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Overblowing the situation.
ChromeBallz
Member UncommonPosts: 342
in EVE Online
Recently it has come to light that one of the developers of EVE has been abusing his powers. I have to sum up a few facts about this before the bantrain starts rolling in:
1) This happened in July 2006. The dev in question spawned a couple of BPO's for himself, which the people in his alliance did not know. The BPO's in question were a destroyer, an interceptor and a couple of ammo bpo's - Not something to write home about if you ask me.
2) The dev got found out after someone heard his voice on TS and recognized him as a dev he met at the fanfest. The situation was revealed, the BPO's were destroyed and the dev's character was deleted.
3) In the past 8 months, a hacker going by several names (Kugutsumen and Anthony Z being the most prevalent) was trying to hack his way into several forums of several alliances. Victims include D2, Goonswarm and now BoB. BoB had earlier declined his offer to give them the databases of the other forums, and later he had been found out to hack their forums. Some time after this he made private conversations from one of the BoB corp's forums public.
What's funny about this is several things.
1) People are complaining about "devs in BoB", ignoring the fact that there are devs in most alliances in the game.
2) People are now accusing every single BoB member of cheating and lying, ignoring the fact that the majority of it's membership wasn't even aware this ever happened.
3) Kugutsumen's accounts have been banned, for obvious reasons. Immediately after, people jumped on his bandwagon to get him unbanned, including some of his victims. They forget that he is an actual, real-world cyber criminal, trying to manipulate people in exactly this way.
People are quick to blame their losses on others. They often forget that there are better players out there. BoB is, currently, the best organized alliance out there, all in all. They have dedicated leaders and commited members.
Other alliances often think that they can win, and if they don't, they will not admit that it's their own fault. A good example of this is Cyvok's blogs: In one of them, he stated that ASCN can win vs BoB if they just use T1 fitted battleships against BoB's T2 fitted battleships and T2 ships, claiming they can win with inferior experience and inferior equipment - Afterwards, he is claiming that BoB cheated since ASCN didn't win. It's still amusing to see how people still back him.
The developers *should* play the game. It's just unfortunate that one of them abused his powers. As a consequence, he lost his 4 year old character, and he cannot play with the people that he became friends with over that time.
The current state of the community is bad. People are calling for a witchhunt for no other reason than to destroy the game they played for so long, or even worse, to just get rid of the players that have beaten them. It's like counterstrike - A pro player enters a server, owns everyone and gets banned because people thought he cheated.
The reason why CCP didn't publicize what happened 8 months ago directly was because this would happen.
The developers *should* play the game. EVE is too dynamic in it's nature to not allow this - They need to be in the middle of what's happening to know what they have to do. An outsider can't make any reliable judgement on how to develop this game - Every single MMO out there has it's devs playing (yes, even Blizzard). After all, it's their game, why shouldn't they play it? That's like baking a cake and not being allowed to eat it, it's ridiculous.
It is just sad that people want to overblow this way past it's relevance, and just want a good scandal to destroy the game they've played for years... Or because they can;t stand that there's someone better than them around.
1) This happened in July 2006. The dev in question spawned a couple of BPO's for himself, which the people in his alliance did not know. The BPO's in question were a destroyer, an interceptor and a couple of ammo bpo's - Not something to write home about if you ask me.
2) The dev got found out after someone heard his voice on TS and recognized him as a dev he met at the fanfest. The situation was revealed, the BPO's were destroyed and the dev's character was deleted.
3) In the past 8 months, a hacker going by several names (Kugutsumen and Anthony Z being the most prevalent) was trying to hack his way into several forums of several alliances. Victims include D2, Goonswarm and now BoB. BoB had earlier declined his offer to give them the databases of the other forums, and later he had been found out to hack their forums. Some time after this he made private conversations from one of the BoB corp's forums public.
What's funny about this is several things.
1) People are complaining about "devs in BoB", ignoring the fact that there are devs in most alliances in the game.
