A consortium of self-professed Bot Hunters in EVE Online has come forward with allegations that CCP has been using bots, and for quite some time.
“Yeah, turns out ‘NPC’ doesn’t just mean that the ships aren’t controlled by non-paying players, they’re actually computer controlled!” explained a spokesperson for the group in an impressive display of double negatives. “For some time, we’ve been suspecting that CCP just couldn’t have that many people on staff, controlling all of those ships, even if people were using multiple accounts. We set up some situations and, by even their own standards, the behaviour was too much like bot behaviour. Everything was very consistent, very predictable. After about a decade we were fairly certain. The sleepers threw us a bit. They tried hard with CODE but, seriously? Obviously a bunch of brainless automatons there. I’m guessing they didn’t expect us to see through all that. We would have actually come forward earlier but then the Triglavians and EDENCOM came along and we wondered, is it possible they just hired more people and we’ve been wrong all along?”
EVE Onion approached CCP with the evidence to get their side of the story. When we called, there was a muttered curse and the line went dead. Just as we were about to call back, the phone rang, displaying the caller as “CCP Legal”. CCP Dewey, CCP Screwem, and CCP Howe introduced themselves on the conference call, rounding out the introductions with a warning that this conversation mustn’t be recorded, spoken of, or even hinted at. After pressing record, we assured them this was the case.
We asked if the allegations were true: Was CCP using bots in the game under misleading names like ‘NPC’, ‘Triglavian’, and ‘CODE’? Dewey, Screwem, and Howe assured us that these were not, in fact, bots, but “AI” or “Artificial Intelligence”. They further exonerated that the AI only applied to “NPC” or “Non-Player Character” accounts so they couldn’t ban them even if they wanted to. AI is apparently different from bots because the actions are “clever and pleasantly orchestrated” whereas bots are “stupid poopy-heads and deserve to be banned.” When pressed to explain how an ad hominem attack outlined the difference between the two approaches, all we got back was, “I know you are but what am I?”
We tried a different approach. We pointed out that the legal bots very clever AI had expanded their actions to mining resources and attacking player ships, including pods. This is much more aggressive and detrimental to game enjoyment compared to the illegal bots poopy heads that don’t kill other players or otherwise disrupt their enjoyment of the game. Indeed, they provide an ancillary service as something to shoot at from time to time, and repeatedly, without apparent end. “Yeah, we really didn’t expect that,” the crack legal team mumbled apologetically. “At first, we thought it was neat when one NPC group attacked another NPC group. Then they seemed to get bolder and started attacking players. Most recently, they even destroyed stargates and created their own region!” We could only raise an admonishing and condescending eyebrow at these exclamations. “Oh! But that’s not our fault!” retorted the trio, evasively. “We even tried to rollback the code to a previous version but the Triglavians somehow reinstated it when we brought the cluster back up!” After a long pause, clearly for melodramatic effect, Screwem tapped his temple with equal melodrama, chanting, “AAAAAA IIIIIIIII — you don’t see bots doing that!”
