Yet Another EVE Online Scandal?

Ariastis writes "An open letter, posted by former EVE Players, levels some new and serious accusations against CCP, the makers of the EVE Online MMOG. In the letter, chat logs & event timelines, along with description of in-game events from CCP-Approved reporting users, describe how most of the big role-playing events are rigged to favor specific alliances & players by CCP. More disturbingly, these users also appear to have CCP employees 'on call', ready to step in on behalf of the favoured players and alliances within the game. CCP reaction is member-only, but a forum thread has been left open to discuss about it." It should be pointed out at the moment all of the evidence put forward is circumstantial; take with a grain of salt. The issue of corruption in EVE was addressed in our interview with Magnus Bergsson at GDC.

Comments

geez then why keep paying to play it??

[grapeape]

Isn't this around the 3rd-4th time something like this has come up concerning EVE? It appears either their userbase is completely paranoid or the people behind the game are shifty weasels either way there is an easy way to express your disdain for the behavior, stop playing.

Re:geez then why keep paying to play it??

[the_mighty_$]

Of course that's the whole point of the game, it's not supposed to be fair.

How do you define fair? To me, fairness means everyone is judged by the same standards and plays by the same set of rules. Fairness should not mean that everyone should have the same outcome. I doubt that any new Eve player expected to be instantly given the "right" to as much in-game power as those people who have been playing longer and have more knowledge about the game. All we expected was that the rules of the game would be the same for everyone. However, when developers use the power that they have acquired outside of the game (by virtue of their being devs) to bend the rules in their favor, that upsets the rest of the player base--and rightly so.

Did it ever occur to anyone...

[Opportunist]

...that this "having EVE staff at beck and call" is not CCP's "official" doing but rather due to some CCP employees playing the game?

Doesn't make it any more "right", but would explain a lot of things. People are people, and most of all they're human. And thus prone to the temptations of power, and of abusing it.

Furthermore, CCP "hires" (or at least hired, dunno if that practice still exists) players to work as the first line troubleshooters, as aides for newbies, as listeners to whining when people get stuck between zones, etc. I wouldn't deem it impossible that some people took up this "helper" position for the sole purpose of furthering their corporation's goals, and those people do have a quite direct connection to the staff. I was one of those people (without the abuse. My corp was anything but a "0.0 capable" corp).

Re:Did it ever occur to anyone...

[Mr_eX9]

...And thus prone to the temptations of power, and of abusing it.

That is exactly why employees of games like these need to be confined to their own guilds/corporations that are automatically disqualified from taking part in major in-game events.

Interesting "coincidences"

[CharonX]

So that fireing of that ISD reporter at the command of a BoB member.
That odd dev promiting himself to director, demoting himself a couple of minutes later without communication.
All inquiries related to above incident being buried and blocked out.
Banning of members who inquired and asked "unpleasant" questions, over formalities
Evidence that CCP wants to push certain results - "outcome X is desirable. see to it" in the storyline.
Previous accounts of collusion and corruption.
Failure to punish above accounts as written in policy.
All those things are only coincidences. No, sir, I don't buy it.

OK..Like a good boy, I read the friggin' article..

[GeneralEmergency]

...and it was just like reading the first chapter of Frank Herbert's "Dune".

I imagine that it would take another 350 pages of that crap before any of it starts to make sense.

Ohhh...and now my brain hurts.

It's all a matter of how you view it

[jollyreaper]

Does a novelist work when writing? Is restoring a classic car work? Is putting in time on an open-source side project work? A lot of people feel the difference between work and play is all in the mind. Some play still requires a lot of work. People do it because they feel it's satisfying.

Say you restored a classic car from a rusted-out wreck and it's now a showpiece. You feel satisfaction. Some rich guy enters a car in the same show and you know he paid someone else to do all the work. Well, does that bust your balls? Some people might feel it takes nothing away from the experience of actually restoring the car and are not put out. Some people might be upset about losing the blue ribbon to someone who just bought his way into the competition. Now what if you find out the rich guy's uncle is also on the judging panel and that this influenced his win? You may enjoy your car but there's no way in hell you'd enter that contest again, right? Now imagine that you had to do all that restoration work in a garage owned by the car show and you cannot take it with you if you want to leave. That's how people feel trapped in the game and that's why they get far angrier than most people would think is appropriate given the situation. You don't have to be a car buff to understand why someone would be upset if some dick smashed up another guy's car. You'd have to be a frickin' Buddhist monk not to be upset if it were your car. And if you were a Buddhist monk, what are you doing with a nice car anyway? :)

I guess what it boils down to is that you're kind of fucked if your passtime can be in any way controlled by someone else. If you like playing D&D, you don't have to go with the latest rules if everyone agrees to stick with the old ones. You can agree to modify the rules in a friendly game of chess for that matter. But if you follow a professional sport and they start dicking with the rules and changing the game, not much you can do there. Same goes for multiplayer games. It's not like you can say "you know what, I don't think I want to install that patch."

Makes sense when you know the game

[Opportunist]

EvE is different in many aspects when you compare it to an "ordinary" MMORPG.

First of all, training and getting your gear takes a long, long time. I'm dead serious when I say, after a year you can consider yourself ready to start (!) considering (!) playing with the "big boys". That year will be spent getting your gear, learning to pilot your ship, learning the market (mastering of which I'd easily allow as a substitute for a year of professional accounting) and so on.

Death hurts. Remember EQ? Yes, like that. You lose EVERYTHING. Well, ok, you lose your ship. Which isn't so much a deal while you're still equipped with ordinary junk you can pick up anywhere, since you can insure your ship for its full price. Hell, given the drop in ship prices, you can even make some money that way! Caveat: Your equipment ist lost anyway. And later in the game this hurts a TON more when the value of the ship is only a tiny fraction of what you paid for all the goodies you had in there.

Commitment is pretty high. We're not talking WoW "let's go and club some dungeon dragon, should take less than 5 hours" commitment. I've seen people gatecamp for 8 hours a shift. Yes, shift. Yes, as in working shifts. And gatecamping can be quite boring when nobody bothers to fly through. Yes, those people were sitting there at a gate and watch the gate. Yes, that's boring as hell. Yes, people do it. No, I have no idea what's interesting about it. But it "has" to be done if you want to "own" a sector.

Now those people get to see that all their work, their deaths, their commitment is for zip. I can see why they are upset about it...