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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.
Does anyone not named Zonk have any idea what any of this means, and do they care? NO!
What's better...
EVE
Everquest
World of Warcraft
Enough Mares for Everyone
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.
...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).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I was expecting to here about another ingame bank heist with an intresting story, please come back when you have an intresting story to submit. ~AC
As a point of fact, the forum thread linked in the article is being heavily moderated. An unmoderated version can be found here.
I knew it was a matter of time before this happened again.
Grain of salt?? there are SCREENSHOTS to prove it.
So, why did a dev join a player corp, and when the CEO of the player corp petitions it
to find out WHY they did it, the petitions vanish?
Then, when they have no recourse, and no avenue of contacting CCP and they make it a PUBLIC question
they just start MASS BANNING players?
This is just inappropriate behavior from a company.
Every time these boneheads cheat/lie/and rush to ban players they lose money.
Another cover-up will take the place of this.
They will say 'nothing inappropriate occurred and ignore/ban anyone that questions it.
Or better yet, imagine if Ghengis Khan, Hitler, etc. had imaginary wargames like this to play with. Would they leave their basements either?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Other one really happened on irc: That was the last I've seen of Raekhan.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Ok, if the Devs want to play favorites and follow up their big "Influence the storyline" advertisments with secret oders along the lines of "Outcome X is preferred. See that it happens." and abuse their power to ensure that - then I don't need to play this game.
Hell, ther are plenty of other excellent MMOGs out there, where the Developers don't cheat their customers.
Welcome on my "Games I will never play" list.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
It's funny how easily these Goonfleet stories keep getting posted on slashdot because some of the mods here are goons. Keep this crap off the front page. Nobody cares about your gang of $10 e-thugs.
What's the point of cheating at a game you already own and operate? That seems sort of like being the GM of an RPG and simultaneously running a character in the game that's twice the level of everyone else. It just seems sad and lame. Is money somehow involved here? Or possibly vaginas? This would make more sense if vaginas came into play somewhere along the line.
Game developer stands up MMO game. Game developer gets in bed with a group of players "A" and develops an incestuous relationship with them. Group of players infiltrate the Game developer corporation as both game masters and developers and start providing extra services to their own friends.
Enter rival group of players "B" that threatens the hegemony of "A". Game developer supports "A" by developing items in their favor and scripts outcomes to favor "A" in RP events that dispense virtual cash and equipment.
Rival group of players "B" uses kickbacks from and paraphernalia sales, earning the ire of the IRS in the process.
Although most of the purchases ingame are completely virtual (money, ships, etc), if "B" is being taxed for finances relating to virtual acquisitions, shouldn't they likewise be able to sue under US law for breach of services by the game developer that is clearly favoring "A" in the ongoing war?
EVE's head of Internal Affairs, GM Arkanon has posted: Dear players. Forgive us for being brief, but there has not been much time to prepare this statement. Our forums have now been taken down due to the load generated by player response to allegations of developer misconduct. We urge people to wait until the facts are out, rather than taking sensationalist statements at face value. Our preliminary findings indicate that what happened what simply a developer doing his job ingame. He joined the corporation in order to access their POS, which was bugged. We humbly ask our players to trust that the internal monitoring of our employers is being taken seriously. The current allegations will be fully investigated and we will publish our findings at the first opportunity. Please understand that this may not be today or tomorrow, but this issue will not be ignored. The forums will be brought up again as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Arkanon CCP Internal Affairs Now this was was removed within an hour or two. Their initial response has been to comment on one of 3 specific allegations of misconduct and ignore the other two entirely. Somewhat surprising.
It's a futuristic real life simulator with space ships?
Graft and corruption, I'm liking the sound of this already.
I might have to play some time...
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.
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Corruption in goverment, law enforcement, and the justice system...all these elements make for an even more realistic game.