2) People are now accusing every single BoB member of cheating and lying, ignoring the fact that the majority of it's membership wasn't even aware this ever happened.
3) Kugutsumen's accounts have been banned, for obvious reasons. Immediately after, people jumped on his bandwagon to get him unbanned, including some of his victims. They forget that he is an actual, real-world cyber criminal, trying to manipulate people in exactly this way.
People are quick to blame their losses on others. They often forget that there are better players out there. BoB is, currently, the best organized alliance out there, all in all. They have dedicated leaders and commited members.
Other alliances often think that they can win, and if they don't, they will not admit that it's their own fault. A good example of this is Cyvok's blogs: In one of them, he stated that ASCN can win vs BoB if they just use T1 fitted battleships against BoB's T2 fitted battleships and T2 ships, claiming they can win with inferior experience and inferior equipment - Afterwards, he is claiming that BoB cheated since ASCN didn't win. It's still amusing to see how people still back him.
The developers *should* play the game. It's just unfortunate that one of them abused his powers. As a consequence, he lost his 4 year old character, and he cannot play with the people that he became friends with over that time.
The current state of the community is bad. People are calling for a witchhunt for no other reason than to destroy the game they played for so long, or even worse, to just get rid of the players that have beaten them. It's like counterstrike - A pro player enters a server, owns everyone and gets banned because people thought he cheated.
The reason why CCP didn't publicize what happened 8 months ago directly was because this would happen.
The developers *should* play the game. EVE is too dynamic in it's nature to not allow this - They need to be in the middle of what's happening to know what they have to do. An outsider can't make any reliable judgement on how to develop this game - Every single MMO out there has it's devs playing (yes, even Blizzard). After all, it's their game, why shouldn't they play it? That's like baking a cake and not being allowed to eat it, it's ridiculous.
It is just sad that people want to overblow this way past it's relevance, and just want a good scandal to destroy the game they've played for years... Or because they can;t stand that there's someone better than them around.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
Comments
Actually... it went more like this.
1) Dev where deleted from game 7-8 months ago
2) Before Dev get deleted he gives 6-10 tech 2 bpo's that he had spawned for himself to his corp.
3) Leadership of said corp and quite possible BoB leadership also KNEW this was one dev.
4) CCP try to cover things up and along with when Kugutsumen work through the information he hacked from BoB Forum.
5) CCP denies there was a dev in BoB that got outed, called it speculations.
6) CCP Admits there was one dev in BoB that got outed (After Kuguts posted evidence)
7) CCP denies there where bpo's given out or any other handouts by the dev.
8) CCP admits there where bpo's given out by said DEV, (Again.. after Kuguts post evidence about this).
9) CCP close and delete a numerous amounts of post on official forum, keep one open for posting that grows to 106 pages in one weekend, also have one post where Kieron post answers the people ask.
He convinient avoid answering about what people really wants to know, WHY did they NOT remove the bpo's when the dev was outed ? Instead they kept the bpo's in the corp for 6 months before removing them only when Kuguts post evidence they where created outside the T2 lottery.).
10) CCP Ban all accounts to Kuguts. after he had posted real life data about SirMolle (and rightfully that was a bannable offence).
11) CCP does NOT ban accounts to SirMolle after he had posted real life data about Kuguts and suggested that people did phone kuguts boss to get him fired.
12) Yet another question not answered by CCP, they refuse to answer why they are NOT banning SirMolle from the game... even when confronted by evidence that this really have happened.
So where are we ? yes, CCP admits only when evidence come forward to things that have happened, for example people say you can't trust the hacker... well that might be, but that hacker had atleast 2 of his evidence confirmed by CCP, evidence that first was said to be false.... so third question CCP refuse to say anything about... "What else are CCP hiding ?".
It was an interdictor (destroyer t2)
and the BPOs weren't destroyed at the time. They have been destroyed only recently.
The Devs should be able to play the game but not interfere in alliance politics by giving unfair advantages (whatever alliance it is... )
It wasn't untill recently that people actually found out the BPO's were not legally obtained, that answers more questions and rectifies my OP.
