EVE Online Scandal Deliberate Frame-Job?

Last Friday, we discussed serious allegations leveled against CCP by players of the game. The comments on the discussion were lively, and pointed. Perhaps a bit too pointed, as CCP's internal affairs investigation claims that a plot to smear the company with false accusations over the long holiday weekend was behind the flurry of online activity. "The objective of this scheme was to permanently paint CCP as a biased and corrupt company that favors a select group of players over the rest of our community. In this particular case, instead of receiving notification of a possible problem and sufficient time to examine and address it, we faced a coordinated and hostile attack executed on our forums, Digg, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and other outlets at the beginning of a three-day weekend. We believe this speaks volumes of the intention of the person(s) responsible for orchestrating this scheme. Verification of this can be readily found on the forums of the people responsible--or at least could, the last time we looked." Scott Jennings over at Broken Toys points the finger at the Goon Fleet corporation, an organization based out of the Something Awful forums. As I noted in the original post, the evidence presented on both sides is challenging to verify independently. Take everything you read about these events with a grain of salt.

hoo boy

I see your scandal, and raise you a CONSPIRACY! One of my friends tried to get me into this game, so glad I didn't end up playing...

Re:hoo boy

Yeah, this stinks of a Conspiracy. Stinks on ice. Did you know that Karl Rove and Harriet Myers are both on the Eve board of directors? Did you know that over 75% of the employees are recent grads of Regent University's new Christian Gaming department? The only way to get to the bottom of this is if Bush will answer the following questions: What did he know? And when did he know it?

Re:hoo boy

If your hobby was building little boats in bottles, and someone knocked your bottles off of the shelf, destroying or damaging them, you would be pissed.

His hobby is EVE, and they bumped his bottle, causing damage to his tiny ship.

Just because it's not real events doesn't mean it's not a real hobby.

Zonk plays EVE Online

Send him your exotic dancers! He demands it

Bad PR move: Never whine

A little lesson in PR for a company obviously challenged in this department:

Don't go on the defensive by playing the "victim" card. (Newsflash: No one cares.)

Here's what skilled PR departments do:
Make strong statements of integrity. Fire someone. Institute a new policy or two.
Devise a system of compensating those wronged. Spend money on public relations,
advertising and technological improvements. Claim (regardless of truth) that the
problem has been solved and that (wait for it...) the reason people hate you is
because your products are so damn good.

I didn't make up the rules. They've been etched in stone for a while now.

Re:Bad PR move: Never whine

What're you talking about? Their whining has literally doubled their free advertising over the past week.

A more cynical person than me would conclude that they manufactured the entire scandal specifically for the press.

Re:Bad PR move: Never whine

Don't go on the defensive by playing the "victim" card. (Newsflash: No one cares.)

They actually tried this in the last scandal, which actually ended up having some truth behind the allegations, to solicit sympathy from the player community and, I guess, to mitigate the any harsh feelings directed at the devs and CCP in general. In an announcement that the company's investigation was complete [eve-online.com], the game's community manager mentioned how the whistleblower who was responsible in large part for bringing the whole controversy to light outed the player character identities of a few developers. He stated that, as per company policy, these developers had those characters removed from the game, and, boo-hoo, were forced to end their long-standing relationships with friends and corp-mates in game.

I was flabbergasted by the ineptitude of their PR.

It didn't help that some of the specific allegations of wrongdoing that were made by the whistleblower went unaddressed until a later post, some of which turned out to be on the mark. One of the developers admitted to supplying items to his corp-mates using by abusing his dev tools. For the record, he wasn't fired (I don't recall what disciplinary action they took, if any, beyond removing his player characters and possibly compelling him to make a public apology.)

Re:Bad PR move: Never whine

If these allegations had come out of nowhere from GoonSwarm, no one would have believed them.

Unfortunately for CCP, they have already been caught trying to cover up allegations that turned out in the end to be true, and a large portion of the playerbase does not believe that CCP handled the initial incident properly at all.

Most of us were willing to give them a second chance, but so far, they're blowing it.

An insightful poster in the EVE Online forums said, "You know you're in trouble when the majority of your playerbase is more inclined to believe an organization that was responsible for the term Photoshop Friday than they are inclined to believe you." Honestly, while the Something Awful/GoonSwarm crew may be assholes, they make NO effort to hide that fact. They're blatant about it, and a lot of people will prefer an open blatant asshole (you know what to expect from them) to a backstabbing sleazebag (They're acting nice, but what are they REALLY up to?)

After the t20 incident, CCP destroyed any trust the playerbase had in them. They tried to cover up the t20 scandal for as long as they could (including banning anyone who discussed or linked to the allegations), and in the end it turned out that the allegations were true. At that point, t20 got a small slap on the wrist and the BPOs were removed from the game, but not the ingame money they generated (and hence the damage they caused). By the time CCP addressed the issue, the ingame balance of power had already been permanently altered. t20 is still with the company, and no effort was made to repair the damage he did. In any other MMO, the damage a rogue developer could have done is far less, and despite that, it's known that other MMO companies (Blizzard, Mythic) are FAR stricter about dev/GM misconduct - at any other company, t20 would be LONG gone, but the fact is that as long as he is still with the company and the playerbase continues to fail to see heads roll, they will never trust CCP again.

The funniest thing is the fact that they say "trust us, we'll do what's right" when so far they have an established track record of not doing so.

Yes, I am now actively looking for another game to play. I was passively waiting for something better to be released, but now I think I can find something better from the list of what is already out there.

Re:Bad PR move: Never whine

As far as I know, T20 is a Sr developer that was part of the beginning team. He may have stock in the company and it may have been legally impossible to fire him.

Just a thought and not a defense. I love eve and play it quite a bit. The acts of T20 were unconscionable and should have been handled differently. "Those that were responsible for sacking the producers have been sacked" type thing.

