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Role Playing (Games)

Eve Online to Elect Player Oversight Group 104

Posted by Zonk from the self-governance-is-the-best-kind dept.
StCredZero writes "The New York Times is reporting on plans by EVE Online developer CCP to open itself up to independent oversight. In response to the recent allegations of misconduct, they are proposing a system of 'nine player-overseers who will act as ombudsmen for the game's subscribers. The company says it will hold the elections in the fall.' Systems will be put into the game to support this ombudsmen status, making this (effectively) a player-run world governance system."
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Eve Online to Elect Player Oversight Group More

Eve Online to Elect Player Oversight Group

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  • Never knew an MMO would try to represent real-life politics so faithfully.
    • Or else these player representatives would cry foul and get a nod and a "yeah, yeah, whatever" from the "government".
      • Obligatory Soviet Russia revefence...

        In EVE-Online, players control YOU ! ...well, audit, whatever, same thing ;)

  • Whoa. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:21PM (#19425895) Homepage
    I'm pretty intrigued by this. Of course there's tons of details to be worked out. How long is each player's term? What kind of powers will this committee have over the developers? How will the elections be handled to avoid one large entity from swinging elections the way they want them to go? Will be watching this one to see how it unfolds, especially as a player of EVE.

    One thing's for sure, I haven't heard of this happening anywhere before (in terms of gaming). I wonder how much of a precedent this sets for MMOs?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anxarcule ( 884937 )
      I doubt the player council will have any real powers. This is just going to be a recipe for more drama, and subsequently more publicity for the game. Which is fine, since people love drama, and drama is a main reason why people still continue to play an online multiplayer game.
    • I know the reason I play eve is that anything can happen. Other MMOs are pretty streamlined, but Eve's nature and player base allow for some interesting stories. It also helps that the average age of the players is much higher than that of MMOs like WoW.
    • It's not going to set any precedent - it's an outrageously stupid idea. It does absolutely nothing, because the people who are crazy enough to believe in the existing tinfoil-hattery menagerie of half-truths and no-truths about corruption can easily extend that same insanity to whoever is doing 'oversight'.

      CCP is screwing themselves by even giving legitimacy to the entire thing. In the end, it will just be one more group which can be complained about - with only 9 winners, the 90% of the population which

  • Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by m0rph3us0 ( 549631 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:23PM (#19425925)
    Who will watch the ombudsmen?
    • Metaombudsmen. It's ombudsmen all the way down.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 )
      Oh, there'll be another election in a year for "supervisors of balance", whose primary role will be to keep an eye on their activity.

      A year later, we'll get "comtrollers" who'll check those supervisors.

      And in three or four years, every player will have some kinda fancy surveillance title and complain that there's not enough control...
    • Not to worry - the ombudsmen will explain that they watch out for each other.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by fitten ( 521191 )
      I haven't seen much detail as to what they'll be watching anyway. Will they be able to effectively do anything at all? Will they be technical enough to examine logs and databases? Will that even matter since someone with the approproiate skills/access can alter those anyway? What will the makeup of the group be? Having them all from BoB, for example, will accomplish nothing most likely and will not foster any good PR.

    • Who will watch the ombudsmen?
      Make them ombudswomen with live webcams and the question answers itself.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Elsan ( 914644 )
      But... Who will watch the ombudsmen who watch the ombudsmen?

  • Great idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Reason58 ( 775044 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:24PM (#19425929)
    Lord knows if you can't trust your own paid employees to not cheat then you can certainly trust anonymous player volunteers.
    • They'll hardly be anonymous, if the player-base is electing them.

      • Re:Great idea (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Reason58 ( 775044 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:31PM (#19426021)
        If your only contact with someone is through the internet then they are anonymous for all intents and purposes. Doubly so if all your contact is through a video game.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ponos ( 122721 )

          If your only contact with someone is through the internet then they are anonymous for all intents and purposes. Doubly so if all your contact is through a video game.

          You obviously haven't spend enough time in MMO games. Getting the fame and popularity necessary to achieve such a goal (being elected by other players) requires a VERY significant investment in time and effort. Simply put, the person in question obviously cares and is attached to his online avatar so much that losing his status would be an i

    • It doesn't matter how anonymous or not-anonymous they are. Unless the playerbase of Eve can manage to actually assess the value of each candidate based on issue positions and ability, this "public election" will become a popularity contest.

