Impersonation – MMO Fallout

Meet Wizhood, a game developed and published by Valve. Well not developed or published by Valve. Or maybe it is? The Steam store says it is.

On the latest edition of “Valve Is A Negligent Publisher,” it looks like the folks at Rakarnov Studios noticed that Valve will allow anyone who pays $100 on Steam to impersonate anyone else, including Valve themselves. The game Wizhood was noticed by intrepid Steam watchdogs to have changed its name, unabeited, to Valve itself. Maybe for nefarious reasons, maybe to see if it would actually work, maybe for poops and giggles. Either way, the name change was allowed with absolutely no oversight or confirmation required from Valve.

Even better, looking up Valve’s catalog of games now includes Wizhood as a title right under Half Life 2: Deathmatch and above Half Life 2: Episode 2. Unfortunately for Wizhood, it does not automatically include the game in the Valve Complete Pack.

Looking at the Steam database it appears that this change was made back on June 26 and may have been a tactic to increase visibility with the Steam summer sale having started just a day prior. Incidentally you can pick up Wizhood for 49 cents, a 75% saving over the standard $2. If you have any inclination of picking this game up, we suggest you do so now before the sleeping giant that is Valve wakes up.

A recent change to Eve Online’s Terms of Service has prompted several inaccurate reports that CCP now disallows scamming, spying, and sabotage, and is actively banning players for said actions. The alteration, according to CCP, clarified an already in-place rule which made impersonation of another player a bannable offense. For example, pretending to be a representative of an organization to scam a player is considered a bannable offense. Pretending to be an alt of another character is also a bannable offense under this rule. One player (Abdiel Kavash) on the forums asked if impersonating one of your own alts to scam someone was against the rules:

CASE 2: I decide that I want to make some extra money off my past customers, without necessarily having to provide any extra services. I create a new character, Phill McScammer, on my account. I then go talk to a past customer of AbdielCorp and I claim that Phill McScammer is an alt of Abdiel Kavash. Customer falls for it, sends me their money and never sees it again.

Short answer: Yes. GM Karidor’s response:

Your character Phill McScammer impersonated Abdiel Kavash, the same way as Joe McScammer did, thus gets it from us the same way if reported. From our point of view, as well as from a victims, there is no technical difference between those two cases of a character impersonating another.

In fact, CCP views a player claiming affiliation with one of his alternate characters to be on the same level as one player claiming affiliation with another player entirely.

Both characters Phil and Joe used the name Abdiel Kavash to give of the impression they were somehow related to him. The cases are effectively identical.

So if you claim to be an alt of yourself, in CCP’s view you are still lying. In response to a wave of player feedback, CCP has opened a thread to gather further discussion on the newly clarified rules.

(Source: Eve Online)