Thunderstore in a mod.
So there we have it. The reason we now have 2 Garry's Mod maps from 2005 poorly ported into Lethal Company is because one person happened to convert them to models and those models then found their way redistributed elsewhere which led to another person finding them and stealing those to put into Lethal Company. A terrible chain.
Odds and Ends - Exid's other work
All of this leaves us wondering. Exid has some other work on Thunderstore - in total they've uploaded 8 custom moons for the game and we now know that for 2 such moons they simply found an asset online and dropped it into the game with minimal effort. (For some reason in rp_HomeTown1999 they at least went through the effort of adding scan points to show the names of various establishments which is... odd? Higher than minimum effort, I suppose.)
How many of the others are the same? Well, I'm not going to bother loading these up in the game but I can at least inspect the manifest files and infer or check things.
Well they have 2 SpongeBob themed moons - BikiniBracken and BikiniBottom. The former is apparently obsolete in favour of the latter but why they are seperate I have no idea. I've not checked these out in-game myself but it's safe to assume that they are both ripped from a SpongeBob game. Based on file listings on The Models Resource7, they're either this one or this one. Ripper and game uncredited though it is at least clear from context that they did not make this. Isn't made clear that they didn't rip it though.
The Los Santos moon is fairly obvious. No doubt they knew they wouldn't be able to pass this off as anything else but they don't credit who ripped the model which I'm sure was not them.
There's a moon of the Titanic for whatever reason. Given how many models of the Titanic are out there this is probably stolen. The OceanGate Titan makes a special guest appearance too, for some reason. I can't find a definitive source on this one. Creator uncredited and unknown.
They have moon named CampNou which is a football stadium. Searching for "camp nou model" on Google brings up a strikingly similar Sketchfab result and examination of the manifest file against the Sketchfab download confirms based on the texture names that they are one and the same. I have no idea if the Sketchfab upload is the original or a reupload from elsewhere but it is listed under CC-BY so at the very least this is a CC violation if this is the original.
The first moons they ever released were in SouthParkCompany a mod which adds both the town of South Park and South Park Elementary as 2 seperate moons. The texture names tell us that these are the Title Screen and Gym Class maps from South Park for the N64. Game and ripper go uncredited. Again.
Finally we've got one that took me by surprise. G7 Island apparently "ADDS a Medival Castle Island dedicated to the Streamer Fousey as a MOON." I don't know who the hell Fousey is or why he would have a "medieval castle island" dedicated to him. Here's the screenshot from the page:

A few folks probably recognise this right away but I'm clueless so it took me a quick search to discover that this is fucking Windfall Island. Damn! Even Nintendo isn't safe apparently. Given how well known Windwaker is I'm very surprised that they didn't upload it as Windfall Island knowing people might recognise it. Nope, instead they just describe it as a generic "medieval castle" and apparently chose to do something to dedicate it to whoever Fousey is. I don't know what that dedication looks like and I don't care to. Shoutouts to Nintendo for dedicating an entire island in Windwaker to Fousey. (Oh yeah, and I just put together that the "G7" in "G7 Island" is probably the same "G7" as in "G7Exid". So this really is almost direct plagiarism trying to claim a fucking Nintendo asset as their own.)
I'm not going to go as in-depth but all of this plagiarism extends to the custom scrap they add too. Their "Bandos Scraps" mod contains models ripped from Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, StreetPass Mii Plaza and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Diamond Records and probably at least one other thing that I can't source.
Final Note - Dependency paths
As a final note, I want to point out some oddities that may point to some of Exid's future (or scrapped) plans for future assets to "borrow".
Now's a good time to mention that AssetBundle manifests also contain a section dedicated to describing other bundles that are dependencies of the current bundle. In this case, all of these bundles depend on the "lethalexpansion" bundle, a bundle from the "Lethal Expansion" helper mod that all these mods use to add the new moons.