      Now, I haven't played Eve and I don't know how the playerbase is distributed. But with the scale of BoB's influence and memberbase, can the players of Eve hope for a fair election? Or will we end up with a government controlled by the major corporations?

      Hm... that l

  • Good PR, but pretty much useless (Score:3, Interesting)

    by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:27PM (#19425973)
    Basically what, they are supposed to fly over for a few days every xth month and 'audit' the game/company?

    What would be the point in that? They can't discover anything serious anyway. You'd need good insider and developer knowledge and months. Apart from that they might act as conduits for reporting on gameplay issues and bugs, but it'd be better accomplished by CCP reading their own forums...

  • Glorified P.R. visit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaseM ( 746707 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:28PM (#19425979)
    "I envision this council being made up of nine members selected by the players themselves, where you announce your candidacy, and if you win the election, they come here to Iceland, and they can look at every nook and cranny and get to see that we are here to run this company on a professional basis," said Mr. Petursson, CCP's chief executive. "They can see that we did not make this game to win it."

    Wait...are they going to be checking for roaches in the cafeteria or something? Looking in "every nook and cranny" means looking at source code, checking logs on home computers, and reading in-game chat logs. i.e. it's not possible. The problem is a social one, not necessarily a technical one. Even if in-game exploits and "god commands" were removed, the extra information from being an employee is still enough to tip the game in your corp's favor.

    So "The 9" are going to go for what amounts to a P.R. visit so that CCP can wash its hands of the mess and say "See? I told you we were a fine, upstanding company! Just look at how clean our cubicles are!"
    • Well, them saying that isn't enough for some people in the EVE community. So why not do this? I mean honestly, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. So they might as well take the high ground.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CaseM ( 746707 )
        If you really want people to believe you're "sorry" and you've cleaned up your act, then fire a few people. Of coure everyone knows that the firings are mostly P.R. maneuvers, too, but at least they seem more dramatic than this farce of an oversight committee.
        • You probably haven't kept up on the full details of the issue (if you have an EVE account, consider reading the Player News Center for the full story). At any rate, CCP released a report of their own investigation into the issue explaining their actions. The tinfoil hat crowd of course cried foul, and that's probably how we ended up with this whole business.

          Assuming they were in the right (and to be honest it seems perfectly logical given their explanations of what went on), then why fire anyone?

          • Re:Glorified P.R. visit (Score:4, Interesting)

            by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:46PM (#19426207)
            You mean the explanation by CCP that completely left out the part (and in my opinion main allegation) where a developer from the database group went around and started questioning and telling the ISD member (volunteer) what to do?

            It is easy to debunk the patently false accusations and then try to use that as proof by association to make it appear as the rest of the allegations are bunk too.

            For some reason the developer in question no longer has a character. Shiny clean eh? I don't suppose it is tinfoil to be just a bit skeptical of a company's PR claims. The internal affairs division completely, utterly failed because their statement read like a corporate press release instead of the report from a supposedly independent review board.

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by cowscows ( 103644 )


            There was that whole previous cheating issue, in which case CCP initially told us how it was all a big misunderstanding and it could never happen. Then a few days later, oops looks like it did really happen. The consequences for the guilty parties in that case were insignificant.

            Pardon us if we don't take CCP at their word after that. They lost any benefit of the doubt with that performance, and their explanation this time around all but ignored some of the more serious accusations and focused on an issue t
    • Say what you will about the EVE folks, at least they don't blatantly cheat in front of everyone's eyes, like those bastards at Blizzard did [wowinsider.com].

  • The company should be able to do this... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rbanzai ( 596355 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:36PM (#19426083)
    I know some might herald this as proof of progress, but I believe this is proof of CCP's utter failure to manage this problem. This should be completely unnecessary, but they've dug themselves such a hole by continually lying about their internal responses.

    Their inability to control their own employees is pathetic. I've played alot of online games, (AO, EQ, SWG, CoH, LotrO, DDO) and have never seen a need for something like this.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by phildawg ( 1104325 )
      With your extensive resume... I don't see EVE listed.

      I should probably let you know now that there is a saying among fellow EVE players... All MMOs before and after EVE are just the training grounds for the real MMO, Eve Online.

