Greedy Goblin

Monday, February 1, 2016

CCP Falcon knocks The Mittani out

Reddit celebrates CCP Falcon again, for doing what he is best at: insulting those who pay his salary. This time the recipient was The Mittani:

What did the one in the wizzard hat do to receive that? Awful lot of words on some chat channel. The summary is that he disagrees with Sion disallowed to run for CSM and provides lot of tears over it. While he is pretty dumb to do it, he was nowhere insultive. Actually Falcon was mentioned once in the chat, by
Xenuria saying: "What is very unclear to me (being still outside the CSM) and not having a chance to sit in a room with @ccp.leeloo and @ccp_falcon is unspoken intentions." - which can hardly be called trolling or provocations.
Falcon replied: "I think there's a bit of a perception issue here."
To that The Mittani said: "It would be delightful if this could be clarified in a transparent and open way, as that has clearly not" - which isn't at all bad.
Then Falcon replied with the pictured quote.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way: removing Sion does absolutely nothing. You need to be extremely naive to assume that whatever info gained by any Imperium CSM is not instantly relayed to all "stockholders" (Imperium/TMC higher ups). Hell, as much Goons love their IT services, they probably written some program to automatically gather CSM chats and documents from CSM members and immediately transmit them to the proper higher-ups, letting for example The Mittani see in real time what Thoric and devs chat.

More obvious stuff: if they want to ban spies who risk "things that affect our business directly, and information security", aiming at Sion is dumb. If any business competitor injected a spy, he would be sitting silently gathering information and being invisible like Mike Azariah instead of stirring drama and making everyone hate him like Sion. Spies supposed to make friendships to pump for more info instead of be so obnoxious that no one talk to them.

Last obvious stuff: the whitepaper change was totally uncalled for. If Sion leaked or was toxic, he could be removed without anyone caring, just like other leakers and toxics.

Now to the point: the chat wasn't official, it wasn't something requesting CCP presence. It was just a bunch of self-absorbed EVE nerds wasting their time. They could be totally ignored, yet CCP Falcon found it necessary to show up and insult an important opinion leader in the community without any previous provocation. Imagine that a waiter would do it to a famous travel blogger in the restaurant. He wouldn't be working there the next day.

The community responded as they usually do, by upvoting the picture below to highest comment. Those who never imagined challenging The Mittani or the Imperium are happy to see him humiliated. Probably the very same people upvoted this topic who celebrated Falcon doing the same to me:

This is very funny, until you consider what would happen to EVE if those who create the content would just quit because of the toxic behavior and observed favoritism of Falcon. Don't get me wrong, I do think that The Mittani should be removed from EVE, due to his wizzard hat performance. Attacking him over his dumb but respectful opinion is very different. Line members (socials) are very receptive to propaganda, so a dev calling their leader idiot can make them quit their alliance, while calling the enemy leader idiot has a morale boost effect. I'm sure many little bees are pretty upset now, seeing the evidence that "CCP is hating them" (actually just Falcon).

The happenings inside EVE should be done by players and not devs, especially not in such hateful ways. CCP should be as invisible as possible, like a force of nature behind New Eden and not an active God. Under Falcon, the CCP community team reached what no other community team of gaming history ever: in other games people are upset about the unbalanced game mechanics, the lack of updates or bugs but give another chance due to the great community, the hype and the open and friendly the community reps. In EVE the mechanics are OK, the updates are frequent, the bugs are rare and the main source of drama is the alleged favoritism and toxic behavior of the reps. Maybe it would help the longevity of EVE if the community team wouldn't be lead by someone using his job for personal ego trip, but by someone who has a clue how to deal with customers (or people in general).

PS: it will be very interesting to see what The Mittani moves for this. If he has some "old Goon" left in him he'll boycott the election to stick it up to Falcon. If all that's left is the Emporium, he'll bow his head down, nominate other minions to the council to keep getting insider info and continues to make less than minimal wage from his multi-thousand dollars media empire.

PS2: the title is a parody of a Goon SotA, celebrating when Falcon was toxic with me.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you're accusing Falcon of favouritism but he's insulted both you and Mittani, who is he favouring?

Gevlon said...

There are two reasons for attacking me:
- he favored my opponents
- he is an asshole

So far I went with the first. It's likely that I was wrong. Also, there is the option of him favoring a group other than Goons (like PL or NC.) Anyway it doesn't matter WHY he is doing it. He has no place serving customers.

Anonymous said...

well calling him an asshole is too far I think. He is "just" unprofessional and embarrassing. I think he wants the EVE Online community to look at him as this cool dude who can be approached anyime anywhere. He wants to be cool, just look at his hairstyle...

Anonymous said...

The dumb thing really is that Sion isn't allowed to run because he's supposedly "the media", yet bobmon who is just as much a part of the media is allowed to run. I have no love for Sion and am OK with him being removed but the rules should be applied fairly or not at all.

Anonymous said...

This could also be a reaction to the alleged favoritism. "CCP does not favor Goons. See how we treat them?"

Anonymous said...

