As I’ve said before though, this is just the first story which has been noticed. Others, like the player preventing from reporting harrassment under the threat of being banning himself by GM’s, have gone unnoticed.

“No matter which way this all turns out, this has been a nightmare for CCP and Eve, and hopefully they will work through this and keep going. Eve’s innovations are too important to the genre and the industry as a whole to be entangled in this crap.”

Surely even if the game suffers massively as a result, the innovations that have happened up until this point aren’t going to disappear?

EVE’s been a success story in many ways and obviously I hope it continues to be, but there’s a real danger that this is being taken quite lightly by many, IMO.

I put it to you that competition and PvP are rendered laughable when the Devs themselves cheat.

Why would I want to get it on at all with that track record ?

So goonswarm, who metagame as a matter of policy and hack the client once again are trying to take the ethical high ground and “sell” Eve. Say, how much was Remedial making from referals and GTC’s?

Anyway,

Eve is a PvP game. If you don’t like competition in your games, you’re probably not going to get on with Eve. Eve also requires cooperation – unless you’re willing to join a corp, there’s a fairly fixed limit to what you can do in Eve.

The comparison with Shadowbane or UO isn’t really fair – you could be ganked within sight of the city walls in those games. Eve has a much bigger “safe”* zone, but the rewards go up when you’re willing to venture outside it.

(*The “guards” will kill your attacker and they lose a chunk of security status. You may still die..)

It’s not for everyone, and dosn’t pretend to be.

Evangolis, Arkanon has allways been one of the more…hmm…legalistic GM’s. Admitedly an outsider might have been a better idea, but if they wanted an insider he’s a good choice.

As to the scandal, things are looking up. They’ve appointed a specific guy to do GM oversight, and he’s someone that the community overall still respects and trusts (former senior GM Arkanon). They are apparently setting up an IA team, etc. We’ll see how things develop, but at the moment it looks like there’s going to be general improvement.

Andrew, I’m glad you’re so into this game, but honestly, you’re weird and kind of creepy.

Anyone else who wants to read Andrew’s bizarre pushes to switch the issue from developers cheating to whatever other subject he wants to like Kugutsumen or Goonfleet or whatever, take a look at his posts at the Escapist:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/68591-Jumpgate-EVEs-Devs-and-the-Friends-They-Keep

Between CCP’s indiscretions and his postings, I don’t think this is the sort of game any casual player should ever play. Myself included.

“Every political entity of any size at all has already picked a side in this war ”

I could name a good dozen who did not want to get involved quite easily. Most of them are now fighting “with BoB” not because they wanted to, but because they’ve been see as “in the BoB camp”.

You keep on posting about how Goonfleet’s cause is good and light, when in fact every single last client-hacking goon should of been banned from the game. If any action is taken by the devs on BoB, then all of goonfleet must be banned as well to make it clear that the devs are being even handed.

I know you don’t like that. Tough.

Jeff Freeman,

*Nods*

“Does that have to be a face-to-face sit-down, you think? Maybe the players could deliver the scoop just as well, if given access to devs.”

I’d say it was worth it. Forums tend to be a morass, and picking the good viewpoints out and discussing them (since it’s very easy to misunderstand finer points in a one-way situation).

Perhaps that calls for a top-secret player-developer forum, but that has issues with bias and so on as well.

“yank all the devs’ god-powers”

Well, why would they have any of them on the main server they didn’t explicitly need in the first place? I mean, on the test server put up a disclamer..and if the dev needs to test a city-busting missile, “so sorry”.

Carrie Byron, and your support for a wanted hacker is and remains sickening. He is not the issue, stop giving him free publicity for his “services”.