As for the real life info: I don't know what that's about exactly, i should look it up. All i know is that Kugutsumen wasn't banned for just posting about Molle. He was actively engaging in sabotaging EVE subscribers (forums, game accounts), but this is something most people choose to ignore for whatever reason.
Why Molle isn;t banned i honestly don't know, but it might be better asking him that question in person since he's the onlyone who can tell you.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
CCP didn't destroy the tainted BPOs when then found out about them. They took no action whatsoever until they were forced to by unhappy customers, and even then they still tried to sweep everything under the rug at first. The dev didn't get "found out" - he revealed his status as a CCP employee to members and directors of his corporation on multiple occasions.
As to Kugut's banning, you're way off there as well. CCP told him his ban was a result of his revealing personal info on the boards, and because he "took actions that increased the cost of running Eve" which is apparently a bannable offense according to the EULA. In other words, they banned him because he forced them to actually do something about their own cheating employees.
Finally, plenty of people are upset about this, but your theories about WHY they are unhappy are pure speculation. It may be that some fraction of those who have canceled or are still raising their voices about this are doing so for the reasons you state, but I doubt it. Personally, I've seen BoB members flying around empire on occasion, but that's the extent of my interaction with them. I was never a member of a BoB corp or of a corp at war with BoB. I am not a BoB fan by any means, I get a bit tired of all the chest-beating frankly, but they have nothing to do with my unhappiness with Eve.
The people I am unhappy with are CCP, and that's true for the other folks I've talked to about this as well. I'm unhappy that there seems to be a culture of malfeasance within CCP, and a great deal of tolerance for shady behavior. I suppose in retrospect that this shouldn't be too surprising, CCP are well-known for being tolerant of all manner of in-game swindling, scamming and other dishonest behavior, it's not surprising that this attitude spilled over a bit into out-of-game dishonesty as well.
This isn't the first proven case of CCP employee misbehavior and it won't be the last. I encourage you to get a clearer understanding of the facts behind this particular episode. Obviously you think that the people who are upset about this are over-reacting, and I'd agree that some of them are. But the suggestion that there is really nothing to be concerned about here is simply incorrect. Anyone who plays Eve or hopes to see it succeed should be concerned about this.
There's only been a single CCP Employee ever caught (at least publicly) of cheating. There have been volunteers (ISD), but T20 was the first employee.
As to "taking actions that increase the costs of running eve" - I'd say that hijacking forum accounts / logins is much better interpretation then being forced to delete some BPO's or make some posts. He was a hacker, and while we're all glad that he brought this to light, he still broke the rules.
As to the 'plenty of people are upset by this' - you're right. But a lot of them are perfectly content now that they've addressed the problems and come forward. There is a vocal minority that is attacking EVE. Most happy people aren't going to deal with all their crap, so you're going to get a lot more from them then from us. The devs have already posted that there has been no sign of a mass cancellation resulting from this, and I for one don't expect one.
The average player was unaffected by this - personally, I was hostile to BoB up until recently so I was probably more affected then the average player, and I can honestly say that I never would have noticed a difference if t20 hadn't cheated.
t20 won't do it again. There are more controls in place to prevent it in the future. The only down side to this situation is that the forum whores have more to whine about. If they choose to leave the game, I won't complain in the least.
Only TWICE (Dev's have been caught twice not once) has CCP EVER done anything about it and only then because they could no longer cover the issues up - they had become to public, this did not stop them from trying damn hard to do so.
The average player is the one that regularly takes part in the lotteries, works hard to get a chance to get a BPO and sees all his hard work degraded by the actions of some CCP employees.
There is a small minority of players who still insist that nothing was wrong (like the quoted poster) with what happened and everything is OK, CCP lost the faith of a large proportion of it's player base NOT because of the cheating (although that in itself is bad enough) but because the company did little or nothing once it was discovered and went to ridiculous ends to cover it up.
