Personally my respect for him is much higher then before the entire incident started. He clearly has done exactly the right thing in response to his actions once he had read the transcript. CCP did exactly the right thing by banning him for 30 days and removing him from the CSM. I understand there are those who called for him to stay on, but it appears he made his decision and I actually applaud him for it. It was really the only action that was possible. His resignation from the chairmanship and removal from CSM 7 should end this story and put an end to the distraction it has caused from an incredible fan-fest and launch of DUST514.
He will be able to run in a future CSM and for once, I can say without reservation, that we will likely have my vote.
Edit: Just listened to the 'State of the Goonion' .... I take it all back. "We will test the waters by destroying Jita" ??? "Understand that I have been fucked" ??? What a self-important twit.
Edit2: WTF is all this crap about this being CCPs fault for not vetting the presentations ahead of time. Do people really want all player driven communication to be censored first! Let's face it, next years alliance panel will be lame. CCP gave us players a little bit of rope and we (or at least our alliance leaders) hung ourselves. It what world can we, the players, blame CCP.
Edit 3: Mittani seems to have calmed down and understands what is happening. Voices of the Void Interview. CCP had no choice. Tough but that is just the way that it is. And I agree with him that the media stories were so innacurate, however that is usually the story. Anytime you hear a story in the news and you know more about it then the reporter, the mistakes just make you cringe. Deal with it.
So the big take-away from fanfest has suddenly turned overnight from Dust514, ship re-balancing, cruicible, and now everything seems to be focused on a poor choice of words from the Leader of the Goonswarm Alliance/part-time CCP spokesperson/CSM Chairman for life/The Mittani/Mittens. I was there in the audience and in the context of the venue, the context of the discussion and the panel itself it didn't sound so bad. However, taken on it's own this is a huge PR disaster. This is what he said...
This is really bad. It is in clear violation of the CCP Terms of Service, and, much more importantly, in violation of the Laws of the United States if not Iceland. Encouraging a mob to get someone to kill themselves over a social network type situation (and that is what eve is) is not something that CCP or Sony wants to be associated with.
What are the implications?
Firstly for the Mittani who, once sober and reading the above quote realized his mistake it is pretty much the end of his EVE career. He has already gracefully apologized and given his ISK to the victim. He has declared that he will step down from the CSM after talking to them. No Rush Limbaugh here. I suspect there will be a permaban placed on his accounts from CCP in an effort to quell the PR disaster. I don't think that he will face prosecution in the US for his statements nor will he be disbarred, although both are certainly possibilities. It is possible his taking full responsibility and apologizing will reduce the impact but far from certain.
For CCP this is about the worst clusterfuck imaginable. When trying to launch a new product that will be free to download onto the PlayStation network, to suddenly be associated with a case of apparent cyber-bullying is not good. Sony may very well pull out. It depends on the amount of press this receives. Video games have a history of tension between role-playing violence and those who would like to prevent kids from playing violent games. As a result there is a surprising amount of resilience to gaming companies to controversy.
If Sony pulls CCP's chain then EVE has a problem. I would not be surprised if there was a patch preventing suicide ganking in the very near future. There will certainly be clear modifications to the Terms Of Service and EULA coming.
As a reference... here is the first 4 sections of the EVE Terms of Service:
From the terms of service:
1 You may not abuse, harass or threaten another player or authorized representative of CCP, including customer service personnel and volunteers. This includes, but is not limited to: petitioning with false information in an attempt to gain from it or have someone else suffer from it; sending excessive e-mails, EVE-mails or petitions; obstructing CCP Employees from doing their jobs; refusal to follow the instructions of a CCP Employee; or implying favoritism by a CCP Employee.
2 You may not use any abusive, defamatory, ethnically or racially offensive, harassing, harmful, hateful, obscene, offensive, sexually explicit, threatening or vulgar language. (Alternate spelling or partial masking of such words will be reprimanded in the same manner as the actual use of such words.)
3 You may not organize nor be a member of any corporation or group within EVE Online that is based on or advocates any anti-ethnic, anti-gay, anti-religious, racist, sexist or other hate-mongering philosophies
4 You may not use “role-playing” as an excuse to violate these rules. While EVE Online is a persistent world, fantasy role-playing game, the claim of role-playing is not an acceptable defense for anti-social behavior. Role-playing is encouraged, but not at the expense of other player. You may not create or participate in a corporation or group that habitually violates this policy.
TL;DR - EVE Fanfest + Mittani = Drama
Note: The target of the attack is alive and well and is still mining in space mostly oblivious to what is happening it seems.
On the EVE online homepage there is a little graph showing the server population. At present it looks like there are noticeably less players on EVE then the same time last week.
It is a bit hard to tell due to server crashes and upgrades yesterday and DDOS attacks last week, but clearly the light green line (today) is not only lower than the red line for yesterday, but also lower then the purple line for last week. Eyeballing it I would say it is around 10% down.
It is hard not to blame Incarna and the protests. I am clearly not alone in my massive dissatisfaction with this latest patch resulting in my quitting.
CCP is rapidly loosing all credibility. Which is a shame. There was once a time when CCP had great plans for EVE. I was watching a 2009 youtube video starring Seleen (current CSM member, former CCP employee) talking about what great new features will be implemented after Dominion.
To summarize, he basically said once the core of Dominion was in they would move to doing things like the following:
Treaty Systems
-taxes for allies in systems
-blue for certain systems
-central wallet for friendly fire incidents
Expand Military Upgrade possibilities
-defense bunkers w guns near gates
-starbases building something valuable.
-fighter and bomber garrisons
-intelligence tools (monitor traffic through stargates)
Upgrade to dock a Supercarrier
Agents into 0.0 outposts.
'Sky is the Limit'
If Incarna had some or even any of these enhancements I am sure that light green line would be on the other side of the red/purple lines. One of those pixels in that green line would even be Toterra come my TZ.
Edit: Trend (green below purple) seemed to have held until the extended downtime.
