OpenLetter from Goonswarm

I had thought that while the handling of the Kugutsumen incident was completely wrong on CCP's part, it was still an isolated incident. And yet, here's more of it. Not only are people getting accounts banned for no reason, but CCP is AGAIN trying to censor the forums and keep people from knowing the truth. I used to wish I got to take part in aurora events, but now I'm glad I never have.

Yes.

Definetly, this is amazing info and though one must always keep a tone of "perhaps hes not telling the truth", I am inclined to believe it. I too was once an aurora event wisher, now I'll just stick to pvp and no story.

I also wished to be involved with Aurora events and it is a feeling which i no longer have anymore.

What i dont understand is why the BOB member was angry about a reporter being their.

This straight pisses me off, ive been sitting by reading about how the dev's are doing all this shit and getting away with it, but I dont know what I should do. Should I quit playing eve? And ander are you sure its safe to post that story here? nvm dont answer that, if they ban you, you arent going to just leave it at that. I have been thinking about quiting the corp im in for the past few weeks now, and I was wondering if there was someone out there that is part of the "anti-BoB" movement I could join. Thanks to those who respond to this.

And thanks ander for showing us the truth once more.

well goonies were spamming the forums left and right. their allies were spreading "the truth" in jita and other tradehubs including the surrounding systems.

tbh _if_ this is true, this is more important the the t20-incident. not about the corp-director stuff, but the close relationship to isd.

problem is: this game is somewhat borked atm. ccp killed 0.0 warfare besides the capital fights, coalition is filled with bitterness, don't fight (at least the northern front) but blaming "teh devs" for "h4x". everybody is searching for corruption everywhere. this bad mood kills the atmosphere (at least for me) because you read bitterness everywhere.

don't get me wrong: if this is true, this is another big hit to ccp's reputation. i wonder how much they can take until this game (and ccp) is dead.

OK, so here's what I've gotten from this whole thing:
1. Some RP events are destined for one side to lose
2. ISD has several members in major alliances
3. Supposedly a CCP Dev joined a corporation to gather intel against Goonswarm?

My response:
1. Though a shame, It can't be helped, the RP events are there to further the plot and they can't do so unless they end a certain way
2. Given then number of pilots in ISD and the percentage of players in major alliances, this is a statistic, not a sign of cheating.
3. Considering that devs can determine anything using their abilities, why would someone go through all the trouble to join a player corporation and give himself the role of director just to gather intel? It makes no sense unless CCP Sharkbait has absolutely no intelligence considering what the last scandal caused.

1. Game should be fair. Giving prizes to pre-destined winners is wrong...
2. This wasnt the problem, but that CCP has highranking members in alliances. Should they?
3. Appearently there was a broken POS to be fixed. However I've never seen a GM before that joined the corp to fix a POS. Also goons claim all of their POS worked just fine and didnt petition. The reason this openletter was published was because CCP removed their petitions asking why he had joined their corp and ignored their questions.

Now also consider the points 4. Some people seem to have quick connections and methods to reach CCP. As per MSN . This made it possible for a BoB member to ask a CCP employee to ban an ISD member via MSN. Same employee was present during the second titan death and congratulated BoB the minute the titan died. He promised he had bookmarked the wreck for future reference and permanent wreck. Simply put, he was asked to come there by other means than petitions. How fast do people usually arrive to a scene when you file a petition? I've never seen a dev come... not once, and certainly never seen this dev at other places ingame when BoB isnt around. Tinfoils hat? Maybe.. maybe not.

This is so funny, seeing lots of people crying out their lungs about a GAME and silly as if it were their full life and world, yet when it comes to the real world and all the misery there, probably most dont even care about it.
Fix the real world first(or atleast care/cry about it), then cry about shit that happens in EVE.

(Oh, and the dev/whatever over msn thingie, no biggie, it would be strange if some players and them didnt talk after playing the game since beta and whatnot :P)

Zomg! BoB spiez!

Theirs nothing wrong with people being friends, however a line was crossed when these friendships were abused for in game services.

In reply to anon #8.

1. The world will never be "fixed."
2. You don't know how much "good" those that are complaining do or don't do in their real lives.
3. From my experience people who don't care about injustice in one area (ie - this game) normally don't care about it in others (ie - the real world).

Don't be so quick to judge them. I'm newly back and have read up on a few things like this and while I still don't know what to make of it all yet I can see why people are pissed. But anyway, no point in judging, someone could easily judge you for spending money on a game that you could be giving to the homeless...etc...etc...etc.

i have only one thing left to say...
SQUISH!