It is already one of the most realistic and die hard games around, including an awesome economy (where, by the way, I hope corruption also occurs). Unlike WoW where the economy is balanced by a magical "binding" system which doesn't allow cool stuff to be handed off to other players, and dieing to another player doesn't mean squat.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Ahh, just what online gaming REALLY needs to gain notice. A simple, clean RICO prosecution.
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.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
that you can sell in game money online for real money? Are these people just helping their buddies out, or is there money changing hands? In either case, am I the only one who thinks these in game scandals make the game a ton more interesting?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
EvE is a well established game. In EvE, characters advance by in game time, thus the older a character is, the more powerful it is. So how is it surprising that developers grow close ties with the older, established players? Those are the ones who have been around since the start. On the eve-o forums, one of the high-ups in the best alliance in the game, Band of Brothers, is repeatedly stating that the developers are friends with BoB members.
8 /510.jpg
Here's an example: http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u162/grover282
This is simply to be expected in a game where developers play the game along with players, and further, where the company recruits its GMs from the playerbase.
I keep being tempted by this game. I like the premise. I did the trial, enjoyed the time. I even like the idea of all the schemes and betrayals that are EVE legends.
But every time I get close to signing up, there's some story of CCP employee misconduct affecting gameplay, and that just turns me right off the game.
I'd hoped they'd cleaned up their act, but it seems the answer is no.
CCP, you need transparency. You need to have clear rules for employees, and enforce them in a public manner. You have serious work to do to clean up your reputation.
It IS costing you money, without any question whatsoever.
You know the game isn't real right?
Camping on quad since 1996.
this MUD is not a democracy, it's a tyranny.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Damn, I hope an educated comment won't do anything to hurt my karma. Anyway... been playing EVE for almost a year now. I'm a huge fan of Elite-style space exploration/trading/combat games and that's basically what EVE is going for with influences from all of the Elite-inspired games that came before it. The basic idea is very solid.
What's the advantage of a multiplayer vs. single-player game? For starters, you think you have a continued universe to explore. Once you beat the storyline in games like Escape Velocity: Nova or Privateer, there seems to be little left to do in the galaxy. The attraction of an MMO is that the players are creating the storylines and you can keep playing for as long as it interests you.
The problem with that idea in general for MMO's is the grind. The gameplay elements that were once the interesting parts of the game become drudgery since you are obligated to keep grinding out those missions to get anywhere. When does sitting on a boat fishing become drudgery? When it ceases to become a passtime but a means to an end.
With EVE in particular death comes at a high price, you lose your ship and whatever was in it. That can represent a month or more of playtime. If you want to PVP against other players, you are putting your ship at risk. It's precisely like gambling and people praise and curse it for precisely those reasons. You'll never have the OMFG feel of barely making it out alive from a single player game unless you disable saving. Conversely, you'll never have the "I think I want to vomit" special feeling when you can reload from a save.
So what this means is that an EVE player has to have an occupation so as to collect his chips. The biggies are mining, ratting (hunting NPC's down in public areas), and missioning (where you have what is like an instanced dungeon except other players can still stumble across it.) These missions are quite fun at first, who doesn't enjoy blowing crap up on the computer? But there is little randomization within the missions so you know precisely what to expect. More difficult missions have the potential of destroying your ship. So, that kind of risk will make things interesting right? Yes and no. You can always try to warp out of a mission when you see you are in over your head. But at greater difficulties, the enemy will have scrambler frigates that zoom in and disable your warp drive. In other words, by the time you find out you're in over your head, there's nothing you can do about it.
So, how does this cause problems? You need to make your isk (in-game currency) to be a playah but it takes ages to earn it. The most lucrative areas of the game (lowsec and nosec) are heavily patrolled by player factions who have claimed ownership. NPC complexes in those areas can be regularly raided for massive isk payouts. Tribute collected from people travelling through the area can create a sizable passive income stream, not to mention the mining of rare minerals and such there. The wealthy factions can also buy blueprints for important equipment and ships in the game and make a fortune manufacturing them. The early scandals involved the CCP admins giving preferential treatment to the largest in-game faction, basically handing them the keys to an isk-printing factory. And even without that being the case, their concentration of capital would have allowed them to buy into the manufacturing racket anyways and thus further consolidate their financial position. Because warfare in EVE is a matter of attrition, he who has the most to attrit wins.
