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EVE Online: CCP Concludes Investigation
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
Over the weekend CCP was accused by a number of members of the EVE Online community of several wrong doings. CCP has now concluded their investigation into these matters and has issued a response to the allegations along with evidence supporting their side of the story.
Needless to say, it has been a very long weekend for a number of staff here at CCP Games. What could and should have been a quiet enjoyable extended weekend turned into something else.
The following blog is long. There will be some in the community that claim the information contained is fabrication, fallacy or an attack by CCP on a portion of the player community. We are simply presenting the results of the investigations, as well as our interpretation of information presented to us and the events that transpired over the weekend.
We ask you read the blog with an open mind and you reach your own conclusions based on the information presented. If you think CCP is in the wrong, we welcome constructive dialogue and criticism. If you feel we as an entity are corrupt and abhorrent, we bid you good luck in finding a game and company that suits your interests. If you agree with our assessment, we thank you for sharing our opinion and ask that you continue playing EVE in your normal manner. We do not ask for any retributive action to be taken, either in-game or out, on our behalf.
Read the full response here.
Comments
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I live to fight, and fight to live.
I have always thought CCP are a fantastic company continuously evolving the best game for me.
I look forward to walking in stations and perhaps one day planets!
They pissed themselves off, because they like it.
Just play the game, have fun, and be glad the developers play the game they make, as so many do not.
The whole thing was just a big drama story, over a game.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
I appreciate that CCP really is trying to provide protections against abuses.
Here is my problem, from my experience in Eve as a player at the end of last year. I was in a corporation at war with BoB, and over the course of the end of year holidays, we lost a base to them. I was unavailable to move my stuff, and so I lost a lot of my better gear. I decided to toss in the towel.
Then the news broke that there has been an issue with a CCP employee in BoB involving a BPO. CCP conducted an investigation, apologized but complained about how this poor employee had to lose their character. I felt like the community was being blamed for outing this person.
I am 99.95% confident that this is as far as the problem went, just like I am confident that this new investigation was thorough and complete. However, there is this tiny nagging suspicion that maybe there is something else going on. This is probably just paranoia on my part, but when you lose so much and then find out that there is a CCP employee who was part of the victorious side, it is unsettling.
I left Eve not because of the staff issue, but because I was tired of either hiding in Empire or having to be alert 24/7 to protect my butt. Life was a constant 2 steps forward, 3 steps back, with my corporation mates giving me gifts to compensate for my negative ISK flow. However, these persistent rumors are unsettling, and pretty much stop me whenever I get an urge to return. I will never know if that other alliance is benefiting in some way from CCP employees, notwithstanding Internal Affairs.
CCP says that the only way for them to develop this game is to "share your frustrations, joys, successes and failures." I didn't experience a whole lot of successes (all were PvE), mostly I found failures, and some of those failures provided CCP employees with their joys and successes. That is probably just my poor playing skills, but at least I'm just an amateur.
Yes, but this entire thing was like a Fox news article.
The headline read like this.
"CCP Cheating?"
This equates to the same thing as "So, if your mom still a whore?"
Even if not true, just implying it does the damage... This is one of the big reasons I don’t watch the "News" anymore.
"Imply it and make them defend it".
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Those are articulate points you've expressed - probably shared by lots more people.
If I were you, I would:
1) Stash all or most of my gear in high security space, closest to my corporation's station. This makes things slightly more inconvenient, but safer (providing gate camping not a problem).
2) Change the way I get my cash flow. In other words, change profession. Chose from mining, PvE, exploration, PvP etc.
3) Perhaps have a break playing another game while your skills catch up with your new 'career plan'.
Best of luck, Jack Target
There's a certain movement who's intent upon discrediting the success of CCP's EVE Online. This latest round of accusations is proof of that. The "whinners" truely are a vocal minority - and I do mean minority.
What's intresting is that SOE also has a similar engagement brewing. The different with SOE is they've come to implement their own spaming of various gaming web sites with alts about "how much better SWG is!!" It's a new campaign to win over the potential fans of Star Wars since the "nge" couldn't do it and the negative publicity destroyed the last sliver of credibility they had - I find it an interesting tactic.
The great thing is that CCP stands up and will say how it is. If they screwed up they will say it. And when they haven't, they proove it.
What amazes me more then anything else is the emo kids who feel that anything relating to EVE must be the devil since they...just...can't...grasp...it...
-Semper ubi sub ubi!
always wear underwear
I have never played EVE. I had been considering it until I saw the reports that a CCP employee admittedly did inappropriate things in game and abused his position, and was not terminated. That cinched it for me. No termination of the offending employee, no subscription money from me.
In this most recent incident, it seems that CCP was wrongly accused. But of course they put themselves in a vulnerable position to be falsely accused when they failed to terminate the offending employees from the last incident. So I don't feel sorry for them one iota, and I hope all the time and money they wasted were worth keeping those reprobates in their company. I certainly don't condone whatever asshat is falsely accusing them, but they reaped what they sowed.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Lol yeah.
It wasn’t "They" there were investigating, it was members of the company.
Ever work for a company? Im guessing not, our you would know that if some one within the company does something wrong, they are fired, and that company goes on.
You really think they would "cover up" for one member, a member of the CR staff, and risk tarnishing the company’s image and reputation, i don’t think anyone in any CR position would ever be worth that, if it lead to more profits, they would flay him in public.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
It's a shame that CCP had to take such time and effort (and man-hour dollars) away from the game to deal with this. This has been attempted by every angry player for every online game ever. All it takes is a couple of players to stir the conspiracy plot and it's off. But I will say that I hope CCP has legal recourse because this sounds like the most skilled, coordinated and executed attack that I've ever seen...someone knew how to excite a riot and did and those people ought to be strung up legally.
