[Labyrrinth]

For those that follow news in the world of MMO gaming, you’ll recall that over the past week there have been rumors of a scandal involving developer sanctioned cheating in EVE Online. The rumors are rumors no more. The Escapist has published a complete investigation, including admissions of guilt from one of the developers, as well as the player who uncovered it all.

From the article, “Over the past few days, news has been trickling out about certain members of the EVE Online development team using their position to give the player corporations (guilds) they belong to an unfair advantage. The story was originally broken by a player who utilized his in-game spy network to listen in on conversations between corporation alliance leaders, looking for intelligence to sell to other alliances, but he stumbled into a controversy that ultimately got him banned from EVE and exposed what could be the most blatant case of developer misconduct in years.”

[Faite]

Ah, this goes on in WOW too, a good friend of mine was fired for it....was not that he was the only one though, just that he was the only one who got caught. High up position too. He is a REALLY good guy, in fact, that was his problem. Nothing really benefited him, just everyone else , he was a good spirit just forgot the rules.

[Ominous]

I wonder how this is going to affect the industry. Perhaps developers will be less likely to play the games they work on.

[Rourke]

Wow....that blows. Even Devs cheat. Bleah. Poo on them for doing that.

It is not a surprise and not a big deal that a dev facilitated cheating players, IMO. It is practically inevitable in any gaming business. What matters is how the company deals with it. In this case, it appears they put on their blinders and chose to try and downplay the issue, and that was a mistake. If there's one thing an MMO company should know, its that the playerbase can be quite ruthless.

[Malak]

This happened a LOT in SWG too on the very server I was on. Only in the form of CSRs that worked for SOE boosting their favored guilds and handing out "G-d modes"!

It was all caught on FRAPS, pictures, etc, and nothing was done do to the CSRs being in relative relation to the developers of the game.

Sucked bad, and I hope this exposure of what was a highly respected MMO (Eve) will set some things straight in the industry.

[Bamilus]

Probably been going for years in at least every MMO. With that many employees you're bound to have at least 1 person who will use their power to give themselves an unfair advantage.

[maevealleine]

Originally Posted by Bamilus

Probably been going for years in at least every MMO. With that many employees you're bound to have at least 1 person who will use their power to give themselves an unfair advantage.

Not suprised at all...and I am not going to let it bother me either

[troldan]

Hell alot of quests had to have had developer help solving in Everquest.
Who the hell would have figured out the wizard epic quest without developer insight into the potion and the guy that turned into that other guy.

[Kates]

I'm sure it probably wont be any different in this game....or in WoW...or in any other game. People are people.

[wanelorm]

Many times, i would see a GM in eq1 powerleveling a friend.. many times completely ignoring the fair conduct rules (kill stealing from my grp). Was quite obvious, watching a lvl 30 character killing in a lvl 60's zone and not taking any damage. I petitioned, was told to mind my own f'ng business, and i found another zone to hunt in.

Sad day..

[Backalley]

No suprise here.

In Everquest on the Prexus server there was a guild called Keepers of the Faith with Verant employees in it. I had people leave their guild and join mine and tell us some of the crap they pulled and saw plenty of it myself.

1) Planes of Power comes out on Tuesday. They are all in Plane of Justice doing the trials with their characters on MONDAY, even their euro players had the expansion. Meanwhile the rest of the people in the game couldn't even zone into POK or buy the expansion.

They didn't finish Monday so I got to see them logging out players inside trials while using a ringer group to beat them. Then those players would log on, loot the mob there and zone out, completing the trial. This was nerfed the next day so nobody else could do it.

All of them were in the next zone earning bonus exp for the next week til some of us, who had to wait in 10 hour lines finally got in. Within a day or two of us being in their they nerfed the zone exp.

2) They logged GM accounts to CR themselves in NTOV. I had ex-members tell me they were present when this happened.

3) Several used show-eq that was supposedly banned by Verant to get the upper hand on races and for raids-in general. I know because I used it also and saw this yet in groups with them as well as watching them during races/raids. It was obvious who had it, if you had it. So on one hand Verant/Sony was saying don't use it but their own employees were.

The list goes on, items named after members of their guild etc. It was disgusting and a major reason why my guild left that server the first chance it got.

Seems like very little is different here. I see some of their members names on items in Vanguard already. While I know this was from people who beta tested raid content, well guess what, they were the ones to do it yet again heh.

It's entirely hypocritical and unfair to all of us who pay money to play and expect a fair and level playing field.

[Roland]

Originally Posted by wanelorm

Many times, i would see a GM in eq1 powerleveling a friend.. many times completely ignoring the fair conduct rules (kill stealing from my grp). Was quite obvious, watching a lvl 30 character killing in a lvl 60's zone and not taking any damage. I petitioned, was told to mind my own f'ng business, and i found another zone to hunt in.

Sad day..

