On August 27th, 2024, the [Until I Die music video] would premier. Within the live chat of this video, Machine Girl would give a direct shoutout to Piper as a sponsor behind it. Something that was suspicious within itself, since clearly Piper would not be a type of company that MG would endorse.

There was also a profile commenting within the live chat under the name of "Da Sludgeeeeee," which those following to the ARG were of course alerted towards due to the prior instances of vandalism under the same name.

This user would comment and give the login information to sos.exposed before the music video would play. Username simply being "thesludge" and password being "untilidie."

When users would log in, they'd be greeted with a sort of click-adventure interface. It appeared that sos.exposed was a website that The Sludge created to vent about its experiences relating to Piper and leak information about them.

To uncover more information about Piper, users would need to navigate this interface and solve and connect things along the way. This is a pretty large website, meaning that conveying everything about it here would be very difficult since it is very image-heavy with lots to explore. Thankfully though, when digging around, I found this archive of the game itself if you would like to experience this!

** [INTERNET ARCHIVE LINK] / [MEGA BACKUP LINK] **

I myself have not played this game (yet,) so to get an idea of how it appeared graphically from afar, below are a few images that I have saved from others in the discord in no specific order. If you'd like to track how users engaged with it, here is a [link] to the beginning of the discussion related to it within the official ARG channel. This could also help you follow along if you'd like to play the game yourself, but as a disclaimer, the site would update at times as this part of the ARG went on. I believe the backup version that is shared is reflective of the final update.

Ultimately though for the sake of summary here, I will share what was uncovered:

General resources:

- A [google doc] by @/octavia2562 in the discord, intended to be a sort of sitemap which shared how to progress and navigate through the website for information.

- A sludgefont guide, put together by the community after engaging with the site and prior material:

Personal information regarding "The Sludge:"

- A [youtube playlist] uncovered from the site, made up of various niche YT videos

- [Various vents] uncovered from clicking different washing machines on one page. This is a text file that contains what was translated.

- This [google doc] by @/heliotropical which contains the cards that were uncovered and the associated text. These largely seemed to vents relating to The Sludges personal and work life.

- It also appeared like "The Sludge" is "Gus Dethel" rearranged, so this has to be its given name. A source of inspiration for its chosen name could've been an Alice in Chains song included within the YT playlist; "Sludge Factory."

Between the amount of time that users were uncovering more information from sos.exposed, various posts were made by Piper which show that that they became aware of this websites' existance. Some users would even go as far as to try and log in to Pipers' own website.

These sort of posts would continue into the month of October of that year. Here are more stories that were posted while sos.exposed was still being combed through:

Finally, within the last updates of the website, users would be told that "they have everything they need to proceed." Meaning they had to be looking over something.

It turns out that by double checking the cards retrieved from the site, users were able to retrieve The Sludge's login information to the Piper website. Username being "GUSDETHEL666" and password being "IMNOTYOURBOY!"

In this final update, The Sludge encourages users to take down Piper with said information. The final home page edit stating that “it’s up to you now,” with one final message to translate:

"TO WHOEVER IS STILL PAYING ATTENTION
IF ANYONES EVEN OUT THERE
ITS NOT SAFE FOR ME TO POST ANYMORE.
ITS ON YOU NOW.
TAKE DOWN PIPER. I CANNOT DO THIS ALONE.
EXPOSE THEM FOR WHAT THEY REALLY ARE.
FIND THE TRUTH.
BEFORE ITS TOO LATE."