EVE has removed the leveling problem inherent in most MMORPG's, your skills train whether you are in the game or not. But because of the expense of your ships and how much you stand to lose when you are killed, you are left grinding for isk instead of xp.
When you get right down to it, the difference between a singleplayer Elite-clone and an MMORPG like EVE is that you have the gameplay process greatly extended. How long does it take you to get an uber ship in Privateer with all the fitti
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The last dev misconduct item resulted in no action being taken against the dev. With the head honcho of game development saying "If you don't like it, leave"
I wonder if we will get such an arrogant response this time.
Calling BoB the best alliance in the game makes it pretty clear that you had taken sides in this whole matter before this latest CCP+BoB cheating scandal arose. Go sell crazy somewhere else, we're all full here.
Several of the posts appear to mention someone at the game company being fired.
If so, there is no way they would give any details, for fear of a lawsuit by the now former employee.
When they are no longer fun, stop playing. A quasi-darwinian process will cause boring games to largely die. Like EvE and EQ2.
Even the hardcore players, the "raiders" or whatever they're called, will quit because without the population base of casual players paying their subscription fees, the developers cannot afford to keep enough staff to turn out new content at a rate that keeps the hardcore interested. It's happening now in EQ2, it'll happen in EvE.
I quit eve a long time ago.
I hope it dies.
I hope ccp goes bankrupt.
I will rejoice loudly at their demise.
You can't get it back after you lose it. People in general can be trusting but they'll remember getting burned. "No, really, it's not how it looks! I can explain why my hand is in the cookie jar!" Now you'll get to see an interesting dynamic. Few people in the playerbase are uber enough to be taking part in all this epic gaming and metagaming. Some may shrug their shoulders and keep playing, feeling this has no bearing on their little world. Some will get mad enough to quit and go do something else. Some will feel justifiably burned, such as the ones who were banned, but instead of going away they get all Alanis Morissette and stalkerish, trying to dig up dirt to expose the corruption to the game world at large. Some people are getting their bread buttered by this sort of thing so of course they aren't going to object.
Now some slashdot readers are going to make the comments about "Pshaw, what if these people had lives?", immune to the irony of posting such a thing on slashdot. But I think it's actually an instructive lesson in human behaviors. People are the same the world over from the lowest shitkicker to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company: we're all just hairless apes dressing up our motives and actions in funny outfits, the same way we dress ourselves. We're all still hairless apes and our motives and actions are about who has the most banans and who's getting to fuck the pretty females. The difference between corruption and scandal in CCP and in, say, the Bush administration is that us gamers have a closer vantage point. Want to have a laugh? Read up on some of the inside histories of the Third Reich. (That laugh will by cynical.) You read about the interpersonal conflicts, dick-measuring, kool-aid drinking and self-delusion and it's no different.
To that other poster who commented that Hitler might not have come out of the basement if he had RPG's to play with, you could just as easily say "if only that fucking art school would have let him in!" Every boy needs a hobby and anti-semitism was Hitler's fallback career.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Jeez. When there are plenty of way worse scandals in the real world going on, what do those of us non-MMO-absorbed geeks care?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
Basically it goes like this: there are three allegations. (1) Someone who works for CCP (the company that makes Eve) used his developer powers to spy on an in-game corporation. (2) Players have supposedly had the ability to mold the Eve storyline through in-game events. However, it is alleged that some (or all) of these in-game events were actually rigged. In other words, the players who spent months participating in the events, thinking they were making a different in the Eve world, wasted their time and were merely puppets in the hands of the devs. (3) The players of a certain alliance (Band of Brothers) have special connections with the developers and allegedly succeeded causing certain people who displeased them to be banned.