Anyway end of my rant.

-Infodragon

Re:Bad PR move: Never whine

As an interested Eve player, I've encountered both the Goonswarm and CCP, although neither in contentious circumstances.

CCP has created a great game, but they need some adult supervision to operate it as a viable business. They are in danger of squandering a very well-made game by taking it too seriously. There are ways to stay "involved" in gameplay without having a stake in the outcome of large-scale battles. And you cannot, under any circumstances, get too "friendly" with certain players, no matter how dedicated the player. When the game "starts", those relationships have to end.

Do you know what happens when a pit boss in a casino gets too friendly with someone who tends to win a lot of money, regularly? And trust me, there's a reason both MMORPGs and Casinos are said to be part of the "gaming" industry.

misleading, as always

First of all, its Goonswarm is the alliance and Goonfleet is the corp.

CCP, while whining about the posting of all this stuff to slashdot and digg, and then claiming that they've shown all the accusations to be false, is being rather misleading. They've completely ignored one of the very serious accusations (the one that said that players have the msn contact details of devs - sure they had a petition, but 5 minutes turn around on a petition resulting in the dismissal of a volunteer has to be a speed record in the world of MMORPGs), and actually more or less acknowledged the one about rigging story lines. Their defense to the rigging accusation that they didn't know how they were going to rig the ending yet. Uh, yeah, that certainly clears you of the accusations... (to their credit, they have thoroughly dismissed the accusation involving a dev infiltrating a player corp).

The funny thing is that they make a veiled threat of legal action against the somethingawful.com - that'll be quite a sight to see! I can't see CCP coming out on top of that battle. (regardless of whether their lawsuit has any legal merit)

Re:Not really

Goonfleet just gets grief because they're gutsy enough to play the extreme end of the game's rules -- things that are looked upon as "cheating" in other games, e.g. spying, doublecrossing etc is THE POINT OF THE FUCKING GAME!

Re:misleading, as always

With all due respect, who gives a fuck about all this and why is it on the /. front page?

The relevance is related to the subject:

1) Intersetallar Kredits(ISK) are worth a lot of real-world money, the 100 billion stolen was worth at least $20,000 at the time when the perpetrator attempted to sell them. If they had made off and actually sold 700bil, that would have been a couple years' salary for most people around here.

2) As for the Goons, EVE is known as a game where it's best to try to cheat as much as you can in hopes of getting away with it, and that its developers are not above this. The fact that people are paying money to lose is both saddening and remarkable, and such is why it's on the front page.

Re:misleading, as always

It's not so bad that it's a scam per-say, but it's rigged. The lawless areas of the world that are effectively the PvP and PvE end-game are dominated by a single group of people called the Band of Brothers; they have and likely continue to receive help from the developers. In the lawful areas where role-playing events occur, the outcomes of the events are rigged - not so much that it benefits any one person as much as the RPers don't influence anything and hence are wasting their time because it's not real RP.

There's still plenty of things you can do that aren't touched by corruption, but as a game structured around PvP and then run by biased developers, you don't have a fair chance of winning at the end-game. It goes as the developer wants it to and if you're not part of the plan or winning side too bad for you.

Re:misleading, as always

In theory, this has been a problem since D&D first came out, where biased GMs could get the new guy killed, etc. In practice such people quickly found themselves without players and games to run, and the same extends to the MMO-sphere where most MMOs don't have this problem. While meta-gaming is predictable, it's none the less a solvable problem that doesn't need to occur. You don't see this problem in most other games, it boils down to the EVE developers being unwilling to overcome their natural tendencies.

Re:misleading, as always

CCP let's you guys post on /. during your lunch hour?

The way I see it, it's cheating

The way I see it, even if you don't give a fuck about virtual money and such, it's still a rigged game. You don't have to take a game seriously to, nevertheless, expect it to be _fair_. Especially a game based on competition and PvP. The idea of a competition is basically, "may the best player win", not "may the drink buddies of the referee win."

I mean, I never took chess too seriously either, but if the games at a club were rigged so the same player always wins (e.g., he gets to ask for another queen any time he wishes), then, you know, why bother playing? Or let me use, say, World Of Warcraft as an example. I don't even do PvP myself, much less take it seriously, but imagine that one guild were pals of the devs and got to win the battle grounds every time via outright cheating and having some dev on call to bend the rules as needed. (Which Blizzard doesn't do, but just as a hypothetical example.) Wouldn't it, at the very least, leave a bad taste?

Fixing the outcome of RP events isn't any different either, or not fundamentally. It's still, in effect, a competition, even if an acting competition. It doesn't have to be taken too seriously or give much of a fuck to nevertheless leave a bad taste if it's rigged.

I mean, imagine I'm your DM at a D&D game and said something like "ok, guys, you get to plead your case before the genie, and I want you to RP it. Whoever makes the most compelling case of why he should get it, gets a wish." If all such events blatantly ended up won by the guy who bought me pizza, wouldn't you, at the very least, say, "yada, yada, just give Jack his wish and let's move on"? Why bother competing if you already know it's rigged and that anything you could say or do isn't going to make any difference at all?

Except in this case people have paid some money too, and are paying a monthly fee too. I can see how they'd be a bit more pissed off if all there is in the game is rigged so the devs' buddies win. If PvP is rigged _and_ RP events are rigged, and that pretty much covers all there is except mindless grind, then, you know, why bother playing that game at all?

