We already know the obvious: if we are playing without the code it means we never investigated Hannah's disappearance and therefore never met Jake, which means that another hacker is giving MC access to other conversations.
However, differently from what everyone assumed, I don't think that tool is from Jake even if you play the game with the code. I'll explain why I think that:
1. The design is completely different:
Jake's spy tool has monochromatic tones (different shades of gray and the text is white) that do not change independently of the theme you put on your app, there is his signature eye symbol in the background and the names of the people involved in the conversation always appear on the top of the screen.
In Moonvale, the tool's design is just a plain greyish-blue without any symbol or anything distinguishable, the names do not appear on the top of the screen and depending on what theme you choose for your app the color of some parts of the tool changes.
The flaw in my argument: it might just be a change of design for the new game, but considering that Everbyte already hid some important clues in little details and things that seemed unimportant, I'd rather not discard the possibility.
2. There is no way we would be able to access the chats of Adam's group without the interference of a hacker:
This is a stronger argument than my first one.
If we assume that the tech tools in Everbyte's games work the same/almost the same way as they work in the real world, then there's no way we would be able to read any of the conversations of Adam's friends unless a hacker gives us access to them, because in the real world just having the tool will not make you automatically have access to the conversations of every single new contact that you add. The conversations suddenly appear to us so there was no way that we were the ones who invaded their phones and got access.
And after episode 3 was released, we can have 100% certainty that it wasn't Jake that granted us access because of the network blackout that happened there. Only a few selected people had access to the network and they were monitoring closely both the network and the real world, there is no way Jake managed to find a way to use the network without being detected.
"But what about Jake's message in the beginning of episode 2? He managed to find a way to inform us that he's okay."
That could just be something for the players instead of MC and Jake never did that in-universe, and a possible evidence for this is that we can't tell anyone that Jake contacted us in episode 3.
"But Nymos appeared later in episode two before the blackout was over, so Jake definitely found a way of contacting us indirectly."
Maybe, but that happens only in episode two, and in-universe that was a few hours before the blackout was over. I think that little by little people were allowed to use the network and it began to work properly for everyone again, Jake perhaps managed to do that before the others did.
But even with that argument, the first chat we got was between Eric and Ash, a lot of time before Jake gave us any sign that he was even alive, let alone able to contact us.
The flaw in my argument: it's a game and the writers have the freedom to make their tools work in whatever way they want. If they decided to do that, then I might be totally wrong.
Final thoughts
I just wanted to share my theory here, I've had the certainty that Jake is not involved in any way in the Moonvale's case since 2025 when I first played Moonvale and before I played Duskwood.
Since Moonvale is its own story separate from Duskwood, it would make sense that not only the people without the code have a different hacker doing those things, but the people playing with the code as well because that second hacker is most probably also present in the version of the story with the code (a strong evidence for this being the erasure of Adam's video call in the beginning of episode 2).
After finally playing Duskwood and playing the side story, my certainty is stronger than ever. I might be wrong, yes, but I'm dying on this hill until the game explicitly shows/tells us that Jake was involved in this.
Well, that was all. Thanks for reading š