When Game Developers Cheat

You'd think it was unlikely wouldnt you...?

It seems however that ANet are not above it.

How is it that 2 employees of Anet are allowed to be in Guilds that win competitions yet the Rules clearly state its a breach of the Rules they made.

As an added note: When this is mentioned (elsewhere) the response is "Oh well, he didnt take part"...erm, I may be being a little slow here but as I understand it the Rules says employee=ineligible....

I was then informed that the "Rule changes required to allow those staff to remain in the Guilds" was ONLY published thru a NON official source (AND I might add a limited source - rawr radio to be precise)

So, what part of that is fair? What part strikes you as a little suspect? The bit about changing Rules to suit the need? OR the bit about publication ONLY thru a non official source. Please note: The Rules are still the same as they always were on the website. NO changes have been made to reflect this "alleged" change to the Rules allowing staff to remain where they were. So am I to believe that listeners of rawr radio are exempt from ALL GW Rules and no one else in GWland is?

OR is the fact that having an employee on side DOES actually give the Guild an advantage irrespective of whether he plays in the tourney or not.

Can rawr radio now be classified as an official source of info now?

Insider knowledge and Cronism..... are these what Guild Wars is about now... is it that stale that even the staff flout rules and make them up as they go along?

$10,000 goes a long way for some people.... even better when you KNOW youre gonna win it......

How can this be a problem i hear you ask... well Ill use what another poster in another forum wrote and you can decide....
He (the Dev) could have told them about the screw up in map rotation. He could have told them when it was being reverted. That could have won them two games out of 7 by itself, a vast advantage. Of course, the implications for the conflict of interest portion are much greater. Their weapons could be more potent, 50/50 instead of 40/40 (this sort of thing happens, look up EVE and associated scandals), they could all pick up a regen, and so on. Devs feeling a part of a group gives them strong incentive for bias on behalf of that group and very may well lead to cheating either in the giving of privileged information (like the map changes) or in a more material sense. It is to avoid this situation that devs aren't allowed in competing guilds. It doesn't matter whether or not you think a violation may have occurred- you often never know in these cases. The point is to prevent the question from ever coming up. If it does come up, something is wrong.

A lot of people think rawr shouldn't have been allowed to either win, or have AP in their guild. It happened anyway, because Anet can do what they want, apparently. It just sucks for all the other guilds who have been ineligible for the last 3ish years, even though apparently they could enter if the person didn't play.

That's ridiculous. Can we say "hypocritical" anyone?

Yea a lot of people in my guild got quite annoyed at what happened during the last MaT. However, it's not like they were actually surprised, just really pissed off. I guess you know things are going bad when your top players of your game actually have their expectations of it almost to nill.

Regardless, this should have been solved.

i dont mind, i picked rawr to win

oh and anyone raging about this, next time put your energy into not loosing

I'm gonna guess you don't play PvP. The point isn't that they won. The point is that Anet broke their own rule by letting them compete in the tournament, as the rules clearly state that any guild with a developer cannot enter tournaments. Hell, Joe Hostile lives with some devs, and that breaks a rule. 2 broken rules, and nothing was done.

Arena Net has lost all respect from me as a company.

I wonder how Arena Net's public relations are going to spin this one around.

/popcorn

I think someone's read too much Team Quitter forum flame.

*whips out a bag of popcorn and sits across from toxage*

Doesn't it suck for you to know that those "two games" were the only games that we lost in the whole tournament. Round 1 on Isle of Solitude vs. You Failed and Round 5 on Frozen Isle vs. Revive Teammates [rezz]. But wait! Maybe we lost those two on purpose.

1) I doubt that an outgoing community rep is much of a competitive advantage in an AT. There are only so many ways to manipulate the outcome, virtually all of them are traceable, and your hypothetical suspect would literally be putting his job on the line in order to give [rawr] a boost. Further, it's not like they don't already have the prize most important to competitive players (capes = ego > RL prizes). I don't buy it.

2) That said, this rule is literally the oldest rule in competitive play. It's common sense and common knowledge. Everyone involved used some extremely poor judgment.

You would expect (given that the rules were as stated by OP at the time of the tournament) that AP will get a solid reprimand at work. I'd say the appropriate response is to compel [rawr] to vacate their prizes and move everyone they beat up a level in the prize food chain. Then find a way to deal with the problem going forward.

EDIT: Adjusted last paragraph to deal with the two possiblities: the "everyone in the know already knew it was OK, we just didn't update" explanation, and the "OP" explanation.

Looks like this is going to be the 300 post thread of the day.

Welcome to Guru Ms Beunaobra (sp?).

This was discussed to death on the QQ forums and the outcome was that the devs just haven't got around to making the rules more specific - that is, any dev can be in a guild as long as they don't play in the tournament

Why would he be reprimanded? "Work" knew he is in rawr when they changed the rule to approve it to enter.

FIXED!

Fixed =)

Well, there is kinda a reason why in most contests in the world, employees and their families are not allowed to enter. A guild is kinda like the family of the employee. It just leaves room for unnecessary criticism, and opens the process to doubt.

When was this announced? If the policy is "common knowledge", ie: everyone that needs to know (top players and staff) knows, then you're correct that there's no need for a reprimand or stripping prizes. After all, the problem is the appearance of impropriety, and almost certainly doesn't involve [rawr] gaining material advantage.

If, by contrast, the staff has been told what the rule indicates, and ANet is making up the rules as they go here in order to serve "fairness", then we have a problem.

The explanation "Oh, we made new rules, we just didn't get around to telling you all," fits either set of facts. Without some additional outside confirmation of the former explanation, this looks like the latter.

Are there other well-known ANet employees that are members of guilds that compete (well) in the monthlies? This would support the former explanation pretty conclusively.

k guys i'll come clean on this

it was me.

oh i forgot this isn't about my wife in which case who gives a shit.

@#$@#$@!#$@!, here I was saying to myself 2-3 weeks ago, when this happened, that I was so happy there wasn't a thread on this in Riverside. AND NOW YOU'VE BLOWN IT.

Apparently we are slacking off people.

Polly just said it! They use mending refrain to hide their SUPER SECRET REGEN CHEATZ.

The OP starts with a strong point but finishes with rambling. Is it that hard to make a decent post?

anet has been hypocritical for the last 3 years.