Jita Park Speakers Corner

So, onwards to the ToS, which now contains the following after the change:



This was changed from: "You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer." only. The highlighted bit is, from what I understand, the only part that is worded slightly differently from the other two places, but in our interpretation also falls into "falsely represent his or her identity", and always has.

My personal feeling on what such a revision should look like is as follows.

• Expand section 2B of the naming policy to include player names and names of player organizations. Change the relevant sections of the EULA & TOS to mirror this.
• Nuke section 2C of the naming policy from orbit, & remove the clauses that mirror it from the EULA and the TOS.

These changes would continue to forbid impersonation through similar names (abusing I vs l to fool and confuse and so forth), but allow more meta styles of impersonation as have been brought up as examples countless times in the past few days, such as claiming to be a representative of another player or player group, claiming to be another player, and so on.


In more elaborate terms, Section 2B of the naming policy would add a clause something like this after the second bullet point:

• Impersonate or parody another character's name or player corporation or alliance for the purpose of misleading other players.

Section 2C would be removed.

Section 8 of the ToS would then read something like "You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or present yourself or your corporation or alliance by imitation of their name"; the language may be a bit clunky, but you get the idea.

And finally, the line in section B of the EULA which currently reads "No player may use the character name of another player to impersonate or falsely represent his or her identity." would change to something similar to the TOS, for example "No player may impersonate or parody the name of another character, corporation or alliance for the purpose of misleading other players."

As far as re-re-wording the ToS, Mynnna's proposal is spot on and I doubt myself or anyone else could come up with anything that is clearer and closer to the spirit of Eve. Maybe there should also be a provision against editing the wiki with malicious intent, but other people already touched up on this.

However, after reading Karidor's previous posts posts it seems the wording is ultimately irrelevant, because even with the previous version, the GM team was working not under the ToS, but under their interpretation of what the ToS reads between the lines :




While I am fairly sure (and I can understand that is an internal company policy matter) no CCP employee will come here willing to discuss the degree of freedom allowed to GMs or admitting that GM interpretation of the ToS can be sometimes arbitrary beyond common sense, I hope at least in private CSM will approach this matter and get a form of assurance that the written rules and only those will govern action or inaction taken by GMs (except borderline cases or loopholes, obviously)

Otherwise, no matter how and how often the ToS is changed, we'll always have the unpleasant surprise to hear "yes, but in our interpretation ..."

In EVE there is a very prevalent "tough s**t" attitude around that makes EVE a very "real" and "adult" game.

Things in EVE matter, you can pay for your account with ISK or you can buy that shiny faction ship which you will then die in a fire inside of. Many games dont have that visceral connection to your stuff that EVE has.

However I think we as a player base and CCP themselves need to step back here a bit and look at the bigger picture. CCP is using the income from EVE to fund at LEAST 3 other projects. DUST514, EVE VR and Vampires Online (World of Darkness). The game has 500k subs that took 10 years to reach, while completely terrible MMO's like Age of Conan or Warhammer hit nearly 1m and then fall off the map due to complete lack of content or whatever else cause them to crash.

The likely hood of a newer player coming into EVE, spending months / a year plus mining, ratting or trading in EVE to have 90% of that effort wiped out by a scammer is a problem for CCP. I know many of you, us, me included realize that dangers in EVE of getting ripped off are just like the dangers in life. Verify that what your doing is legit, triple check, ask 10 other people if doing x or y is a good idea etc..

However you have a huge market of sci-fi, fantasy or fps players that CCP is looking grow into EVE subscribers and DUST514 bling buyers. If they come into EVE and 4 months later get robbed of all their goods and hard work a vast majority of them will just say **** it and quit.

I know that many people think thats LOL AWESOME GJ NOOB and not think twice about it, but the reality is CCP has probably done a ton of internal investigation on what is causing new players to stop playing EVE and I am going to wager that one huge issue is the scamming that occurs in the game to newer players.

Almost every group in EVE I can think of is welcoming to new players... why? because they are as f*****g rare as a unicorn. Even when a "new player" joins your corp or alliance you cannot tell me you arent extremely suspicious of that "new guy" for a god damn year after he joined.

EVE has a major issue with market penetration. The tutorial is shakey at best, finding a good home for a new player is extremely tough BEFORE you take into account scammers, the game is hard to learn and harder to get good at and dont forget how extremely boring EVE can be if you have a new account with limited options on what you can do.

I am betting that this is just one step CCP is taking to mitigate new player losses. We as a community should be taking a hard look at how new sub's to EVE Online are treated before we get our pitch forks and torches trying to burn down CCP HQ.

GM Karidor quotes all relevant documents here.

Before, the rules specifically outlawed using ingame names to misrepresent oneself as another player. I think this is a fine policy, it avoids a lot of problems and generally the only people who will be upset about it are those attempting to defraud other players.

The new wording appears to be a material change. You no longer include the specific language restricting this policy to names. Thus the concern that pretending to be other people's alts, or misrepresenting yourself as a representative of a corp/alliance, will be an offense.

To many players, such behavior makes sense within New Eden. It may be morally reprehensible, but it's a big bad world, of course people will lie and cheat!

With the corp/alliance it is usually quite obvious. If I am not a member of the corp or alliance that I claim to represent, something is quite fishy. If I am a member, then I am representing my group by definition. Even if I am not a very good representative, or don't have the policies and interests of my group at heart.

It is harder to tell if I am misrepresenting myself as the alt of another player. You could eve-mail the main and wait for a response. But if I want to be on my alt, doing business as my main, I am probably not going to bother quitting the game and relogging twice just to satisfy your curiosity.

So I propose the following:

1. Reword the TOS as follows:2. Add a new API key permission that shows all characters who belong to the same account. This way, third party developers can build tools that can verify whether the claimed alt and the claimed main belong to the same account. Of course not every character will opt into this, but the very fact that the option was available would make it fishy if 'ChribbasAlt' promises to help you sell your titan but doesn't show up on these services.

3. Add an option to the show info context menu "Copy character name" so I can paste it into such a site without worrying about typos.

2. Add a new API key permission that shows all characters who belong to the same account.

My personal feeling on what such a revision should look like is as follows.

• Expand section 2B of the naming policy to include player names and names of player organizations. Change the relevant sections of the EULA & TOS to mirror this.
• Nuke section 2C of the naming policy from orbit, & remove the clauses that mirror it from the EULA and the TOS.

These changes would continue to forbid impersonation through similar names (abusing I vs l to fool and confuse and so forth), but allow more meta styles of impersonation as have been brought up as examples countless times in the past few days, such as claiming to be a representative of another player or player group, claiming to be another player, and so on.


In more elaborate terms, Section 2B of the naming policy would add a clause something like this after the second bullet point:

• Impersonate or parody another character's name or player corporation or alliance for the purpose of misleading other players.

Section 2C would be removed.

Section 8 of the ToS would then read something like "You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or present yourself or your corporation or alliance by imitation of their name"; the language may be a bit clunky, but you get the idea.

And finally, the line in section B of the EULA which currently reads "No player may use the character name of another player to impersonate or falsely represent his or her identity." would change to something similar to the TOS, for example "No player may impersonate or parody the name of another character, corporation or alliance for the purpose of misleading other players."

I do happen to agree that their interpretation is valid with the way the EULA & naming policy are currently written, and do believe that they've been enforcing it that way for awhile, even though it differs so strongly from the common player interpretation. This is why I believe so strongly that the way they are written should be changed.