On the lighter side, though, it does remind me of a Woody Allen quote: "I was watching a ballet at City Center, and I'm not a ballet fan at all, but they were doing the dying swan, and there was a rumour, that some bookmakers had drifted into town from upstate New York, and that they had fixed the ballet. Apparently there was a lot of money bet on the swan to live."

way too serious

it doesnt surprise me that this sort of thing happened- first players accuse each other of cheating then they accuse one of the biggest organizations in EVE of helping players cheat- then the accused declare a conspiracy.. neigher seems to have much evidence- but that isnt the point. the point is that a lot of players are taking the game to be something greater than what it is- way too seriously in fact. they need to remember that there is a world out there- everything doesnt revolve around EVE any more than it does any other game. if they really feel compelled to take action on it- fine get some evidence but what they should do is just move on... this sort of thing happened at least once before with EVE [in game scams etc.] but everyone moved on.

It Shouldn't Suprise Anyone

EVE is one of the few MMOGs where other players can legitimately destroy huge amounts of your hard work, if you've dared to step into the alliance warfare arena. People don't like to be beaten, it's far easier to accept that you've lost if you have something to pin it on. Traditional targets have been incompetent allies, the vague 'internal problems', people leaving EVE for other games (Lineage II was popular with the old Forsaken Empire - too popular), essentially anything which can deflect blame. The odd 'CCP is helping my enemies cheat' accusation cropped up, but that was relatively uncommon - up until about a year ago, that is. Since then, everything is a result of someone, anyone, with authority tilting the scales in favor of the other guy. If you're winning, its because someone is cheating for you. It's both incredibly sad and completely unsurprising that the human response to losing at even trivial games is to bitch and moan - a problem which is compounded on the internet, because you can make up whatever you want and noone will ever have the ability to tell you to stop being an ass. At least in organized sports, the "Fucking Refs" phenomenon only works for a limited time, until someone slaps the hell out of you and tells you to stop being an idiot.

Actually, it's not that hard a concept

Actually, it's not that hard a concept. Most games essentially let everyone have everything (suitable for their class), if they just put enough work into it. That's what "fair" means. If you do X units of work (not even do it _well_ or better than everyone else), you're guaranteed a promotion. That's what XP is for example.

It actually works pretty damn well, because you don't have to have a working pyramid. Unlike RL you don't need 1000 peons or more to have a millionaire. You can have half the MMO's population stuck at level 70 for example. (And take a census on WoW sometime if you don't believe me. The bar graph looks like lots of tiny little bars for all levels and a huge spike at level 70.)

It doesn't even have to be all about levels, you can give people lots of other rewards too.

Games are an easy case to make "fair", because you there isn't an actual need to make it "unfair". You don't actially need a privileged 1% minority of rich guys (for bonus points, whose only merit there was being the always drunk son of the guy who actually earned that money) creating employment for everyone else. The game can create any amount of employment or virtual money needed by itself. E.g., a single finite instance, can keep an infinite number of players "employed" hacking those monsters for xp and loot.

For that reason, you don't have to give anyone privileges over anyone else, much less tolerate (or worse: create) blatant nepotism, like the accusation here went. There is no, "see, Jack wins every time only because he's Richie McMoney's nephew, but, you see, we need rich robber-barons like McMoney to keep the economy going, so quit yer pinko commie whining and get back to work. You wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for people like McMoney." Again, here it's the game's responsibility to create the "jobs" and the rewards, you don't need to put some pricks in privileged positions for that.

And it can get as lopsided as it wants to. You can basically have everyone be a CEO (don't laugh, there are games where everyone owns a company), without worrying that noone is a worker. Who cares? You can have millions of workers as NPCs or abstracted as "your company has 2500 workers, 500 clerks, and 100 researchers" numbers. Or you can have everyone be a king, and noone be a peasant, if you want to. Or whatever.

So "fair" is actually very easy. Most games are "fair" by default unless you actively screw that up. (Which is what CCP is accused of doing.)

And, frankly, it can be prevented. I've been on free MUDs which policed themselves against just this kind of thing. Everything a wizard/creator/builder/whatever gave a player or did to a player was logged and reviewed, and it was cause for immediate termination if you went and made the game unfair to reward your buddies. Can't a company do the same? How hard _can_ it be?

Now "balanced" is a more tricky proposition, and that one takes real skill and work. That much I'll admit. That's what separates good designers from wannabes. Kudos to those who can get that right. But "fair"? "Fair" is the default.

Re:Actually, it's not that hard a concept

1. First of all, I was talking about "fair" in a general case, and in regard to the game, not to your interactions with other players. Even if other players can do better, or you can lose, the idea is that the game itself isn't rigged against you. You can still lose a duel or a battleground in, say, WoW, but that's because you played worse, not because someone rigged the competition.

The idea of "fair" is, basically, that the game itself is agnostic as to who the players are. A "fair" game doesn't even know whether you're Jack who's a drinking buddy of dev X, or Jill who only gives nookie to dev Y if she wins. You're just character Z, with the same chances as any other character of the same class and level. If you have the skill or work hard enough, you win, if you don't you don't, but anyway: it's the same skill or effort anyone else would need in that same situation.

And, as I was saying, that's the default state for a computer game, unless someone actually goes and messes with it. Any way you'd go about genuinely implementing a set of RPG rules, the rules themselves are agnostic. If paper wins against stone and loses against scissors, it doesn't matter if it's dev's friend or the unpopular whiner who's playing paper, it still applies the same rules. The computer only knows it's paper, not who's playing that paper.

To make it unfair, you'd have to actually spend some extra effort there to skew it. Whether by active dev intervention (e.g., dev X steps in to give the +5 Sword Of Ganking to his buddy), or some way in the code and database (e.g., having some hidden flags for who's supposed to win more than normal.) It doesn't just happen by itself. That's all I'm saying.

Getting the rules to be "balanced", now that's a problem. But "fair" just means applying the exact same rules and giving the same chances to everyone. That's the _normal_ state.

2. But if you want to get it back on topic to this particular affair: Maybe because, as far as I understand, there was already a case where a dev was acknowledged to have played favourites, and CCP tried to play it down as, basically, "uh, it was just one guy, not the whole company, and we, erm, made him promise he'll stay away from the game in the future"? Just a thought.