I recognize all of your words as English, but I have no idea what you just wrote.
All I did was post this link. Now I lost everything, including all the money I pre-paid for my account, which I had paid up 3 months in advance. This is really unfair. I was only asking what the hell is going on and I got banned. I wasn't even involved in any of that fight. I just wanted to know what the fuss was.
i re_Again_for_Alleged_Corruption_Open_Letter_Made
http://digg.com/pc_games/EVE_Creators_CCP_Under_F
Or better yet, imagine if Ghengis Khan, Hitler, etc. had imaginary wargames like this to play with. Would they leave their basements either?
Apparently, yes, they would have eventually emerged from their basements. And they would have emerged mightier than before! From Wikipedia:
"The stunning Prussian victory over the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) is sometimes partly credited to the training of Prussian officers with the game Kriegspiel, which was invented around 1811 and gained popularity with many officers in the Prussian army.
Useful Historical Fact of the Day: If Hitler had played C&C, we would all by typing in German by now.
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."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I hate to say this but here is what seems to be happening. Unlike other games EvE has only one massive server, total user population 180K peak users at one time current around 33K. This means its actually easier to sell gold (isk) in EvE then in WoW (not multiple server issues). So here's what's going on group A buys ingame isk (like eve gold) from farmer group B. Group A then sends the isk ingame to group C. Group C then sells the isk and cashes out the RL money. It looks like group C is making money from isk farming but they're not. EvE is an absolutely excpetional vehicle to 1) move money internationally and 2) launder the money while your at it.
Does CCP know what's going on, yes. Is organized crime involved yes. Is CCP's legal nightmare that somebody will wise up and start bringing RICO charges against some of the in game alliances (thousands of players), you bet. All the mess you see is just the tip of the iceberg.
Who said it had to be fair?
There's no "fairness" clause on your birth certificate.
If the only issue was that some players were friendly with the developers, then I doubt anyone would be complaining. However, it has been proven that in the past at least one developer was cheating and giving himself some of the most valuable items in the game. If he and his corporation had not acquired those items by cheating, the balance of power in-game might be completely different today.
The damage was done but CCP assured people that this one a one-time incident and that it wouldn't happen again. However, if the allegations presented in TFA are true, then the corruption is still going on and may be widespread.
In conclusion, this isn't just some losers complaining that the older players are more powerful--people are complaining because they think that the developers are breaking the rules to benefit their in-game characters and corporations.
Skip ahead if you must, but the read will be worth your time.
Get a Frickin Life?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"Disturbing" is clearly a relative term.
Life would be a lot happier if most difficulties were this upsetting.
-FL
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...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seems like if BoB has an 'in' with CCP, Goons have an 'in' with Slashdot. Do you realize how fast this made it onto the Slashdot front page (before CCP even had a chance to respond that they would respond)? I personally think that game owners and site editors have whatever editorial discretion (which includes modifying game balance) they want over their game/site - it's the player/reader's discretion to play/read, so I'm not getting upset about it, but methinks there is a greater "meta game" going on here then most people are aware.
:)
Then again.. if you go down this alley... you have to then ask yourself... what meta game am I playing? Isn't the whole MMOG scene fun?
..."The issue of corruption in EVE was MOST DEFINITELY NOT addressed in our interview with Magnus Bergsson at GDC."
Out of every 10 allegations made about misconduct, CCP ignores 9 and addresses the 1 least offensive one, then does nothing about it either.
Apparently.
This story appeared long after CCP had given the standard, "Uh, yeah, we'll 'look into it' *winkwink*" line.
What are you doing on slashdot?