These are actually absolute paths instead of being relative to the project folder like the other listed files so we can get even more of a peek into how Exid was structuring these. And what's interesting is that every time Exid makes a new moon they seem to copy a previous moon and build on top of it. Sargus still has references to textures from South Park.
Interestingly, the path to the Lethal Expansion bundle can often differ from the moon that the mod is actually for. South Park, both Bikini Bottoms, Camp Nou, "G7 Island" and the Titanic all reference the appropriate moons.
Los Santos, interestingly enough, is called "Michael House" in the dependency path which is definitely more accurate than "Los Santos" given that it is only Michael's house.
Then "Kastra"'s (a.k.a Dead City) dependency path is very interesting. It references Liberty City, meaning that Exid either intends to package some small section of Liberty City as a moon in a future mod or at least planned to at some point before giving up on the notion.
Finally, we've got the most recent one. The manifest for "Sargas" (a.ka. HomeTown1999) lists this as the dependency path:
D:/Lethal Moon/A- Models for checking/World Trade Center/LethalSDK_v1.3.19/LethalSDK_TwinTowers/Assets/AssetBundles/lethalexpansion.lem
This is a strange one, because this is the first time a dependency path has pointed to this "A- Models for checking" subfolder (normally, they're just direct subdirectories of "Lethal Moon".) But also, the fucking World Trade Center? Okay, this is just speculation, but given Exid's track record so far I am almost certain that this is fucking BigCity. Told you we'd get back to that.
So, either Exid scrapped their plans to port BigCity (which would've been far more recognisable than two obscure maps from 2005) or they are cooking up the Lethal Company World Trade Center (definitely not gm_bigcity do not investigate) mod as we speak.
Conclusion
Well... that post was a lot longer and a lot more callout-y than I expected. But this was an absolutely insane, fascinating journey to go on. I did not expect to go down this rabbit hole from laughing at a shitty uncredited "port" of a GMod map. Mysteries still remain. For example, does Exid have any idea where the GMod maps come from? They sure as hell must have known where the Windwaker castle came from but that didn't stop 'em.
I don't know. I don't know if I ever will know and quite frankly I don't know what to do with any of this information besides throw it out onto the internet. Who knows how many people are even gonna read this thing? What should I do with all this?
I dunno! Maybe I'll figure it out. Maybe if you have read this far you have thoughts or suggestions or ideas of your own. Maybe the right thing to do is nothing. Maybe I'm making a mistake by making this post so... aggressive? Not sure at all.
Whatever the case, it's written now and I've put too much time into writing it to not post it now. So here we go! Thanks for joining me on this odd journey. I hope you found it interesting, at least.
(Inspired By The Last of Us)
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This is an issue on all of their maps. Apparently they can't figure this one out.
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At the time of writing, Sargus/Sargas/rp_HomeTown1999 isn't listed on the website though all of Exid's other mods seem to be.
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Granted, my mod is not actually public, though I may release it some day.
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Another mod that did catch my eye was their "90's TV" mod which apparently just straight up adds full episodes of Fresh Prince, Family Guy, Friends and Mr. Bean to the TV that's purchasable ingame. I personally do not give a shit about this but I'm not sure Thunderstore would be particularly happy to learn that they are hosting 4 full episodes from various TV shows which are contained as easily viewable MP4s in a 607MB ZIP file. Not sure where to raise that concern.
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Mods with custom content will author their custom content in Unity and then package said content as an asset bundle. This means Unity will cook the assets in Unity-compatible formats and such, allowing the bundle to be loaded by the mod and the assets within used.
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This one is pretty funny since it lists the author as "Facepunch Studios" which is... not right.
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Once again, nothing inherently wrong here. That's what The Models Resource is for, after all. I used it to grab Oatmeal and Tattletail's models because it saved me the work of ripping them myself. The problem here is not giving credit. If I was to ever release those as a mod I'd credit both their original games as well as the person who did the work of ripping them (assuming I don't revisit and re-rip Tattletail myself)