I'm sure Mittens got over what Falcon said ten mins after he read it.

He simple isn't that thin skinnned, and probably doesn't want/need anyone white knighting for him.

Just my two cents.

Anonymous said...

Soon is a shareholder in TMC, and actually gets paid in real money, Bobmon gets paid in isk.

Is it really that hard to understand how getting paid real money for the amount of traffic a site has, well having inside information constitutes a conflict of interest? It is pretty much the definition of conflict of interest.

Wilhelm Arcturus said...

Falcon coming unglued and snapping at players isn't a new tale. A bit of drama around the CSM again that reads as much like petulance as anything.

More amusing to me was Falcon putting up the pretense that there are aspects of the CSM Whitepaper that "CCP have no control over." What an utter load of crap. CCP dictates and approves every aspect of the whitepaper and can ignore it or throw it away at need. That is just him just trying to inject some meaning into the whole CSM process while it remains simple a PR stunt that has run far too long.

Gevlon said...

I can't care less about the feelings of The Mittani. I do care about how badly this looks for usual players. I'm sure that the toxicity of Falcon has driven out many players, especially from my camp by "officially" declaring me a madman/troll. How he treated the Mittani is just another example of how he treats players in general.

Tomorrow it will be you. Maybe you just shrug off. But your corpmates, alliance mates will not. After all, who would listen to a player who is openly smacked by "the Gods".

Mike Azariah said...

I am invisible?

Or I just do what I do without making as many waves?

m

Unknown said...

@Anon 1/2 11:52

Bobmon runs an EVE dedicated fan site.

Sion received money from Sony as part of the TMdC LLC deal with a CCP competitor.

Can you spot the difference now?

Gevlon said...

@Kinis: Sion did so as part of TMdC. TMdC and Imperium leadership is one and a same. Do you suggest banning all Imperium personel? If not, why Sion?

Unknown said...

Hey G, do you not think CCP Falcon was just fed up of a whinging customer? If you've ever dealt with customers directly then you'll know there's always one guy/girl out there that no matter how you explain a situation it still isn't good enough for them.

I suspect CCP Falcon just became fed up of hearing the same self entitled public record spewing from Mitten's keyboard despite the fact CCP leeloo has been at lengths to describe the reasoning behind CCP's decision, hence his "gently_caress_yourself" (my paraphrasing) reply.

Regarding CCP devs just showing up - I'd say that's just CCP's celebrated engagement with the community, be it Twitch, Twitter, /r/eve or official forum. I honestly can't read anymore into it than that.

Mittens will do nothing other than lick his wounds. His space empire and IRL game related business interests take precedent over any butt hurt he may personally feel for being called out so publicly. Now, he might have to share out some of that Sony $ pie to whichever shill he decides to put in Sion's CSM place. Maybe that's the real reason for him being bent out of shape over the matter ;-)


Oh, the real spymaster, finger on the pulse guy and CSM powerhouse has been revealed! Mike Azariah, you sly dog!!!! Just kidding, you, Sugar and a couple of others are what I would most want from the CSM and your tenures have been exemplary.

Unknown said...

@G 20:18

Well now, I'm just an average Joe looking up at the shenanigans of the high and mighty. Afaik, there are three known owners of TMdC LLC - Mittens, Sion and Ayrth (sp?). From the recent whitepaper changes, this would imply all three would be barred from standing for CSM due to their IRL business dealings with Sony. This clearly would not apply to staff writers or other contributors to TMdC or other CFC leadership types, and rightly so imho.

Elizabeth Norn said...

Because Sion is an employee of TMC, most of the Imperium are not. Duh.

Gevlon said...

@Kinis: if a customer gets to your nerve, the canned response is "I've already replied your question and cannot provide further assistance. Goodbye!"

Also, it was a random chat, he could just let The Mittani cry all day.

@Mike Azariah: can you name one thing you did. Because it somehow missed me.

Mike Azariah said...

One thing? Trying to get CCP to fix the new player experience and working in the Rookie Help Chat on a regular basis to collect information of where the initial stumbling blocks are. See the thing is that a LOT of what the CSM does is inward facing. You DON'T see what we are doing except when we release the drama llamas or CCP decides to mention us in a Dev blog (as this morning with Endie getting the nod).

Just because you do not see the pistons move in your car does not mean that there is nothing under the hood.

m

Anonymous said...

"Is it really that hard to understand how getting paid real money for the amount of traffic a site has, well having inside information constitutes a conflict of interest? It is pretty much the definition of conflict of interest."

Yes, it is hard to understand the difference when both sites are media sites and both have "journalists". Ignoring the fact that EN24 is supposedly run as a business as well, both sites have people that consider themselves at least semi-professional in the world of gaming media. Bobmon even gave a presentation about exactly that. The risk for either of them to use the information they get to further their careers in journalism are the same, which is what companies normally have those "no gaming media" rules for. I don't see why wanting to have the rules applied consistently is a bad thing.

Anonymous said...

Mike... shhhh. You're invisible not silenced, people might notice you're a spai.