There was briefly this official comment
The moderators have alerted CCP and the IA team regarding allegations of Dev misconduct. They will conduct their investigation, however its the weekend so it will take some time for the Devs to provide an answer. Please be patient.
before the boards exploded. Literally. As in “Temporarily Offline”. Edit: They came back shortly thereafter, with the following note:
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.
F13 thread already in progress.
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow it is T20 all over again guessing they will not learn from this either.
Regardless of the truth, I don’t think that CCP cannot afford to give any credibility to the allegations.
A reporter interfered with a fight, and was dismissed. I don’t see how that’s CCP cheating.
It is cheating because Band of Brothers members tried to order him to leave and they have no authority over a ISD member. Then there is the whole thing about some corp in goonswarm having a GM enter the corp get director roles and then leave the corp 10 minutes later. Really no reason he should have director roles.
Is it possible for someone to summarize the situation without any use of EVE terminology or slang? I grok CCP, I grok BoB, but I don’t know ISD or goonswarm for example. I tried to read the first two linked pages and my eyes melted.
Goonswarm is an alliance of a couple thousand people that hold space in the game.
ISD is the Forum moderators, and people who do the role playing events.
Each Alliance is made up of many corporations they group together to make the alliance. The screen shots were the leader of the corp seeing a GM enter the corp get Director roles (Guild Master)for 15 minutes then leave the corp without anyone inviting him. GM do enter corps sometimes to fix a problem, but he entered the corp and became a director which there is no need for.
You’re lucky. I was straining so hard to make sense of it that my left eye sucked in so far it swapped places with my left nut. Wierd view, and my nose is dribbling.
ISD is Eve’s in-game volunteer program and runs a lot of the organized events in the game. It’s managed by CCP and ISD members have access to tools normal players do not, including the ability to teleport to other players in the same system.
Goonswarm is a normal, if huge, player alliance comprised primarily of SomethingAwful goons.
Issue 1: A CCP GM, Sharkbait, joined himself to one of the Goonswarm member corporations (Darkstar 1) and gave himself Director access — as I recall the highest permission level within a corporation. Minutes later he left, without saying a word. Nobody’s owned up to inviting him in, so the running theory is that someone else asked him to do it.
Issue 2: BoB, also theoretically a normal (if huge) player alliance, apparently still has an in with CCP and was able to get an ISD observer fired without going through any of the normal complaint channels.
Scandel #1: In game role playing events are pre-planned and corrupt.
Scandel #2: BoB thought an in game offical reporter was interfearing with thier game. They called a CCP dev directly to get him banned. And they didn’t call him via an in-game petition like everyone else would need to, they just called him up on Messenger personally.
Scandal #3: CCP developer used god mode tools to give himself a senior position in an enemy of BoB. The conclusion everyone has taken is he did it to spy on BoB’s enemies.
ISD are an official in-game organization, mainly used to report on events happening within the game and to run roleplaying events (not sure about that second part).
Goonswarm are the largest alliance in the game, and are currently at war with BoB.
There are basically three things of note in the letter:
1) ISD rigs roleplaying events to ensure a certain outcome.
2) An ISD reporter was banned after he allegedly interfered with a BoB offensive. At least one BoB member claimed to have connections within CCP, and that he would have the reporter “dealt with”. In short, BoB and CCP appear to have numerous connections which are (still) being exploited by the former.
3) A GM joined a GoonSwarm member corporation and gave himself director access using GM powers, and left about 20 minutes later. It’s possible this was a harmless check of a bug or exploit, but could potentially be used to pass critical information (location of capital ship production facilities, most notably) to others.
“A reporter interfered with a fight, and was dismissed. I don’t see how that’s CCP cheating.”
A reporter warped to the location of an ongoing fight, where he may or may not have inadvertently bumped into a dreadnought as he left warp. That’s hardly ‘interfering’, its not like he started shooting at the dreadnought, and its certainly not something worthy of a dismissal. The fact the reporter was dismissed from his position seemingly because Band of Brothers pilots threw a hissy fit at him…. the suggestion that BoB have such power over ISD that they can order a summary dismissal of this nature looks bad for CCP. Really bad.
As for the DS1 infiltration, again, its early to make conclusions but again, it doesn’t look good at all.
“Issue 2: BoB, also theoretically a normal (if huge) player alliance, apparently still has an in with CCP and was able to get an ISD observer fired without going through any of the normal complaint channels.”
You stop being an observer when you warp directly into a Dreadnought and bump it out of position.
“He joined the corporation in order to access their POS, which was bugged.”
That doesn’t explain why repeated attempts to get an explanation were met with silence and deleted petition tickets.
If it were that simple, a POS being bugged, why were they not up front about it before the whole thing exploded?