      EVE is way beyond the grindfest of the hardcore EQ days. We are talking about a game that has PVP wars where if the victors were to sell their spoils on ebay, we would be talking about 100,000 dollars... We are talking about ships that if blown up are worth 5-10,000 dollars to replac
      • As the gameplay of EVE online was never a point of contention at any time in the article itself OR the discussion so far. We are talking about their administrators, and EVE's are corrupt beyond belief compared to pretty much any previous MMO game, with the possible exception of Ultima Online.
        • I think Eve Online is just so different from what you or I might consider an MMO... Eve really has done a lot of innovation in the MMO field. It's hard to compare them to other MMOs. In most MMOs, I doubt people even have the means or will to find the corruption. It just doesn't matter as much there as it does in EVE. Another point would be to say this is really silly isn't much different than SOE's community summits. Where they pay everything for community leaders, major guild leaders, etc. to come out to

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by vux984 ( 928602 )
            Where they pay everything for community leaders, major guild leaders, etc. to come out to San Diego and talk to them about the direction of the MMO. I know that have done this for EQ1 and EQ2.

            Yeah, that was productive. Lets take the people who play 20 hours a day and ask them about the direction the game should take. Big surprise their laundry list of wants were about as out of touch with the majority of players as you could possibly get.

            Its the accounts that log in 1-3 times a week that are your bread and

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by StewedSquirrel ( 574170 )
          Meh.

          One of the issues is likely the uniqueness of it all.

          it would be simply silly for a developer to seed some in-game item so that one guild on ONE shard could have some advantage.

          The simple fact that the game is full of truely "unique" items, concepts, areas, etc.... that's what makes it prone to this. It has nothing to do with the developers or whatever.

          If some dev on WoW sees the "Magical Uuber Magic Sword" for his buddy, who notices? After all, didn't you hear about that guy on server #422 who had

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rbanzai ( 596355 )
        My apologies, I played EvE for months, just left it off my list. :) //Gallente all the way mo-fos!
      • I think you might be starting to lose your grip on reality. Someone mentions EVE and you immediately launch into an elitist rant about how EVE is the most awesome game ever and anyone who doesn't spend all their free time playing it should move to a third world country because they don't "embrace technology."

        The post you were replying to didn't have anything to do with EVE as a game.
    • I have to agree. Why can't they just have internal oversight? This just sounds like a gimmick (Elected players won't really have any power) or a way to save money by not having to hire people.
      • Every MMO I've played has had very strict internal oversight on its GMs and devs. They can't use their GM account to play non-GM characters. They can't play with their normal player account on servers that they have GM duties on (I'm aware that wouldn't work with EVE, though). When a "canon character" is needed for an event, there's a sign-out and approval process, and the people who are allowed access to such characters are limited. Log audits of GM abilities are performed periodically to make sure that pe
        • There already are strong internal controls, but the people who insist on nailing themselves to the cross to protest a lack of INTERNET JUSTICE simply refuse to believe anything released by an internal audit. More amusing are the denials that they even exist because if they existed then CCP would be trustworthy but I don't trust CCP so they dont exist because if they existed then CCP would be trustworthy... its a merry-go-round of people martyring themselves over perceived injustices in an internet spaceship

  • Wow talk about needing a life (Score:3, Insightful)

    by svendsen ( 1029716 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:37PM (#19426095)
    Seriously how screwed up can you be if you take a game this seriously. This isn't life or death, this is luxury entertainment. You pay X per month and if you aren't happy you go elsewhere. It is no different then if you play a sort, take dance lessons, martial arts whatever.

    So these 9 people will have oversight? So they can see all source code, all chat logs, all everything anytime? Will the company pay for them to go there? Unless they are rich the avg. person will not be able to do this.

    May I suggest a good game of chess?
    • I guess your list of MMOs would be summed up with just about WoW, many alts (all below lvl38), and you have never raided in WoW.
      • Actually number of MMOs I have played is ZERO. And what difference does it make if its an MMO, single player, whatever. Video games are luxury entertainment, they do not do anything but entertain. If you are paying for entertainment which no longer entertains you then you need to take a step back and say why am I wasting my time and oney on this?

        If you don't like this MMO, go to another one or look for anew hobby. The amount of time people waste on this is beyond me.

    • Seriously how screwed up can you be if you take a game this seriously. This isn't life or death, this is luxury entertainment. You pay X per month and if you aren't happy you go elsewhere. It is no different then if you play a sort, take dance lessons, martial arts whatever.

      So these 9 people will have oversight? So they can see all source code, all chat logs, all everything anytime? Will the company pay for them to go there? Unless they are rich the avg. person will not be able to do this.