Yes, it's harder to get out of MUD slinging contests than to end them in the first place, but that's why most people try to distance themselves as hard and fast as they can from that kind of stuff. I'm betting that if someone at, say, Blizzard, was proved to have rigged battlegrounds, the announcement would have been "we've fired him and taken steps to make sure we'll know if anyone even tries that crap again" not "we've, uh, had a stern talk to him and moved him around to another team". The message the former gives is "we don't allow that kind of crap", while the later says, basically, "heh, we don't give much of a fuck if that happens."

And once you've given the "we don't give much of a fuck" message, yeah, I can see how it would be hard to dig yourself out of that hole.

That still doesn't excuse corruption

If that's what keeps you entertained, you can even play russian roulette, as far as I'm concerned. But that still doesn't justify fixing it. If the gun is rigged so one of the players can't lose (it's actually possible nowadays), then wtf is the point of playing against them?

And comparisons to RL are emotional and all, but missing the point. Noone said they have to police against players who play better. I do, however, say that they should police their own fucking devs.

In most cases it doesn't even need active surveillance, but just making sure there are consequences and you fire the twits who can't stay honest. Same as casino employees, for example, if you want an example with real wins and losses and pulse racing. It doesn't mean you'll have three guys watching each other and the blackjack dealer, it means you make sure everyone knows they'll never work again in that town and possibly face prosecution too if they're caught cheating.

And, from what I understand, CCP already failed in that aspect once. "Uh, we moved the guy to another team" doesn't even start to give the right message to either party. It's like a casino saying "uh, it was only one crooked dealer, and we, erm, moved him to the roulette instead of the blackjack table" in a case like that. It doesn't give the right message to either the patrons or to the other employees.

And I don't think any casino there would go, "yeah, well, RL is corrupt too, we can't police it", by the way. It _is_ possible to build a whole business on the idea that it's fair and honest, and at least legal gambling went to great lengths to build and preserve that image. Especially _because_ everyone has seen movies about rigged roulette tables and money laundering via the blackjack table, and expects that kind of thing, they go to great lengths to distance themselves as far as possible from that kind of an image. They don't go and confirm it, since everyone was expecting it anyway.

So, well, I don't think a MMO company is absolutely unable to do the same thing.

but..

Regardless of wheter they have been wrongly accused this time or not, this isn't the first time by a long way that CCP have been in the headlines following accusals of corruption of the game.

No such thing

as bad press. Somebody's looking for attention?

How 'bout the weather?

You know, it's really nice outside here in the north east, who is up for some touch football? But be forwarned, I'm going to pick my players based on skill, 'cause I'm all bias like that.

I'm inclined to agree, but...

Having seen both sides of these latest allegations I'm inclined to agree with CCP, it really doesn't look like they did anything wrong in these cases. Whether their actions were deliberatly taken out of context in these allegations or not I don't know, but many people felt this is exactly what would happen after the monumental mishandling of the first incident involving t20.

The damage done in that first scandal is going to take CCP a long time to fix and anything fishy between now and then is going to be portrayed in the wrong light by default.

However I have no doubt certain groups in the game have benefitted from having developers in their ranks. Not just BoB, though I'd suspect they've gained more than the average advantage over the years. I personally know a few people who are either good friends with developers or have access to certain databases internal to CCP's development and testing team. Although they're hesitant to share "inside information" I've learned a lot about the game from them that can't be found anywhere else. Put one of them in charge of an entire alliance and you can be sure they'd put that information to good use, gaining an unfair advantage for an entire group of players in the process.

These latest accusations may have been baseless, but there are still problems that need to be addressed. A major one is transparency. If CCP employees are going to be playing the game there can only be two policies; complete secrecy or complete transparency. They tried the former and failed, time for another approach.

When in doubt, blindly obey us

Seriously, thats what CCP is more or less telling the public at this point. After the PR nightmare involving t20, CCP is basically trying to blow off this entire incident. After the t20 incident, we KNOW that some of the staff have had some level of interaction with guilds/clans that resulted in said guilds/clans getting a leg up on the competition (however great or small it is).

Suddenly, another EVE scandal is revealed and CCP tells people they're being framed? After months/years of various accusations? Its completely and utterly unbelievable.

MOD Parent up

I'm inclined to agree with you. I've been watching the latest scandal and CCP for the most part handled it well. Especially after the last SNAFU.

Personally I see it as the game maturing. Anyway remember Ultima Online from years ago? Various tales of GMs helping friends, looking after castles for famous baseball players and manufacturing gold faster then Rumpelstiltskin. They put in a lot of processes/systems to stop this.

CCP is just doing the same.

Btw, I believe any game where the players have interaction with GMs/dev team at any level will eventually call claims of favoritism/cheating. I recall stories like this from Asherons Call or City of Heroes. In those games the Dev/GMs vary become visible in the game.

Again?

In the controversies I've seen over EVE, just as a bystander I've felt considerable pressure to pick a side in the argument, despite not knowing anything about it. One thing keeping me from signing up is the thought that I'll have to deal with this kind of bullshit in-game as well - I don't mean "CCP allegedly doing something unfair" bullshit, I mean "intergalactic flame war" bullshit. I don't care if the developers are giving any faction an unfair advantage. I don't want to care whether the developers are giving any faction an unfair advantage. In fact, if I find myself starting to care about that, that's how I'll know it's time for me to quit the game. The fact that such controversies spring up every time CCP sneezes suggests to me that I won't enjoy the game's atmosphere.

CCP is doing bad PR

They spent pages debunking the part that every reasonable player knew to be false and then basically said what amounted to 'oh yea that wasn't true either' to the real allegations that actually concern people. Then they played the high horse victim card.

It is sad. Eve Online is a good game, with crap management.

