Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

You don't go toxic with toxic people

Like everything that relates to CCP corruption, my last post regarding inconsistent economy reports, drew in the usual haters. While I filtered them from my blog (is there a setting in blogger to auto-ban Jim L and Elizabeth Norn, they spammed like a dozen comments), they are running rampart on Reddit. Like always, they don't debate the data I've found. They just claim that "I had it coming". They are talking about the Falcon bully, despite I didn't mention it in the post we are talking about, it was only about the hole in the reported ISK numbers.

While I got from him "what I deserved", Falcon was doing his best to protect Goons from the fallout of the monument vandalism. Because those who did it were great guys who deserved all the support. He went out of his way to promote the Goon propaganda book, because The Mittani who would have banked $50-100K on that thing is a model citizen and also deserves support. And he turned a blind eye on the Bonus Room, because Erotica1 is the nicest man alive (Ripard forced banning Erotica1, cost him his blog). Xenuria is a wonderful asset for the CSM so he could run, only I was banned from running (and later Sion but then at least he made an excuse, something competing business something). Everyone mentioned here are wonderful people and Falcon rightfully protected them, I was the only crazy toxic madman troll. That's what you're saying?

Even worse, these haters never bother to link where I was toxic. Nor Darius Johnson who - as former CCP employee - defends Falcon as I was " toxic-as-fuck" and had it coming. So please, link any post from before the Falcon bully where I was toxic. Alternatively please link a post of Falcon where he was hateful with someone who is not me. I've found only one, where he jumped on The Mittani about the No Sions rule after the Kickstarter failed and he became a clown for promoting it. The thing is that he seems to be a respectful with everyone who is not me.

However the above is bad logic, since "who is toxic" is fully opinionated. One can say it with a straight face that Erotica1 is a great guy who did some harmless fun, while my in-game project about shooting pixel Goon spaceships was so horrible that something had to be done. However this logic is fundamentally wrong, since professional people are not toxic with toxic people. They calmly escort them out. This is what the EULA and GMs are for in games. If you go to Jita and start writing stuff that would make Hillary place you to the basket of deplorables, you'll get a polite e-mail informing you that your account was closed due to gross EULA violations. Unless of course you are a "notable content creator" and nothing happens. The point is that normally the answer for obviously toxic comments is not toxic, but politely and firmly disciplinary.

CCP Falcon had the power to take action against my account if I abused any player or staff member. Actually it's his job to take action against such players. For some reason he didn't choose this professional and simple way of dealing with my toxicity in EVE, instead ... he started a Reddit hate campaign?! This seems like a special kind of stupid. You know what's the funniest? I still didn't get the e-mail informing me that my account is closed, after really attacking them and having a "Don't play EVE Online" page on my blog with over 10K hits. As my account management page says that over two hundred people tried out EVE with my referral link, it's not a wild guess that similar amount was convinced to not try out EVE since I replaced the "Come play EVE Online" page with the new. I guess I could log in right now (I won't).

So there is no way CCP Falcon is doing his job right. Either I'm toxic and then he slacked by not taking action against my account or I'm not toxic and then his bully campaign has no excuse. Pick your poison Goons IWI RMT-ers!

PS: why did I pick the EVE story up again? Because there is no way in hell that a company that lost 1/3 of its service in one quarter will not have some heads rolling. I'm sure that there is a wild musical chairs is going on in Reykjavik. I want to put some well-deserved spotlight on Falcon, hoping that he gets what he deserves when the music goes off.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you want people to link evidence of you being toxic, they can link this. This is a toxic blog post. You're stirring the pot for no good reason than "I want to get someone fired".

Provi Miner said...

and if he fall's then will we see gob return? I hope so

Gevlon said...

@Anon: the good reason is to save the job of hundreds and the enjoyment of hundreds of thousands. Falcon and a few "content creators" ARE responsible for EVE going down.

@Provi Miner: he has to go of course, but replaced by another wouldn't make things better. CCP must implement rules and their enforcement system to prevent any Falcon-like behavior be repeated.

Provi Miner said...

I don't know goblin most companies are going in the opposite direction you want ccp to take. you want hands off by the rules, but most companies are going for the whole "engage the stakeholder thing" you see CEO's digging ditch's with local communities to show "how we are all in this together". I have seen major companies ignore the numbers and go with the populist concept to increase brand loyalty. I think Falcon went to far yes, but the idea of zero engagement stick to metric's is not a forward progressive modern company philosophy Hell I just spent 8 hours learning how to be nice to the customer and by nice I mean bending over backwards to get something done even though there is no real point other than customer satisfaction as the pay off, in fact its fairly against my best interest (doing my job timely) to assist the average customer they way my company wants me to deal with it.

