Troubadour
Slacker Industries
Exuro Mortis
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Posted - 2007.07.10 22:01:00 -
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I would not be surprised if CCP did end up taking some sort of legal action. What the goons did was malicious, premeditated, and targeted. It was aimed at trying to erase the credibility of CCP, a company whose business depends on it's customers trusting them to maintain their virtual world and remain unbiased in all in game political events. It would be one thing if these allegations were factual, or even real evidence of any bias or malicious behavior on the part of CCP employees, but they weren't. Looking at that long-winded "open-letter", there is nothing more then some implied bias and a sob story from some guy who got booted off ISD for what he thinks was a BoB guy being buddy buddy with a dev. The letter was designed not to show any truth, but just to make CCP look as bad as possible.
Why? Perhaps frustration from in game losses. Resentment over losing to BoB and the perceived game-abusing relationship between them and developers. It's funny that now, with the new post-patch sov mechanics and making offensive sov wars much harder for BoB and GS having some success holding them off, goons are not as quick to jump on the "OMG CCP AND BOB HAX US!!11" bandwagon. Anyway, there was plenty of motivation for this kind of attack, and forum raids and disinformation campaigns are something goons are familiar with. It doesn't matter if the allegations are true or not, damage was done. For many people in the gaming community, this story may of been the first time they heard of CCP and EVE-Online. A developer cheating or showing bias in it's MMO to one group over another is a big deal and made many gaming, computer, and even mainstream news outlets. I had a RL friend (who plays eq2, yick)call me up a few days after this "open letter" went out asking me, "Hey don't you play eve? What's up I heard the company that runs it is cheating or something." Forever will CCP and EVE be tainted in the minds of a lot of these people. It's much easier for people to buy into and keep believing outrageous lies then boring truths.
Anyway it turns out that all of the allegations of misconduct on the part of CCP were not true and the former-ISD had already been in question for previous events prior to his bumping incident. In the official GOON response to CCP's debunking of their claims, they have this:
 Quote:
What is disliked about the game is the perceived bias in the game. Even if no bias is present the actions of your developers and of various community members creates the perception of bias and it is this perception that you need to correct.
No, they really don't. Cooking up disinformation campaigns and imagery and then turning around and then going "Everyone thinks you are biased CCP, what are you going to do about it?" is exactly what was done. As all of the allegations were false and aimed to harm CCP's public image, which it did in a very demonstrative way, it fits the legal definition of slander as well.
I think that in the future, goons should be more careful about their actions.
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