Like most things in EVE it’s driven by the players. The leaders of the alliance had the option to make it so that a vote would have been called that all the directors of the alliance would have had to participate in to dissolve the alliance. But they didn’t bother to set it up and so they allowed one person to flick the switch.

The fault lies with the executors of the alliance, not with any game design flaws. Just though I’d point that out for the people who don’t know the intricacies of the game.

That’s really funny to see a person chatting with gamers, claiming to be a designer and saying sophisticated words such as “bad design” and “lack the necessary depth” while demonstrating complete incompetence in the subject.

The general consensus is that he wasn’t working alone, and others in the company were certainly complicit in fraud. It should also be stressed that the guy didn’t dismantle the company, he just basically ripped off his customers.

So basically you’re saying, it’s not that the developers didn’t see this coming, it’s that they deliberately planned it this way? I hate to question your abundant faith in CCP, but do you have any evidence to support this assertion?

After going through most of the comments I’m surprised that no one has mentioned just how unrealistic this whole scam was. This isn’t akin to the people of Troy wheeling in the Trojan horse, it’s akin to someone highly placed in a Fortune 500 company somehow managing to tank the company by himself. It just can’t happen.

Honestly, this would be like Steve Ballmer signing over everything MS owns to Sun. It just can’t happen. Even if Steve wanted it to. It ignores any common sense rules of how corporations are governed, nevermind the checks and internal security within the corporation, or even the legalities involved. What happened here is an example of a deeply flawed game mechanic that CCP needs to address – but probably won’t, which is why they’ll never be more than a very bit player in the MOG scheme of things.

Now a corporation in the real world has all manner of avenues open to them to tank themselves, ranging from the legal to wholly illegal – e.g. Enron. Yet, there is no possible way for a single individual to scuttle a large and powerful organization in the manner in which it happened here.

CAOD on the official forums will generally headline most of what is going on, but there’s little discussion and everything should be viewed skeptically. Mostly because 90% of all posts there come from people involved in a conflict, posting on unaffiliated alt-characters as though they weren’t involved.

I’m not disagreeing, in fact I’m fully in accord with what you’re saying. Perhaps ‘poor’ is the wrong word, but clearly the mechanics lack the necessary depth and forethought to reflect the complexity of the game at the level it was operating at, to the point that personal ‘trust’ in the individual played too much of a part in the process to the detriment of the game.

Does anyone have a good recommendation where I can go to get updates from the fighting? That radio thing with the two interviews was pretty fucking entertaining but it seems like they dont have many recordings available on their site.

Players can be given a number of roles that give them control over areas of a corporation without giving them the same level of access a director has, it’s not simply poor game mechanics at fault here. However, there are certain areas that a player other than the CEO only has access to with directorship.

What I’d like to see in a future patch would be to make a few more assignable roles separate from directorship, so a trusted player can be given access to control much of the corporation without having the power to destroy it entirely. I’d also like to see improvements to the voting system, which is pretty much redundant as it is now. Basically give the CEO more options to customise how the corp is run.

For example, they could choose to have it work like your suggestion, where directors would have to vote on major actions such as withdrawing a large sum from the corp wallet, kicking a player or offlining a starbase. They could also have it so the directors can initiate these actions, but they have to be approved by the CEO before they go ahead, or the option would still be there for the corp to remain as it is currently, with directors having power to do almost everything the CEO can. These would introduce safeguards that are, speaking as a player who loves the darker aspects of EVE, entirely within the spirit of the game. They don’t introduce artificial safeguards against spying and infiltration, but they could prevent large organisations from being destroyed on the whim of a lone player.