Why continue to pay?

What continues to confound me as this drama unfolds is why do people who disgruntled with Eve continuing to play Eve? If you so strongly believe CCP is rigging their sandbox, why continue to pay to play in it? Do you think that if you continue to saber rattle while cutting them a monthly check is going to fix anything? The real power is in the subscriptions. Lessen their cash intake and they will be forced to respond or at least figure out a more subtle way slink around and deal with bad press.

Otherwise stfu about threating to cancel your multiple subscriptions. The more you continue to pay, the more you continue to ask be fucked. They are more than willing to oblige so long as your checks clear.

Re:Why continue to pay?

That is a very good point, but you see, eve actually is a really fun game and we'd kinda like for it to be successful which would be helped if the company running it cared more about the success of the game than about playing the game themselves and looking guilty every couple of weeks. But you know, a lot of people have been voting with their feet; eve's number of user's online has been dropping for weeks.

Beware of the GoonFleet link

In true Goon style it is now a link to Goatse.cx My poor eyes.

warning, major goatse

Link to "the GoonFleet Corporation" is a goatse now.

Of course it was a frame-job

Why would CCP cheat, you know, again? After the other incident why would they risk losing another 2 players? The thing that I hate about all this crap is that the Eve players will not leave. Ever. If you don't like what CCP is doing then quit paying them to do it. They don't want your appreciation; they want your money. Complain all you want. As long as you pay your 10 bucks (or whatever it is) a month they don't care. Until then they will do whatever they want and you still won't quit. So shut the fuck up. They shit in your bowl and you eat it with a smile then complain till the next serving. Get a damn backbone.

In other news...

Roger, the guy down the hall in room 415, just pulled off the craziest move in Tetris history, clearing 12 rows in three moves, on level 14. Onlookers in the Stupid Tetris Fans United (STFU) guild were quick to point out that this is unpossible, and must be the result of some kind of scandal.

Rival guild Zoo Ostrich Masichist's Guild!!1! (ZOMG!!1!) allege that Roger's game is totally illigetimate, oweing to the fact that he once made a tetris game for his calculator while fucking around in high school math class. One member was over heard saying "It's a conspiracy. We all know Roger's in the tetris industry."

Representitives from ZOMG!!1! and STFU were not available for comment, but one thing is certain: news of this scandal is spreading like wildfire, and the tetris world may never be the same.

EVE: Serious business!

I used to play this game some moons ago and I got a taste of EVE politics, and boy do people take it seriously! I spent many night playing a so-called diplomat in between internal alliance matters that were trivial. My point: people take this game (too) seriously! Now, I've heard about the flame spewing dragon that is goonfleet and many men have lost their dignity in mighty flamewars against that group in the past, but it still strikes me as odd that goonfleet should attack the company and as such the game itself as well. But I guess that is the nature of flamers. One could argue that the EVE community has developed anti-establishment movement against the game and CCP. But the CCP team is a great bunch that are doing quiet a good job of keeping in touch with the community. They allow them self to play the game to get a feeling how it is to be a player, they take a part of the community discussion and try to be "one of them". I guess that their greatest and weakest point. As for their PR move to claim a grand conspiracy of "carefully constructed and well-timed social engineering effort", it must go down in the history books as the worst PR move of them all! Just remember, its just a friggin game...

The tone of the response is totally unacceptable

Combative and derisive towards the accusations made. Yeah, that's what an "internal affairs" investigation should be. The tone is 100% supportive of CCP and 100% belligerant to the accusers, and because of that fact ALONE, I simply cannot believe anything the "investigator" says.

I mentioned in a previous thread I'd been undecided on joining EVE, this one blog post locks it down for me- this company will not see a dime of my money, ever.

Eeek!

Someone take down the Goon Fleet corporation link, they changed it to Goatse. I had thought I would never see that horrible, horrible photo ever again.

I was wrong.

A website built on years of trolling?

I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked! Next eBaum's world will be under suspicion for not having original content! The scandal!

Deliberate Frame-Job

Because you might have thought it was an accidental frame-job.

Wow

PvP games are serious business.

Hahahahahaha.

Wargames reference

A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

well this does show something corrupt

How come a Gm gets his complaint answered in 1 day as shown via the CCP thread they posted. I had this same issue and it took me over 1 month to get a response from CCP at this same time. Every ticket me or my corp enters takes over 20 days for a reply. This account which they acknowledge as a gm account got serviced in 1 day.


so no favoritism there. Sure this Gm may not have been able to take actions on his own account and had to place the petition to get the issue resolved, he still received favorable treatment, which is a violation of CCP's rules. A customers issue should be resolved in order not by who knows who or who is in what corp....

Game Over, CCP

That has got to be one of the most defensive and petty "responses" I've ever seen come from a company. At a time when people are calling for CCP to act professionally, they pull this stunt and come off looking like bitter nerds, not a mulit-million dollar company.

My advice to anyone even *thinking* about playing this game...don't. It's painfully obvious that CCP will go to any length to protect their perks, privileges, and collusions with certain alliances. They don't want a fair game because they want to have fun themselves, customers be damned. The clock is ticking for CCP, how much longer until the final explosion?

The MMORPG metagame expanding?

I have always thought that all the constant high pitched noise on MMORPG fora were just spoiled kids and other immature people whining because the virtual world didn't revolve around them.

It probably still is, but at least this article suggest that there can be more to it than that. Groups of people trying to create "events" by coordinated manipulation of the fora means that the in-game groups are trying to extend their actions to the real world, or at least a level of virtuality close to the real world (fora like /.). This is so much more interesting.

Standard SA Trolling... Now illegal!

GASP! Those fine upstanding gentlemen at Something Awful? [somethingawful.com] I can't imagine that those fine, upstanding gentlemen, the people who have defined the very word "Internet Troll", would ever, EVER do something as illegal as libel and fraud.

