EvE Devs play with BoB. Investigation in progress....New Scandal page 9!

[Strazos]

I canceled my account as well. Unfortunately, I didn't catch it before it tapped my account for February. Oh well. Not saying I'll never come back, but I wasn't really playing much anyway.

[Sparky]

Not that anyone cares, but 3 cancelled here too (well strictly speaking one recurring subscription and two paid with timecards - but I let them know three were gone).  My brother was having problems accessing the account management page so maybe they're overloaded right now, heh.  I was kind of getting bored anyway so it's a good excuse to bail after two years and change.

[Fordel]

Man, I want to jump on the cancel bandwagon, but I haven't been subbed to the game in like half a year 

Wait, does this mean I'm a trend setter? 


Probably not  :-(

[Wolf]

yaaay! Go go overreaction :)

[Sparky]

yaaay! Go go overreaction :)

Well I've bitched on the forums and cancelled my accounts but phase three requires a plane ticket to Iceland. 

[Der Helm]

yaaay! Go go overreaction :)

My thoughts exactly ... 

[angry.bob]

yaaay! Go go overreaction :)

Normally I would agree, but in this case you're wrong. If it were WoW, EQ2, whatever it what is alleged to have happened would be tacky - but not game breaking. But Eve is a zero-sum game on a single server. BoB (fucking whores who stole my guild abbreviation for their HBO miniseries pussy rubbing, may Allah curse them) owns about a third of all 0.0 space. They had a Dev organizing and running their capital fleet. A dev transferfed a dozen T2 BPO's to BoB. They got a mothership replaced due to "lag" with little/no wait. Getting facilities and selling them on ebay - I don't even know what the fuck is with that. Isn't that pretty much the same thing as just making a castle in UO and selling it on ebay? And the list of alleged abuses goes on. All that shit directly impacts everyone who plays EVE, the only question is by how much. All that real estate they own? No one else gets to own it. No one else can even use it except at BoB's pleasure. And if even some of those allegations are true, no one else ever gets to own it - or even play with it, ever, no matter what.

This is the exact equivalent of the old days of playing Trade Wars and the BBS admin giving himself a 3 deep, one way in home system and 50,000 fighters and mines at each hop. If the allegations are false, they need to be addressed specifically and said to be untrue. If any of them other than devs played with BoB as nothing but regular players without using any Dev or company resources are true, then the devs need to be fired and BoB needs to be disbanded and all their shit taken away. Anything less wrecks the entire player driven sandbox thing that CCP bases the game on. Instead, the community rep makes one post that says the Devs who's characters are known have lost those characters. That says fuck-all nothing and satisfies nobody.

[Simond]

I'm waiting for the next Kugutsumen post, personally.
Good luck perma-banning someone whose day-job is dicking around with computers & networks from a game with 14-day free trials.  :-D

[Slayerik]

yaaay! Go go overreaction :)

Normally I would agree, but in this case you're wrong. If it were WoW, EQ2, whatever it what is alleged to have happened would be tacky - but not game breaking. But Eve is a zero-sum game on a single server. BoB (fucking whores who stole my guild abbreviation for their HBO miniseries pussy rubbing, may Allah curse them) owns about a third of all 0.0 space. They had a Dev organizing and running their capital fleet. A dev transferfed a dozen T2 BPO's to BoB. They got a mothership replaced due to "lag" with little/no wait. Getting facilities and selling them on ebay - I don't even know what the fuck is with that. Isn't that pretty much the same thing as just making a castle in UO and selling it on ebay? And the list of alleged abuses goes on. All that shit directly impacts everyone who plays EVE, the only question is by how much. All that real estate they own? No one else gets to own it. No one else can even use it except at BoB's pleasure. And if even some of those allegations are true, no one else ever gets to own it - or even play with it, ever, no matter what.