Unknown said...

Oh Gevlon,
don't get mad at the reddit trolls. Consider the crap they write about you as a badge of honour. Trolls cannot rationally judge you, they are too biased, therefore, everything you say is tinfoil asshattery to them...

While I do not agree to everything you say, it is obvious that you considerd you arguments and point of views based on your observations...

Tithian said...

@ Provi

For the average company, the customers/shareholders do not compete against each other for rewards or benefits. A CEO digging a ditch in a local community is fine, and does not remove his ability to go to the neighbouring community and dig a ditch there as well.

When competition is a thing, then it is the antithesis of "we are all in this together". Even on non competitve games (i.e. WoW) the mere notion that a dev would favor a certain class/spec in a mostly PvE game enrages a lot of people. And that is because without perceived fairness, a lot of people will start feeling like they are wasting their time in a game where they are not the target audience (i.e. part of the dev's clique or the target group for the game's content). Why pay a sub fee for that?

Anonymous said...

I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but unfortunately you're totally off on this one, Gevlon. It was a mistake, it's relatively easy to make a mistake like a that - as software developers we make them all the time.

I do agree with you that in the perfect world Falcon had to get fired for his comments. But CCP is a good old boys network and it has a track record of covering for its own people and treating customers like vermin.

There was an age old scandal of a developer who used his position to print BPOs and high end items for his corporation. Guess what the CCP did to this employee when the news of this terrible abuse of his position leaked to the public. Nothing. They deleted the char, allegedly deleted the items. And the guy kept working for CCP like nothing ever happened.

You could argue that what he did was far worse than what falcon did. You could make some pretty good arguments for it being the other way around. One way or another nothing will be done. We, as customers, can only vote with our wallet and i did exactly that.

After they introduced the injectors and the citadels i stopped playing the game after 8 years of supporting CCP through all the bullshit while hoping for a better tomorrow. The problem is - none of the MMOs on the market are even close to it in terms of metagame, but at the same time it's probably the worst actual GAME on the MMO market, which is a direct reflection of an awesome job EvE developers have done working on this game and moving it forward.

For a game where 80-90% of the players are carebears they sure love to shit on them by introducing zero new game mechanics/activities that cater to people who are paying their bills and paying for their yachts. You can make a case for incursions being a decent example, but that's about it. Mining is still the same click and go afk shit as it was 13 years ago. Same with the mission system. Burners scratched the surface, stuff like that has to come out every year, not every 5 years.

No company can get away with this crap for years and not lose the subs. No amount of marketing genius will save you in the end, the game is too niche for marketing to be an effective strategy of keeping the sub numbers up without CONSISTENTLY introducing new content that is aimed at your core audience.

p.s. people who think PvPers are the core audience of EvE = lol.

Unknown said...

Actually, I think the main reason of this post wasn't reddit, but the comments Gevlon had to moderate on this blog.

Those he didn't gave me a pretty good idea of what he was dealing with. Extra points to @RedHand saying that if you don't like something, you should just shut-up about it and move on, and yet, came on this blog to say he didn't like it's content.

Anonymous said...

"So please, link any post from before the Falcon bully where I was toxic"

Take any one where you call any member of GSF or CFC a house slave, and work from there.

You have (by your own quote) toxic since falcon, and, Eve is really not the game for you, not because of the game itself, you can do that fine, but, seriously, read aloud to someone some of your posts....any time anything, game or otherwise, does that to a person, they should step away.

Unless of course you don't believe what you write.

Anonymous said...

Back in the day cheaters where dealt in the only right way
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eGbMqL_CwM

Today they RMT without fear

vv said...

CM's don't take actions against accounts. CM's are people who read blogs, forums and communicate with players in a way that allows them be close to players. They report to their bosses what players like, what they care about. They asked to "defuse" situations when something go wrong. They role is to be bridge between developers and filter player's feedback. They can't say to ban or unban somebody. It's producer who makes final decisions and change rules. CM's may affect them as any developer though.

Going "all corporate" means making "Candy Crush Saga" and "Clash of Clans". Those games are made on objective metrics from start to finish.

I've worked in a few game development companies and that was what CMs were doing. I don't think that CCP is really different.

Gevlon said...

@vv: according to the Sion TMC post, CCP Falcon was leading the monument vandalism case. According to Ripard Teg, he made the call on Erotica 1.

I agree that CMs should operate the way you described. But they don't.