      May I suggest a good game of chess?

      How about soccer? We know the fans are able to take their footie with a degree of restraint and civility. And golf, we know people are very moderate in that regard. They certainly don't spend thousands of dollars on instructionals, equipment, club memberships, golf vacations, or spent crazy stupid money to live in golf communities. These people keep it real, not like those fucking no-life gamers. *sarcasm off*

      Honestly, I consider all of the examples to be a bit off, it's just that those are socially accept

      • Yea the world is so fooked up, having a life means you have to do something outside which is not allowed to involve electronics. I say move to Africa bitches.
    • You're right. We measly players couldn't possibly contribute anything positive. Why even try to improve a game when it's so much easier to just walk away? Why not just abandon something that many of us have enjoyed for months/years over some small problems?

      CCP should be taking this stuff very seriously because this game is the base of their existence as a company. Players can be concerned and want to help without considering it a life or death situation. The universe of EvE, in many ways, has been built in

  • Let's see how this will run (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:38PM (#19426103)
    Ok, so players should "elect" their representatives. How is this done? Most likely on a "one vote per account" system.

    Who will run for it? Probably many, but who has a chance? Well, to have a chance, you'd have to be known. Who'd cast his vote on someone he doesn't know? Who do you know? The people from your corp, or alliance.

    So who has a chance to get the most votes? People from the largest alliances, of course. And ... weren't they the ones accused of cheating?
    • There are a number of large alliances, many of which are quite hostile towards each other. But no one side is so much bigger than the rest that they could completely rush the voting and run the table. I'd expect that the major alliances will each choose a candidate or two for their members to vote for, and those candidates would be all but guaranteed to win a spot.

      The smaller alliances, not to be insulting or anything, most of them don't interact at the level where the cheating would make much of a differen
      • So the "arbitrators" are going to be the "lawyers" of the sides involved? Could it be that they can hardly be impartial?

        So when A of alliance B is under suspect of cheating, and C of alliance D (which happens to be in bitter war with B) comes to see whether the allegations are true, what outcome do you expect? Worse, is the "judgement" in any way going to settle the issue?

        I'd rather predict that C will try to see any kind of hint as a proof of guilt and try to dig up as much dirt as he can. He'll make it pu
        • No, but at least this way all the interested parties can sit in one room and get CCP's take on it in person. CCP has done a completely awful job at communicating with the players over these issues, so even if they do care and take it seriously it sure sounds like they don't when you read their forum posts and such.

          If nothing else, having a few people from the opposing sides being able to see each other and losing some of the anonymity that the game and the forums provide might allow a little bit of reasonab
  • Eve's parent company, merged with White Wolf, are confirmed to be working on a World of Darkness MMO game. Could this be a testbed for a system where players represent "Princes" with actual power over the governance of the new game?
  • ...who gets to be the Jack Abramoff of EVE? :P

  • Spontantious thought (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zironic ( 1112127 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:49PM (#19426265)
    Won't this just turn into a popularity contest?

    Normally an ombudsman is appointed by the government/company to represent the interests of the citizens/customers. Never heard of anyone getting elected as ombudsman before.

    They're normally supposed to be professionals so they can pursue issues that the normal citizen don't have the knowledge/resources to do.

    Also aren't ombudsmen normally meant to represent the interests of the persons they represent and not some kind of watch force?

    • Won't this just turn into a popularity contest?
      Isn't that what elections are?

      Socrates realized this failing of democracy 2500 years ago. We elect the people best at talking about the issues, not those who are best at dealing with them.
    • To some extent it will happen though alliances that seriously want to be part of this audit so they feel safe to put away their tin foil hats will stand behind some one they trust to go there and look in person. Depending on the power and sway that alliance has their man will end up in the group. It'll be a terrible council if it is given any real power but just being able to talk directly to CCP and voice concerns will solve a lot of problems. Right now they are just not approachable and with such a ser

  • Are They "Employed"? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:52PM (#19426317) Homepage Journal
    I recall that a few year back there was a lawsuit claiming that volunteer helpers in Ultima Online were actually working for the company and should therefore be paid. The helpers had some extra powers and support from the company. The court agreed, which led to the dismantling of the helper program and a fairly large chunk of cash for the plaintiff.

    Could a similar situation arise from these positions or will the company treat them like paid support employees once they're elected? And if they're employees they'd hardly be independent oversight, would they?

