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

[Fmar]

IA kicked out the reporter because he was blatantly violating the rules ISD reporters are supposed to follow?
--Dave

It not really clear on that point.

Me: "So I guess a BoB director claiming he has CCP buddies at his beckon call, and the fact that said buddy showed up 40 sec later, will raise some heads at CCP?"
Boss: "Oh, I think it already has...."
Me: "Well, at least something good will come from all this mess..."
Boss: "We have his IP address."
Boss: "He's posting from CCP, he's Staff."
Boss: He's in the QA department...."
*after long pause*
Boss: Well, I'll tell you how this goes tomorrow, take care, Rae..."

I signed off.

Turns out, within 3 hours, every ISD-related account I had was banned.

[Drogo]

Well Dianabolic has at least proved that one of the three accusations brought to light are true. BoB does have a bat phone to the devs and can have people dealt with without the need of filing a petition. I wonder if someone can get him to comment on the other two accusations. If someone could get him to post a little more I bet all the dirty laundry could be hung out to dry.

[MahrinSkel]

One thing I would agree is that the RP Events program is systematically corrupt.  Not just in favor of BoB, but nearly every major event.  Somewhere along the way the line between sharing info so people could RP the event properly, and blatantly rigging the results, got crossed, and the program has never looked back.

--Dave

[MahrinSkel]

CCP are trying to spin it to say the dev joined the goonswarm capital corp Darkstar1 and gave himself director level access to fix a pos bug.  Only thing is according to the CEO of darkstar1, when he joined they only had 2 small pos and neither had modules fitted, it's also been stated that nobody in darkstar1 filled a petition for any kind of bug.

Ummm....  Reality check here: If Darkstar 1 had only small POS, then they didn't have any capital shipyards. I don't think a small POS has the power/CPU to mount one.  And nobody would build a supercap in a small, even if you could, because it wouldn't be able to defend itself.  Maybe a medium, as a bit of misdirection.

--Dave

[Merusk]

So what's more likely: A company already caught with one hand in the cookie jar is digging in with the other hand, or a group with an axe to grind manufactured a situation?

How about choice #3, said axe-grinders manufactured a situation that would shine the light on the cookie jar just in time to see that hand dipping in.

See, that's the one I'd go with.  People who pay money to CCP are tools at this point, really.

The game is corrupt, the system is broken. You all lose.

[Fmar]

After reading dianabolics comments about how its not a bid deal they have a 'bat phone' to devs, I'm starting to think that this may have started due to the smallish community that Eve-online once had. 

Or maybe CCP just doesn't see things like other MMOs have in regards to dev/player relations.
I remember a few years back when furor made a single post on the foh forums & the wow community exploded.
How do you think they would react if they found out a few guilds had wow devs on MSN ready to help with any issues they encountered on a raid?

[MahrinSkel]

The Darkstar situation is a non-starter.  The ISD reporter looks like a setup to me.  The RP Events thing looks substantive, and is a prime example of why you shouldn't run such things with volunteers, but for exactly that reason it doesn't mean CCP is corrupt.  And *all* of it becoming public now, at once, is The Mittani trying to manufacture outrage to save the Coalition.  That's my bet, anyway.  This may seem like tin-foil hattery towards The Mittani, but I've seen just how byzantine his plots can get.

--Dave

[Arthur_Parker]

CCP are trying to spin it to say the dev joined the goonswarm capital corp Darkstar1 and gave himself director level access to fix a pos bug.  Only thing is according to the CEO of darkstar1, when he joined they only had 2 small pos and neither had modules fitted, it's also been stated that nobody in darkstar1 filled a petition for any kind of bug.

Ummm....  Reality check here: If Darkstar 1 had only small POS, then they didn't have any capital shipyards. I don't think a small POS has the power/CPU to mount one.  And nobody would build a supercap in a small, even if you could, because it wouldn't be able to defend itself.  Maybe a medium, as a bit of misdirection.

--Dave

According to the CEO of darkstar1, when the dev joined they only had 2 small pos and neither had modules fitted.