This is the exact equivalent of the old days of playing Trade Wars and the BBS admin giving himself a 3 deep, one way in home system and 50,000 fighters and mines at each hop. If the allegations are false, they need to be addressed specifically and said to be untrue. If any of them other than devs played with BoB as nothing but regular players without using any Dev or company resources are true, then the devs need to be fired and BoB needs to be disbanded and all their shit taken away. Anything less wrecks the entire player driven sandbox thing that CCP bases the game on. Instead, the community rep makes one post that says the Devs who's characters are known have lost those characters. That says fuck-all nothing and satisfies nobody.

I think Bob is right on here. Its basically bullshit. Will I quit? Probably not but I am a glutton for punishment.

[Soln]

my take on the whole thing is that the CCP people involved used their free time to help the game, in their minds.  By giving stuff to BoB and giving the game a real enemy, they spurred the growth of other corps.

In other words, they used their spare time to assist in game design and world development. Clearly, this is stupid and shouldn’t be allowed. Particularly in an open PvP sandboxy game.   But I find Eve pretty sleazy and CCP pretty culpable in a lot of these things.  So I'm not surprised.  And my sub ran out end of Nov. 

[angry.bob]

I think the way they're (not) handling this is really going to hurt them, and badly. It's starting to show up on mainstream sites like Blues and Shack now. For all the growth it's had, EVE is still pretty niche and it wouldn't suprise me if this ends up costing them a sizeable chunk of their players as well as quite a few future subs.

[Simond]

Kugutsemen's site went public again.
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind"

   
Default Suspected Devs In BoB
In addition to the previously disclosed devs... here are more suspects.
The most suspect guy is RagnarH who left the exact same day I exposed the devs in RKK. What a coincidence!

Quote:
| Lyrics | Republic Military School - 2006.05.31 10:23:00

| Vegeta | TAOSP - 2007.01.10 01:21:00
Omniscient Order - 2006.04.22 07:53:00
The Wolves - 2006.03.24 01:07:00
Brutor tribe - 2006.02.12 21:58:00
Cult Of Cthulhu - 2005.06.20 21:45:00
Brutor tribe - 2005.06.20 21:42:00
[Closed] The Legitimate Businessmans Club - 2005.05.23 04:04:00

| Diamond_Dog | Brutor tribe - 2006.01.22 19:20:00
Murini Ice Syndicate - 2005.09.06 23:36:00
Brutor tribe - 2005.09.03 16:16:00
Reikoku - 2005.03.21 21:07:00
Brutor tribe - 2005.03.17 17:22:00
Fighters of Heineken - 2005.01.05 18:50:00

| Svabbzor | Reikoku - 2006.11.08 21:02:00
Random Execution Party - 2006.10.15 00:20:00
The Kru - 2005.12.08 20:38:00
[Closed] Snuff Syndicate - 2005.10.20 20:12:00

| Ben Hump | Reikoku - 2006.11.08 16:31:00
Random Execution Party - 2006.10.15 00:19:00
The Kru - 2005.12.08 20:38:00
[Closed] Snuff Syndicate - 2005.10.24 17:37:00

| Svavz | Reikoku - 2006.11.08 21:48:00
Random Execution Party - 2006.10.15 02:38:00
The Kru - 2006.09.05 16:37:00
Celtic industries - 2006.03.23 18:37:00
The Blackwater Brigade - 2006.03.19 12:48:00
BANK of HUZZAH FEDERATION - 2006.03.17 23:10:00

| RagnarH | Brutor tribe - 2007.01.31 18:23:00
Reikoku - 2006.11.20 23:44:00
Brutor tribe - 2006.11.13 23:11:00
Engage With Rage - 2006.10.30 23:03:00
Dark Reality - 2006.10.30 19:15:00
Engage With Rage - 2006.10.20 22:53:00
All these guys registered on RKK with icelandish email addresses.

Funny that RagnarH left on the 31st January 2007 after the Reikoku Makes Its Own Luck series.

Anonymous source contacted me and claims Oveur and Kieron are in the above list and that Vegeta (currently in TAOSP/BoD) is Lemonde.

Great plan, CCP. Great plan.

