“It was difficult to admit the truth,” the engineering manager acknowledged, “but there it was, staring us in the face.”
It is no secret that CCP has been wrestling with code quality since shortly after the turn of the millenium. Facing a legacy of spaghetti code, CCP developers have struggled mightily to deliver new features to meet both player and executive demand. From deleting boot.ini (2007) to game-breaking exploits allowing infinite damage (2014), to a bug that prevents capsuleers with corporation roles from opening their wallet (2019), defects have ranged from the bemusing to the absolutely mind-boggling.
“At first, we thought we could manage publicity long enough to resolve all our legacy code issues,” the engineering manager admitted. Public relations started with traditional responses, such as “can’t reproduce,” then escalated to “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature,” and finally settled into “POS code.”
Then, in 2019, the ultimate breakthrough.
“This absolutely guarantees we will never again encounter a new bug in EVE Online,” the manager announced as they concluded an internal meeting. For a moment, the room was silent. Then, chaos erupted, as developers lept from their seats, exchanged high-fives, and one normally quiet lass erupted with “YEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEE!”
The solution, and its rationale are blindingly clear, once stated simply:
“There is a clear relationship between the amount of code we write, and the number of defects we create or expose in existing code. Thus, the optimal solution is to write no new code. To achieve this end, effective 2019.12.16, Developers may now play [EVE]. We are entirely confident that no productive work will occur from this day forward, and thus no new defects will be created or exposed.”