I mean, not to someone who would actually be big enough to fight back, that is.

Granted, these are the same fine upstanding gentlemen who constantly find things online that they don't like then encourage their horde of twits and retards at their forums to harrass people for shits and giggles.

But hey, it's funny when they're finding some kid's Guile fansite or bringing bomb threats to a furry con (and then bitching when the police have something to say about bomb threats right next to an airport), right? So it has to be fun when they're trying the same form of character assassination and harassment on as large a scale as to attack a multi-million dollar international company... right?

Right? Ha ha? So funny? Right?

So obviously, if EVE gets upset enough to actually sue them for this, they're just being bad sports. Ha. Haha. Right? Uh, guys?

I wonder...

How many naysayers of CCP here are from somethingawful?

Let's not forget that the goonfleet internal forums show standing orders to tarnish CCP's image.

http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topi c&threadID=527762 [eve-online.com]

From dev blog:

Since last Friday, an unnamed corporation posted over 4000 times on EVE's message boards concerning these allegations. In addition, 1046 posts were made on Digg.com; 235 comments were added on Slashdot; and made multiple EVE-related edits on Wikipedia. Each of these sites was hit within a few hours of each other, at the start of the three-day Memorial Day weekend in the US and a three-day weekend in Iceland, all referencing unfounded allegations -- now proven to be false -- that occurred three weeks ago or longer.

Goon fleet members spammed the forums so much that CCP was forced to shut them down (I saw it happen; an entire front page worth of spam). And some people still thing its a CCP conspiracy?

Re:I wonder...

One thing that should have been made more clear in the open letter and all the posts was the fact that every reasonable method of trying to find answers was ignored/removed by CCP and the mods. The reasonable forum post was instantly deleted, petitions questioning the DS1 thing (which would have answered teh whole thing right away!) were deleted with no responses, and since only BoB have MSN access, there really wasn't much left.

CCP went out of their way to ignore the questions until they needed to be made public enough to not be ignored.

CCP made dug their own hole

It's tought to make a ton of ISK consistently in EVE, and for those that do, its quite lucrative from a RL$ to in game currency. Some 1B isk goes for what? $90 U.S dollars?

CCP keeps a tight fist on the isk department -- except for the lucky lottery winners of T2 ships. Yet if they nerf the economy such that everybody can make the lucrative isk, then they will lose 50% of thier player base.

CCP made it possible

Now, I wouldn't call it impossible with the Something Aweful crowd involved. They do have a record trying to destroy what others built. But, seriously, how could they if there wasn't already a reason to believe them?

If EvE was a fully credible game, with a CCP having a record of being straight, honest and upright towards its customers, with no favorism, remembered for being fair and unbiased, with no sensible allegations pending that there could remotely be some kind of intermingling between developers and player groups, the whole case would be laughed off.

The problem is, it's anything but that. There have been such allegations before, there have been shady deals, there have been cases where we've seen favorism.

Can this be a plot by some dissatisfied players to bring down the game? Sure. Could it succeed if there wasn't "prior art" of that kind? Certainly not.

Seriously?

Come on guys. Goon Fleet. That's all that needs to be said.

Re:Seriously?

i'll trust a Goon over CCP any day

its been about time

Its been about time for all this to end. I do more than hope that the days of Goonswarm come to an end. I guess there is little chance for sa.com to vanish aswell. For me, personally, Goonswarm ruined EVE, as they brought Metagaming to a whole new level, and based on my personal ingame and forum experience with them I am quite sure the info about the smear campaign is the truth. Goons ever thrived to ruin things for others, by whatever means possible, in the name of 'fun'. They never even tried to get part of the EVE community, but stayed Goons. Its not surprising that they try to take EVE and CCP with them on their downfall. If they will be gone for good it might be time to subscribe EVE again.

CCP Community Manager

To clarify a bit what a company CCP is, let me quote the CCP Community Manager Kieron"

If a member of the EVE community finds he or she cannot accept our current level of transparency, we bid you good luck in finding a company that meets your needs.

Damned if you do..

EVE Online would appear to be the perfect example of what happens if Devs appear to be *too* involved in playing the game, yet as any MMO player will attest - forums are filled with people crying about Devs not having "real-World experience of the problems class x is having". Seems like they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.

From a player perspective I can see how damaging it would be to even be seen to show bias one way or the other towards a class, guild, corp. or whatever the game terminology happens to be. From a developer perspective it must be quite frustrating not being able to enjoy the game in all its splendor (guild raiding, etc included) whilst simultaneously having to deal with legions of forum whiners moaning about how the Devs "dont know how the game works at the ground level".

And of course let's not forget that MMO communities are, without exception, always incredulous, accusatory, fickle and obstinate on the game forums. Everyone has their tinfoil hat on 24/7, expects (demands) the Earth for their $15 a month and despite having very little visibility of the organisational goals, objectives and constraints everyone purports to be "in the know", a programming expert and a visionary. It must be soul-destroying to have to deal with people with this mindset day-in, day-out. Being a Dev on a MMO must be like living life as a major politician: every word spoken about the game (especially on the forums) has to be carefully crafted so as to be totally unambigious and unemotional, since you can guarantee that the World and his dog will deconstruct and scrutinise every syllable, all the while presupposing a hidden agenda (again, tinfoil). It's no wonder Devs usually don't speak much on the forums.

(A slightly amusing anecdote: I was reading the Star Wars Galaxies forums recently as I used to play and a Dev made the heinous mistake of getting involved in an off-topic discussion about American Football teams. Naturally before long someone piped up saying "it's great that you're talking on here but shouldn't you be looking at the pressing issue of Spy DoT damage not being mitigated whilst wearing the Eye of Sauron ring? If you don't fix this I'm quitting and so is my entire family, friends & pet.". Ok I'm being facetious to prove a point, but it was still disheartening to read).

