TMC is out again intimidating players with their CCP influence

Let's start with some "metagaming" history lesson! Goonswarm members vandalized the EVE monument and took responsibility for it in my name. CCP choose to cover it up, protecting the reputation of Goonswarm and the criminals from justice. While I heavily criticize this move, I cannot prove corruption or favoritism as I've witnessed "let's keep it under the carpet" from many-many corporations in my life. Hell, even the naive "they are young, let's not ruin their life with criminal record" could be behind their choice. Anyway, the case was closed and forgotten for good, until TMC published a horrible badpost as bait, then Sion set things right by telling the story, peppered with quotes like "He [CCP Falcon] went out of his way to ensure that no one knew who was responsible and fought internally to make sure that it stayed that way. ... He is the reason why those stacks of articles don’t all say “Goonswarm vandalizes monument”." "they reversed all the permanent bans. All of them. Instead, the people named in Theo’s mail got a mixture of three- to six-month temporary bans, and the prohibitions on attending future EVE events was lifted. For that again, CCP Falcon was in large part responsible."

Without any previous exchange, CCP Falcon found it important to publish his less than nice opinions about me. Again, there is no possible way to verify or falsify that he did these with the intent of helping Goons in their desperate hour when MoA started entosising their systems one by one. He can simply be one of the many EVE players who think that I'm a worthless piece of garbage and for some reason found it professional to express this opinion about one of the clients who pay for his salary. TMC published an article where they leave nothing to imagination about what happens with those who take their systems: "CCP Falcon knocks Gevlon out".

Fast forward today, where the new lead propagandist Matteral is "covering" the SMA vs IWantISK war. He first reiterates the stuff we all know for weeks (pagebreak = extra visits), then get to the point why this article was written:

• "At prices that low, you could pay for your account with $1.35 for a month. It is a ridiculously low exchange rate, and other RMT watchers dismiss that as not credible."
• "theory has other problems: Eep is not banned, and he is the keystone to the alleged RMT. If Eep were responsible, the bans would be top-down. Instead, CCP's bans are bottom-up: Many small bankers, one big banker."
• "One last clue is that CCP normally takes their time to ban, sometimes months. If these bans were the result SMA’s witnesses, CCP acted unusually fast. This information was turned in over the holidays, when CCP's offices (like many other developers') are like a ghost town. This makes their information even less likely to trigger the bans."

Let me translate it for you: "experts agree that the SMA evidence is crap and yet CCP banned IWI bankers with lightning speed". If you are slow, they even spell it out to you: "IWI owner Eep was given many opportunities to walk away from this prior to SMA responding to his threats of which lead to our RMT findings. Instead he chose to continue aggressively pursuing his war against SMA. DustinHF and Paul Woods may have started this mess by dragging the IWI community into all of this via their greed, but at the end of the day it was the owner of Iwantisk himself who has and continues to destroy his own people to play some kind of mobster, hiding behind all of his money. SMA has not gotten any of your bankers banned. We simply pulled back the curtain and let everybody have a look. Was it worth it?"

Let me get it straight: I'm 100% sure and always was that IWI - and all the other gambling sites - are heavily RMT-ing. If it was up to me, all the owners and bankers of all gambling sites would be banned in this minute and all the "big winners" negwalleted for RMT buys. I also believe that CCP was investigating them for some time and every single IWI banker had his ban coming. I am happy to see these RMT-ing crap banned, and as a customer I congratulate to the CCP employees who caught them. It was a year overdue, but hey, better late than never!

TMC warps this story - the third time - to make the impression that CCP is doing enforcer work for them. Let's not be naive: if someone with 100B lying around doesn't recklessly doomsday, roam in tournament ships, or bankrolls an alliance, he is doing RMT. Why farm it if you don't use it?! (spare me from "he had fun farming it", nobody enjoys EVE PvE). Also, using "alliance titans" and other shared accounts is commonplace among veterans, despite being bannable EULA violation. Finally if you show me an active CSM member who didn't leak information, I show you one with heavily painted fingernails. Ergo, most veterans have reasons to fear CCP scrutiny, so Goons interpreting this story as "IWI messed with Emporium, got his bankers banned" can intimidate them from attacking Goons and their minions. The nastiest hint is the "and continues to destroy his own people", meaning that if IWI don't call off the mercenaries who massacre them on MoA scale, they ban more people.

What's the point of this post? That Goons don't play nice? That hardly worth a post. That they take the game far too seriously and respond to pixel spaceship losses by vandalism, doxxing, cyberbullying, server hacking and attacks on one's account? That wouldn't surprise anyone who is playing EVE. The point is that CCP must take serious measures for this to stop because a person believing that one group has control over CCP actions is a lost customer. Here is what must be done:

• CCP was not shy in the past from stopping players to claim "CCP is behind us". It should be made clear that anyone claiming "CCP is my dog" will get a disciplinary action.
• It should also made clear that anyone "implying" the same, dancing around "claiming it" is frowned upon and he cannot expect community niceties. For example as this Goon propaganda post should be rewarded by a 1 month embargo while devs don't answer TMC questions, their "reporters" are not welcomed on community events and TMC is blocked from the in-game browser.
• EULA violation handling must be faster. I know that security experts aren't cheap, but losing customers is more expensive. Every day a violator is out, he is harming fair playing customers. IWI is out for more than a year while obviously RMT-ing and he is still not banned! CCP must use more effective methods than just watching logs: for example go and buy ISK for their own pilots and when the ISK is delivered, track it back and ban the seller. Even better: sell ISK at lower rates and catch the buyers!
• EULA violation handling should be open about community figures. Sure, it's no ones business if Joe Nobody was banned for death treats after a lost PvP engagement. But if a corp or alliance leader, blogger, service provider or a group of people acting together (bonus room) are banned, there should be a coverage and explanation what they did, why was it bad and what they received. People will guess anyway, don't let "metagamers" run the narrative about CCP actions! If there is story, it should be the true story!
• I hate to say it, but there should be some amnesty mechanism for violators who are no longer violating. One shouldn't be held hostage over a soundcloud where he slips sharing accounts in 2008. Either a time pass or coming forward, confessing publicly and paying the damages should save someone from banning (but not from shame).

PS: While we were considering these high metagaming moves, MoA, TISHU, OSS and The Culture did the morally right thing.