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Dev Blog: Client modification, the EULA and you

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Eclipse Industrials
Quantum Forge
#641 - 2013-04-19 20:42:18 UTC
Vibramycin wrote:
Autopilot (the regular non-cheaty) used to warp you to zero, but CCP changed that intentionally and, IMHO for good reasons.

It did??? When??? I'm old school (not "beta old", but damned close) and I don't remember AP ever going to zero. For that matter, manual warping to zero wasn't an option either, and selling fake bookmarks on escrow (the system prior to contracts, for you noobs) was one of the many great scams lost to the pages of history.
Entity
X-Factor Industries
Synthetic Existence
#642 - 2013-04-19 20:51:12 UTC
Vibramycin wrote:
Entity wrote:
CCP Peligro wrote:
"It doesn't impact gameplay negatively for the vast majority of players."
Oh really? What is this based on?
Modified clients place additional load on the servers, they are therefore detrimental to the ability of our legitimate players to enjoy EVE Online.


Modified clients can definitely cause undue load, but that depends entirely on what they do.


It also negatively impacts gameplay by making it artificially safe and fast using cheaty autopilot. Autopilot (the regular non-cheaty) used to warp you to zero, but CCP changed that intentionally and, IMHO for good reasons.


Not disagreeing with this (or any other) hack being bad for the game. By all means terminate cheating players with extreme prejudice.

I'm merely not subscribing to Peligro's sweeping statement. It's not as bad as the "I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic, see if I can track an IP address" video he linked to, but it's still wrong enough to make me go "Roll".

Heck, It's entirely possible to create client mods that behave nice, are benign, do not cause any additional load, improve UI usability, etc. In the end, it's all python code and 3rd party programmer's code need not be any different than CCP's own code.

(And no, I don't use client mods myself, nor do I recommend it ;-)

╦......║...╔╗.║.║.╔╗.╦║.╔╗╔╦╗╔╗

║.╔╗╔╗╔╣.╔╗╠..╠ ╠╗╠╝.║╠ ╠╝║║║╚╗

╩═╚╝║.╚╝.╚╝║..╚╝║║╚╝.╩╚╝╚╝║.║╚╝

Got Item?
Kblackjack54
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#643 - 2013-04-19 21:10:09 UTC
Read this lot with interest, not for a loophole but for the amusement value of seeing CCP dig themselves into a hole over this one.

Seems on the face of it that even though an application is against the terms of the EULA, if in the day a CCP employee feels happy not to do anything about that application then that is OK, but on another day he feels unhappy about it then it's not Ok. and he sagely points to the EULA and swings the ban hammer.

This leaves the community in a difficult position, most of not all use EVEMON for some purpose, yet now it is unclear if they are breaking the rules, a lot use various comms software with similar possible problems, some use programs like ISBOXER, again same prognosis.

I have over time used all of these programs with EVE but never have I considered that anything they were capable of, and I admit I never explored there full capabilities, would actually land me with being tagged as hacking the client, I would suggest that most players that have used them also barely scrape the surface of whats available in them or what they are capable of if misused.

I feel strongly here that CCP is not playing a fair hand to it's players, I have no problem with banning someone who deliberately sets out to hack the client, that's a given as far as i am concerned, what I would like to see is CCP issue a list of approved applications and equipment that can be used in conjunction with EVE with a firm disclaimer that if misused the player will receive a permanent ban if proven.

This would take any confusion out of the EULA on this issue and leave CCP free to concentrate on the real problems.
Urziel99
Multiplex Gaming
Tactical Narcotics Team
#644 - 2013-04-19 21:13:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Urziel99
Tamiya Sarossa wrote:
EvE Player Logic: 'CCP doesn't ban bots because they need the money! But CCP will ban us for using a non-harmful cache scraping program such as EVEmon over a rule that they've already said they won't enforce in non-exploiting cases just because!'



Never trust Devs. Have you forgotten what game you play?

