EVE Devs Admit To Misconduct

RidinThoraxes writes "The Escapist has published a complete investigation of what they're calling Jumpgate. The ongoing scandal of dev-backed cheating in the game world is fully explored, complete with a confession from the offending developer, emails from their community managers, and an interview with the enterprising player who uncovered it all."

Comments

Re:If this was seen more in real life

[Cornflake917]

I couldn't agree more. Some of my friends can talk hours on end about WoW. It drives me nuts. I can see that they have so much passion for overcoming challenges in their virtual world. It's just sad that there are so many challenges in the real world that are being ignored, but people rather level up their fishing on their paladin.

Re:Broken Aspect in Eve

[Nananine]

That's a very good perspective on the issue. However, without the pure capitalism they have in game, EVE just wouldn't be EVE. The game is built on how cut-throat it is. So it's all right that major power blocks control the economy, because that's just the nature of the beast.

However, when a DEVELOPER OF THE GAME comes in and deliberately tips the balance in favor of an alliance he's not only friendly with, but helped RUN, then there's a real problem. The economic model is no longer cut-throat and capitalistic, it's just unfair.

Re:More info on 0.0 Space

[PopeRatzo]

There's two main acts in any scandal like the one in which Eve is involved.

Act One: in which the offender denies everything, then finally admits the truth but tries to weasel out of doing anything about it.

Act Two: in which the story becomes so big as to affect the bottom line (this could mean stock price, subscriptions, or perceived loss in prestige and industry standing, which could limit future earnings). At this point, you start to see heads roll and something actually done about the problem.

Eve is right on the cusp of Acts One and Two. This little drama has become so common that it's become common behavior for corporations to wait to see if Act Two actually starts before acting positively.

As an Eve player and someone who has a fair amount of professional interest in MMORPGs, I plan to wait to see how CCP plays out Act Two before I give up on them and encourage other players to do so as well. But the clock IS ticking, and the intermission is almost over. You hear, CCP?

Re:The Significance of Cheating in EVE

[umbrellasd]

I personally got a kick out of BoB and the imbalance, because I think it strongly mirrors exactly the type of real world situations that are so interesting. Very often in the real world, someone gains an unfair advantage and exploits it. In fact, this is the foundation of empire--every Empire. Whether economic, technological, or knowledge-based. Someone has an advantage and for a time there is no way to counter it. So they run roughshod over everyone else and subjugate people, and people become more and more oppressed and then revolution. Whether by leveling the playing field (a nation adopts guns to replace the sword when forced to do so or lose sovereignty), or the masses band together in a revolution against those that oppress them and with sufficient numbers that whatever advantage the minority had, it no longer matters.

So in this case, the interesting dynamic I was waiting for was to see an emerging mob of the underpriviledged banding together and saying to the T2 cartel, "Yeah, you've got the good stuff and it's better than our crap, but we have so much crap now and we're dumping so much of it on you, that you are going to suffocate in the stuff and we win anyway."

Alas, it didn't get there, but I was hoping. By far the most fascinating thing about Eve is it's ability to encourage group dynamics. Real corporations comprised of hundreds of people, interacting with each other on the battlefield and in the economy, in a way that more closely parallels the real world than any game I've ever played. I've played more than my share of WoW, and it's got a strong appeal, but the group dynamics are absolutely nothing compared to Eve. There is no other online game with that degree of dynamic. For that, my hats off to CCP, cheating dev and all.

For the most part, only mature adults play Eve, I think. The appeal of the game is too deep, it's not a fast moving game most of the time. Manipulating stock markets, building corporations, obtaining resources, training over the course of a year of real time. It doesn't have the immediate gratification of a WoW, but it is amazing for what it is. I'd be interested to see what the player base would have been capable of on its own as far as restoring balance even in the presence of a monopolizing cartel of T2-lords.