[MahrinSkel]

And it took a CCP employee spying for BoB, risking his job, 14 minutes to figure that out (Directors can get that information in seconds)?  That's more believable than that he really was a QA employee trying to investigate a problem that couldn't be duplicated on Sisi?  Like I said, a non-starter.

--Dave

[ajax34i]

Haven't played the game in a long time, and I've stopped reading the boards 2 months ago.  I think the reporter may have been an ass, and also BoB got speedy intervention / response from CCP officials.  It's fishy on both sides.

I think that CCP's way of manipulating their game is... different.  Most MMO devs go about it by nerfing whatever they don't like, and buffing whatever they do, but with EVE I imagine it would be difficult to "nerf" a particular set of players (an alliance, f.ex) without nerfing everyone; nerfs to gear or game mechanics won't affect BoB alone, or the Goons alone, etc.  So, in my opinion, the way they control the game is this "conspiracy" whereby devs hold positions of power within alliances and affect politics.  You want to prevent one alliance from taking over the server...  it would be the way to do it.

Except, it might have started that way, good intentions and all that, but they made "friends" and now the friends are abusing the friendships, and the leaks are causing negative publicity.  All publicity is good publicity, but shrug, it's still a bad image.

Bottom line, for me, EVE is an old game, buggy and not that interesting to me anymore, and whose devs are already working on the next MMO.  I probably won't play this next MMO of theirs.

[Arthur_Parker]

And it took a CCP employee spying for BoB, risking his job, 14 minutes to figure that out (Directors can get that information in seconds)?  That's more believable than that he really was a QA employee trying to investigate a problem that couldn't be duplicated on Sisi?  Like I said, a non-starter.

--Dave

Directors can see how many pos's your alliance has?  You think that's why he gave himself director rights?

[Drogo]

The Darkstar situation is a non-starter.  The ISD reporter looks like a setup to me.  The RP Events thing looks substantive, and is a prime example of why you shouldn't run such things with volunteers, but for exactly that reason it doesn't mean CCP is corrupt.  And *all* of it becoming public now, at once, is The Mittani trying to manufacture outrage to save the Coalition.  That's my bet, anyway.  This may seem like tin-foil hattery towards The Mittani, but I've seen just how byzantine his plots can get.

--Dave

Honestly, I do not know if CCP is doing under the table stuff or not, but so far all the information I have read on several forums points to a smoking gun of CCP employees doing bad things.

The ISD reporter may not have been objective, but BoB getting him banned without filing a petition is dead wrong. A BoB member has openly admitted they contact devs through MSN and not through petitions. This is a serious problem for a PvP game that should theoretically supply an even playing field.

The Darkstar situation may be a non-starter, but we do not know that yet since Darkstar claims it did not have a problem with its POS, did not petition for help with a POS, the GM did not inform them he was going to join their corp, he had no reason to make himself a director of their corp, he had no reason to hide his joining his corp but apparently hid it in a way so that only his resignation was noticed, the petition asking what he was doing in the corp was deleted without response and in game questions to him about the situation went unanswered. There may be a perfectly legitimate reason for what he did, but the way everything was handled definitely sounds fishy if nothing else.

I am surprised that you actually acknowledge that the rigging of RP events may have been a bad thing, but then you try to blame it all on the volunteers as if CCP had no idea how its RP events were run and if they were rigged. Do you really think RP events were rigged completely by volunteers with CCP never having a clue? I am sorry, but I cannot for a second conceive that you actually believe that.

Everything posted so far seems to point that CCP was caught with its hand in the cookie jar again and your defense of CCP just does not ring true.

Edited: Removed questions about his being a developer, actually took the time to look up Orbis Games. Also took out degrading remarks, BoB has the right to give their opinion too. Plus I should know better than to take pot shots at other posters.

[Reign]

Just some food for thought--

I've always believed in player content, but I've also witnessed many times where player politics were handled on a knee-jerk reaction mechanism, instead of more "deep" reasons. I don't want to go into huge details, but in SB, I ran an entire nation based on a lore story to inject "logical" (or at least consistent) diplomacy into our server---do this, the Church (our nation) will support you. Do that, the Church will hunt you down.

People may not have liked the Church, but in retrospect a lot of people liked the fact that we existed--it added meaning to conflicts instead of simple random ganking. Many other servers tried to do that type of "meaningful pvp", and some succeedeed, and some failed.