I've seen this happen since UO when a player finds out they just got their butt kicked from an employee playing after work an they are pissed about it. I know from this personally as my best friend worked at Origin on UO and got me started on UO and MMO's in general. And he kicked my butt on a daily basis...but because he knew the game better, not because he cheated. And that is what this is all about: cheating. Just because an employee who works so hard on a game and knows a hell of a lot about it kicks your butt, is that cheating? No...they just know the game better and are better at it than you. Did my friend at Origin use any "tools" from work or anything to cheat? Absolutely not! What is the point in playing if you have to cheat any way...where is the fun in that? My friend pwnd me and most others because he was better at the game and knew the game inside and out (and not because he knew "behinds the doors stuff"...it was all open information...he just knew it better than me). And I bet that CCP players as a whole know EVE a heck of a lot better than the general player base does.
So please put the conspiracy theories back into the closet until the next November and we can revisit "the man in the grassy knoll" and realize that CCP employees enjoy their own work and product and would never take a chance at "cheating" or "controling" something to work in their own benefit; their benefit is when the most amount of people have the most amount of fun and if you bend that toward one side "winning", then the game becomes unbalanced and CCP would only lose. Give them credit for being smarter than that.
The bottom line is THIS IS JUST A GAME PEOPLE! Enjoy what you do and what you play; if not, find a new game and take your flaming energy to try to make a better planet/society instead of pulling it down.
This is the same ICELANDIC company that stated they couldn't get a handle on the problem until after a U.S. Holiday? Why is an Iceland company using a (false) excuse about Memorial Day to excuse their total lack of customer support in this matter?
If they have nothing to hide and everything is on the up and up, why are they deleting any mention of this or earlier issues of developers cheating in favor of BoD?
CCP/Whoever this guy is = LIARS. My guess is CCP is probably selling ISK as well. Nothing like printing your own money, right?
Maybe if your tinfoil hat hadn't slipped, you would have read the text correctly. On the other hand... maybe not.
In my experince it takes hours for responce of GM unless your favored by them. It's been seen in the past of GM/Dev favoring other certain guilds over some in past mmogs. that includes WoW where I seen favorism. It didn't involve any extrem favoritism like item giving what ccp was guilty of in the past.
--
"Any free people have the right to choose how it wants to be govern thats the essence of democracy. It's sad when America has chosen for the stability and consistency of a dictatorship and doing it democratically" -utnow
Two things to add:
1) As you can tell by my "novice" title and the "1" under how many posts I've made that I don't do this a lot but I really thought CCP got bushwhacked and felt bad for them.
2) I don't play EVE any more, haven't in two years as it was too slow for me and I play WoW now so I had nothing to gain or use from that post but trying to share my two cents to try to spark some decency in people. What kills me about all of this is where has decency gone in this world? When did it become OK to just flame on people and cut down their beliefs and go off on them and that was just "normal"? Where did being nice, caring about other's opinions, truly listening to ideas you disaggree with an open mind, and not being so darn vicious go? What is wrong with people these days? I'm almost ready to go back to the "pre-Internet" days of not having everyone's opinion so readable as the flaming just eats at my core at how cruel people can be. I may be a tree-hugger and old but can't we just get along and think a little before bashing people's heads open to their brains to realize that maybe there is a better way to handle something?
Sorry, just had to add that as it's been eating at me all day. Cheers (and go hug a tree damnit or I'll do something really mean).
In my opinion, they should not have employees involved at all on the game server other than running NPCs for events. If they really want to experience the game as the customers do, they can do so on the test server - where it has no permanent effect on the persistent server. This would more than likely clear up all the talk and accusations of foul play on the part of the employees.
I'm currently not in a corporation myself, enjoying the game at my own pace and doing my own thing - so none of this drama has really effected my game play since I'm really just an insignificant small-fish in the ocean there.
"Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received
with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him."
- Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
I agree.
so...
You just have to respect a company that is willing to show some integerty to post these things. normally from a dev you would get the generic "investigation is in progress" line and they expect all the ADHD kids to forget about it. They understand that they have a more mature community and they are willing to show at what stage of the investigation they are at and the results that they found. How many other gaming companies have you seen do this?
Um didn't CCP already admit one of thier employees did just that? So cheating devs are just paranoia? Sir/Maam It seems to me your clearly biased for the game to the point of blocking out negative dev actions. It's just a game don't love it so much you have "game goggles" on.
I agree the recent snafu is a attack against ccp. And it seems like the those attacking CCP didn't have the whole story im some instances.
I believe ccp on the rigging thing. I'm not so sure about the shackbait thing. People who play for the other team shouldn't be joining the enemy and be able to see what they have while fixing a bug. People will never know if thier enemy whos has a dev/gm on thier team, who joined thier corp with access will use that info. This generates paranoia and distrust.
On the ISD reporter getting banned. CCP didn't give enough info. It still looks like the reporter's side of the story can be true. Infact CCP seems to confirm his side of the arguement with that petition screenshot. The attidude of the petition macths the attitude the ISD reporter.. reported.
I still don't like how close the devs are to people. I'm not saying devs can't play thier own game but they should do so with a CLEAR and WELL defined speration. And people should NEVER know who the devs are ingame.
Devs and gms CANNOT afford to play in the big alliances in THIS game or stuff like this WILL continue to happen.
I hope CCP learns from this and takes action with themselves for the good of thier own income.
The goons have made a response to CCP's findings. You can read it at http://goonfleet.com/reply_to_CCP.html