Should the hacker have been banned --> YES he should not have posted personal information
Should SirMolle have his account deleted --> YES he broke the same rules
I for one HOPE that the introduction of an internal affairs will stop the stupidity that has been going on. But attempting to bury this issue with a 'well most people don't care any more' really does not wash, most people do care and most people hope that the playing field has been leveled.
That said, there are thousands of players that this does not effect in the least that are sounding off for no reason. And that has become obnoxious. CCP needs to fix the situation, sadly I don't think the most vocal outside of BoB will be happy unless all of BoB is dismantled and banned and CCP employees banned from joining player corps.
I guess ccp could care less about losing over $300k a year so far, and the numbers continue to slide downhill...
ohwell, tossed my 3 accounts to the trash, off to support another company, one not in Iceland.
ccp the "we cheat for our buddies and are proud of it" company...
Kugutsumen and Anthony Z are the same person. Also something that those who support him and his criminal activites.. is the little point of him trying to blackmail CCP... and the info of him trying to blackmail them can be found on his forum. Also it has been said that he was banned for account hacking.. But because CCP refuse to say why he was banned his fangirls are making up all sorts of things.
People who are calling for SirMolle to be banned should also call for 'The Mittani' of goonfleet to be banned.. After all he did the same thing.
T20 ins't the first CCP employee to have been caught creating.. the other was a Junior GM who was sacked after the incident when he spawned himself a load of faction gear. Unlike the GM in question T20 wasn't sacked... Now many of the witch hunter kids want to see him sacked, but CCP refuse to do so. (reason that have been speculated on is that he owns some of the copywirtes on various in game designs and items.. To sack him now will result in the loss of work having to be redone. That he was punished back when the incident forst happend, and they will not punish him a second time.)
And Demonbaraber has pretty much summed it up.
\_
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
_/
In his blog about the issue, Hellmar claims " there have been a handful of cases where our employees or members of our various volunteer and partner programs have taken advantage of the proprietary powers they are granted through access and knowledge . . . Usually the punishment has been quite simple: termination of employment."
Were I Hellmar, I'd have taken advantage of the opportunity to point out that t20's case was unique in that it was an actual employee and not a volunteer.
Regardless, the original complaint is still valid: CCP had to be compelled to address this problem by an outside party before they were willing to do the right thing. The issue becomes one of trust. t20 may or may not be the only CCP employee to cheat, or he may be the only one to get caught. A policy of full disclosure for all past and future events of this nature is the thing I wanted CCP to announce, but instead the have continued to go the way of obfuscation and secrecy.
Regardless, the reason I am so upset about this is BECAUSE Eve is such a great game. It's easily the best MMO going. I'd love for CCP to convince me that I can trust them in the future - I'd reactivate my accounts in a heartbeat if they did - but so far that's not been the case.
During the ASCN/BoB war, there shows an increase of logins...so I have to say your threory is not correct.
War has been in the game since the get go, and logins were going up until the misconduct was brought to the public eye.
Lets watch this for another week. See if the pattern repeats again.
ccp the "we cheat for our buddies and are proud of it" company...
$15(sub fee) x 2000 (less subscribers)x 12months = .....(you can do the math)
you are correct, SINCE ccp was caught with their hand in the cookiejar, the logins have wained...up until then, they WERE increasing.
point is, ccp is looking like the enron of the gaming universe at this time...insider lies, coverups, all the while, patting the liers on the back and giving them a bonus...
Shame really, for a game with so much promise, the devs lied and cheated, then covered it up...and we should still support them?
