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Eve Online's most notorious player has quit the game
- zionic 4y agoEnd of an era. Met and worked with him a few times. He was certainly an interesting character.
- shard972 4y agoAbout time mittens was removed. So much of this was known for years but ignored because of his status outside the world of EVE Online, and thus the absolute position of power he crafted for himself within GSF.
- ivoras 4y ago
- decafninja 4y agoA lot has changed in the world since when Eve Online was a new game. There are a lot of things I (and many of my friends) have said in in-game chatting without any hesitation back then that would not fly in today's more politically correct and sensitive world, even taking into account the gaming community's brasher nature. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
- simmerup 4y agoEve Players aren’t woke. They have an internet culture make up where Jew jokes, racism, etc are regularly used
- bigbillheck 4y ago> Digging past transgressions and putting them on display, intense dislike of personal style elevated to the point of mass hatred, that sort of thing. Oh you mean like Kiwi Farms?
- the_only_law 4y agoNo no no, that's just good fun trolling.
- tedivm 4y agoIf by "woke style extremism" you mean "people upset that a guy who was banned from one of the most hard core trolling forums for repeated child pornography offenses was given a position of power in the organization" then you're right on the money.
- revethrowaway 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fsociety 4y agoSomething Awful has it’s dark corners for sure. I did not encounter this personally but have no doubts it exists after playing with that community for two years.
- spacemanmatt 4y agothe hell we don't
- tedivm 4y agoIt was literally in the article. Apparently I'm the only one in this thread who bothered to read it.
- OOD 4y ago>most hard core trolling forums for repeated child pornography offenses was given a position of power in the organization He was a reddit mod?!?
- TomGullen 4y agoWhat does being woke mean to you?
- tiahura 4y agoHumorless, thin-skinned and boring.
- TomGullen 4y agoThat's what you think of it, but what does it mean to be woke?
- shadowgovt 4y agoI mean, if they cause The Mittani to win EVE, that's easily the least boring thing to happen in the game in about three years.
- libraryatnight 4y agoI have a question. Is "woke" actually synonymous with cancel culture or "extremism"? because when I became aware of the term it just meant more or less socially aware, particularly to the struggles of minorities. Then I tuned out for awhile and when I noticed it again it seemed to be a pejorative people like Tucker Carlson use to drum up fear that anyone who said their friend was gay in the 90s is going to prison. For instance my father in law frequently talks about how he can't say anything because of the woke people, if I ask him what he can't say he has no answer and if I ask him who's going to hold him accountable if he said it, he can't answer that either - but holy shit is he scared of the woke people. Anyway when I see people use words like "woke" or "transgenderfication" (of the children, of course) it really tips their hat. I guess my curiosity is did the woke people tarnish the word, or did opposing media re-define it?
- memish 4y ago
- OOD 4y ago
- memish 4y agoAnd here we see that it's blasphemous to even point that out.
- phabricator 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- OOD 4y agoI relent the loss of Tumblr because these tired takes on "chuds" and "literal nazis, tell ya whut" were mostly contained there and the shitty subreddits. Now they're getting posted on HN :(.
- jabroni_salad 4y agoIn Eve, doxxing individual players and using the information in propaganda campaigns is a big part of politicking. Mittens himself has certainly carried out his fair share of it. Twitch streamers might be where 'swatting' became popular, but eve corps have been using it to gain competitive advantages in the game for far longer. Getting someone to permanently quit the game is seen as a win condition. Furthermore, nullsec entities in Eve are HUGELY egocentric, as people collect around leaders that bring them fun. This means that pretty much everyone who is doing well at the game is going to end up with a TMZ paparazzi situation. Mittens handles his pretty well, but anyone would get ground down by it eventually. What I'm trying to say is that the community has a very high tolerance for BS and it will take more than posting some chat logs to get him to quit. Anyways the reason this one was a bridge to far is because it seemed he was covering for a pedophile for like a decade. https://groomswarm.wtf/ https://groomswarm.wtf/
- jamiek88 4y agoSo we can’t even hold literal child pornographers against people now ‘cos it’s ‘woke’? Seems to me more like consequence of actions than anything else.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoWhat's woke-like extremism in this case?
- revethrowaway 4y agoAmazing that they're downvoting you to oblivion. The same people who caused this man to leave the game have been harassing someone IRL over their personal politics and sending letters to their employer. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/vzv75n/you_guys_really_need_to_stop_this_is_far_beyond/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/vzv75n/you_guys_really...
