EVE General Discussion

Greetings pilots,


We would like to address your concerns regarding the update to article 8 of our TOS that was published yesterday. Some basic information on how we deal with issues that come up regarding impersonation is therefore appropriate.

All cases are investigated individually on a case by case basis. If there are complications or difficulties in reaching a solution cases are moved to senior game masters, which happens a lot with the impersonation issues that are reported to us. There are no magic catch-all rules and policies to cover every eventuality so they must interpret the rules we have in place and apply them to the issue at hand in order to keep the peace. For all practical purposes there has been no change in how impersonation issues will be handled compared to the last few years. The TOS update reflects the way reported cases of impersonation have been handled by Customer Support for a long time. The rules applied have been buried in our naming policy and EULA but have now been placed in plain view in order to better help players to make decisions on how they interact with one another.

As cases are investigated GMs look at the information that is available, one of the important considerations being the intent behind a player’s actions. Benevolent roleplaying of NPC entities may not be considered to warrant action in regards to impersonation while malicious activity employing such trickery will not be tolerated.

One concern is that we have pretty much banned all scams in EVE. Clearly, this is not the case.


Thank you and fly safe.

So claiming I am a Quafe Ultra delivery guy and for 50m Isk I'll drop a case or two for a cat then keeping all those freshly printed isks is malicious trickery that can be visited upon with a ban? Guy did you even realise this game is Eve you are talking about?
As a player I, by definition, cannot be officially representing any NPC entity no matter my claims so why the need for any such language at all?

Edit: malicious activity employing various trickery is kinda the whole damn point of the game.

How can those terms be objectively defined in a universe like Eve Online's?

What's more...
In in-game terms... what is the CFC? I entered it in the People&Places search without success.
(And I entered 'clusterfuck' and the game crashed, seriously -.-)

I think they don't want to answer this question as there is going to be a Riot over it!

If I say I'm part of the Mordus Angels, and if you fly through my space I will kill you, could a newbie petition his ship loss for thinking he was fighting NPCs?

It's poor wording in your Terms of Service. Please just try again.

Further question I have, once you cover the above.

If it is decided that pretending to be a member of a group (example stated above, recruitment scam) is considered a ToS breach, what metrics will CCP be using to define exactly what a "group" is.

Confusion happened when, in specific example, we were told that pretending to be a nonspecific "recruitment officer" for the CFC was against ToS if not a member of CFC, but conversely, pretending to be a member of the New Order "Coalition" was allowed (classing the New Order as "not a group" as it were).

Thanks in advance.

Particularly when taken view of in the context of a long con...

Well that clarified... nothing.

First of all, beautiful PR response! 262 words, 13 sentences, to say nothing new or bring anything useful to the table. I am not a scammer nor have I ever been scammed by such shenanigans, but myself I find the wording extremely vague.

Let's assume the stupidest player in existence with the shittiest overview setup where he only sees distance and ship name. Let's say I name my ship "Centatis Wraith" and warp around. This player sees me on a gate with a Succubus named "Centatis Wraith", locks me up and gets concordokken. He could argue I was impersonating an NPC ship because he was ******* ********.

We're entering lawyer territory now. Are we going to need trademarks for our corp/alliance names now? If someone creates a corp called Goonhunters, could goon fill a complaint saying that the word "Goon" could confuse players into thinking the Goonhunter is a branch of Goonswarm, and as such appear to be representing Goon and thus break the ToS?

Seriously, instead of coming up with bright ideas like this, take your ToS, give it to your lawyer, ask to what extent someone could argue over it. You'll see how badly it is worded.

If I apply to an NC. corp claiming to be Vince Draken's cyno alt, am accepted, then go on a wild Awoxing spree, then again by the newly presented wording I've breached the TOS.

Is this your intention?