Also, why did the CCP employee attempt to delete all records of his having joined the corporation, such that the only reason this came to light was because the corp CEO got an automated ‘resignation’ letter from the CCP character? Why did the CCP employee avoid all attempts by the corporation members to contact them and discuss the reasons for his brief infiltration of the corp? Why did the CCP employee not simply approach the CEO or other directors of DS1, explain to them that there was a potential issue with a corp structure, and deal with the problem openly? Why the sneaking around and attempted covering of tracks?
Under other circumstances, CCP would be given the benefit of the doubt, but post-T20, their motives are already suspect. They’ve already lied to us once, why are we expected to believe them now?
Dianabolic = #2 man in charge of BoB. (the people accused of having improper access to devs)
http://tinyurl.com/yqb9g3
Among things he says:
“We have a “special” line (if you want to call msn that) to our FRIENDS.
Even devs need friends, you know, they’re not robots.”
So you got one team with devs on instant messanger.
Is that a bad thing?
Aren’t devs allowed to have friends?
They sure do. I remember in DAoC, sending in a bug report about my, at the time unique, level 10 croc tear ring being able to crash the servers at will one patch, submitted via MSN. Kept the servers down all day with that one.
Actually I think that was to me and via PM on the Pendragon boards. And, as we all know, I am a misanthrope who has no friends. But regardless!
This is an interesting unedited transcript of the volunteer reporter’s defrocking, from Slashdot:
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=236285&cid=19278713
Whether or not CCP is guilty of any wrongdoing in this current PR nightmare, you have to love their ability to create massive drama in their game.
It might be horrible for the players, but it makes a great reading for those who like to watch train wrecks happening.
They are the poster child for what not to do for a company running an MMO.
Regardless, what IS plainly obvious from the logs and such is that the chain-of-command and proper procedures for the volunteer program are either not in place or not being followed.
I think we’re gradually learning that volunteer programs in MMOs by-and-large just don’t work, and when they do work, they’re still a ticking time bomb.
-Rip
Never actually played Eve beyond the intro screen, worst GUI evar.
But this is ridiculous, how the hell can you run a gaming company when your staff can’t even minimally get their shit together.
I’ve seen better modded UOX shards.
Again not reacting to the in game event, just the afterwards company response. Time to call in Tweety.
Of all the people I know who are still playing Eve the most common response to the question: “Why?” is as follows…
“I’m ‘x’ months in to a year subscription.”
It’s all fine and good to want to play your own game (2crush), but in order for there to be a game at all people need to pay you. At some point all these long-term subs will just not be renewed anymore.
“Actually I think that was to me and via PM on the Pendragon boards. And, as we all know, I am a misanthrope who has no friends. But regardless!”
Na, that was some Banelord bug.
The croc ring thing went in through Julie. That was actually what got me on the Pendragon boards in the first place.
You know, a while back after I’d gotten broadband, I started kicking around the idea of picking up on an MMORPG.
Not interested in what amounted to DikuMUD stuff, I narrowed my options down to City of Heroes and Eve Online.
Now I’m really glad I went for capes rather than spaceships.
–TR
Why? The fact of the matter is this stuff that goes on has absolutely no effect on 95%+ people playing EVE.
There’s not really any evidence of any important wrong-doing ont he part of CCP here. Oh, there’s some questions that should be answered, but the actual evidence is thin at best.
However there is overwhelming evidence that CCP is having a very hard time managing their PR worth a damn.
-shrug-
Most big corporate scandals involve a tiny minority of the actual consumer base. It’s not so much about the material effect on the average consumer, it’s about,
a) Holding the company to the standard of being an honest and reputable vendor;
b) Preventing a “slippery slope” of abuse.
We’re still shaping what the MMO industry should look like, and I don’t want it to look like it’s corrupt. If I still played EVE I’d vote with my dollars, albeit I already did against its boredom. :p
-Sutro
With all this in-game favoritism going on, I kinda feel like a rube having spent all that time leveling characters in Modernagrav. “Hey Scott, log in and Dreadnaught me please!”
Regarding the DS1 POS theory – they have two or three small POSes in total, none of which were bugged or petitioned about at that time. It [i]might[/i] be something to do with bugged lockdowns on BPOs…but you’d really think that the dev* would have mentioned it to the corp leadership.
(*Dev, not GM. If he were a GM, his in-game name would be ‘GM Sharkbait’. ‘CCP Sharkbait’ = CCP employee)
And not two years ago, CCP were the golden boys with golden toys.
Superior tech falls to inferior operators, once again.
I’ve got a lot to say about this, so much that I don’t want to do it in comments scattered all over the blogosphere. I think it’s time for me to start blogging again myself. Scott, any chance you can hook me up with feetofclay.brokentoys.org again? The email address you’ve been providing me is still good, I check it on my laptop.