    • I recall that a few year back there was a lawsuit claiming that volunteer helpers in Ultima Online were actually working for the company and should therefore be paid.

      Maybe I'm wrong here, but why was this given the time of day in court? If I "volunteer" to do something, say help build a house for a charity, what is the justification that I should be compensated for my time? The whole point of volunteering is knowing that you will be a part of something and you are investing your time for free.

      Unless the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Greyfox ( 87712 )
        A little more information here: http://womengamers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=211 0 &sid=92bc68047fee68b9ac2a2096cfe7cdc6 [womengamers.com]

        It would seem that a for-profit company can not technically have volunteers. If people are doing work for a for-profit company the company is obliged to pay them. Maybe that's why Slashdot never accepts my story submissions...

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by kushboy ( 233801 )
        Not sure of the facts, but I know, at least with Asheron's Call, the 'auditors' (were they called Advocates? I know they had pretty cool shields) received free subscription to the game. A $10 value. Not sure, but that might have been the problem. They were being "hired" for $10 a month... And I guess that means they weren't volunteers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hurfy ( 735314 )
      I was wondering the same thing.

      Asheron's Call dismantled their in-game assistance after the ruling on UO :(

      Seems like they would be defined as auditors, how many auditors work for free? Then we are back to employees which was the problem in the first place....

      Of course the whole elected thing was brought up. The only way to get elected would be to be well-known which has zero relationship to good auditing skills or honesty ;(

      Naturally i have no solution that is better than the current lip-service :)
      • Well, except for a government, I find it hard to believe that anybody would do auditing without getting paid for it. And I don't see anybody potentially paying for an audit of EvE besides CCP. But there doesn't have to be a conflict of interest. If CCP gave an outside auditing company money upfront, where their payment was guaranteed and not in any way dependent on their final results, then impartiality could be maintained.

        Of course, selecting from the player base, whether you pay them or not, doesn't reall

  • A Game (Score:2, Insightful)

    by colganc ( 581174 )
    It's a game. CCP is putting even more burden on their customers. Paying customers. CCP should be taking care of this not their paying customers. CCP provides a services to their customers and is paid to do so. The customers should not be responsible for making sure CCP doesn't cheat. I quit. I cancelled my two accounts. This won't bring me back.

  • GIVE ME LIBERTY or GIVE ME SOCIAL CLIQUE (Score:3, Insightful)

    by neuraljazz ( 307431 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @01:57PM (#19426395) Homepage
    When in the Course of virtual non-events, it becomes necessary for one whiners to dissolve the factional bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the computer program, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Internet and of EULA entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of whiners requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Toons are enforced as equals, that they are endowed, by their User, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Money, and the pursuit of Headshots.

    That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Toons, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Whiners to whine to technical support, and to institute new Social Clique, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their MMO addiction.

    NO SUBSCRIPTION WITHOUT WHINER INTERFERENCE!

    / If you don't like the game you're playing, then quit // If you believe people are cheating, then quit /// Personally, the player's sense of entitlement to run the game is the biggest problem with MMOs today
    • That's a crappy way of looking at things. If you don't like the way something is going, then just turn your head and walk away?

      A lot of people enjoy EvE for what it has been, and what it could be. As players, we're not only doing ourselves a favor, but we're also doing CCP a favor by making suggestions that we feel would increase our enjoyment of the game and convince us to keep sending them money for our subscriptions. It's CCP's job to digest those suggestions, separate the good from the bad, the practica
  • This is just a PR move. Anyone with any MMO experience will tell you this "oversight group" will simply end up being dominated by a clique of the most powerful players in the game. The most popular players, the leaders of the most powerful guilds/clans/corps and the richest players will all take the top seats and nothing will ever get done. Corruption will run rampant and eventually the users are going to get fed up and ANOTHER scandal will eventually be revealed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by i7dude ( 473077 )
      This is just a PR move. Anyone with any MMO experience will tell you this "oversight group" will simply end up being dominated by a clique of the most powerful players in the game. The most popular players, the leaders of the most powerful guilds/clans/corps and the richest players will all take the top seats and nothing will ever get done. Corruption will run rampant and eventually the users are going to get fed up and ANOTHER scandal will eventually be revealed.

      Man, its amazing how realistic games are the
    • When I heard of this, I immediately thought of this old horrible movie.