DUNE is a nice, simple light read.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
For now, whatever they reach in the game, whatever feat they accomplish, will be met with a shrug and a "so what, in God mode, everyone can beat a game".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you'd like to protest, but don't want to flat-out quit yet, just cancel the autorenewal on your account. The "cancel account" link on the "my account" page will simply stop your account from autorenewing; it won't lock you out of the game until the end of the pay period. You can always change your mind before then and it still sends an effective message to CCP.
This stikes me as the only way to send a real message to a company that exists, like any other, to make a profit.
This is the same and only scandal in eve excluding players scamming other players. Its just someone else posting the same rehash of the same old information.
Um... this is a game right? The player controls to what extent events in a game affect them in real life. If it pisses you off, stop playing. There is no scandal, just a bad game.
A simple, clean RICO prosecution.
If it gets rid of the goldfarmers and such, so be it.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
But they should still fix that. Last I knew, Blizzard not only allowed, but REQUIRED employees on the WoW project to play the game. Makes sense, you want them to be in touch with what is actually happening. However, I've also never seen any evidence presented that they abuse this power. The reason is probably that Blizzard has very good safeguards in place to ensure that they can't and/or are immediately detected if they try.
Really this is not asking much. It shouldn't be hard, and isn't unreasonable, for a game company to put in place safeguards against this.
It's a good game NOT to play since it isn't really a game. Seems to me they've spent too much time thinking about what's "realistic" and "hardcore" and not enough time thinking about what is fun. That's the one thing I've got to give Blizzard, they seem to really think about how to make their game fun. They try to give people the ability to do what it is they want to do.
I've just never understood this mentality with some games, particularly MMOs, that fucking over your players is a good thing. No, it's not. That's not fun. Games are meant to be fun, an escape from reality. It's plenty easy to get fucked over in real life, I don't really need that in my entertainment, thanks.
That developers are to their game world as deities are to the real world. They don't obey any of the normal bounds. Even though the government plays by a difference set of legal rules than citizens in the real world, they are still bound by the same basic physical laws. There is no such limit to developers in games. If they want something changed, they can change it. They aren't the government, law enforcement or anything else, they are gods.
As an example I used to be an Immortal on a MUD. That's a developer, CSR, GM, whatever you want to call it in today's terms, on this MUD, Immortal was the name. In my case, I was essentially a senior GM in current terms. We logged in to the game same as players did, and had the same basic text interface. However where a player might have 50 or so commands we had like 200. They ran the full gamut of godlike abilities. I had a kill command that would kill whatever I specified, NPC, player, whatever. No checks for any kind of resistance, you just died. When in an area, you'd see a description (that an Immortal had written). I'd see that too, but prefixed with a number, which was the actual area number. I could go to any area simply by issuing a command with the right number, no matter where it was. I had a whole host of player editing commands, I could change anything on any player account. Any stat, any item, etc. They didn't even have to be logged in. Heck if I wanted I could tell the MUD to stop and entire section for debugging, all the MOBs would stop doing things, all scripts would cease.
Now that would mean that corruption on my scale was rather different than on a player scale. A player might work hard to infiltrate a rival guild to spy on them, I could just order the MUD to give me their chat logs. A player might steal money from their allies for their own gain, I could create as much money as I wanted, presuming I had anything to spend it on. A player might hatch an elaborate plot to sabotage rivals as they killed a powerful MOB, stealing the loot for themselves, I could simply create the item in my inventory.
That's the problem here. There is no real world analogue because such power can't be wielded in reality.
It's worth a mention that developer rigging is a vastly bigger deal in a game like EVE, compared to other MMORPG's.
In other games, it's really not such a big deal if a developer joins a guild, observes how the content and game mechanics play out, maybe drops a few quest hints. Some people in a guild getting +3 swords instead of +2 thanks to subtle handholding will not make or break a game for anyone. Something like a developer using dev tools to join a guild and making himself an officer for 20 minutes is hardly anything earth-shattering in a game like World of Warcraft; heck, the members of the guild might be honored about it.
