Arti - Slashdot User

Submission + - CCP Speaks on Allegations of Dev Misconduct in Eve

Submitted by Arti on Wednesday February 07, 2007 @03:28AM

Arti writes: Last week the hacker spoke, raising questions for many about how game companies should deal with "out of game" tactics. What about the game companies themselves? The man behind Kugutsumen.com alleged that CCP employees had been involved too intimately with the game's top alliance, Band of Brothers (who, ironically, have publicly described themselves as "omnipotence itself"). These claims were made based on posts apparently hacked from the alliance's private forums. CCP promised to look into the allegations. Now they report in a post that many players say is inadequate and does nothing to address a crisis of confidence in CCP's oversight of its employees. Developers need to understand the games they make, and deserve to enjoy them, but how far? And what should a company do when an issue like this pits it against some of its own customers?

Submission + - Taking MMOs OOG

Submitted by Arti on Tuesday January 30, 2007 @08:37PM

Arti writes: Eve Online is famous for hosting the world's first virtual IPO, and also for its Byzantine "meta game", in which players create fake characters and accounts to infiltrate each other's organisations for intelligence, theft or sabotage. More recently the game has seen the rise of Kugutsumen an intel blog whose creator has been accused of using real-world hacks to obtain secret information from other player forums and private messages. Some players are up in arms at the use of such out-of-game tactics. On the other hand Kugutsumen claims these techniques have uncovered evidence of corruption. Quite aside from the legal ramifications of attacking other people's web forums, should game companies tolerate forms of "play" that involve out of game illegality? Should they attempt to monitor and punish these kinds of activity using sanctions in-game, where the company writes the rules?

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