      Essentially you have a group of people who provide oversight that act as a small cabal. And they violate the #1 rule - they play at the same time.

      How about this CCP? Clean up the way you run things and stop trying to put a band-aid on it.

  • This is silly (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jaeph ( 710098 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @02:46PM (#19427241)
    After the first incident, the company should have forbidden the developers from playing on the main server (have fun on test).

    I think the cost of having the developers playing the main game well outweigh the benefit.

    -Jeff

  • The fact alone that they are considering this says enough already about the confidence in their own management system.

    I gave EVE a go with a trial account, was toying with the idea to ditch WoW and go full on with EVE, but now....... Only when hell freezes over I'm gonna send my cash to a company that asks the public to keep an eye out for corrupt staffmembers.

  • The only way out of this mess... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CharonX ( 522492 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @03:01PM (#19427479) Journal
    Well, CCP has selected the only reasonable way out of this mess - whether the latest allegations had a foundation of truth or not, their clumsy handeling of the last incident had already sufficiently tarnished their reputation so that those new allegations further damaged it - some doubt would always remain.
    By installing a player oversight they take important steps to restore player faith in them - as the article said, especially in online games, the perception of reality is the reality.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by colganc ( 581174 )
      My perception is nothing is truly changing. Give the "oversight" group a say in the punishment and then you might have something effective. If the oversight group has no power except to show what we already know (CCP interfers unfairly in the game) there won't be a change. Since there is no power vested in the group perception won't change. This is just another feel good move by CCP.
      • Actually, I don't think CCP is "bad" per se. Their (CCP) biggest problem seems to be they don't seem to be interested in adding checks in game to look for, avoid and/or catch individual devs that go "bad".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by balthan ( 130165 )
      No, the only reasonable way out of this mess is to ban developers from playing on the main server. CCP refuses to do that so there will always be a conflict of interest.
  • So the "9" will be voted in via Elections...

    There will be no "voter" intimidation?
    "Vote for Pedro or we will nuke your planet from orbit."

    Would not the group of players who have been accused of being in on the cheating be the ones most likely the ones who will be voted in? From what I read they are very large in numbers and hold vast resources.

    How about outright fraud will tallying the votes?

    I do not play this game. But from all that I have read there is an inherent issue of reduced credibility.

    What gets me
    • Band of Brothers (BoB) doesn't outnumber everyone else. BoB plus their allies are just about at parity with the resistance. But all of these folks won't vote monolithically for BoB's candidates.

      No one lives on planets in Eve (yet). If you are really determined, even the most powerful alliance in 0.0 space can't keep you from conducting operations and having fun. At most, they can lock you out of a given region of 0.0 space.

  • the whitsleblower (Score:3, Insightful)

    by crabpeople ( 720852 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @03:43PM (#19428201) Journal
    Did they even unban that guy who discovered this in the first place? Let him be the ombudsman!

    But I guess its better than nothing. I love how the bob slime claims that they will take over the entire galaxy. Over my frozen corpse they will.

  • Winterblink for president! http://www.winterblink.com/wda/ [winterblink.com]

  • CCP amazes me (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brkello ( 642429 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @03:59PM (#19428515)
    This is the stupidest idea I have ever seen. The elected officials are just going to be the ones that are already buddy buddy with CCP as they belong to the larest orginization. They are just giving more people power to abuse the system. I agree with others on here...this is all come about because their complete incompetance to managing their staff and dealing with the people who abuse powers in the game.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by colganc ( 581174 )
      I didn't see that the group would have any extra powers. They only get to view what's happening.
    • You must be brought up on the US style two-party system where the two parties are practically identical, vs. the kind we have in many european countries.

      BoB certainly will get more people in that any other alliance, yet you still end up with a significant number of people with other alliances.
  • As long as the staff is involved with the corporations the hanky panky will never end. I understand that playing the game is necessary to test things out and see that everything is working but how are people supposed to trust the developers when the devs have 3-4 year old characters in the corporations. PS. Can I get the Hulk now or I'll cry harder than the goons.

  • You know what, I don't care if this falls into a heap; at least their trying something. They aren't as big a company as someone like Blizzard so they have to think a bit harder about solving problems with less.

    What I find bitterly ironic is the same people on Slashdot who will give Open Source Software movement a chance will also love paying out on CCP. When compared to a company like Blizzard, they must have to work damn hard to stay afloat. Personally I'll stick with them purely because I want to see wh

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