Forums » Off-Topic

EvE Online, CCP corruption, etc etc.

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May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
So, I play EvE online since it's spaceships pew pew and whatnot, and apparently there's some more Dev/GM corruption afoot there. Some may remember back in February when there was previously admission to Dev misconduct in favor of a certain alliance in game.

EDIT2:
Less of a draft, big final version writeup. Check it here.

Original Kugutsumen link of the full version of Raekhan's story, requires registration but not a valid email here.

EDIT3:
Summary as follows.
- RP events rigged in EvE
- ISD(Sort of like Guides here but with less power) reporter banned on behest of BoB member in CCP
- CCP employee stealth joins Darkstar 1, a capital ship production corp for the alliance I'm in(GoonSwarm). Said employee gives themselves director role, allowing them to perform as the CEO of the corp, and then leaves about 14 minutes later. Unluckily for them, the game automajikally generated a leave message with their name all over it and sent it to the CEO of the corp.
May 25, 2007 LeberMac link
Whoa, what have I gotten myself INTO?!?

WTF is going on, This Band of Brothers Corp in EVE is, like, waaaaaaay to cozy with the devs/company, eh?

I may be an EVE n00b but I will make it my mission to DESTROY B0B!

P.S. I'm rather uncreative so, yeah, I'm "LeberMac" in EVE too.
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
Sup EvE buddy?

Band of Brothers is an alliance based out of 0.0(Super deadly low security space) made of up mostly high SP, mostly rich, mostly chilled in the beta players.

But, elsewise, if you play- what's your name? We can chill or something if I'm not off running missions in TCF space.
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
As of a few minutes ago we received authorization from our alliance leader to spam the heck out of the EvE-O boards. Fun stuff.

I'm pretty sure we're all(a few thousand of us) going to be banned from the forums for this. At least.

Edit: Forums Temporarily Disabled
o7
May 25, 2007 slime link
Post it on Digg.
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
Already been posted, and on top of that I got banned ingame.

user Calaihm is banned
Last Login: 2007.05.25 21:51
Number of Visits: 325
Reason: EULA Violation Disruption of ingame channels

Good thing I set a long skill training.

Edit: It's already on Digg, will be on Slashdot soon, and will hit Ars Technica and the like(We have them in our alliance woop woop) mondayish unless they run a column sooner.

Edit2: I answered the question in the help channel that was asking which open letter. Apparently that's grounds enough to get banned ingame without warning.
May 25, 2007 slime link
Yeah it's on Digg, but the link points to the forums which are down.
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
What link did you want then? The open letter link is in the OP.
May 25, 2007 jexkerome link
You should have made a copy of it on some player's blog. There was bound to be one.

Anyway, another reason to not play EVE.
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
Unfortunately, EvE fulfills my need for spaceships pew pew while I'm chilling out waiting for VO content(active subscription ahoy). The rampant corruption doesn't actually affect most of the game, mostly just alliances based out in 0.0(Grayspace on bovine growth hormone) and/or at war against BoB and allies. Twice unfortunately, my alliance is both based out of 0.0 and part of the power bloc against BoB and allies.

Edit: Update from the ISD fellow who was involved.

Hey, Graelyn here.

People are bugging me to post SOMETHING in response, so this spot will get me the most reads I guess.

Why bring this up now?
To get the people on my back to release it since the day it occured to calm down.

Is ISD completely corrupt?
No. Not all of it at least. As this was all going down, there were ISD folks shocked to hear it, and as you can read, my IC dept head was on my side (or at least put on a good show of it). Unfortunately the problem seems to lie with descision-makers. I can't tell you with any degree of reliability where that blame lies.

Why did this go down in public?
Some of it didn't, a lot of it did. The story is a pretty big meshup of the clusterfuck of chat windows I had going at the time.

Is BoB this abusive to all ISD?
From what I have seen, yes, but they're not alone. Every big alliance does, as sort of a bragging right. This episode was actually tame in comparison to many things I heard, until the 'we'll get you fired' threats came....I had religiously counted the number of different alliances I had been accused of working for, at my leaving the number was at 17. Since I was an Empire-Alliance leader, none of that was the case; we had no 0.0 links except the CVA guys, who I turned down any assignment to cover due to that link. Other reporters did not always avoid such conflicts of interest, something I hope is being addressed in a current realigning of that organisation....

