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Should MMOG 'Play' Be Confined?
Arti writes "Eve Online is famous for hosting the world's first virtual IPO, and also for its Byzantine 'meta game', in which players create fake characters and accounts to infiltrate each other's organisations for intelligence, theft or sabotage. More recently the game has seen the rise of Kugutsumen an intel blog whose creator has been accused of using real-world hacks to obtain secret information from other player forums and private messages. Some players are up in arms at the use of such out-of-game tactics. On the other hand, Kugutsumen claims these techniques have uncovered evidence of corruption. Quite aside from the legal ramifications of attacking other people's web forums, should game companies tolerate forms of 'play' that involve out of game illegality? Should they attempt to monitor and punish these kinds of activity using sanctions in-game, where the company writes the rules? This ties right back in to the discussion of Real Money Transfer we've been having over the past week. Where does the line between 'play' and 'cheating' lie?"
...and I've been following the thread on the Eve-online forum avidly.
... which is why I like it; only the strong survive, and the 'weaker' (ie less dedicated/less interested or no interest in unconsentual PvP combat) are quickly winnowed out, or forced to remain within 'Empire space' bascially a sandbox which while a little safer is by no means 100% safe.
I've played Eve-online for over a year now, and as stated it is indeed the most brutal, darwinistic multi player game on the net that I know of; utterly unforgiving of mistakes and weakness
In a way, I'm glad the accusations have come to light - firstly, it took repeated forum spamming by 'Goon fleet' (an alliance/guild within the Eve universe) before the Devs within CCP (owners of Eve-online) finally made a statement regarding the issues; I gather the impression that had they had not repeatedly spammed the forums, the current investigation that is being carried out would not have been initiated.
Secondly, there have indeed been several instances as of late where certain players have known of information that could only have come from CCP employees.
The biggest issue at the end of the day is that CCP employees are also allowed to actually play the game itself, and as players are expected to give their loyalty to their corp/alliance, while simultaneously remaining true to CCP's doctrine and not give out any internal information that would aid player alliances/corps.
And that in a nutshell is what started this current uproar. The players are stating that each and every time a CCP employee logs on as a player, he or she has a clear conflict of loyalties, and they are asking for clarification from CCP regarding this.
In my opinion, the vast majority of CCP employees who play the Eve online game are honest and genuine. However, it only takes on single misguided Dev to leak information, and much is ruined, which seems to be the case here.
Having read Kugutsumen's blog, I cannot of course say that it is genuine. I can however say it is believable.
Hopefully in the future CCP Developers will no longer be allowed to maintain positions within PvP alliances, and the clear conflict of interest will be avoided; as to if that will actually happen however, remains to be seen.