In EVE it's rather different, because it's a living, breathing and mercilessly unforgiving player-run world. In which a corporation can put months of gametime, tens of thousands of player-hours, not to mention thousands of real world US dollars (in black market value), into capital ships or a refining/ outposts in a system, only to utterly and irrevocably lose it in combat the next day.
Gaining officer access to a corporation would mean the person is able to conveniently pin-point where the capital ship assembly docks belonging to the corporation in question are located, and whether they in the middle of manufacturing supercapitals: the joint effort of hundreds, or thousands of players. If a competing corporation knows where the capital ship assembly dock is located, then it's already 80% of the effort of destroying, or at least disrupting it, as the defenses in any single outpost are limited by the game mechanics. Intelligence like actually is really valuable in this game, and can affect the joint efforts and gameplay results for thousands of players.
Having a GM join a corporation that deals with manufacturing such expensive capital ships, making himself an officer, and leaving 20 minutes later for no reason or explanation at all, deleting petitions and refusing in-game communication about it, PLUS the demonstrated ability of the largest enemy corporation to buddy up with developers as directly and as to get neutral observers banned, mean the allegations of developer rigging and misconduct in this case are very, very serious indeed.
Passing valuable intelligence to competing corporations, not to mention the earlier, previously proven (and iffily handled) developer misconduct regarding the same enemy corporation (like bestowing them blueprints, as in the ability to limitlessly manufacture, powerful vessels) -- does actually significantly affect the gameplay for thousands of paying customers.
That some key events are rigged is a given. Sorry, but it can't be any other way. Storylines are developed months in advance, the developers need time to implement them. You can't develop two or more stories and possible outcomes just in case it turns out this or that way. That's even quite understandable.
Solid reasoning so far, but I draw another conclusion from it:
When you cannot make your storyline play out as desired without cheating, you should not have long, preplanned storylines. At best, you can have one where irresistible forces that are credibly outside player control drive the plot.
In EVE's case such forces could be stargates going defective or some star going nova, as controlling such events is outside the skills available to player characters. But if CCP only spawns something like a medium-sized pirate fleet, they should be prepared for players wiping it out before it achieves its storyline purpose.
C - the footgun of programming languages
It makes me quite sad to see so many break down this game, because of this scandal.
:)
Wether or not it is true is beyond me, I've been out of the game for about a year and not up to date anymore.
But even it is was to be true, don't make one bad thing turn this game into a horrible game. No matter what happened, Eve is still beautiful. It's player base is amazing, the developers works incredibly hard to improve and provide new content on a extremely regular basis, and the dynamics of the game (economy, PvP, etc) are just pure genuis.
I had to quit the game because I couldn't get anything done at college anymore, but even now I have sworn to begin again after my studies. Not because it's just a 'good game' like what you can call Starcraft or CS, but because it's a beautiful world in there, driven by magnificent people, either players or dev's. No matter what happened in this current affair.
Just wanted to notice that for the record, between all this bad karma
Player-level espionage and corruption is expected in EVE and part of the game. But cheating by GMs is just lame, for the reasons Skycraft-fu has explained.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Just curious?
seriously, if mmo's and the like arent your thing, then don't care and don't bloat of this thread with your not caringness. i mean, i dont care too much about the lot of physics posts, but i dont flame them for it. :)
/. and a long time player of eve. what many outside the game fail to comprehend is the way in which propagana works in Eve-Online. it takes it to a whole new level of metagaming. couple that with the megacapitalistic mechanics, in which you can lose literally everything including your very character's ages of trained skills, and you start to understand why the game's player base can be so fanatical and involved. most of us are older players. we like this amount of pressure. we like this style of metagaming.