What I garnered out of those 6+ months of "research" is that there is actually quite a strong benefit in the long run to a game's sustainability (given world changing capability of any form, based on player action) if there is controlled, planned "guidance" (read that as interation and leadership) from paid game "devs"--actually paid players, on staff--that directly interact with each shard/game world/whatever under a long term plan that is tailored for the dynamics of that server.

In other words, done right, I think that not only is the company playing their own game good, but in fact if done well adds quite a bit to the game's fun factor and long term viability.

I'm kind of with Stephen Zepp here....If I was currently an EVE subscriber (I cancelled my account last year from boredom), I would immediately start organizing the underdogs of the server in an attempt to form a coalition against BoB..It makes it more intriguing that you have one, massive juggernaut ruling the systems that needs to be taught a few lessons...All you need is a few rag tag, run and gun victories to build momentum and a good recruiting campaign, and youll have yourself a rivalry, and then a full scale war before too long...Hell Im tempted to re-activate my account and join one of their enemies now... ; )

[bhodi]

Every game on the planet's devs have played their own games. There are WoW guilds with pocket devs, UO devs, and I'm sure LoTR has devs who play. I know devs watched the leading WoW guild death and taxes try to take down kel'thuzad and worked directly with them to try and patch it when it bugged. I'm not sure why you are are trying to imply this is unusual or negative in any way. MSN over petitions? BFD. You probably missed this when it came up earlier; there is no way to stop devs from playing their own game, nor should there be. Also, any 'red name' has their current company displayed under their avatar.

[LC]

Don't worry, Dave is always on a different page cause he's leet ;) Its kinda nice having the BoB representitive in here though, keeps it "fair and balanced". Just like EvE!

Two of us versus several dozen of you is balanced? Sounds like proper goonfleet math to me.

[LC]

And it took a CCP employee spying for BoB, risking his job, 14 minutes to figure that out (Directors can get that information in seconds)?  That's more believable than that he really was a QA employee trying to investigate a problem that couldn't be duplicated on Sisi?  Like I said, a non-starter.

--Dave

It's amazes me that people don't realize a GM could get information like that without joining the corp. 

[agathon]

See, this is what happens when you cannot get out of your ship and walk on honest-to-goodness terra firma - everyone goes crazy.

Someone tell CCP it is time for an NGE.

[Sutro]

I am sorry I do not post here much and you have a dev label, but I am not sure who you are a dev for and I would honestly like to know.

My unofficial and possibly partially incorrect biography of MahrinSkel -

He was the economy system designer of DAOC and later worked as head design honcho on a game called Wish that never made it to release. He now works for Orbis Games, which publishes (among a couple of other things) Virtual Horse Ranch for the casual pre-teen+ female demo, which is smart because it's one of the fastest growing and one of the most underserved. See Pogo, yo?

He likes to post and loves to debate/argue, which has great synergy with what he's currently doing because I doubt there's many "OMFG U NERFED MY CLYDESDALE WTF DIAF" comments to send him into a fit of apoplexy.

I often disagree with his design opinions, but always respect them. I also often disagree with his non-design opinions, but because his design ones are always well thought out, I feel compelled to grudgingly respect them as well.

You should too.

-Sutro

[Drogo]

Thanks Sutro for the more complete Dev bio on him. That is what I was originally looking for in my post.

[Sutro]

Yeah, don't think that Mahrin works for CCP, because if he did every board with the word tritanium in it would be lit up with 1500+ word count macroeconomic essays.  :-D

-Sutro

[Kail]

Two of us versus several dozen of you is balanced? Sounds like proper goonfleet math to me.

How many of you are in Goonfleet?  I didn't think there were more than two or three.

The rest of us are just sitting on the sidelines.  I personally am unsubbed, partly because of this kind of thing, and partly because of CCP's wierd responses to it.  So I don't really care if BoB or the Goons manage to take over teh univarse.  But from the sidelines, it does look fishy, at least, with the limited information I've got (and I'm grateful for Mahrin being willing to take a few lumps to show the other side of the coin).  But it definitely looks odd to me, and this isn't the first time it's happened, and I still don't see anything from CCP that sounds like they're taking it seriously.  And BoB players cutting in with "The Devs only give us special consideration because we're friends" is not helping my view of things.