No offense to the devs but that kind of open ended and unlimited power should give anyone with a positive IQ a bit of pause.
BFE
Shadow Flight
#645 - 2013-04-19 21:20:43 UTC
How can using outside sources (EveMon, EveHQ, etc) be illegal? CCP has talked about giving them MORE rights. There were talks about CCP allowing programs such as Aura, and EVE Nova the rights to not just check mail, SP , training queue, etc.. but ALSO TO ADD TO/EDIT THEM! Now CCP is saying those programs are illegal? What a bunch of crap. If anything, those programs KEEP people involved in EVE and paying subscriptions.
Styledatol
Stellar Forge Industries
#646 - 2013-04-19 21:52:43 UTC
I'd respectfully request CCP to run that sort of **** by the CSM before publishing it.
It seems to me that, as of late, a whole lot of rage and outcry happened because people misunderstand CCP's words/intentions.
While this is understandable, to a degree (English ain't my first language either, nor second). There is no denying that CCP devs do not make themselves clear enough; it would save everyone, mostly the poor devs who post in those threads, a great deal of headaches and rage if CCP run their already written devblog posts by the CSM - to ensure that everything is clearly worded, for everyone to understand the way it's meant to be understood.

At least, those devblogs that deal with sensitive matter that may **** people off.
Armon Nahrain
Chroma Corp
Prismatic Legion
#647 - 2013-04-19 22:02:33 UTC
It is absolutely ridiculous that CCP would take the stated stance "This is against the rules, but I guess its cool if you do it, we probably won't ban you." That's not a rule, that's passive aggression in GM form. Either fix the rules and ban what you actually want to ban while leaving acceptable activities outside of ban territory, or just blanket is and tell people that's the way it is. Expecting players to continue to partake in a bannable activity because you promise you won't ban them is absolutely insane. Furthermore, considering that this is in itself a reversal of previous policy regarding cache scraping, where is the guarantee that you suddenly won't decide that all cache scraping activities are indeed illegal and ban accounts that are actively using them per your vague "permission" and promise not to ban? Asking your own playerbase to skirt your rules because you aren't going to enforce them just looks lazy and incompetent. Please just fix it.
BFE
Shadow Flight
#648 - 2013-04-19 22:15:57 UTC  |  Edited by: BFE
CCP Stillman wrote:
Horatius Caul wrote:
Uppsy Daisy wrote:

The EULA has always been completely vague. The nearest we have had previously was that cache scraping was legal.

All EULAs are vague, on purpose. Why? Because they are written to allow the first party to cover all eventualities and do whatever they want with you. The EULA also makes it clear that CCP can ban you for whatever reasons they feel like, should it come to that.

A dev saying that something is okay or another dev saying something should be okay to do doesn't actually void the agreement you've accepted which states that doing so is not okay. The EULA is written by lawyers to protect the company, and random members of staff can't alter its clauses.

What they can do is opt to enforce or not enforce the clauses on a case-by-case basis, which CCP's security staff does. They could just as easily take a blanket approach to the TOS and EULA and enforce it by the letter, which wouldn't just ban everybody using EVEMON but also everybody who's ever used Triexporter to play around with EVE's 3D models, textures, or fonts. But they haven't, because they value these things in the community and don't consider you a bad person. CCP has made an effort to separate botters from other people who violate the EULA, which is more than you can expect from most companies.

"Is this in violation of the EULA" and "Will I get banned for this" are two completely different questions.

This gentleman is spot on. Smile

Trust me, we have no interest in banning people unless they are doing something that hurts the game.



So, to reiterate earlier: Why would CCP want to give more rights to (and therefby informally endorse) such 3rd party programs like the phone app Aura, or Eve Nova, or the programs EveMon, EveHQ, etc... if it's against the EULA? I will have to find the forum/blog/etc that states this, but if you are willing to give more rights to certain programs, then why not just edit the EULA to very pointely, and specificlly, ban botting, etc, and leave the other 3rd party app users vague as most EULA rules do?

*edit* I should say instead, that CCP has CONSIDERED giving more rights, not specifically talked about doing so...
dr mineral
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#649 - 2013-04-19 23:37:41 UTC
ah , 2 of my acounts are banned , this char not , and have the same crime .
so , not everybody with a crime is punished .

i play sinds 2007 , and i now some things are not alowed .
but i now ccp is doing nothing on that , till now .

for me this is a case , wrong time , wrong place , ect .

someone give me the warp to zero autopilot , and i just tested it maybe 3 times in the last mounth .
never did something wrong before .

the player that gave me that little prog , prolly nows that ccp was going to take action .
so in fact , he played pvp with my accounts .

so , ccp gave players the power to kill me and others for 30 days .


ok , this player destroyed my game for 30 days .

the pvp is not over .

i visited the real police .
now he can explain why he sended haking progs to me .
and convinced me its nothing bad .
Entity
X-Factor Industries
Synthetic Existence
#650 - 2013-04-19 23:50:44 UTC
dr mineral wrote:
ah , 2 of my acounts are banned , this char not , and have the same crime .
so , not everybody with a crime is punished .


