A few days ago we reported about player sentiment against CCP employees (this includes the GMs) that have been steering valuable in-game items to groups in which they participate.

Apparently, news of this re-appropriation of goods was broken by a now banned player who utilized his in-game spy network to listen in on conversations between corporation alliance leaders.

The Escapist refers to this player as Kugutsumen. Kugutsumen is in the business of "bribery and social engineering", and the buying and selling of information for in game-currency (hence the spy-network). During a fairly routine run, Kugutsumen uncovered a story about cheating developers and the CSRs who tried to cover up their indiscretions.

Kugutsumen also uncovered several questionable transfers of goods, among which was the transfer of 10 Blue Print Originals (BPO) - something that is equivalent to billions in EVE's in-game currency from Ishos Rerajan, a CCP developer, to an in-game corporation.

Earlier this week, Kugutsumen had five of his accounts banned after offering to work with CCP to help them figure out exactly what happened and what changed hands. CCP's reasoning was that Kugutsumen has violated the game's EULA.

The Escapist reports Kugutsumen as having said this: "If CCP is not willing to work with the me on a serious issue like this, and rather prefer to ban my accounts and attempt to silence me, then I will have to work with the players so they know the game is rigged and know what they're paying for."

Kugutsumen went public with the information he has. The CCP message boards got flooded with messages. Eventually CCP had to begin an internal investigation into what has happened.

While the message board inferno was ablaze, Kugutsumen was conversing with Kieron, CCP's Community Manager. The concluding email from Kieron read:

Please forgive me for having a hard time believing your statement about your intentions. Instead of taking your concerns to the proper channels and dealing directly with CCP, you have incited the EVE community, besmirched the reputations of a number of innocent players and developers, and much more. Your actions have done damage to this game you profess to love, damage that is going to take a long time to repair.

Until you remove all content on your site concerning these allegations, I have nothing to discuss with you. Removing said content will be the first step in proving the honesty of your intent. As I stated on the forums, CCP is investigating and further outcry will not speed the investigation along.

Kieron

Community Manager

EVE Online, CCP Games

Kugutsumen conceeded and closed his site temporarily, helping CCP to get to the bottom of the situation. The result of the investigation? Here's Kieron's official announcement of the completion of their investigation:

Our goal is to provide the best possible game, gaming experience and development process possible. In light of that, we would like to address the recent allegations of CCP employee misconduct. CCP has taken these charges very seriously and since they surfaced we have launched a thorough investigation consisting of an examination of character histories ranging back to their creation as well as into any connected characters owned by the developers involved. This examination was performed by the same internal division which is also tasked with standard periodic audits of all developer and volunteer accounts. Areas of investigation include, but are not limited to: messaging history, financial and transactional history, combat and corporation logs, item and cash transfers and IP logs.

As for the allegations themselves, they consist of two parts. The first part involved a case that happened seven months ago when a CCP employee's identity became public knowledge within his corporation. Per company policy, the incident was investigated and actions taken where appropriate, including the removal of characters whose identities were compromised.

The second part of the accusations stem from a leak of information pertaining to an in-game event arc. Due to the amount of time that has passed since the planning and execution of the event arc, we have not been able to confirm nor deny the veracity of these allegations.

In both cases, these accusations were recently brought forward when a player revealed the identity of numerous CCP employee characters. Since these play characters are known to belong to CCP employees, they will be removed from the game. Many of them have been around since the creation of EVE and it is most unfortunate that these developers are now forced to end their relationships with their in-game friends, but that is our policy when the anonymity of staff members has been compromised.

Last summer, CCP implemented stricter monitoring procedures and audits on all CCP employees' EVE accounts. We are confident that our rigid procedures and protocol will prevent any misconduct or, at least, allow us to quickly discover it, should such an unfortunate scenario arise.

As the community knows well, we at CCP enjoy not only playing EVE Online, but improving EVE and interacting with our playerbase. We feel EVE benefits from the developers playing EVE as any other members of the community do, and to impose artificial limitations -- such as no access to Tranquility or special flagging on a developer's player character -- would greatly hinder the development of EVE.

CCP is very passionate about EVE Online and is committed to its continued growth. We hope that this statement will put this issue behind us once and for all and allow us to continue moving forward with the support of our community.

All allegations mentioned above are untrue, except one. Sadly enough, the allegation regarding unlawfully obtained blueprints are, in my case, true. I’m here, laying out the facts of what happened in June 2006 so this whole issue -- which jeopardized my colleagues, my company and our community -- can be put behind us, I hope for the better.

This incident has raised the question of whether developers should be allowed to play the game they work on. There is simply no way to develop a world like this without experiencing it first hand. You cannot develop it by proxy, evaluate fun through statistics, or make judgments without fully understanding how it is growing and evolving, when nearly every tool can be used by players in ways that were never anticipated. In order to do justice to the game, we must share your frustrations, joys, successes and failures. You cannot fully appreciate the investment of time and effort that players make without doing it yourself, and every employee at CCP is aware of what it is like to work yourself to exhaustion for something you believe in and love.