What’s life like at EVE Online developer CCP Games? To hear one former CSM member’s account, it’s generally pretty chaotic and poorly managed. A Reddit post from Xenuria, one of the members of CSM 11 that was active around 2016, describes his time in the game’s office as “worse than [players] know.”
The post oscillates between hyperbole, assumption, and personal observations, but it does leverage some specific accusations against the developer, including broken internal metrics for SKIN sales, ignoring requests from the CSM to not include cash shop items like skill injectors, a “toxic” workplace culture where certain staff – particularly women – are “talked over” if their views divert from the norm, and a general sense of displeasure with CEO Hilmar Petursson, with one developer wishing Petursson would read a book on how to run a company during a tour of the office.
He also says that the studio considers the CSM “an afterthought,” accuses the company of mismanaging CSM funds by overpaying for last-minute flights, and alleges that the studio bends the rules of CSM nomination in favor of those who “are going to simp and suck up to CCP” while trying to stonewall CSM candidates that ask hard questions of the developer.
The thread has recently exploded with well over 1K comments at this time, including replies from other former CSM members; one replied to a few of the accusations leveraged by the OP and another remarked that his time as CSM “was the single biggest contributing factor for [his] decision to quit EVE.” These reps are part of a growing body of current and former CSM members who’ve spoken out against the company in recent months; readers will recall that back in March, it was CSM members who fostered the uprising against CCP that saw the studio walk back the “bargegate” mess.
In other EVE news, there’s an audio log reading Discord remarks from CCP Paragon related to the game’s decision to hike its sub price, which explains that the price is meant to keep the game profitable and because the game “lost Russia,” that a discount is possibly going to be offered to those who have multiple accounts, and that the upcoming EVE Fanfest will have a big announcement – “the largest one probably we’ve ever done.”