Ultimately this huge controversy, whilst ultimately of little interest to me as an outsider, has given me a fresh outlook and sympathy towards MMORPG developers.

fascinating..

I think it's fascinating how the politics of an on-line game spill over the internet.. I wonder what is the percentage of real in the internet, and how much is fantasy and fiction ? It's challenging, because the actors could be dead serious, act like they are serious or have multiple identities to express their storytelling talent... it's reasonable to suspect everything, but on the other hand it's also fun to actively be part of the story and the fictional reality.. When do we reach the point when global news are being created to support something in-game ? (now ?) It's useful to be aware of the mechanisms.

Lumthemad....

Ah, Scott Jennings, AKA, Lumthemad. I so enjoyed his stuff during the heyday of eq1. He is, and forever will be, the gossip columnist of mmogs. But, I do feel my that my bean juice just spilled over into my applie pie when I see this crap on my fav tech/geek site, /. ....

Can I just not care?

"Take everything you read about these events with a grain of salt."

I'll do one better and just not care at all.

In Soviet Russia...

CCCP investigates you!

On the topic of bad PR

I see a good amount of comments about CCP's PR or lack thereof. I can't help but remember the good PR that games like EverQuest incorporated. Like when asked about why Bard animations were incorrect, the response was "they are meant to be fruity." Or when monsters would get suddenly teleported to their original spawn point for no reason, "its a feature, not a bug." In fact, before Verant's subsequent downfall (or buyout.. whatever) they went on an outright stance against players. The Conquest banning for waking the Sleeper was absurd, since the real reason they were banned was not for exploits, but because the devs introduced content they didn't finish. They claimed that Conquest exploited terrain to achieve victory.. much in the same way that NPCs would "exploit" similar terrain issues to train groups in dungeons.. however, this "feature" was listed as a bug, and subsequently many people got banned. After some time, some were allowed to play, but only after THEY apologized. I don't believe Sony or Verant ever acknowledged any misconduct or over reaction to that event. I could go on about numerous companies (generally tied into Sony now that I think of it) that have made such stances against players. To CCP's credit they admitted this wrong doing. They made it very public, and despite their lack of disciplinary action they have tightened their reigns a bit. The problem is that these are developers. Developers are not easy to replace.. its not like a few CSRs abusing mod/guide powers. In all actuality, working from the existing model of MMORPG PR, the appropriate action would have been to ban all the players who benefitted from dev misconduct, then nerf all the new high end items to distract people. At this point, CCP is a huge target as a company and accusations sorrounding BoB/CCP will be easy pickins. Its not too far fetched that a rival alliance will resort to politics like this, in a game BASED on politics. Why this even gets slashdotted/dug/red/whatever is a bit silly at this point.

The favoritism needs to stop, that's all

The favoritism needs to stop. It's that simple. The alliance that CCP is accused of playing favorites has admitted in the official forums three times that they're friends with the developers and chat with them over MSN. Those posts have since been immortalized by the other big opposing alliance.

The very proof that CCP posted on their site makes it clear that when a Band of Brothers member complains to them over MSN the response is near-instantaneous (see the IRC log in the open letter).

This type of favoritism is unacceptable to most players and probably should be to all. I don't care if they chat about their personal lives, or their "real lives", or even about EVE on MSN. That's cool by me. But when they solicit in-game responses from the company over a channel that no other alliance, corporation, or player has access to - and get it immediately, then there is a problem. That's favoritism and is not acceptable. It's not even that difficult a policy to implement and it won't even ruffle anyone's feathers too badly. Developers: If you get a request for customer support over MSN, tell the requestor to file a petition just like everyone else. And obviously don't provide them in-game resources of any kind. That I shouldn't have to explain.

Yes, I am in Goonswarm.
No I did not participate in the Goonswarm's massive public campaign across the internet to stir up trouble. Thus far, this has been my first post on any forum regarding what's been going on.

It's very disappointing. I love the game, but the proven favoritism is sickening. Who wants to play a game where the house is playing favorites for one of the players?

Perspective?

Hey, I got an idea... Why doesn't everybody take a break, watch the news in the real world, and then come back and examine the flame wars in the virtual world. I bet there are a bunch of folks overseas that would be glad to flame the issue for you while you go on patrol...

Facts

1. The accusers Goons and their Allies have been involved in a huge 6 month fight to the death, with the people they are accusing, Band of Brothers and their allies. 2. After initial success early in 2007 the war has taken a very bad turn for the Goonies. It now seems very likely they will lose this war and be kicked out of their home systems. 3. If these accusations were actually true they had the option to complain to CCP management and try an work things out. They could have brought forth their arguements and evidence. If CCP Internal affairs did not respond they could have appealed to top management, if the refused to listen or take them seriously they could have issued an ultimatum. If CCP stubornly refused to respond or if their responce did not address the core of their complaints then they could have gone public. 4. The fact that Goonswarm choose, as virtually a first step, to go public in a way to maximise the damage to CCP's reputation is almost certain proof that this was a smear campaign. 5. The way the accusers acted is absolutely consistent with the behavior of sore losers, of people who are on the brink of defeat and instead of accepting the loss, seek a face saving way out. What you have seen is the cyber equivalent of somebody over turning the chessboard once they realize they lost. 6. It is clear from the way they went about this that their desire is not to improve the game, it is to damage the game on their way out. 7. One characteristic of smear campains is they try and generalize from one case of possible wrong doing and make it seem as if a whole enterprise is corrupt. If you examine crime statistics you will find that at least one postal worker every year is accused of sexual assault; does that mean you should grab your children and lock the doors the minute you see a mail delivery truck head down your street?

