The EVE that CCP sells is a sandbox game where you can do anything. They by no means have ever, anywhere, sold a game where you can go on stage in their live event and use your limelight time to point and laugh at other players, let alone call them names and incite other players to harass them in game to drive them to suicide. They also do have rules in place about what is acceptable language (though it does seem they do not have the resources and/or interest to enforce those). That they let it go as far as actual reference to driving someone to death before they intervened is what should surprise people here - not that they did eventually do something.
A sandbox is for building whatever you want and playing whatever games you like. There is no fixed plot you have to use and you can use the toys provided the way you like. But if you start calling other kids names and throwing the sand in their eyes, a kindergarten teacher is going to come and pick you up and put you on the timeout bench, and no amount of kicking and screaming about how it was your sand will save you. The only thing left to do at that point is to grow up and realize that despite having the freedom to play you do not have the freedom to bully.
Darth Gustav wrote:First of all, did you see the names of the pilots singing their respective national anthems to the glee and delight of every nerd in Reykjav+¡k? Do you think CCP was laughing too? Because it sure looked like it. Or how about the slide which was vetted where an Eve player hinted at symptoms of mental instability and possible suicide? Do you think they let that go up on the screen because they want Eve to be Hello Kitty Online?
Were IPOL and the local police dispatched to this "victim's" home, as per CCP policy, when they became aware of his purported condition? Was anything done for nearly a week after this "reprehensible offense?"
Is it possible, however unlikely, that even in a state of drunken stupor Mittens was being allegorical? Is it remotely conceivable that he didn't genuinely want this person to die?
Did everybody in the presentation have their headsets on, laptops ready to blow this dude up and supposedly verify the IRL kill? Or were they at a location where this was unfeasible?
Did CCP, a tech-savvy firm with a historical penchant for cramming both of their feet in their mouth and going "nom nom nom" with regard to bad press think, even for a second, that broadcasting drunks for profit with no delay might not be a good idea? Did anybody at fanfest sign a waiver of their rights to free speech or even receive a verbal warning pertaining to the Q&A session and its potential consequences in-and-out-of game before the panel?
I just wonder if you can clear some of this up for we disenfranchised, since you obviously have a pretty firm grasp of what CCP has and has not done for the community that basically props up Iceland's entire economy.