[Morat20]

Oh dear, where is my cancel button? I think CCP should be handling it a bit better, but frankly this Kugutsemen dude strikes me as an arrogant asshole.

[Furiously]

I used to be guilded with a developer at Mythic, our guild had transitioned from EQ and he had gotten a job at Mythic. I'd tell him to poke Lum for me whenever we grouped. Sorry about all those pokes Lum.

He didn't ever edit the database to give himself better armor or more money. He didn't share any secrets. He just played the game like we had since EQ. I don't recall if we asked him for secrets, or if we did, he just laughed at us. I never felt like "Boy, we have an advantage, we have a mesmer who is a dev." Neither side put the other in a position to ever be put in a questionable situation.

I'm guessing Mark Jacobs hires professionals or has talks occasionally about not going Stockholm.

If any of those BPO's were dev created instead of lotteried, I will feel a bit betrayed by CCP.

[Morat20]

Not sure if this has been posted, don't think so: Latest from CCP:

Our goal is to provide the best possible game, gaming experience and development process possible. In light of that, we would like to address the recent allegations of CCP employee misconduct. CCP has taken these charges very seriously and since they surfaced we have launched a thorough investigation consisting of an examination of character histories ranging back to their creation as well as into any connected characters owned by the developers involved. This examination was performed by the same internal division which is also tasked with standard periodic audits of all developer and volunteer accounts. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: messaging history, financial and transactional history, combat and corporation logs, item and cash transfers and IP logs.

As for the allegations themselves, they consist of two parts. The first part involved a case that happened seven months ago when a CCP employee’s identity became public knowledge within his corporation. Per company policy, the incident was investigated and actions taken where appropriate, including the removal of characters whose identities were compromised.

The second part of the accusations stem from a leak of information pertaining to an in-game event arc. Due to the amount of time that has passed since the planning and execution of the event arc, we have not been able to confirm nor deny the veracity of these allegations.

In both cases, these accusations were recently brought forward when a player revealed the identity of numerous CCP employee characters. Since these play characters are known to belong to CCP employees, they will be removed from the game. Many of them have been around since the creation of EVE and it is most unfortunate that these developers are now forced to end their relationships with their in-game friends, but that is our policy when the anonymity of staff members has been compromised.

Last summer, CCP implemented stricter monitoring procedures and audits on all CCP employees’ EVE accounts. We are confident that our rigid procedures and protocol will prevent any misconduct or, at least, allow us to quickly discover it, should such an unfortunate scenario arise.

As the community knows well, we at CCP enjoy not only playing EVE Online, but improving EVE and interacting with our playerbase. We feel EVE benefits from the developers playing EVE as any other members of the community do, and to impose artificial limitations -- such as no access to Tranquility or special flagging on a developer’s player character -- would greatly hinder the development of EVE.

CCP is very passionate about EVE Online and is committed to its continued growth. We hope that this statement will put this issue behind us once and for all and allow us to continue moving forward with the support of our community.

Seems fairly straightfoward -- they can track items, cash, the usual db changes and didn't find squat. They can't trace leaks of info as easily, so couldn't verify it or deny it -- which is a fairly honest statement. (More than one company would phrase it "We were unable to find any evidence to support the accusation).

Some cockmunch did out a lot of Devs, so they had to shuffle the characters and hide them -- killing in-game relationships. I suspect they'll be a lot of "You're a Dev!" accusations from certain cock-munches who think it's their claim to fame.

There. I've fucking sullied myself with forum drama. I need a bath.

[Furiously]

In both cases, these accusations were recently brought forward when a player revealed the identity of numerous CCP employee characters. Since these play characters are known to belong to CCP employees, they will be removed from the game. Many of them have been around since the creation of EVE and it is most unfortunate that these developers are now forced to end their relationships with their in-game friends, but that is our policy when the anonymity of staff members has been compromised.

I'm not seeing where this is the player's fault...CCP has a policy....Consequences...Actions...

