CCP Squares Off Against <cite>EVE Online</cite> Players

In a recent post on CCP's blog, the company simultaneously defended itself against allegations of wrongdoing and took aim at one of EVE's biggest guilds, Goonfleet. For those new to this squabble, here's a bit of background: a GM supposedly joined a corporation in Goonfleet's alliance, made himself a director, then left. This raised suspicions of espionage and other such sneaky shenanigans. There were a few other issues as well, but that one was the biggie. CCP promised to do an internal investigation and deal accordingly with the matter.

Perhaps the investigation wasn't moving fast enough, perhaps some EVE
members were just bored, but this past weekend, they got pretty vocal about their displeasure and posted about it in various forums. Said posts got Dugg, Slashdotted, and everything else you might expect in our digital landscape, attracting much attention to the dispute.

CCP
responded by posting a blog addressing some of the allegations of wrongdoing, including screen shots to provide proof that said allegations were indeed false. Never did quite get around to that whole cheating accusation, though. Moreover, they got pissed at their own customers, as they feel that the mass 'net presences of the complaints was a carefully-planned attack of social engineering.

Here's how CCP sees things:

More specifically, the objective of this scheme was to permanently paint CCP as a biased and corrupt company that favors a select group of players over the rest of our community. In this particular case, instead of receiving notification of a possible problem and sufficient time to examine and address it, we faced a coordinated and hostile attack executed on our forums, Digg, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and other outlets at the beginning of a three-day weekend. We believe this speaks volumes of the intention of the person(s) responsible for orchestrating this scheme...

Claims that the goal of this effort was to expose corruption within the company cannot be taken seriously. They are simply a smokescreen intended to mobilize and use the EVE community against CCP.

Anyone else thinks that smacks of paranoia? The blog post went on to say "The allegations investigated above by this internal affairs department will also be examined by our legal resources, as we do not intend to sit idly by while our servers, community and reputation are under attack." I'll leave it up to you to decide what you think they mean by that.

I don't claim to know the truth of the matter. I don't know if CCP is trying to cover up its employee's wrongdoing, or if Goonfleet is just being a bunch of, well, goons. And honestly, I don't care. That's not really the point here. So members of the EVE community mouthed off...so what? Is CCP only happy to take their money--and given Goonfleet's size, it's a damn lot of money--each month so long as members all sing CCP's praises? Such bitching and moaning is hardly unique in the world of gaming, and in this case, it seems like there's a potentially serious issue at the heart of it.

Don't get me wrong--CCP is absolutely entitled to stand up for itself, and it should, but there's a difference between correcting misconceptions, laying down the law in a firm but fair manner, and fighting back in some kind of short-tempered huff. I can see where they're coming from, but I think they've handled this entire situation about as badly as they could. What do you guys think?

IA Investigation Update: Three Investigations Concluded[EVE Insider Dev Blog]