Developers that abuse the system

[LethalGT]

Originally Posted by twostep

thats crazy, i always thought things that like were urban legends. could you be more specific? i'm interested in knowing what they did, without saying names or anything.

And what happened to them, obviously they got fired but give me details and how they got fired

[mobius]

Originally Posted by twostep

thats crazy, i always thought things that like were urban legends. could you be more specific? i'm interested in knowing what they did, without saying names or anything.

Can't speak to kieron's experience, but in the EVE-Online scandal the dev in question did not get fired, but he did get "relocated". The running joke is that CCP has a new parking lot shoveler (they're in Greenland after all). CCP did the right thing though, they basically said "whoops! sorry - we'll place protections in the system to prevent/alert this kind of thing again" and they took the free items away from the corporation in question. The player base has done one better though, because the corp in question has been steadily losing territory and members since it happened.

[Mark]

Oh wow, here's kieron at his old job: EVE Online | EVE Insider | Forums

Nice.

[twostep]

haha, wow thats nuts. its crazy that the devs' accounts got banned cause of that fool. i bet he got his *** beat at work the next day.

[Lady Elsa]

LOL! this is kind of funny, but in a sad sort of way. What was that dude thinking? Still, its good to see that his account got banned, too bad for the others though.

[BahamutKaiser]

People do alot of unhealthy and immature things just to play a game, it isn't any surprise that someone who dedicated their career to videogames is also a fanatic which would do something stupid just to get a one up in the game. It's nice to get an official response on that kind of foul play in MMOs, but how about the issue I brought up, making the game satisfying enough to invite the activities and tasks a game has to offer instead of inflicting activities which even the developers try to cheat because they are not worth experiencing.

[mobius]

IME most people cheat to be cool, accepted, or feel powerful. There's also financial rewards, which are usually for the later reasons anyways, but don't really apply to a MMO. My guess is that dev thought the guys in BoB were cool and wanted make them look up to him, so he cheated. Sad really.

[Sun]

Of course developers have access to tools the general gaming community does not. Not a problem. The problem, of course, lies when developers, either through action or inaction, allow these advantages to cross over into the realm of the public paying customer. Bad move.

[BahamutKaiser]

Mobius, your overlooking the most obvious and pertinent reason, because they are bored to death of, or do not want to put up with the grind of the game. I would say that more than any other reason, people cheat just to get ahead or get what they want without the obnoxious hastle required to obtain it. Everybody wants nice stuff, not everyone wants to dredge to get it.

[kieron]

Originally Posted by BahamutKaiser

Mobius, your overlooking the most obvious and pertinent reason, because they are bored to death of, or do not want to put up with the grind of the game. I would say that more than any other reason, people cheat just to get ahead or get what they want without the obnoxious hastle required to obtain it. Everybody wants nice stuff, not everyone wants to dredge to get it.

The vast majority of companies have game play policies for conduct in and out of the game. Most of them have a zero-tolerance policy for infraction. Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances such as the EVE incident mentioned (I'm not going to provide details, all the information is out there.) where zero-tolerance is waived, but those are the rarity.

It doesn't matter if the person is bored to death, doesn't want to put up with a grind or any other reason, a developer shouldn't do anything to take advantage of position or knowledge. Abusing the trust given by community and co-workers is wrong and it seems like karma always comes around.

[Draca]

Would a dev realy need any "special bonuses" wouldn't they have a edge by knowing exacly how the game works?

[BahamutKaiser]

I'm not concerned with why or not a developer feels like cheating the system, whether it is right or wrong isn't important to me, what matters is that if they are activities that even developers don't want to play, maybe they should do a better job of making the gameplay entertaining enough to justify their effort and time investment. Everyone knows that monotinous and simplistic gameplay is a waste of time, making the general gameplay a joy to play can counteract the reason people want to cheat to a great degree.

It's a good measurement of whether the game is worth the time it takes to play when you can honestly say the player is being cheated out of an enjoyable playing experience if he skips over portions of it by cheating.

[RenegadeAngel]

Originally Posted by Draca

Would a dev realy need any "special bonuses" wouldn't they have a edge by knowing exacly how the game works?

That wouldn't make them level or get equipment any faster than the average person really.

[mobius]

Originally Posted by Draca

Would a dev realy need any "special bonuses" wouldn't they have a edge by knowing exacly how the game works?

Give the "hardcore" community three months and they'll know how Aion works as well or better than any Dev. Most likely none of the developers knows the whole game inside and out. They tend to specialize and math bugs, collision problems, and AI "features" are something you discover by trial and error.