[Morat20]

In both cases, these accusations were recently brought forward when a player revealed the identity of numerous CCP employee characters. Since these play characters are known to belong to CCP employees, they will be removed from the game. Many of them have been around since the creation of EVE and it is most unfortunate that these developers are now forced to end their relationships with their in-game friends, but that is our policy when the anonymity of staff members has been compromised.

I'm not seeing where this is the player's fault...CCP has a policy....Consequences...Actions...

If I understand correctly, he did it by tracing IP addresses off of a forum to CCP -- which means certain Devs were more than a bit stupid in posting to corp boards from work without taking a few precautions, but it's not the same as "Dude, I'm a Dev!" on corp-chat.

As for the T2 thing -- if they were spawned or the lottery was hacked, I'd count it highly likely that CCP would have been able to trace that. Their logging for that sort of thing is undoubtably comprehensive, and any GM/Dev tools that work on the live server undoubtable log everything you do.

[Simond]

...apart from the minor detail that it was the dev who wrote most of the T2 lottery code that was handing out T2 BPOs to his corpmates in RKK/BoB.

[Morat20]

...apart from the minor detail that it was the dev who wrote most of the T2 lottery code who was handing out T2 BPOs to his corpmates in RKK/BoB.

Just because he wrote the T2 lottery code doesn't make him immune to DB auditing.

First, we can assume he didn't "poof" those T2 BPOs into existance. Spawning them outside the lottery system would have undoubtably been immediately traceable even with rudimentary auditing tools (and certainly by anyone willing to check back through the DB and trace the item history and regular log files).

So that leaves several options:

1) He rigged the T2 lottery code in some way. I sincerly doubt this -- first, it would have been caught in any kind of code inspection (and you can bet your ass it would have been looked at once the allegations came up, if not before).
2) He exploited some bug in the T2 lottery system -- once again, this would have come up in examination.
3) He knew the T2 lottery system well enough to maximize his chances of winning -- how to maximize his RPs prior to the lottery and got lucky. As a member of a 0.0 corp and a very long-time player, if he had any research alts or skills on his main, he would have had a lot of tickets. (I'd be surprised if there was much he knew that wasn't known by a lot of players. The mechanics of the lottery system are fairly simple).
4) He won some, bought some, collected them (I don't know if they were all new T2 BPOs or what) -- or any combination of them -- and then handed them out to the corp for manufacturing. He's undoubtably a rich player at this point, and cash can buy you a lot of things.

Outright spawning of the BPOs is a ludicrous notion -- it would have been clear in any audit. It's the easiest damn thing in the world to prevent. That leaves rigging the lottery code itself, a bug in the lottery code he exploited (both of which would have been unlikely in the first place and would have certainly been caught once people started digging). That leaves 3 and 4.

Auditing this sort of thing isn't hard -- it would be trivial to find the origins of each BPO that the Dev ever had in his possesion. If they all originated as "his winnings in the T2 lottery", a bit of simple math would determine if that was statistically likely or unlikely over the time frame in question. If other people won them, the same analysis could be done on them and log checks to determine if they were sold or given away.

That's sort of the point -- with access to CCP's database and the bare basics of the lottery system, it's only a few hours work to determine which BPOs he gave away, where they came from, and when. If he won 6 in a single lottery, then a quick check of his RP's prior to the lottery, the total number of RP's outstanding for those categories, and the number of BPO's seeded for that lottery, and determine whether he rigged it or not.

If he did, he'd be bounced -- unless he's an owner, which might make it difficult.

[Sparky]

I'd be frankly amazed if he spawned BPOs, that shit would be traced in a minute and this guy would be risking a well paying job rather than some crappy internship like the GM who spawned himself a Scorpion with the best mods in the game (incidentally he was caught and fired after a huge Eve-o shitstorm when the GM in question ran into a gatecamp, got popped then banned the guy who popped him - old scandal). 