Someone, quick, give this man a Darwin Award before CCP reads this!

╦......║...╔╗.║.║.╔╗.╦║.╔╗╔╦╗╔╗

║.╔╗╔╗╔╣.╔╗╠..╠ ╠╗╠╝.║╠ ╠╝║║║╚╗

╩═╚╝║.╚╝.╚╝║..╚╝║║╚╝.╩╚╝╚╝║.║╚╝

Got Item?
Rhivre
TarNec
Invisible Exchequer
#651 - 2013-04-19 23:53:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Rhivre
dr mineral wrote:
ah , 2 of my acounts are banned , this char not , and have the same crime .
so , not everybody with a crime is punished .

i play sinds 2007 , and i now some things are not alowed .
but i now ccp is doing nothing on that , till now .

for me this is a case , wrong time , wrong place , ect .

someone give me the warp to zero autopilot , and i just tested it maybe 3 times in the last mounth .
never did something wrong before .

the player that gave me that little prog , prolly nows that ccp was going to take action .
so in fact , he played pvp with my accounts .

so , ccp gave players the power to kill me and others for 30 days .


ok , this player destroyed my game for 30 days .

the pvp is not over .

i visited the real police .
now he can explain why he sended haking progs to me .
and convinced me its nothing bad .




Quoting for posterity, and awesomeness, and general....everythingelseness

EDITing also because the internet says :

"but i now ccp is doing nothing on that , till now ." Is not true :)

Fluffy Bunny Pic!

I'm Watching U
The Rainbow Industries
#652 - 2013-04-19 23:53:57 UTC
dr mineral wrote:
someone give me the warp to zero autopilot , and i just tested it maybe 3 times in the last mounth .
never did something wrong before .

That's what they all say.
Kimpaz
The Stooges
#653 - 2013-04-20 00:03:13 UTC
dr mineral wrote:
ah , 2 of my acounts are banned , this char not , and have the same crime .
so , not everybody with a crime is punished .

i play sinds 2007 , and i now some things are not alowed .
but i now ccp is doing nothing on that , till now .

for me this is a case , wrong time , wrong place , ect .

someone give me the warp to zero autopilot , and i just tested it maybe 3 times in the last mounth .
never did something wrong before .

the player that gave me that little prog , prolly nows that ccp was going to take action .
so in fact , he played pvp with my accounts .

so , ccp gave players the power to kill me and others for 30 days .


ok , this player destroyed my game for 30 days .

the pvp is not over .

i visited the real police .
now he can explain why he sended haking progs to me .
and convinced me its nothing bad .




I haven't laughed this much cause of a forum post for a long time.
Thank you!
dr mineral
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#654 - 2013-04-20 00:10:30 UTC
i dont accept the darwin award .

i now i have the posebilety to lose a 3e acount with this .
but the truth is more important .

maybe you are to young , and dont understand this.
but its only a game .

in life you have to take responsibility.

and a darwin award .
thats more for a bank robber that says , put the money immediately on my acount here .
Rhivre
TarNec
Invisible Exchequer
#655 - 2013-04-20 00:20:20 UTC
dr mineral wrote:
i dont accept the darwin award .

i now i have the posebilety to lose a 3e acount with this .
but the truth is more important .

maybe you are to young , and dont understand this.
but its only a game .

in life you have to take responsibility.

and a darwin award .
thats more for a bank robber that says , put the money immediately on my acount here .





You should accept the Darwin award.

I guess the"Truth" you are talking about is your previous quote where you said that CCP had never done anything about this hack before.... I am not going to link to other forums here, but a 5 second google search would have

a) shown you that the most common question asked about the thing you used is "Can this be detected"
b) Shown people complaining about being banned from back before you even started playing Eve

Finally....if you blindly install anything people give you onto your computer, I suspect getting banned from Eve is the least of your worries

Fluffy Bunny Pic!

Kismeteer
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#656 - 2013-04-20 00:55:52 UTC
dr mineral wrote:
the pvp is not over .


Sorry to say, the PVP is over. At least for you.
Brutus John
Dihydrogen Monoxide Industries
#657 - 2013-04-20 01:09:05 UTC
My 2-cents worth is that EVE is virtually unplayable without all the third party tools. Declaring that using them is now a ban-able breach against the EULA (whether enforced or not) will only make EVE a less appealing game to play.
Galen Dnari
Dnari Mining and Manufacturing
#658 - 2013-04-20 01:41:11 UTC
Thirty three pages of mostly stupid discussion. Were we invaded by a bunch of WoW players or something?