Why do you hate BoB?
I had some good friends in BoB. It was known by some as 'The place where the old RPers do to die'. It was where the legends of the RP community usually ended up at some time or another. I had been told by some that, once I was done with the Amarr-shilling, I might find a home there, but I kinda wondered if the person offering really had the ability to make such a claim ("Sure, like you can guarantee that." was my response, if I remember correctly...)

Are you pissed at CCP?
I was that day. Howwever, by that time, action on my playing char was sporadic at best (Whats the point? the RP world was rigged...), so the bitterness level dropped off pretty quickly.

Did you bump the BoB dreads?
Possible, but I doubt it. As I've said, I jumped to a very close distance to one, grabbed a screenie, then orbitted at 80k. This process took less than 8 seconds (helps when your ship goes 2500m/s with insta-accelleration). Accusations that this would cause bumping seems silly; I've done the same with Titans without any problems. I heard the accusations of bumping, but thought I couldn't be that sloppy with my manuvering...and upon looking closer, saw no such thing going on. Being accused of doing the same thing in 'BKG' solidified the Bullshit factor, as I had not been to that system in some time.

Is (name) actually GM (name)?
Don't know. Quit asking.

Who is Adm Chand-whatever?
He was the name of the fellow screaming in the IRC. This was something I had not told Kug about, and I'm a little impressed that he filled in the blanks on his own....

Who is Istvaan?
What rock have you been under?

Hopefully this will shut up my ventrillo peeps, and I won't hear anything more on the matter.

AdmGrae
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
New EvE news item:
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

Edit: This still doesn't explain why any questions about the incident were deleted before the mighty threadnaught was deployed, or the other two incidents in question.

Edit2:
Hay look.
May 25, 2007 Whistler link
I have to say, as an outsider, that my assumption was that the Corporation joining thing was probably to kick a bug loose. No idea why the posts about the incident were deleted, except that maybe the person who performed the deletes may not have communicated with the person who joined the Corp.
May 25, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
That's what everyone wanted to think in the first place as well. The only issue is that the petitions were deleted, the CCP employee who joined the corp was not responding to attempts to contact them, emails weren't answered, threads regarding it on the forum were near-instantly vaporized, etc. CCP likes to play shoot offenders and coverup when stuff gets somewhat out of hand, and doesn't play it very well.

And also, the CEO and members of Darkstar 1 all say that they don't know of any bug going on or any active petitions open by any member of the corp. They didn't even know the employee in question joined up until the EvE system automatically generated a message when he left. We still have no idea why they put themselves in the corp in the first place.
May 25, 2007 Whistler link
Yeesh. When VO gets big, remind me to leave all the customer support to paid employees.
May 26, 2007 Cunjo link
f'kin drama llamas...
May 26, 2007 ananzi link
corruption is inherent in any system where the ordinary member does not have a voice in the governance of that system.

and corruption is bad enough even when they do. but there are checks and balances to correct those problems, but online, everything is a 'private space', and so there are no checks and balances and users do not have a 'say' other than their payment, which is hardly what would consider a 'say' in a modern social organization.

basically, online, corruption does not exist, because the meaning of the word 'corruption' implies there was some agreement beforehand or some kind of social contract between the people that 'make decisions' and the people who 'live with decisions'. in cyberspace, this is nothing more than a nebulous understanding between an owner of private property (the servers) and someone 'invited' to that private property, meaning basically, there is no contract and the user has no rights whatsoever, any more than you do if you are invited to someones party at their house.

since the argument can always be 'we can do what we want, we own this place', and most EULAs basically say 'terms of this EULA may change any time', and just about zero of them say anything even remotely like 'the company promises to not favor one player over a nother'.

people are not going to overthrow this system either. their solution, rather than introducing some mechanism whereby corruption is stamped out, instead are going to just try to become part of those that benefit most from corruption.
May 26, 2007 zamzx zik link
Ananzi, addressing your first sentence;

That in itself is a logical fallacy. Any ordinary member has twice the chance to be corrupted as any governmental member.

I had a whole paragraph more, but I'm too lazy to be coherent. Goo'd nuff for me
May 27, 2007 jexkerome link
We should send ananzi, Genka and who? me? over to EVE to destroy it (faster than the corruption is doing, anyway). That way VO will be the sole space MMORPG out there.
May 27, 2007 Scuba Steve 9.0 link
Compared to some people in GoonSwarm, those three are just barely getting their troll legs to stand up.
May 27, 2007 MSKanaka link
This post made my day.