He acquired those BPOs honestly most likely.  Now you can argue if a dev character who is effectively "banned" should be handing any out assets when a mere subscriber wouldn't have that luxury, but that's a different debate.  To my mind far more important than a few BPO, which in the grand scheme of things mean shit really, is the information about events and whatnot that were allegedly shared.  That info would be priceless and would've given BoB far more advantage than a bunch of mediocre blueprints.

[Morat20]

I'd be frankly amazed if he spawned BPOs, that shit would be traced in a minute and this guy would be risking a well paying job rather than some crappy internship like the GM who spawned himself a Scorpion with the best mods in the game (incidentally he was caught and fired after a huge Eve-o shitstorm when the GM in question ran into a gatecamp, got popped then banned the guy who popped him - old scandal). 

He acquired those BPOs honestly most likely.  Now you can argue if a dev character who is effectively "banned" should be handing any out assets when a mere subscriber wouldn't have that luxury, but that's a different debate.  To my mind far more important than a few BPO, which in the grand scheme of things mean shit really, is the information about events and whatnot that were allegedly shared.  That info would be priceless and would've given BoB far more advantage than a bunch of mediocre blueprints.

I agree -- and at least CCP is being fairly honest with the "We have no way of denying or verifying whether it happened". They really don't, unless the guy confesses or he did it over chat and not voice.

I suspect their auditing will be tightened up again, and they'll probably work out some procedure to prevernt their IPs from being traced back to CCP -- like banning Devs from posting from work. (Half the players seem to live in Iceland, so....).

[Raging Turtle]

Anonymous source contacted me and claims Oveur and Kieron are in the above list and that Vegeta (currently in TAOSP/BoD) is Lemonde.

The forums monkeys are going to go CRAZY if this turns out to be true.  (He's the lead dev for the entire game)

Oveur in Bob?  I'm not sure if I'd be surprised or not if that turns out to be true, but it sure as hell doesn't want to make me play 

[d4rkj3di]

To be fair, it was LV that got the Hel by getting ISD leaked info on the event. Even after CCP acknowledged that there was indeed shennanigans involved with the pre-staging of materials, the Mothership that was awarded to the cheaters is still in the game, being flown. That is another sore spot that is being brought up in this latest shitstorm.

[ajax34i]

Not gonna cancel cause of this, shrug, I'm a carebear in the noob corp, don't think I've been affected by BoB or any other alliance.  Gonna eventually cancel cause I'll get bored of it again, like the last two times.  Plus, not sure how much longer EVE's gonna be the focus of CCP; didn't they say they were going to develop that other MMO?  A year from now, who knows what we'll be playing.

[Yoru]

Plus, not sure how much longer EVE's gonna be the focus of CCP; didn't they say they were going to develop that other MMO?  A year from now, who knows what we'll be playing.

From statements, "WoD Online" is backburnered. The fruit of the WW acquisition is being poured into an Eve P&P RPG among other things.

[Wolf]

How do you not see that Kuguass is harming the game? Can you not look beyond your hate of BoB for a second?

Yes devs have player characters. Yes these player characters are very old and with shitload of skillpoints and experience in the game. Do you know where most of the 2003 players end up? That's right - in one of the corps in the Band of Brothers alliance. That is the reason they're the most dominant entity in the game. Do you think Oveur or any other lead dev would jeopardise his fucking life and his greatest piece of work so BoB Can have more space? That's beyond ridiculous.

You have the word of a fucking asshole (with no proof other than "there are devs in BoB, so it's obvious they helped them") against the word of the guys that made the game you love (or at least play). Who are you going to believe? This whole thread is really retarded (with several meaningful posts).

[Velorath]

How do you not see that Kuguass is harming the game? Can you not look beyond your hate of BoB for a second?

Yes devs have player characters. Yes these player characters are very old and with shitload of skillpoints and experience in the game. Do you know where most of the 2003 players end up? That's right - in one of the corps in the Band of Brothers alliance. That is the reason they're the most dominant entity in the game. Do you think Oveur or any other lead dev would jeopardise his fucking life and his greatest piece of work so BoB Can have more space? That's beyond ridiculous.

