Over the past few days, news has been trickling out about certain members of the EVE Online development team using their position to give the player corporations (guilds) they belong to an unfair advantage. The story was originally broken by a player who utilized his in-game spy network to listen in on conversations between corporation alliance leaders, looking for intelligence to sell to other alliances, but he stumbled into a controversy that ultimately got him banned from EVE and exposed what could be the most blatant case of developer misconduct in years.

This particular case, involving a single developer, underlined where improvements needed to be made and we have since focused our efforts on reinforcing rules and processes so that consistent ruling is assured. As of the beginning of January this year, we have been building up a special institution within our company similar to the Internal Affairs divisions of law enforcement agencies. For this team, we have assembled the most ardent hardliners in our ranks. They all fully understand the enormity of what they have accepted to do and we are certain that they will be able to shoulder this responsibility.

It is no trivial thing when corruption takes place. In our case it's no different than the injustice of public servants in the real world feathering their own nests rather than ensuring the prosperity of the many. Living in a country of a comparable population as the world of EVE (Iceland only has 300,000 inhabitants), I sure know how it can feel when governance is not balanced and feeling powerless to stop it. I am certain that members of the EVE community are now going through similar emotions.