the nature of EVE

I could be wrong here, but from what I've seen in my short time playing EVE is that the point of the game is the unbridled quest for power. There are no rules on how you do this or even that you do this. If you want to be a pirate, go ahead. There are consequenses(sp), but you know that going in, just like real life. One group made a corp and sold stock. that's not in the rules but they did it and it worked. The only rules that matter in Eve are what someone can do and what someone can't do. While I don't like the idea of players being buddies with the guys that run the programs and possibly getting some help, that's the nature of the game and also the real world. What's the difference between this, and when corporations or special interest groups get laws changed/passed to benefit them by their favorite congressman. This happens all the time in the real world and usually people get away with it, and no one bats an eye. I don't like that but I accept it as part of the way the world works, if i want a powerfull and dominating business, then i better be prepared to deal with that. As there are no lawmakers to buy off in Eve (as far as i know), I just consider this to be a substitute for that. Knowing that Eve potentially has this aspect in it means it just part of the game and it might be to my benefit once i get really powerful to have found some of these guys to be friends with. If I don't, i can still be successful, but i might have a harder time at some point if i cross the wrong person. Once again, this is a lot like real life. Adapt to the realites you discover and go on. Life isn't fair, why should your games always be?

This is a surprise?

How can anyone possibly be surprised that the audience of a game targeted at griefers, might not set too many limits on their behavior. I mean, really, I'd have thought they would all be great sportsmen. ::snicker::

Why?

WHY OH WHY couldn't we have come up with something like that when playing DAoC?!

Speaking as an MMORPG developer...

Any player that thinks the owning company of an MMORPG would purposefully put themselves at risk simply to cheat at their own game has been playing way too long and has forgotten that real life money outweighs any amount of imaginary game pixels.

It's one thing to call the developers idiots because they changed something in the game you don't like but to accuse them of maliciously conspiring against their customers is just asinine. Maybe if you tried to claim they were doing it to suck more money our of their customers but accusing them of cheating just to win at their own game?! Get a grip on reality please! Whoever started this campaign must have realized the humor in this and is most likely just another troll giving people grief.

I care a bit

Cause I was curious about this game and thought I might play it since I'm sick of the fantasy MMO's. Now, well yeah. Not feeling it.

Re:Who cares?

Why should anyone care what happens in an RPG?
Next up: pinball tilt scandal!

It getsa lot more interesting when 100,000 people are playing the same game of pinball

Re:It's a good thing this...

you computer is a useless luxury, i'm going to come and take it. what's that, why do you even care?

Re:Unfortunately

They fail to mention how their volunteer moderators deleted every single civil thread on the issue, and that CCP themselves deleted the petition that was filed.

I don't see the problem with that.

A year later, I find myself victim of flat out discrimination by the developers, as they cater to their own 'old boys club'. Not a specific generation of players, even, like many MMOs develop content for, but a specific group of players in the game.

Hard to believe people who post as AC.

CCP's problem is that they want to play their own game, and they want to win.

CCP's problem is that they've got people now making up stories after one event that seems to of tainted their image.

Re:Goatse Resurrected?

Looks like the innocent-looking wiki.goonfleet.com brings you the love from Goatse.

Well d'oh. Let me spell it out for you:

• It's a wiki
  
• It's been linked from Slashdot
  
• Ergo, sooner or later it will (has been) goatsed
  

Lesson learned:

Never click on a link from Slashdot that has .asp, wiki or .cfm in it if you value your eyesight!

Re:Goonies Cave into Legal Threat and Disband

That announcement is just as false as the allegations they recently made. Just because it's posted on a forum, doesn't mean it's true.

Re:Who cares?

Pinball tilt scandal: millions of machines across the US rigged to trigger "Tilt" blockade after five minutes of continuous play without losing a ball. The dishonest profit from stopping the game is estimated to $14mln.

That would definitely make it to the press.

Re:Who cares?

In the previous article about this, I posted the following:

The difference between EVE and other MMORPGS is that almost all content is player-generated. It's a hardcore PvP game with heavy penalties for dying, unlike a certain other slightly more popular MMORPG, which is a casual-friendly PvE game with almost no penalties for dying. That it's PvP means that all end-game content is player-generated. The official forums are really important, because it's where the leaders and members of various alliances slag each other, and it has repercussions in the game. Basically, the game is an ongoing forum-war with battleships in space.

So, with their forums being important for the game, it attracts the kind of player that actually thinks that what's written on the internets at large is important. That's why the game constantly get top ranks at all general MMORPG forums, not because it's actually awesome or very popular, it's because its players are playing the forum war all over the internet.

And that's why you get posts like the grandparent, someone who thinks that what he writes here, on Slashdot, somehow carries over into EVE the game, and that's why you have the original article, because the players are also doing the forum war AGAINST CCP. This article is just one more way of doing that, one more way of influencing the game makers into changing the game in a way that whatever satisifes the agenda of the poster.

However, since most of the internet population does NOT play EVE, noone cares about shit like this.

It is with some satisfaction that I notice I was right. :-)

Re:Welcome!

"players who have been playing the game for the better part of half a decade"

Nice one. EVE's been "online" for 4 years (hardly the "better" part of half a decade, though if you'd said "almost" half a decade I'd have let it slide). Hell, I probably quit it before you even started...go back to the sims ya wannabe ;)

Re:CCCP

I'd mod you funny, but I have no points :(

Re:When you find one fly in the house, there are m

Exactly. What cinches Goonswarm's case is the fact that while it was technically legitimate action, it took place within SECONDS of it being brought up. With 30,000 players online(plus at least ten times that many accounts), It takes days or weeks on average to get a response,

Essentially BOB has devs playing at the same time they are logged into the server. If you have this mental image of the dev playing on one screen and having the sql interface screen/app open at the same time on another screen, you're getting the correct one.

Their PR can't get around the fact that a dev can't be playing or chatting with people who are playing, and on the server at the same time.