[MahrinSkel]

Directors can see how many pos's your alliance has?  You think that's why he gave himself director rights?

Any member of the alliance can see which POS's you have in systems with Sovereignty (which capital yards must have), unless the alliance officers are fanatical about deleting those emails (they get sent to the Alliance mail list).  I've seen that done in particular cases, when we didn't want a spy to know a new System Defense POS had gone up.  But it only works if the spy is offline when the email goes out.

Any member of a corp can see all production facilities under the control of that corp and what they're building, you don't have to be a director (that's why the BoB logistics corp in F-T had only 6 members).  And as LC pointed out, the stuff is all a database, I'm sure a well-crafted SQL query could have given him any information on the POS he wanted.  All of that amounts to "a CCP employee surreptitiously joined a corp that once talked about building supercaps, he must have been spying for BoB!"

I'm more defending CCP than BoB.  Although I will say that the goon portrayal of BoB as a bunch of cheaters that will do anything for an edge doesn't match up with the scrupulous adherence to their agreements that I've seen in my direct interactions with them.  If I really thought that BoB was systematically cheating, if the evidence was there, I'd be right with you.  But what I've seen is a lot of stew from very little oyster, for in-game diplomatic purposes.  If the goons really *believed* their rhetoric about BoB cheating with the active collusion of CCP, they'd have all quit by now rather than play a rigged game.

--Dave

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm happy to see what CCP's response is. 

I don't buy the a "well-crafted SQL query could have given him any information on the POS he wanted" argument because admins are lazy and gui's are designed to be easy.  I have no idea what the dev was doing in goonswarm, but if it was entirely innocent, then at the very least it looks like bad judgement to close/delete the petition and not reply in-game when asked about it by the CEO.

[Krakrok]

Who gives SQL access to their $10/h QA employees?

[Chenghiz]

Directors can see how many pos's your alliance has?  You think that's why he gave himself director rights?

If the goons really *believed* their rhetoric about BoB cheating with the active collusion of CCP, they'd have all quit by now rather than play a rigged game.

--Dave

They want to beat BoB just as badly as BoB wants to beat them. Quitting wouldn't accomplish that, and goons are not some sort of hive mind to all make the exact same decision regarding the practices of CCP.

[Polysorbate80]

The company needs to take a step back, regroup, and develop those professional skills a bit more thoroughly.  Official lines of communication and corporate policies/procedures are set up for a reason, part of which is to avoid impropriety (or even just the appearance of it).

I understand the pressure and the temptation to cut corners to "help out", but sooner or later it inevitably bites you on the ass.  It's just not worth it in the long run.

[Lightstalker]

I'm happy to see what CCP's response is. 

I don't buy the a "well-crafted SQL query could have given him any information on the POS he wanted" argument because admins are lazy and gui's are designed to be easy.  I have no idea what the dev was doing in goonswarm, but if it was entirely innocent, then at the very least it looks like bad judgement to close/delete the petition and not reply in-game when asked about it by the CEO.

Lazy admin cheaters just write a script to dump the table of entries showing location + interesting thing under construction...  because this isn't the first time they've wanted that information.

Petitions and in-game replies could be ignored because:

1) Not a PR guy
2) No good way to reply to all individual messages at once
3) Proper action means paperwork and most of all
4) It is Friday and someone doesn't want to be at work any longer than they have to
5) All of the above

There are ready and plausible explanations for the reported behavior without this being Dev cheating - not that we know either way.  Plenty of drama though, and "cheating devs" sure plays better across the interweb. 


