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.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
So that was the result from the Reykjavik. No to non-vanity microtransactions :). Also, no to removing the 'Door' and returning to the old station screen :(.
I am not sure why it took two days of negotiations, and another day of futzing around, to say all of this. I assume most of that time was Mittens giving free, and obviously much needed, advice about how to handle PR in the future.
Will EVE players come back?
Some will, others won't. My guess is about a 10% loss of subscribers by the end of the summer. Far less then if they had continued on their previous communication strategy.
What did EVE Players Get from all this
CCP should be now scared out of their minds of the players. If it weren't for the CSM doing all of their PR for them, they would be finished at this point. Considering their precarious financial state, A major drop in revenue would kill them dead.
Aside from that EVE players did not get very much not much. No replacement anytime soon for the hanger. No commitment to work on the long neglected backlog. No commitment to pull resources from vaporware to work on EVE. No changes to NeX store prices. All we really got was a reaffirmation of what they had said before the 'Fearless' scandal and the CEO letter.
Who benefited the most from this
The Mittani, and to a much lesser extent, the CSM. He saved their buts... big time. However I am not sure that the CSM, even led by the politically savvy Mittani, can bail them out through many more incompetent actions.
What about Toterra??
As long as we don't have the old station environment, or at least a new one that works on my computer, I can't actually play. I would love to, and I have tried (heck I am on tonight), but it just doesn't work very well. Expect a thorough review of Perpetuum soon, the good (obvious EVE copy) and the not so good (no spaceships).