Sheesh!

http://eveboard.com/ub/1939472205-31.png
Octoven
Stellar Production
#659 - 2013-04-20 01:58:17 UTC
Over 2,000 players banned for using a script in their client? Good to know CCP has detection software sent from God, in my experience all technology is imperfect and at some point someone will get banned for a mis-interpreted detection. You cant tell me that every single account you banned this week had a hack software on their computer with 100% certainty, why? Inherently the more accounts you put into the mix, the greater the chance that the imperfection in the detection methods I spoke of will bleed through.
BFE
Shadow Flight
#660 - 2013-04-20 02:00:52 UTC
CCP Peligro wrote:
Muscaat wrote:
Ranger 1 wrote:
Muscaat wrote:
CCP Stillman wrote:

Trust me, we have no interest in banning people unless they are doing something that hurts the game.

Then why post all this crap about suddenly deciding that cache scraping has always been against the EULA and threaten to ban those who do it?

This attempt to clarify the situation seems to have done anything but.

Only if you are incredibly obtuse.


For years, CCP have been saying "cache scraping is OK". Then out of the blue we get a dev blog and wiki page telling us exactly the opposite: cache scraping is banned and CCP can ban you for doing it. Then, in the comments thread accompanying the dev blog, we get a dev saying in effect "it's banned and we can ban you for it, but we probably won't".

That's not exactly clarifying the situation to me.

I have a personal interest here: I have both written a market cache scraper and also run a website that uses scraped market data. Now, after investing years of development effort into both having been told it's OK to do so, CCP suddenly tell me I could be banned for it? That's not pleasant.

And there are many more people out there who've invested way more time and effort into developing third-party applications than I have.

It might seem like nitpicking, but when you've made a heavy investment into a game, suddenly being threatened with a ban for it rather makes one want to seek as much clarity as one can.


I absolutely understand your frustration. This was not intended as a threat in any way.

Please, consider the fact that cache scraping can be used for illegitimate purposes which are damaging to the overall health of the game, such as for example market bots. The policy is in place to protect the game and our players ability to enjoy the game.

A blanket yes or no is not possible in this case. With our statement of intent, I sincerely hope that our legitimate players don't worry about catching the ban hammer for something we genuinely aren't concerned about.





Listen folks.... It REALLY IS as simple as this: How many people have actually read teh EULA in its entirety? I mean seriously. SERIOUSLY. I admit I haven't. I scroll to the bottom (when required to highlight the Accept button) and hit accept. I don't want to spend two days reading, when I can hit accept and spend two days playing. When a topic like this comes out and says, It's always been bannable, I say ok. I might not like it, and in this case I don't. Moreso, for those that read my previous posts, I find it a little hypocritical on CCP's part, but since they own the game, I really have no say in it. (Perhaps I should run for CSM9, and bring my ideas with me)

Anyways... People, it's time to stop fretting. Yes, CCP states cache scraping is bannable, but they have admited NUMEROUS times, that even though EVEMon EveHQ, Aura, etc are scrapers, they are mainly focused on those players with evil/bad intentions. i.e. Botters (whether miners, marketeers, etc), hackers, and the like.

Most likely.... nothing is a certainty..... your EveMon, Eve Fitting Tool (if it applies), Aura, Eve Nova, etc are not going to get you banned.

We all need to take a deep breath, and focus on the important issues; not what's been in the EULA for years, but on how to fix it for the future of EVE Online.

***Let's change the EULA to specifically and pointedly ban botting/hacking/etc, and allow, and ENDORSE 3rd party programs, to affect your EVE account!!!! I don't want to just be able to READ my mail via Aura, on my phone... but to WRITE/RESPOND back! I want to be able to send a Corp mail, or an Alliance mail, sending out a CTA, and then be able to CHANGE my skill queue while I'm at work, so when I get home, I don't have eto wait 3 hours for a change to finish.... it already will have been changed, and now I can put it into effect!***

This issue, amoung others, should be the focus. We all now know, CCP will most likely not crack down on you or me, for using EveHQ to check new members API's, check noob's skill queues and help them train appropriately until they get a handle on the game, etc.... they are focusing on finding hackers and botters.