FIX IT THOUGHTS:
Fire the dev
Ban anyone that knew a dev was helping them (notice I said ANYONE)
Ban anyone that posted personal info
Ban anyone that used an exploit/cheat/insider-info that was provided by a CCP employee/isd, and then terminate the employee/isd
Harsh things have to be done to those that benefited from ccp misdeads...and for ccp to regain trust of its playerbase.
ccp the "we cheat for our buddies and are proud of it" company...
just for the record... a developer turning a blind eye to constant, repeated, nonstop cheating, by the corp/alliance he's in.... i don't think it is possible to blow that up out of context. all the cheating which he had turned a blind eye to for all these months/years, is still being turned a blind eye to by ccp. what came of this? who knows. ccp isn't at all interested in getting to the truth, just banning people that discovered the truth.
have the banned the BoB leader who posted K's real information, including his phone numbers? because, that is an incredible infraction of eula. of course they didn't. because he's a BoB leader... can't be doing bad things to high-ups in the band of developers, now can they?
now, kieron being the uber nazi and doing the threateningb that is all his almightily impotent self seems to be capable of, is nothing new. but the rest of the devs/gms/*volunteers* all being completely ignorant and innocent of any wrong doing, and one single dev hiding his lies and cheating for months/years and again NO ONE ELSE ever noticing something... either every one is a cheating douche, or they're incredibly naive and/or stupid in the head.
if all this had already been covered, sorry, i'm still furious and i really don't feel like any douches (not naming any names, kieron), banning me for venting on eve-o forums
hmmm... not one to normally quote goonies, i think i will in this instance.
a "here's your sign" disclaimer: if i have unintentionally linked to anything below, please don't give me a ban, i'm not making any money from linking to anything off of the eve-o forums, which is what i've pasted from below. i even deleted the poster's name, just in case it opened a link to anything at all on the eve-o site. thanks, luvya. now on with the quote...
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
Edited by: Jacob Majestic on 07/02/2007 22:28:32
The only problem with making a list of people to ban is that the EULA is quite nebulous.
For example, the EULA is not a legal document, it is an EULA violation to "break laws," whatever that means.
As another example, if the allegations are true that t20 directly oversaw RKK's capital operations, he would be privy to intimate knowledge of massive account sharing.
Take a second and study the EULA. I'm sure if you look hard enough you'll find a way to get banned.
This makes it even more important that we be able to trust that CCP devs and GMs will adjucate the rules fairly. For example, when you petition you trust that the GMs that read your petition will decide your petition in a clear and consistent manner.
Kieron's lack of transparency makes me wonder if CCP's culture is changing for the worse.
-dbp
*edit*
Not enough carriage returns.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Different people react differently to things like this. Many of those defending their decision to continue playing like to point out - rightly, in my opinion - that t20's actually infraction was not that severe. Others assume that anyone who got upset and quit over this was a n00b, or someone who ended up on the wrong part of BoB's killboards once too often, or something like that. Others insist that those claiming to have left are lying, or will shortly return to the game. At any rate, it's certainly not the case that there are more "fools" defending CCP than there are "fools" attacking them.
In general, though, the CCP defenders either do not understand, or choose to ignore, the underlying issues of transparency and accountability with regards to CCP's behavior. And I am sure many - probably even a majority - of those still playing who have honestly considered the issues simply choose to believe CCP's claim that this was an isolated incident and that safeguards now in place will prevent it from happening again.
And that's fine; that's their business. For my part, CCP remains unwilling - and seemingly never will be willing - to do the things it would take to restore my faith. Which sucks for me; Eve is a great game that I very much enjoyed playing, but I am not willing to be CCP's chump.
when the group your in is in a scandal you immediately get to bottom of it not take 8 days to investigate situation you investigated nearly a year ago
you bear your soul you dont hold back on what happened- to do otherwise you risk people thinking WTF else are they lying about and/or covering up
90% of the uproar could have been solved by firing t20 and bob getting punished for EULA violations that t20 had to be a party to NOT aware of a party to
given lack of info on why t20 wasnt fired have to assume he isnt only dev to be involved in like behavior and if he gets fired he would leak it out-the post about his work product being reworked if fired is a joke -you work for a corp oration they own what you do if your lucky you get a royalty payment for it as a bonus
in conclusion
ccp response had done nothing to make me trust them to be honest I get same vibe when you catch your girlfriend in a lie about something-you dont have enough info to know exactly whats she has been up to but you know what she has told you isnt the true either
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
There should be a trust certificate of sorts given or awarded to games so that consumers know which to avoid off the bat.