Wow...I would of got a screenshot of THAT reply as well as the toon and bumped it all the way up the chain of command/powers that be.

You can bet your @ss that the "real" directors and producers would not of condoned such behavior. It leaves a bad taste in everyones mouth, people don't like cheating in a competitive game...Especially by GM's or rogue dev's.

My bet is if you'd climbed a bit higher you would of seen some results

But that's just my opinion...sad day indeed.

Lets hope we never see anything like that in VG!

I can't see Brad condoning that, OR sitting on it

Regards & Good Hunting All!

[lifebane]

there were multiple scandals of this sort in Horizons... yeah you know, that game that still clings to life.. the one that was going to have vampirs, demons, angels, etc.... at least it had Dragons that could fly!!

I begin to think that there has been no game that has escaped the taint of that kind of preferential garbage.

[Trystan365]

The real thing that bothered me is that the guy who reported it is the one who got his multiple accounts banned. CCP (the company who owns Eve) did not terminate the employment of the dev (named T20) and genuinely seemed more hacked off that they had to delete their characters than to show some character and fire the people involved. Yes, people..plural. The Eve boards were highly censored, to this date the original thread cannot even be mentioned without the forum mods deleting the post (it is now called "The thread that may not be mentioned"). It was a big cover up from CCP that they got caught with their paws in the honey pot.

I was considering cancelling my account, as I've dabbled in Eve. This was the lynch pin...account closed.

[Trystan365]

Originally Posted by Backalley

Seems like very little is different here. I see some of their members names on items in Vanguard already. While I know this was from people who beta tested raid content, well guess what, they were the ones to do it yet again heh.

Thats called a small thank you from the dev team to the individual beta testers. If you are gonna get your panties in a wad because people beta tested content, it sounds more like a big case of sour grapes.

The two islands near Martok are named after GMs. You wanna rail against that, too?

[Ziegfried Trueblade]

Nothing new here, people are naive to think this never goes on at other companies.

I do think its kind of cruel for the devs to pretend they are just average players when they are anything but. I'd prefer devs just kept themselves at the GM status or whatnot but obviously they want to take part in the world they created.

While it is wrong for them to abuse their power, they have nothing stopping them from doing so unless the playerbase gets outraged and all quits. And thats not going to happen. Maybe a couple of players who got affected by the dev's abuse of power but not much more.

I'm glad I don't take the viewpoint of fairness with MMOs. I mean I still do my fair share of discussion/ranting but when all is said and done its their game not mine.

Bottom line: I just started playing EVE and this isn't gonna make me stop. I'm too jaded to care anymore.

Originally Posted by Backalley

The list goes on, items named after members of their guild etc. It was disgusting and a major reason why my guild left that server the first chance it got.

Seems like very little is different here. I see some of their members names on items in Vanguard already. While I know this was from people who beta tested raid content, well guess what, they were the ones to do it yet again heh.

Wait a minute. Your whole post was about devs cheating and then you throw this part in there. So lets just get this straight here. Are you implying that:
1. Having items named after players who contributed significantly in beta is somehow a form of cheating?
2. That Vanguard developers are cheating right now?

For the first, you'd better explain that leap in logic. And for the second, you better start coming up with some hard facts to back up that claim.

[ChrisFish]

I cancelled my EvE accounts that I have had for around 3-4 years. That hurts, but I am playing Vanguard a lot and my wife plays Vanguard. How can I pass that up?

I am still hoping to build my own small time MMORPG, and I certainly would expect the devs to play. But when they cheat, they need to be dealt with per the rules. t20's characters need to be deleted (not just disabled), the items added needed to be removed, and t20 should either be fired or at least given a play ban of significant amount (like 3 months).

CCP is small enough that this backlash may affect them. SOE is way too huge I think. I can only hope that if it happens here, it gets dealt with.

[Suraknar]

Originally Posted by ChrisFish

I cancelled my EvE accounts that I have had for around 3-4 years. That hurts, but I am playing Vanguard a lot and my wife plays Vanguard. How can I pass that up?

I am still hoping to build my own small time MMORPG, and I certainly would expect the devs to play. But when they cheat, they need to be dealt with per the rules. t20's characters need to be deleted (not just disabled), the items added needed to be removed, and t20 should either be fired or at least given a play ban of significant amount (like 3 months).

CCP is small enough that this backlash may affect them. SOE is way too huge I think. I can only hope that if it happens here, it gets dealt with.

GM, Seer and councellor scandals have been around for as log as MMO's exist, I remember some from the days in Ultima Online.

It is in human nature to be good but some people are too good and are simply taken advantage of by others.

The irony of all this is actually thepeople that put effort in taking advantage of the goodness of others, in an effort to perpetuate their own disillusions of "advantages" with a bunch of bits and bytes part of a server somewhere that may or may not exist in the future or become totally meanigless.

Talk about being in love with one's own Moody Pixels :P