First, I'd like to thank you Slyngel for being civil and logical in your arguments...hard to find regarding things like this at times.
I agree that there were definately several breaches of protocol (even if a member of BoB knew a dev/GM they should not have contacted them using out-of-game channels for an in-game issue for accountability's sake. However, given this I do not believe that there was any "cheating" or anything of that nature going on - the petition that CCP Sharkbait responded to was filed on the 6th and the event in question took place on the 9th, and he joined the corporation to reproduce the bug the petitioner experienced.
Unfortunately the best we can do at this point is trust CCP Arkanon and their Internal Affairs division, because I can't trust any major alliance to be neutral in this affair.

IA is in danger of looking like a puppet.
In the Kugu incident IA was used, in this set of incidents IA is investigating - yet Kieron who is the head of ISD and not IA has posted saying that nothing has been found. If this time IA will find nothing about the other allegations and the employee is not sued or makes a statement retracting what he said, then this is strike 2.

How many times can they use IA - which is supposed to be impartial, before the entire community cries "bullshit" and CCP loses face.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't want heads to role in the Kugu incident, but if this time nothing is found, and the next time this happens likewise, then the customers will need a witch-hunt or start cacelling subscriptions. :(

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that one.

The way I look at it, I'm not going to quit the game or anything like that, unless this or another mess affects me and how I play. But anyway, good luck to all who are fighting corruption \o/

o7

--Aertaka

I'm a bit annoyed about this, as a fee-paying customer like all of the rest of you. More, though, by the fact that it's been so widely pushed to digg and slashdot before CCP were able to respond.

By all means, go bleating about it if you don't like the response, but basically a bunch of people have decided to take the allegations at face value and yet again besmirch the name of EVE. If the allegations are found to be false, then clearly there's not going to be the same amount of digging and linking to slashdot of that, is there?

What I'm trying to get at here is that you need to tread very carefully, because one bad word spreads ten times as far as a good word. Yeah, fight corruption, I'm all for that, corruption stinks. But, make sure that when you make a stand, you're making the stand about the right thing.

Of all the things raised in the goonswarm letter, it looks like the only real issue is the fact that BoB seem to have an MSN "hotline" to the powers that be. IA seem to have explained everything else (to my satisfaction, if not for those swept up in the mob mentality). However, to the un-initiated reading this from digg or slashdot, it looks like a stinking pile.

We all know how much research the magazines tend to do on these stories, i.e. slightly less than sweet F-A. Next month, no doubt, magazines will be portraying this as a huge thing when it will have largely been dealt with and forgotten.

In this respect, CCP in my view is entirely justified in conducting the damage limitation exercises that they have been doing.

I don't mean to belittle the RP community by brushing over the tetrimon arc issue. Offering RP, as EVE claims to, where the RP's can actually influence the path of the game, really doesn't allow for fixed events. Whoever wins, wins - and to hell with what was planned if it was the wrong people. But isn't this an old story, which CCP says was dealt with ages ago? For people to be using it as an excuse not to get involved now is a bit lame, IMO. Either you want to be involved in RP, or you don't.

Though perhaps the people saying that were unaware at the time, and in that sense my previous comment about slashdotting old news as the latest gospel truth is already proving true.

Our corp was RP originally, and I can tell you nothing was planned. We made it up as we went along, and being in contact with AM, PIE, and some CVA who were also in the RP, i can tell you they thought they were winning even though they were losing real bad. And what was said about AM, kicking the shit out of star fraction, if its the war im thinking of I was directly involved, and I can tell you no such thing happened. AM ran from SF ever chance they got because they were scared. I once lost a rax to 3 AM ships just so the SF force could arrive and pop a cae for me. Great set of pilots those SF guys, real fun to play with.

Surely ander you are fearfull of CCP banning you outright for your posting of this? Do you not fear the nomanlad of krugsman.com??

if they ban him he'll create another account, thats the thing thy cant ban 14 day trials if you create 30 f em (btw im drunk when writing this so dont mind me)

Look at it this way. A business man (CCP) is accused of murder and corruption. He is hauled in front of a judge and the judege asks him to launch an investigation into his own guilt. He goes away and promises to come back with an unbiased finding. He gets some employees in his own company to look into the issue and compile a report. He reviews the report and makes sure it has the right spin. He comes back to the judge and says, "I can find no evidence whatsoever of my guilt against all accusations". The judge says "Fine. You are not guilty; off you go"

Issue finished. Justice is satisfied.

What bothers me is that the whole ISD volunteer program is not being run well at all. It is unprofessional and in my experience it in not what you know but who you know that counts. I think that there is no co-inceidence that ISD's senior staff is comprised by BoB members. How odd is it that a Senior Goon is only a lowly ISD reporter whereas there is clear evidence of BoB tampering in the affairs of ISD.