I think the RP event scripting thing is a natural consequence of the medium and the revelation that the outcomes are scripted is just poor expectation setting all around that program.  Custom tailored events take time to set up, put in the proper scope, and arrange participation on both the hero and villain sides.  That kind of effort can't be put into an event that might suddenly not occur or may occur in such a way as to block the rest of the planned events.  The whole thing doesn't scale well in to begin with.  Something like this was tried in Shadowbane and the players turned it into "Whack the Feature Character for phat loot" or gank the group in the event because I wasn't the star of the show.  It produces a dissimilar level of service across a playerbase that pays the same monthly rate, which raises understandable complaints.  Setting the expectation early that events have an intended outcome that is not, entirely, decided by the players might keep folks from freaking out when an unexpected outcome does occur and no one leading the event knows what to do next.  I wonder if there is room in player's hearts for a scripted world that periodically resets where players can cycle through the factions to experience all sides of each conflict.  Not everyone enjoys being the plucky, but doomed, opposition to the other guys hero and that is what is required of most custom tailored Event Team events.

Who gives SQL access to their $10/h QA employees?

Folks who realize someone else can work the crappy hours while they go polish their Porsche and hang out on the beach?
Some part of QA probably has more access than the average dev since they need to get in and validate behaviors and look for side effects instead of just accepting that the game doesn't fall down anymore when you push that button.  And of course, not all QA are spider monkeys.

[Simond]

Well Dianabolic has at least proved that one of the three accusations brought to light are true. BoB does have a bat phone to the devs and can have people dealt with without the need of filing a petition. I wonder if someone can get him to comment on the other two accusations. If someone could get him to post a little more I bet all the dirty laundry could be hung out to dry.

Dave, taking off your 'Fixion' hat for a while and putting on your 'Red Name' one - is one of the powerhouse alliances in game, and one that's already been tainted by Dev corruption previously, having a direct line to the development team for a game that's been live for four years and counting a Good Thing?

Especially as said alliance seems to have enough clout with the devs and GMs to do things like get ISD volunteers dismissed as will.

[MahrinSkel]

Dave, taking off your 'Fixion' hat for a while and putting on your 'Red Name' one - is one of the powerhouse alliances in game, and one that's already been tainted by Dev corruption previously, having a direct line to the development team for a game that's been live for four years and counting a Good Thing?

Especially as said alliance seems to have enough clout with the devs and GMs to do things like get ISD volunteers dismissed as will.

If it was my shop, said QA employee would be getting called in for a little talk.  I'd crank "Command Voice" up to eleven and give him an asschewing they'd hear in Greenland.  You use your backchannels to gather information that is useful to *you* and it's understandable if some information leaks back the other way.  But you don't let your backchannel contacts use you to bypass disciplinary procedures.

I wouldn't say they got him dismissed "at will", more that they caught him off-base and he paid the consequences.  But the QA guy should have told them to go through channels.

As for the Direct Line....  There were people in Camelot that effectively had my "direct line".  The ones that tried to use it as a way to get over on the other players got a permanent block on my IM.

--Dave

[Comstar]

In the officially allowed eve o thread

A quick recap and more news from the same thread:

- A corp in Goonswarm discovers that Sharkbait joined their corp, made himself director, then left after 20 minutes. Petitions regarding the issue were closed/deleted with no explanation offered.
- A former ISD reporter came forward about an instance where a BoB member ordered him to leave a system, threatening to get his CCP buds on MSN to do something if he didn't. Said ISD reporter was almost instantly reprimanded in private channels, and later banned. Said ISD reporter also claims that many RP events involving valuable loot/rewards were rigged (an accusation that has been around for some time). This entire section is probably the most distressing, but also subject to the most bias (comes from a fired volunteer).
- Lack of response from CCP to these issues prompts Goon threadnaught. Multiple characters are temp-banned, gagged in-game, and outright banned. Forums pulled down.
- Forums return, with Ark's news post "addressing" the issue. Discussion limited to this thread.
- Diabolic outright admits to having private communication access (such as MSN, see the ISD reporter incident) to devs/GMs in this thread, and says that it's Goons fault they aren't e-bffs with CCP.
- After all the gagging on the issue, mere hours later GM Kutsu openly discusses his personal opinion in Jita local. When petitioned about how inappropriate this is, he himself responds to the petition and closes it.

[Trippy]

Edit: fixed smiley

[tkinnun0]

- After all the gagging on the issue, mere hours later GM Kutsu openly discusses his personal opinion in Jita local. When petitioned about how inappropriate this is, he himself responds to the petition and closes it.