/.d on their forums. obviously, patience is not always an attribute of some eve gamers, heh.
im a longtime reader of
that said, i do believe there was some dev misconduct some time ago. but i do not believe ccp would be so asinine as to let it happen again. let me explain it in the context of EVE as a player:
a universal war broke out over the previous scandal in the game. both sides have used propaganda. this latest so-called-scandal is in fact part of the metagame. you all probably don't realize it, but in fact you are playing eve right now by participating in this thread, lol, the eve player base is exactly the kind that reads sites like slashdot. the accusations made have been put forth by one of the major alliances. they are compiled, not recent, and work to outrage the eve player base precisely in order to exact punitive repercussions on its warring enemy. and yes, those who are doing the accusing ARE the type who will see this as "winning" eve at all costs, even to the point of the company of CCP suffering. CCP are certainly not the best at communicating what they did and continue to do in order to prevent player/dev incest; however, that does not add up to them facilitating or denying wrongdoing when it happens. think of it: they are a small company, are levelled a malicious charge, and promptly get a thread over 60 pages in less than 24 hrs on their forums demanding answers, all the while maintaining their game servers and getting
sry for such a long post but i thought it might help your discussion to consider this whole thing in the above terms.
It's a trick. Get an axe.
It's a good game NOT to play since it isn't really a game. Seems to me they've spent too much time thinking about what's "realistic" and "hardcore" and not enough time thinking about what is fun.
I think that particular problem arises when you have player-controlled territory and the need to defend it (because your stations there CAN be blown up while you are offline). Suddenly it is not a game anymore, but work you have to do unless you want to lose your prior conquests.
My own EVE Char will avoid that particular style of gameplay and tour the lawless regions now and then in "hit and run" style once she is fit enough. We will see how well this works out, and at this point it will be decided if I stick to EVE for a longer time. Because EVE is a great game in many ways, but I won't let it turn into a second job.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I understand that people that pay to play a game expect to have a fair game... but of course they should expect that a game's staff IS going to give favors to their pet players and guilds? It's been happening since there were multiplayer RPGS (including MUDS/MUSHES/MUwhatever) online.
32i people is imaginary. Sheesh, schools these days.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
What's CCP? Chinese Communist Party?
I quit over the last major scandal. It was more of a last straw. The game has to be one of the most boring ones out there. After you get over the fun of blowing things up in space and getting a bigger ship with better weapons and blowing up more things in space...you realize that the UI is poor and that is where most of the complexity in Eve exists. The player base are a bunch of elitists with small -something- complexes because they always like to belittle other MMORPGs (like WoW). They aren't any more intelligent, they just like to think they are as to justify spending so much time in that game instead of another. I liked their skill training system a lot. But they remove one grind and replaced it with another (generating ISK). And even PvP is a grind as it is mostly sitting at gates and blowing up ships that don't have a chance to defend themselves.
:)
On the plus side, the servers can't handle all the players on there so thinning out the population with scandals every few months is probaly good for the game
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Clearly because CCP says it it must be true. This is like asking the corrupt officer to tell you if they're being unfairly targeted. The actual full response lists at least a semi-decent investigation of the issues raised, but not the additional issues which came up during the scandal (and were far more interesting/outrageous) which was that players had game developers as MSN contacts and routinely communicated with them. Conflict of interest much in a single sharded competitive MMO? Furthermore, it's pretty clear that Arkanon has no real interest in carrying out his job properly since if he did then he wouldn't have gone to the trouble of specifically hinting as strongly as he could that *obviously* CCP is being targeted just because. CCP has no idea what t20 did to how anyone perceives them in relation to BoB, and no idea about why they're policies might elicit the counter-responses they do. They're completely inept at community management issues and as far as many can tell it's something of a minor miracle EVE is as good as it is, though almost anyone will tell you that's because they basically said "yes we allow scams and social engineering attacks" between members of the playerbase. For some reason they seem to feel that this gives them freehand to play the game how they want as well. But by all means it's going to be great how this turns out well. I'm sure 2000+ account bans and trans-atlantic solicitors letters can't possibly be bad publicity.
but you'd better never get caught using it in a real-life situation, if you're not qualified.
http://goonfleet.com/reply_to_CCP.html