Originally by: Amiable Quinn

---

Edited by: Amiable Quinn on 31/01/2007 18:53:34

Originally by: kieron

---

Anyone saying the team should not be playing the game is mistaken. It is simply not possible to develop EVE without participating in all aspects of the game, something that cannot be done on Singularity or an internal server.

---

If that is CCP's attitude, then the community should just get used to this kind of thing happening over and over again.

The real problem is the lack of transparency. Stock brokers, for example, can buy and trade stock but they need to publicly disclose those sales to prevent insider trading. In EvE there is no public disclosure, we just have to take it on CCP's word that our benevolent overlords are not stacking the deck against Joe player.

I'm sorry, but I do not trust our benevolent overlords. It is human nature to seek advantage, especially in hard-core corps/clans like BoB where there is a pretty strict minimum online requirement to remain active (I imagine). There needs to be strict and open control mechanisms to insure this doesn't happen.

Devs need to tell us:

1. What the rules are for Dev accounts.
- Can they own T2 BPO's?
- Can they be fleet commanders in large alliances?
- Are they allowed to have multiple accounts?
- Do they participate in any espionage?

2. How are Dev accounts monitored to insure they are not gaining unfair advantage?

3. How are Dev accounts punished if malfeasance is discovered? Are players re-imbursed for losses against Dev accounts?

4. How are suspicious incidents handled? Eg. A few weeks before cargo container blueprints are upgraded an alt account mysteriously decides try to buy as many of those blueprints as possible.

You may need to play the game to develop it, but you need to provide a mechanism so that the community feels there is proper oversight.

You may think this is silly, but this is the kind of thing that makes it into the gaming press, and even the real-world press if it gets bad enough. Regardless of the mechanism of how this information was discovered, it is out there now and CCP has to deal with it.

---