You have the word of a fucking asshole (with no proof other than "there are devs in BoB, so it's obvious they helped them") against the word of the guys that made the game you love (or at least play). Who are you going to believe? This whole thread is really retarded (with several meaningful posts).

So your point seems to be that people never do stupid shit that might cost them their jobs, and that everyone should be blindly loyal to the people who develop the games they like?  Not that I care one way or the other since I don't play EvE, but I'm not sure I'm getting your logic here.

[Wolf]

My point is that people don't do stupid shit that could cost them their life's work, dream, whatever you wish to call it. Have you seen Oveur or any other of the lead devs talk about the game? Thought so. I choose to trust them, over a piece of shit that is activly ruining the only game I really feel is getting somewhere. And by proxy ruining the sandbox/virtual world model as a whole. Imagine this gets blown up in the media and it most likely will. We'll be playing dikus for the rest of time.

This is not a fucking player run UO shard. It's a bussiness.

[Simond]

My point is that people don't do stupid shit that could cost them their life's work, dream, whatever you wish to call it.

Such naivety is refreshing.

No, wait, that's not the word I was looking for. Foolish. Such naivety is foolish. There we go.

This is not a fucking player run UO shard. It's a bussiness.

Exactly. Therefore the devs need to act with some bloody professional decorum, instead of trying to whitewash the issue(s) away.

[Miasma]

Kill the messangers!  Bury those heads deeper in the sand, deeper I tell you!  People never bend the rules to help friends they have known for years, that's crazy talk.

[5150]

Oveur could have killed this off very easily by publishing the full findings

The fact that he instead chose to publish some PR bullshit was stupid and its no surprise that people think that there was something going on, nothing has been done/will be done and the rot probably runs deeper than they originally thought

and I can't blame them

Don't blame the players blame Oveur for missing the opportunity

[Soln]

"we have not been able to confirm nor deny the veracity of these allegations."


ya, that's says nothing.  All it leaves is the lingering doubt that something happened.  And the player base is left to speculate and fight over to what degree things did happen.  Terrible community.  Glad I'm out of it.

[Merusk]

My point is that people don't do stupid shit that could cost them their life's work, dream, whatever you wish to call it.

Such naivety is refreshing.

No, wait, that's not the word I was looking for. Foolish. Such naivety is foolish. There we go.

Indeed it is.  The world is rife with people corrupting their life's work in more meaningful fields than games over dumber things than power.   Politicians looking for pussy, for example.

I don't play EvE anymore.  I thought it was interesting the way BoB had taken over entire swaths of the game.  I didn't hate them or like them, they were irrelevant to me and my playing.   I find this whole scenario distasteful, corrupt and incredibly poorly handled.  CCP is acting like they have something to hide, and it sure as hell doesn't make me want to resub.

As you said, it's a business.  That means they have to be that much more transparent.  This kind of shit happened in text MUDs, it happened in UO, it happened in EQ, and hell I'd be surprised to find a company it HASN'T happened in.  The difference in all of them is the way it was handled.

[Kamen]

Please put aside for a second whether a dev acted improperly in this particular case.

How can CCP 100% guarantee regular players that they have a level playing field (in a game where the setback of losing things is far more severe than most games) when the developers are playing, making friends, and helping one side or another?  Currently, they are asking us to simply take their word for it that they won't misbehave, disclose who they are, and that they have uber safeguards that will 100% guarantee catching abusers.

I’m not so sure that’s enough.  Whether you know a dev is on your side doesn't matter to me.  You have an advantage, or at a bare minimum the perception of an advantage knowing developers are in the game.  I'm starting to think that it's not enough for CCP to promise a level playing field with developers in it.  They cannot even afford the perception of potential impropriety if they want to be considered legitimate.

Eve might have been able to get away with having developers actively playing when they were niche, but I'm not so sure it's a good idea any longer.  It’s time for CCP to grow up.

[Der Helm]

You guys know what ?

I do not think I would like to play a game that the developers do not play themself.

That way lies madness, tears and statements like "working as intended".