The corruption, intrigue and espionage that fill the world of EVE Online ’s player-run corporations as always been a unique feature of the game, and attracted mainstream headlines to the game. For example, earlier this year, when giant player alliance Band of Brothers was taken down from the inside by a single spy, the story caught the attention of mainstream media outlet CNN.
EVE Isk Developer CCP has always seemed to encourage these sort of these sort of devilish in-game deeds as long as they didn’t cross into out-game circumstances (for example: password hacking). But what happens when corruption takes place inside the very establishment that CCP setup to provide players with a voice?
Our story begins in early 2007, when a CCP developer, known in-game and on the forums as CCP t20 provided valuable blueprints to his player alliance, the aforementioned Band of Brothers. These blueprints were for the game’s Tech 2 ships, which are more powerful than their Tech 1 counterparts. The number of these blueprints are severely limited, and most player manufactures who which to create these ships have to purchase blueprint copies. Therefore, possessing just one Tech 2 original blueprint is practically a license to print money.
When another player publicly revealed on the game’s forums that a CCP developer had given a player alliance a significant advantage, the player base was outraged, as many called for t20’s termination from EVE Isk, and some threatened to leave the game. Despite the outcry, CCP only apologized to the fans in the form of a dev blog, and t20 remained a CCP developer for another two years.
In part because of the t20 controversy, CCP announced in March 2008 that a Council of Stellar Management would be created. Nine players would be elected to the Council and would be flown to CCP headquarters in Iceland and would hold court with CCP developers and be able to voice the concerns and suggestions of the games’ player base.
Since the creation of the CSM in 2008, they have claimed several vital improvements in EVE Isk as their doing. First and for most, being the skill training queue. For the uninitiated, skills in EVE Isk are based on ’setting a skill to train’ and then waiting for a timer, as opposed to a certain game with elves and mages where you kill butterflies for hours, grinding your way to a higher skill level. The timer on these skills range from just 30 minutes for some low level ones to 25 days for some higher level ones. Formerly, if you weren’t online to change your skills when the previous one ran out, your character would stop skilling. The skill queue, which the CSM claims as a product of its existence, allows players to plan skills to train up to the next 24 hours.