–Dave
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/7857/hhhhaaaaaajj0.jpg
Mist | 25-May-07 at 11:44 pm | Permalink
“Why? The fact of the matter is this stuff that goes on has absolutely no effect on 95%+ people playing EVE.”
You’re either a BoB shill or an idiot pubbie. Which is it?
I don’t really see how CCP can fix this. They’ve already had their second chance from most of their playerbase. At this point they either need to fire large portions of their core staff and disband BoD alliance and member corporations, or . . . i don’t see what other option they have if they want their game to survive.
At this point it’s clear to me that BoB was immediately seized upon by CCP as a purposeful third-party event generator. When there’s a nemesis that everybody hates, there’s an opportunity to keep the pot stirred.
However, with the godlike power CCP supposedly has over Eve, where they’re apparently able to puppet-string the entire game to fit their whims, I wonder exactly how they arrived at such a conclusion. Or, more importantly, why they thought they’d never get found out, or that when they got found out, it wouldn’t be that big a deal.
J. –
I don’t think BoB was deliberately seized upon as an “event generator.” I think the developers just got to know people in BoB and started to think of BoB as the “core” of the game — “what helps bob helps eve” basically.
Academic difference. If any MMO maker ever “gets to know” players to the point where giving them preferential treatment seems like a good idea, it better REALLY be a good idea, in a purely Machiavellian sense. Because once that line’s crossed, all pretense of the game being fair becomes meaningless.
I see no real evidence of wrongdoing here, just some Kugutsumen tinfoil crap.
From the current news that the devs have recently posted in player news, I’m not sure if any of the corruption allegations have anything to stand on. According to the devs, either the actions were legitimate GMing acts, or, in the case of event-rigging, were resolved already. What I *have* noticed is:
1) Player trust is hard to earn back once it’s been taken away (in the T20 incident).
2) Once trust is lost, the players are quick to hop on anything that even remotely looks like a scandal.
If CCP had adhered to a more strict policy regarding staff/player interaction, perhaps scandals/threadnoughts like this would be more avoidable.
I don’t like the explanation for sharkbait’s actions. They should know they don’t have the customer’s complete trust anymore. They NEED to drop the “company policy” bullshit and show everyone what the petition said and who sent it. Even Blizzard dropped company policy when they were caught red-handed transferring characters outside their own rules, so they could regain customer trust.
Rigging RP events is trickier. On one hand, CCP didn’t deny the document existed, which gives the former ISD guy credit. However, they can say (and they have) it was a living document anyway, because they can change its official status to unofficial and no one would be the wiser. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t unofficial, but there’s no way to know, especially now that they have thrown it away.
The last thing they aren’t talking about yet is the former ISD member being fired under crazy circumstances. If he is to be believed (which I do), he didn’t bump shit and the dread pilot freaked the fuck out. If he did bump it, then maybe he had it coming.
Two things are for sure. The first is, his banning was not followed under normal procedure. If everyone had stuck to protocol, things probably would’ve been different, and even if he did end up still banned, it would’ve been seen less as BoB abusing game rules and more of a legit incident.
The second, and by far the most legit issue, is that BoB can personally contact developers to do their bidding. It really shouldn’t be a suprise, not after t20 getting caught favoring BoB with blueprints and didn’t get fired for it. Why devs are still allowed to do shit like this is unfathomable to me.
“I see no real evidence of wrongdoing here, just some Kugutsumen tinfoil crap.”
Quiet, Whitecloak. Your history with Goons doesn’t exactly paint you as an unbiased opinion.
I think its awesome they love and play the game they made, but seriously, stop cheating. :p
A lot of people underestimate the impact of this sort of things. Sure, a lot of the Eve opium addicts aren’t quitting en-masse over this, but what it does, is that it shallows out the loyalty base bit-by-bit making it far more vulnerable to “the next big thing” than it should be. Case in point, EQ1 lost 50-60% (500k to less than 200K now) when WoW-the-REAL-next-big-thing came out. 50% to 60% loss of paying customers is a crazy huge loss to ANY BUSINESS no matter how you slice it.
I’d say EQ1 would have kept more than 90% or more (WOW isn’t all that great or revolutionary a game) if not for years of community mismanagement and abuse from the likes of Abashi, Absor etc. and the Devs (all the nerfs, crazed unprofessional shit like this). Players can stand a lot of stuff, but if there is no loyalty to the game/brand – its ‘adios!’ when a better game (that comes near enough) is out. CCP is digging its own grave soon enough.
GoonSwarm is leaking.
>We urge people to wait until the facts are out,
That’s crap. CCP never releases the facts. We still don’t know the facts from the T20 incident.
CCP has responded.
All allegations are false & furthermore the people that brought it up did it to hurt CCP/Eve.
http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=472
I noticed they didn’t touch the fact that some people in certain alliances have MSN access to devs/GMs.
That is what I think has the community riled up the most right now.
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