EVE Online's devs have always been bumbling, corrupt, greedy assholes. Some of this may not make sense to you, but hope enough does to see that here.
I could talk for weeks about the sheer nepotistic corrupt bullshit in the early years, when an Ayn Rand roleplaying group (not kidding, they were called "Taggart Transdimensional") got unique advantages from the devs that no one else could access all in the name of "roleplaying." They conjured up fictional characters that gave those advantages (the very first and exclusive t2 mining laser blueprint originals) to their Randroid favorites, and over and over again changed the rules to fit their favorites, year after year.
The dystopian corruption of the setting was coming from inside the development company.
Fredrik Knudsen's video on EVE is really fascinating stuff, though more focused on in-universe events. I don't recall him even bringing this up in the vid which seems like a huge miss, I just recall various claims of admins giving benefits to certain users unchecked for a while. Also tracks with the monetization changes the devs made that universally pissed off their whole playerbase, unironic lolbertarians are wild
Oh that video is amazing and it recapped so much that I didn't see for myself after I quit the game in disgust around "Tyrannus," which was appropriately named because it was a staggering number of "protect the country club" rules changes to make sure the company's favorite in-game failsons were protected from invasion in a way where they could just press a button and prevent invasions entirely as long as they were rich enough.
I spent ages botting with like 10 accounts, from bot mining in a rented nullsec system to bot faction warfare amassing a stupid amount of isk for one player, then having decided I had enough funds to have fun, joined some corps and realised I didn't enjoy the game at all
Should log on and sell off the characters and ISK some day
I haven't played EVE for a long time and I only know from other people how it's presently going (not good, sounds like, which isn't much of a change), but damn does that company have some toxic stans.
Reminds me of the types of people I participated in wars against, back against BoB and their numerous (described by them) "pets." They were almost always insufferably smug pieces of shit that ran interference for CCP's worst behaviors, usually with excessive use of eyeroll emojis on the forums.
Sure, the skullduggery and corruption is neat when it's in-game and you're ready for it, but when godlike entities outside of the game's limitations can just conjure shit up and change the rules to fit their Randroid buddies, that's not fun.
This would have never happened if CCP Guard was still there. Rip permaband. In all seriousness, CCP seems like an awful place to work but there are still good people that work there. Although they either leave like Guard or Snorlax or get worse like Hilmar. Aurora still seems okay, but for how long remains to be seen.
Posting pirate software should be illegal. I never really understood the appeal of eve i imagine its very much a sunk cost fallacy game i don't really see how new players can get into it. I tried it out a few times and put a decent amount of time into the game it mostly devolved into either doing missions or mining and both were very boring. Gameplay is clunky, grind is intense, only recommendation is to join a corp where i would do the exact same activities but get taxed.
I did play with a few friends and do some lowsec mining but nothing interesting ever happened its only ever nullsec ganks anyway
My surface level understanding of the game made it seem like the kind of thing that I would have loved at some point in my life, but the more I learn about it, the more I'm glad I never gave it a shot.
It certainly delivers the corruption and backstabbing hellscape that it promises (including its development company's meddling in the game), but it's also a bit exhausting because of it. More fun for me to read about than participate in.
I noticed they are trash tier after playing few days and my ship evaporating with nearly my entire progress. I kinda liked that game, but this is complete dealbreaker.