This is correct and, as the writer of Pinball Browser, I am aware of this.

First of all, good news. All of Stern's Spike 2 titles, including Rush, all now work with Scorbit, even with the latest Stern code releases. They work with Stern Insider Connected, or without Stern Insider Connected !

I can't speak for Scorbit but here is what I have seen :
Starting with Mando 0.98, Stern is actively deleting files that are only used by Scorbit.

Based on the actual code, it's clear to me this is done intentionally, nothing related to licensing or security.
I believe this was done as an anti-competitive move in anticipation of launching Stern Insider Connected.

Some of these files are generated by the tools I've developed and are exclusively used by Scorbit (and no one else).
For those interested in the details, the code from Mando 0.98 pro that is pointed out by Fubar is at @2066b4 and is pretty clear :
SternDelete (resized).png
The same code has been in all firmwares since then.
This code is deleting the files that are generated by the tools I've developed for both Scorbit and Pinball Browser (pbspk2comm and pbspk2comm.dat), and also a file that is created by Scorbit themselves and not generated by Pinball Browser (pbspk2comm.sh).
This code also removed the preinstalled serial driver that was used by Scorbit at the time to communicate with the Scorbitron over a USB serial cable.

To protect Scorbit's customers, we found a way to solve the problems around the serial driver, and then Stern striked again, responding by modifying the kernel to prevent any serial driver reinstallation !

Fortunately, we found a way to restore communication between the game and the Scorbitron. But this is not the end of the story...

Starting with Godzilla v0.79, Stern started to encrypt the scores into memory to prevent Scorbit from reading them !
In my opinion, there is no benefit for the user and the goal is to harm Scorbit, probably due to their desire to kill competition on connected games.

Despite all of this, we found work-arounds and restored the functionality to Scorbit's customers. This is all while the guys at Scorbit have tried numerous times to work directly with Stern at no cost, like they have with every other manufacturer, and Stern has refused to work with them prentending they didn't have time now. Obviously they seem to have the resources and time to add some code to stop Scorbit...

In brief, Stern is clearly trying to shutdown competition on connected games with malicious behaviour, targeting a company that has been demonstrating these features for over seven years. This is classic unfair competition. It is no different than when Microsoft tried to force customers to use IE by breaking Netscape, claiming it was to improve security and the user experience. You see how that worked out for Microsoft. It cost them billions and a decade of anti-trust headache. Any competent lawyer knows federal and EU anti-trust protections override any licensing agreements, even if they are signed contracts !

Many things had to be done to acheive what they did:
- Reverse engineer some components to figure out how to harm Scorbit;
- Kernel changes to prevent serial driver reinstallation;
- Changes to game code to encrypt scores and remove driver and files used by Scorbit;
- Changes to the firmware build process to generate the random values involved in the score encryption.
Obviously, this is a team effort and the management had to know about this.
And if it was a rogue employee or something, I think they would have contacted Scorbit by now to apologize and fix this.

For those interested in the details, it's easy to dump the encoded filenames and decode them.
With Rush LE v0.96, the following command can be used :
Cmd (resized).png
When you run it, it displays the encoded data and the decoded result that reveals the Scorbit files that are deleted :

003cfefc 04 34 86 f8 be 9e 1a c6 21 1f f1 f9 5d cb e2 43 |.4......!...]..C|
003cff0c 36 a4 76 e8 6e 0e ca d6 11 af 41 e9 ad 7b 52 73 |6.v.n.....A..{Rs|
003cff1c e6 3a 7a 12 37 ff f7 ff cd 63 91 10 bc f8 86 3c |.:z.7....c.....<|
003cff2c d8 eb d4 07 49 24 24 f2 d3 93 fd 0b 9d d7 f0 91 |....I$$.........|
003cff3c 8f 81 05 3f e4 9f c6 58 32 18 6f 60 17 37 7c c0 |...?...X2.o`.7|.|
003cff4c 2b 4a 29 15 a0 41 88 11 52 f2 95 20 30 b9 8f ba |+J)..A..R.. 0...|
003cff5c 60 b3 f9 02 91 a5 67 6f 52 23 ca 57 fd 26 c8 a2 |`.....goR#.W.&..|
003cff6c 54 20 0b 43 51 65 77 35 bc 09 22 40 90 cb 38 cc |T .CQew5.."@..8.|
003cff7c c2 d5 45 1a |..E.|
003cff80

00000000 2f 00 2f 62 69 6e 2f 70 62 73 70 6b 32 63 6f 6d |/./bin/pbspk2com|
00000010 6d 00 2f 62 69 6e 2f 70 62 73 70 6b 32 63 6f 6d |m./bin/pbspk2com|
00000020 6d 2e 73 68 00 2f 62 69 6e 2f 70 62 73 70 6b 32 |m.sh./bin/pbspk2|
00000030 63 6f 6d 6d 2e 64 61 74 00 2f 6c 69 62 2f 6d 6f |comm.dat./lib/mo|
00000040 64 75 6c 65 73 2f 33 2e 31 34 2e 32 38 5f 31 2e |dules/3.14.28_1.|
00000050 30 2e 30 5f 67 61 2d 77 61 6e 64 42 6f 61 72 64 |0.0_ga-wandBoard|
00000060 2b 67 30 38 66 35 32 39 31 2f 6b 65 72 6e 65 6c |+g08f5291/kernel|
00000070 2f 44 72 69 76 65 72 73 2f 7c 73 62 2f 73 65 72 |/Drivers/|sb/ser|
00000080 69 61 6c 00 |ial.|
00000084

The only reason for the filenames to be encoded is to stash the malicious code that harms Scorbit.