In  a classic ragefit, a player biomasses his character(s) and has his assets worth 317 billion ISK equivalent to ~600 PLEX (30 day game time codes) or over EUR 10,000 siezed when faced with botting charges. Unfortunately he manages to transfer it all to a newbie training corporation (EVE University) before leaving, leaving them with all the problems.

This may seem extreme, but for the guys in the security team its just another day at the office.

At the end of the day, these are first world problems but you can always dive a bit deeper into the case. And lets do that!

In this forum post by a CSM Member, a few reasons as to why one should perhaps as a CSM member start to question that there is congruency in the banning/warning process and if security measures are indeed in place for all players. However, bear in mind that petitions are closed for privacy reasons and can not ever be shared with other parties. Assuming foul play because employees refuse to disclose personal information is not only irrelevant but also bordering on ignorance.

Process of Escalations

Normally in bigger corporations with some form of service department, you will have a department or team consisting of maybe 5-10 people, and then a team leader that can be used for escalations. Sometimes a head of several groups can be used, provided that the person has proper insight and isn’t actually hired for other skills that are more relevant for the position. You should always be able to escalate cases to a higher positioned person, ultimately ending with the CEO – but this is exceptionally rare. Often it will actully stop at 1st or 2nd escalation because those are the persons with the knowledge in that particular field.

Personally, I would never ask for something to be escalated to a CEO because more often than not, they actually don’t get involved and wouldn’t know a bent pipe from a banana (no offense).

So it seems like that the escalation route has a good and reasonable route (the team want members that have insight to review the cases, so naturally it would be one from the team that is escalated to – not just one with a higher position).

 

Privacy Policy

Due to the requirements to protect the privacy of the players making petitions, there is very little that can actually be revealed about the cases. In fact, you will almost never get information about other players petitions whether you feel entitled to or not because getting that kind of information means the person providing them is violating the other persons privacy. This can actually be an offense in some countries that are protective of their citizens and with CCP – also I am sure it is grounds for dismissal within CCP.

This is the reason there is Internal Affairs division as well, to protect the players and employees from misconduct.

Being provided an answer like “this player got his ISK from botting” is in fact a violation of privacy.

 

Alerting the Community

This was propably a bad idea from the start due to several reasons, and I’ll list these now:

  1. EVE community has a low tolerance for botters, in fact they are lower on the acceptance ladder than newbies.
  2. Pointing out that lack if disclosure of personal information relates to miscunduct on CCP’s part.
  3. Pointing out that the evidence provided to claim innocence was in fact enabling the person to increase the rate of gameplay, thereby violating the EULA.
  4. Refusing to accept CCP’s unique insights as fact simply because they are not being made available – due to violation of privacy.
  5. Pointing out that the player in question was an outstanding community member is completely irrelevant – there are no exceptions to the rules for a reason (For the same reason, the Mittani was removed as the head of the CSM some time ago).

I think its safe to say that this is the reason that player reps, like the CSM members are – should never get involved in personal cases. This is because of several things, but most importantly – single player cases rarely benefit the entire community, which they are there to represent. Handling single cases is simply not an effective use of time. In this case, raising the discussion did nothing but clarify the rules of botting, some of these rules we knew already existed – and some where clarified.

 

Other sources:

EVE Forums