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Have things changed or are the Devs and CCP still a bunch of cheatin rats?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_online
http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=424
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/boa...threadid=75285
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/ar...gy&oref=slogin
http://goonfleet.com/open_letter_to_CCP.html
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl...46246&from=rss
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...hreadID=948936
EVE is sometimes criticized for being too geared towards experienced players, and being rather intimidating for new players. CCP claims that this is largely a myth, and they try to balance the gameplay for both hardcore gamers and new or more casual players.
There have also been problems with limited server capacity, especially in battles with very many participating players. Very large battles are uncommon, but there have been battles with around 1000 players involved.
CCP has also been criticized in open letters for showing favouritism to some fansites and ignoring others.
CCP's largely hands-off approach to managing the in-game economy has also come under fire for encouraging in-game "criminal" activity. Piracy (in the ship-to-ship sense) is a fact of life, as is protection racketeering and theft. The two most spectacular examples were even reported in wider media:
* The first was a corporate heist perpetrated by the in-game assassin's guild Guiding Hand Social Club. The GHSC infiltrated a target corporation over the course of nearly a year before performing a virtual assassination on the target's CEO and stealing or destroying billions of credits' worth of property.
* The second was the Eve Intergalactic Bank scam, in which one player encouraged others to invest in-game currency in a banking scheme before disappearing with, allegedly, 700 billion Interstellar Kredits. However, the picture the player posted to prove his claim was proved to be photoshopped. Estimates as to the real amount vary in between 50 to 100 billion.
Both events were debated heavily both inside the game world and in wider media. Many gamers thought the actions were acceptable in a game universe, and that the thefts were perfectly in-character for those who wished to play the villain.
However, others disagreed - particularly since EVE's virtual currency is regularly bought and sold (albeit in violation of the user agreement) for real-world money. Supposing the EIB scam had netted 100 billion ISK, if it had been laundered into other accounts and sold through an online auction site or currency dealership, it would have fetched a real-world price of around US$17,000.
Such incidents are usually referred to CCP's EULA policy that gamers have no legal interest in the characters they create or virtual money they make, as is common with many other games, and that such in-game actions are permissible if they do not involve actual code exploits. However, this has added fuel to the public debate over virtual property rights.
Developer Misconduct
The "t20 Incident", February, 2007
In February 2007, a player using the alias "Kugutsumen", who is known for getting hold of information through metagaming, posted allegations of developer misconduct in relation to one of the ingame alliances, Band of Brothers. Later that week, CCP admitted that they had in fact known of the wrongdoing for over 6 months and apologized for it. The incident involved t20 (one of the software developers), using his developer access to obtain valuable in-game items to benefit Band of Brothers, in which he was part of the leadership. CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson stated that any conduct of this sort would result in immediate termination, but as (unnamed) disciplinary measures had already been taken against t20, it would not be fair to subject him to double jeopardy. CCP banned Kugutsumen's accounts for posting real-life info of the developer in question and the use of possibly illegal (hacking) means to retrieve the info.
Kugutsumen replied to the accusations of using hacking as means of retrieving the info; CCP's final input in the matter was that Kugutsumen caused CCP unwanted work-load (technically, a violation of the end-user license agreement) and that was enough reason to ban him. Kugutsumen has since continued to post material on his website, and there is considerable debate amongst the player base as to the appropriateness of CCP's response.
In response to this incident, CCP set up a Internal Affairs division, dedicated to monitoring the activites of CCP employees in-game, and preventing further incidents.
The Goonswarm Open Letter, May, 2007
On May 25, 2007 new allegations of developer misconduct were brought forth. These new allegations consist of three main contentions:
* The infiltration of a corporation by a high-ranking CCP developer, who then elevated himself to a directorship position and resigned immediately after entering one of the corporation's stations
The results of CCP's investigation showed this was not malicious. The developer in question was repairing an error as requested.
* The predetermination of in-game roleplaying events, contrary to CCP's assertion that such events are player-influenced
CCP did not investigate this issue. Instead, posting an excerpt from the supposedly-damning document, they maintained that they only rarely influence the larger in-game fiction's results and never influence which players benefit.
* The alleged use of player influence causing the banning of a volunteer reporter who was present during a major player versus player fleet battle
The investigation of the volunteer showed there had been numerous complaints against him that caused his removal. The allegation of a direct player-to-developer complaint via MSN Messenger was not addressed, though a screenshot of a valid in-game "petition" that was involved in the reporter's removal was provided.
"Goonswarm", an in-game alliance consisting largely of players from the SomethingAwful.com forums, and a former player named "Kugutsumen" presented these issues to the community in the form of an open letter and blog posts. After massive spamming of links to Goonswarm's open letter on the forums, including several that resurrected posts that hadn't seen replies in three or more years, the developers shut the forums down completely to halt what the Goonswarm players were calling "the threadnought". Half an hour later, the forums were restored. CCP had also created a news item and forum thread for discussion.
In the end, CCP posted a detailed response on each of the contentions, clearing their actions in each case, albeit with an admission that Sharkbait, the developer who joined the corporation in the first contention, should have contacted the affected corporation before joining it. Furthermore, CCP accused Goonswarm of intentionally timing the accusations on a Friday so as to immediately preceed the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. and the weekend leading up to Whit Monday in Iceland, presumably intending for their timing to result in a sluggish official CCP response. Legal options, the response stated, were being "examined".
http://www.funingame.com/eve_online_criticism_and_controversy.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_online
http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=424
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/boa...threadid=75285
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/ar...gy&oref=slogin
http://goonfleet.com/open_letter_to_CCP.html
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl...46246&from=rss
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard...hreadID=948936
EVE is sometimes criticized for being too geared towards experienced players, and being rather intimidating for new players. CCP claims that this is largely a myth, and they try to balance the gameplay for both hardcore gamers and new or more casual players.