CCP needs to clean up ISD as it is being run in a very bad and corrupt manner. To me it seems that ISD is at risk of being disbanded altogether which would be a bad thing for us players. After all, if this hoohar keeps up CCP will be looking for a scape goat and ISD is right up there in the line of fire.

They need to make sure that NO BoB members (dev or otherwise) have direct personal access to senior ISD members and that ISD members remain anonymous to the devs. Only the CCP support managers have any business dealing with ISD at this level. It also means that none of the dev staff can actually be in ISD either except in publicly disclosed roles (eg Kieron).

If I were in IA I would be making reccomendations to that effect in an effort to remove any avenues of conflict of interest and possible corruption.

So we should be lobbying CCP in the forums to reform ISD. EG:
1. Remove all devs from ISD except for support staff.
2. Remove dev access to ISD member identities
3. Initiate proper disciplinary procedures for ISD members
4. CCP Support staff who have access to ISD member information should not be allowed to have normal playing accounts on the live server.
5. RP GM staff should not ever have player accounts
6. Devs with player accounts cannot become involved in RP Events.
7. Devs with player accounts cannot be in senior roles in any Alliance or corp within an Alliance. They should be reminded that their player accounts are there mainly for gameplay testing purposes and not for personal fulfilment.
8. Devs with player accounts should be flagged clearly to to all other dev accounts, including their real identities.
9. All Dev accounts that are currently in BoB should be deleted, regardless of their involvment in the current debarcle. This should be done as a demonstartion of the commitment of CCP to its players.
10. All player members in BoB who are also in the ISD program should have their ISD accounts suspended until they leave BoB or choose to leave the ISD program.
11. All ISD accounts should be recreated with different names to ensure anonymity .


Those are my thoughts anyway.

Fair enough with the list of changes, except why are you only targeting the devs/ISD who are in BoB? Just because they got caught doesn't mean they are the only ones abusing their power. You can't cry about this situation but then propose a solution that only hits one side of the in game community. Preach fairness, but deliver bias? Thats no better than the current situation tbh ;-P

But who is to say that a dev in a high ranking aliance post (BOB or otherwise) has divulged information to ccp that they exist. They just don't mention it work, spawn some isk/BPO's/Ships/Equip in their own personal hangers, or an alt/trial hanger and bingo job's done no-one is the wiser!

While I'm no BoB fan, Goonswarm have made it clear they do not want to play the game, or win it, they want to destroy it. The best way to do it is by things like this.

I'm still undecided over the chain of events, but I think it's important to bear in mind the motive behind these letters and posts.

For one thing, the petition that lead to sharkbait joining darkstar 1 was denied by darkstar 1 members on the eve-o forums, even though CCP has produced proof that the petitions were created.

I still say Billzard should buy out CCP...

kick'em while their down!!

Maybe CCP did something wrong. I honestly don't care.

Goons are doing something much worse. they are actively trying to destroy Eve and they are willing to lie to do it.

Commenting on a year old post but here we go.... :)

I am not giving proof, but I will give you my experience. I can say a few things with something in the realm of 90% certainty:

1) CCP actively desires to have friendly relations with the most powerful alliances in game in order to control the conflict levels. They do not see what they do behind the scenes as 'wrong' since their goal is to create large scale conflict, and that won't happen if the alliances aren't constantly at war, replacing ships, and so on

2) I know for a fact that CCP has planted people into corporations before, through social engineering

3) I know for a fact that CCP and BoB have formed corporations and small alliances that were publicly against BoB, but secretly were manipulated to lose BY BoB. In one case I know of a CEO of an alliance corp that is a BoB higher up.

4) I HIGHLY suspect that CCP is not taking harsher action against macro miners (and such) to provide cover for their OWN operations, through China and other countries, to sell ISK, items and characters, thus making an additional revenue stream for their corporation.

Reason #4 is at the bottom of all the other reasons.. the motivating factor. Basically, CCP is acting like The Fed and Congress rolled up into one entity. I have to say, it's absolutely brilliant.. and absolutely dastardly. It does, however, make everything make some -sense-.

Firstly i believe lookin in this sittuation as an outgamer is going to be more objective...
CCP enabled isk selling via time codes wich means each ship that the players loose will make dollars and euros to ccp's wallet...Creating large scale capital wars is an easier way rather than controlling 35 thousand people and inspecting if they are macromining or not...Eve is a realistic game that makes harder to decide on a war if your alliances logistic capabilities is restrictid.if you dont have money,you dont wanna get involved in a silly war wich can destroy all youve got,and in eve things need time to be replaced.If alliances dont fight each other ccp cant make money.Which means encouraging alliances to fight each other is the most probable way to make money for CCP.BOB's last campaingns callsign was "Max. Damage",in other words "Max. Dollars".That's all