This just illustrates CCP's systematic inability to Do The Right Thing. Is it possible for a company to participate in their own game and have a non-abusive relationship with their customers when the game is all about abusing others?

[Arthur_Parker]

I'm happy to see what CCP's response is. 

I don't buy the a "well-crafted SQL query could have given him any information on the POS he wanted" argument because admins are lazy and gui's are designed to be easy.  I have no idea what the dev was doing in goonswarm, but if it was entirely innocent, then at the very least it looks like bad judgement to close/delete the petition and not reply in-game when asked about it by the CEO.

Lazy admin cheaters just write a script to dump the table of entries showing location + interesting thing under construction...  because this isn't the first time they've wanted that information.

So he can't have been cheating because he's not very good at it?  k

[Simond]

- After all the gagging on the issue, mere hours later GM Kutsu openly discusses his personal opinion in Jita local. When petitioned about how inappropriate this is, he himself responds to the petition and closes it.

This just illustrates CCP's systematic inability to Do The Right Thing. Is it possible for a company to participate in their own game and have a non-abusive relationship with their customers when the game is all about abusing others?

Blizzard apparently doesn't think so, judging from this post by an ex-employee of theirs:

This is the first and probably only post on eve-o I'll ever make, as I've never been much of a "Game X Forums" kind of guy, but I had to say this.

As an ex-Blizzard employee, I am flabbergasted at the extent to which developer presence contaminates the player pool. With WoW there wasn't a line between our player accounts and our personal accounts- there was a wall, a moat, a spike-filled trench, and electrified barbed wire. You so much as tried to enter a developer command into the console, you'd be kicked from the server, your account would be flagged, and unless you had a really damn good rason for attempting to bring developer capabilities into the game your ass was fired. You told no one anything about the game behind the curtain, you never told anyone in-game that you even worked for the company, or your ass was fired. The impetus for crossing that line in eve is entirely beyond me.

And don't start for a second with "We need to see how things work." Rubbish. You've got one of the most robust test servers known to MMOs, you've got ridiculously fluid interaction from your player base (At least from the bottom-up) and if nothing else you could have internal servers to try things on. Having anyone with even the possibility of developer powers in the public server is nothing short of madness. Having powers above and beyond normal players, or having access to information beyond the average player, is akin to putting water in chocolate- a single drop can cause a whole batch to sieze and it's ruined just like that.

"But what about GMs?" you ask. Fair enough, they need certain powers to set things right. But they should only ever exist in the game when no other option presents itself. They should be invisible, intangible, a last resort for a coding malfunction or dispute that requires GM omniscience to solve. They should not be people but a service, identifiable only to the point that they can be held accountable for their actions. If you tried to log in as a GM account anywhere but at Blizzard's GM center, hell, if you even hinted that you had a GM account, you'd be canned so fast your head would spin. That CCP would willingly and intentionally contaminate the public player base with what amounts to demi-gods with varying degrees of moral fortitude just boggles my mind.

The thing is, I know some CCPers here on the american side of things, people I've worked with in the past, and I just feel so sorry for them. I just want to say to them, "What the hell is going on over there? What kind of people are you working for?" but I know it isn't their fault.

Bottom line, CCP doesn't care. What exactly they don't care about, I'm not sure; it could be that they don't care about people being in a position to abuse powers beyond what normal paying customers can do, or it could be that they don't care about the effect establishing an Old Boy's Club with their closest pals has on the rest of the game, or it could be any number of things. But the inevitable conclusion is that there is some aspect of the past and current troubles that they are simply turning their noses up at.

The sad thing is, I left WoW for EvE because despite all the work I had put into it, EvE struck me as the superior product. Ironically, I was half wrong and half right. Eve has the potential to be a superior product, but this kind of customer relations seems to spit in the face of everyone who wants to play a game with a firm set of established rules applicable throughout the playerbase.

Edit: And thanks for the answer, Dave. :)

[Endie]

- After all the gagging on the issue, mere hours later GM Kutsu openly discusses his personal opinion in Jita local. When petitioned about how inappropriate this is, he himself responds to the petition and closes it.

Do you have a link to this bit?  I know that, technically, I could read the whole thread to find it but, you know.. :eve-o: