Last week, we covered Visionary Realms’ investigation into one of its own developers after Pantheon players accused said developer of guild favoritism. According to the now-rebutted allegations, VR’s technical director spawned special mobs for a guild to kill and loot, which prompted a hot debate over whether it happened and whether it even mattered in an early access MMORPG with wipes queued up anyway.
The spat might have ended at the weekend, as late on Friday, VR finished its investigation and found the dev blameless. As we posted, the studio combed through logs and says its dev wasn’t a member of the guild and didn’t actually spawn any mobs, though he did hang out with the guild and make jokes about spawning said mobs, which was then “taken out of context by a disgruntled former member.” The studio also said that “[t]he GM involved has been counseled on the issue and will be taking a break from in-game activities.”
But on Sunday, Visionary Realms opted to continue the discussion anyway, as studio CEO Chris Rowan reflected on the incident and what the team has learned from it. He suggests that as the game “approaches 100,000 users,” the company’s relationship with the community needs to change, as “chumming around and joking” is “no longer tenable or appropriate.” Basically, he takes responsibility for the culture and vows to fix it.
“[M]ore importantly, any arrangements that involve community such as pre-patch testing cannot and will not be structured or run in a way that allows any advantages, whether real, or even just perceived. Until now, we have worked closely with a guild for pre-patch testing because they were self-organizing, insanely competent, and saved us the huge administrative effort required to marshal testing forces when needed. But guilds compete. With that comes a great deal of passion and potential volatility, especially when there is any perceived risk of one guild receiving unfair advantages. We thought we could contain the risks, but that turned out to be overly optimistic and just plain wrong. I should not have allowed it and take full responsibly for the poor judgment in not stopping it.”
Consequently, Rowan says, VR has formalized its procedures in early access to ensure that internal testers are never testing on live servers, that only authorized CS and CM staff will have GM commands (other staff will not, including himself), that community engagement guidelines are public, and that all GM activity will be logged and reviewed.