There have also been problems with limited server capacity, especially in battles with very many participating players. Very large battles are uncommon, but there have been battles with around 1000 players involved.
CCP has also been criticized in open letters for showing favouritism to some fansites and ignoring others.
CCP's largely hands-off approach to managing the in-game economy has also come under fire for encouraging in-game "criminal" activity. Piracy (in the ship-to-ship sense) is a fact of life, as is protection racketeering and theft. The two most spectacular examples were even reported in wider media:
* The first was a corporate heist perpetrated by the in-game assassin's guild Guiding Hand Social Club. The GHSC infiltrated a target corporation over the course of nearly a year before performing a virtual assassination on the target's CEO and stealing or destroying billions of credits' worth of property.
* The second was the Eve Intergalactic Bank scam, in which one player encouraged others to invest in-game currency in a banking scheme before disappearing with, allegedly, 700 billion Interstellar Kredits. However, the picture the player posted to prove his claim was proved to be photoshopped. Estimates as to the real amount vary in between 50 to 100 billion.
Both events were debated heavily both inside the game world and in wider media. Many gamers thought the actions were acceptable in a game universe, and that the thefts were perfectly in-character for those who wished to play the villain.
However, others disagreed - particularly since EVE's virtual currency is regularly bought and sold (albeit in violation of the user agreement) for real-world money. Supposing the EIB scam had netted 100 billion ISK, if it had been laundered into other accounts and sold through an online auction site or currency dealership, it would have fetched a real-world price of around US$17,000.
Such incidents are usually referred to CCP's EULA policy that gamers have no legal interest in the characters they create or virtual money they make, as is common with many other games, and that such in-game actions are permissible if they do not involve actual code exploits. However, this has added fuel to the public debate over virtual property rights.
Developer Misconduct
The "t20 Incident", February, 2007
In February 2007, a player using the alias "Kugutsumen", who is known for getting hold of information through metagaming, posted allegations of developer misconduct in relation to one of the ingame alliances, Band of Brothers. Later that week, CCP admitted that they had in fact known of the wrongdoing for over 6 months and apologized for it. The incident involved t20 (one of the software developers), using his developer access to obtain valuable in-game items to benefit Band of Brothers, in which he was part of the leadership. CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson stated that any conduct of this sort would result in immediate termination, but as (unnamed) disciplinary measures had already been taken against t20, it would not be fair to subject him to double jeopardy. CCP banned Kugutsumen's accounts for posting real-life info of the developer in question and the use of possibly illegal (hacking) means to retrieve the info.
Kugutsumen replied to the accusations of using hacking as means of retrieving the info; CCP's final input in the matter was that Kugutsumen caused CCP unwanted work-load (technically, a violation of the end-user license agreement) and that was enough reason to ban him. Kugutsumen has since continued to post material on his website, and there is considerable debate amongst the player base as to the appropriateness of CCP's response.
In response to this incident, CCP set up a Internal Affairs division, dedicated to monitoring the activites of CCP employees in-game, and preventing further incidents.
The Goonswarm Open Letter, May, 2007
On May 25, 2007 new allegations of developer misconduct were brought forth. These new allegations consist of three main contentions:
* The infiltration of a corporation by a high-ranking CCP developer, who then elevated himself to a directorship position and resigned immediately after entering one of the corporation's stations
The results of CCP's investigation showed this was not malicious. The developer in question was repairing an error as requested.
* The predetermination of in-game roleplaying events, contrary to CCP's assertion that such events are player-influenced
CCP did not investigate this issue. Instead, posting an excerpt from the supposedly-damning document, they maintained that they only rarely influence the larger in-game fiction's results and never influence which players benefit.
* The alleged use of player influence causing the banning of a volunteer reporter who was present during a major player versus player fleet battle
The investigation of the volunteer showed there had been numerous complaints against him that caused his removal. The allegation of a direct player-to-developer complaint via MSN Messenger was not addressed, though a screenshot of a valid in-game "petition" that was involved in the reporter's removal was provided.
"Goonswarm", an in-game alliance consisting largely of players from the SomethingAwful.com forums, and a former player named "Kugutsumen" presented these issues to the community in the form of an open letter and blog posts. After massive spamming of links to Goonswarm's open letter on the forums, including several that resurrected posts that hadn't seen replies in three or more years, the developers shut the forums down completely to halt what the Goonswarm players were calling "the threadnought". Half an hour later, the forums were restored. CCP had also created a news item and forum thread for discussion.
In the end, CCP posted a detailed response on each of the contentions, clearing their actions in each case, albeit with an admission that Sharkbait, the developer who joined the corporation in the first contention, should have contacted the affected corporation before joining it. Furthermore, CCP accused Goonswarm of intentionally timing the accusations on a Friday so as to immediately preceed the Memorial Day weekend in the U.S. and the weekend leading up to Whit Monday in Iceland, presumably intending for their timing to result in a sluggish official CCP response. Legal options, the response stated, were being "examined".
http://www.funingame.com/eve_online_criticism_and_controversy.html
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