Shades of Gray
In a game thats practically built on a foundation that allows and downright encourages players to scam, cheat, lie-to, and extort others (and we love you for it CCP), where do you draw the line? Most of us are aware of the big no-no’s that will bring down the big-bad-Ban Hammer; real-life threats, racial epitaphs, and pretty much anything involving IRL money are the obvious big ones. But sometimes you come across an idea or a scam that just not that cut and dry. This scenario was brought up in SN corp chat tonight, and seeing as its a VERY gray area, I wanted to field it out there to see how people felt about it.
Note: the scenario described below is PURELY a hypothetical scenario
Lets say you’re talking to someone in eve, and they casually mention that they sometimes share their account with a friend. Not like, “sometimes my friend takes over at the keyboard while I take a piss” but as in “we share a username and password”. Account-sharing for those unaware, is a BIG no-no with CCP, and is grounds for a perma-ban.
But back to our scenario. Person A is told by person B that he (person B) and his buddy, person C, share an eve account. “Egads!” thinks person A, thinking first of his duty as a loyal capsuleer. As he’s proof-reading over his immaculate and scathingly righteous CCP petition however, something else comes to mind. The intrepid and sneaky side of him comes to life, and thinks there may be a way to profit from this knowledge. An idea begins to form.
Person A goes back to person B, now with an evil grin on his face. He informs person B of his slip-up, as well as what sort of consequences he’s looking at for it. But then, person A lets person B know that “maybe” this could be their little secret…for a price.
And so here’s our dilemma: Has this crossed a line? By blackmailing B and C, is person A now an accomplice to B and C’s offense? What if person A takes the bribe money and then still reports B and C to CCP? Would that change anything about how you view the scenario?
I’m honestly looking for responses here, so please comment away. And again, this is a fictitious hypothetical scenario.
o7,
-Aiden
p.s. Its been whispered to me that my blog is at times hard to read. Looks good to me, but then again I’m biased. Would appreciate feedback in that department as well.
Finders & Keepers 
I’m all for “regular” scamming but this kind of crosses the line between in-game scamming and real life scamming. On top of that CCP might not like it. Although your not really an accomplice (in my mind) you are using out of game facts to extort someone in game. Kind of like Paul did some time ago when he told someone that he had received a mail from CCP about someone buying ISK.
Agreeing with SuddenlyNews, I agree this starts to become “real life scamming”. Anytime CCP is involved in your caper, you need to step back and re-evaluate your attitude towards the game. Paul’s caper involving lying about ISK being taken away by CCP (and thus he re-wardecs a group of tards) brushed against this line. This type of scam, outright RL consequences blackmail, seems to step right over it, imo.
+1. The sandbox rules we either loathe or love exist inside the sandbox simply because, at the end of the day, internet spaceship money is internet spaceship money. A whole bevy of other rules–RL threats, isk selling–is in place (and strictly enforced) to isolate the sandbox. Even if it’s not the letter of the law, I wouldn’t doubt that its spirit would be drastically opposed to any such exploitation of RL links to EvE advantage.
Also, might I note that, unlike most prepackaged deals, your blog has a classy layout. Quite legible.
Agreed, this would go a wee bit too far. Replace that particular bannable offense with any other (e.g. ISK selling) and ask yourself the question again. I know that many people actually do share accounts, but blackmail (even just for ISK) to look the other way on a rules violation seems to cross an ethical line.
Then again, I actually do just ignore the violations of which I’m aware and move on. I’m not looking for any value out of it, I just figure it’s CCP’s job to enforce their rules until it directly impacts my gameplay. This may not be fully ethical either, in some sense.
This post was much better Aiden 🙂 No “wall of text” here.
And who would suggest such a shocking and unethical thing?
Some people…