- gamblor956 4y agoMittani started all that bullshit. He rose to power by harassing his perceived in-game enemies in real life. It's hypocritical, and actually quite disgusting, to call him a victim considering how many people's lives he tried to destroy over a video game.
- fsociety 4y agoNot always but it can happen. I recall that a corp learned one titan pilot lived in the neighborhood of another titan pilot and his corp tried to convince him to cut their access to power right before a raid started on the titan. Since titans remain in the game when you disconnect, this means that the ship would be defenseless. The amount of opsec that Goons (and others) would practice is intense as well.
- fsociety 4y agoAh you were talking about “woke extremism”… I think that word is overused but Eve is a in love and war all is fair kind of game.
- Sakos 4y agoMittens himself has driven a lot of the toxic environment in Eve. He's no innocent flower here and it's laughable to paint the criticism he gets as anything but justified. Unfortunately, Goonswarm has a lot of toxic people at all levels (but particularly in management positions) and that won't change just because he's leaving.
- lithos 4y agoThe successful have one rule, don't get caught. They got caught and get to be removed for it. Cancel culture is just an extension of that to lower classes.
- AdmiralAsshat 4y agoHard to tell from the article whether the real person is stepping down, or his in-universe avatar is. Like, is he gone for good? Or will he just reappear as a new lvl 1 player in two weeks? I assume the former, but there's something perversely funny about the idea of a player in a fictional universe having to resign from fictional corporation because he failed to adequately address in-universe HR claims.
- VectorLock 4y agoThere would be no point in him starting from scratch with a new identity. It wasn't the game he liked, it was the notoriety. Most people in EVE Online at this strata aren't even really "playing" the game, its all metagame at that point.
- busterarm 4y agoAs a former notorious EVE player myself, yes this is correct. I've done everything from old school POS wars to Titan kills to running multiple types of production empires to living in wormholes and being a wealthy (trillions ISK, back when the best way to get wealthy was through RP) feared low-sec space pirate (this one was my personal endgame). Once you've reached one of EVE's endgame scenarios it's basically impossible to continue playing and get any enjoyment out of the game. You might try, but it's like chasing your first high. It's never as good. And knowing Mittens and what he's like...yeah he's not playing anymore unless it's waiting for the heat to die down and coming back in a year or two.
- decafninja 4y agoEve is also notoriously difficult to "start from scratch". I'm sure someone like him could still maintain secret contacts that could help him out, but even then it's an insanely difficult, if not nearly impossible, effort to get even remotely close to where his old character would have been. And that's just in terms of stats and resources. Relationships are a whole different story, and a critical part of success in Eve. It's not like WoW where the delta between someone that started the game in 2005 and someone who started in 2020 isn't that far apart. Someone who started Eve in 2005 would be like a member of the Rothschild dynasty while someone who started in 2020 would be at best, some low level corporate middle manager.
- karmicthreat 4y agoI mean at the end of the day Goonswarm was entertainment for Mittens. So when imaginary spaceships become unfun, its probably time to go. He was far better than Remedial was.
- retzkek 4y agoWas it just entertainment though? I recall hearing years ago that he was making a not-insignificant amount of money via EVE, whether through legitimate (e.g. themittani.com news site) or illegitimate (e.g. selling ISK or supercaps) means.
- karmicthreat 4y agoHe was previously a DC lawyer who FIREed and moved out to WI. I think he made a little money but I don’t think it was anything other than toy money.
- vorpalhex 4y ago"Yeah, being an attorney wasn't cut throat enough so I decided to become a Space Pirate King..."
- simmerup 4y agoIt’s funny that he’s complaining about his smears against personal life when in one of GoonSwarms conflicts with Band of Brothers they pioneered mocking the BoB leader for being a repairman irl
- sascha_sl 4y agoAccording to urban legend, BoB once found the physical location of an enemy fleet commander and cut their power. Only a few years back, a director of CO2 got banned for threatening to cut off a hand of a diplomat that had taken most of their wallet. The Mittani himself, mentioned here, also almost got permanently banned for a encouraging the audience to tell a Goon victim to kill himself on the Alliance Panel at Fanfest.[1] So it's pretty rich of him to complain about toxicity in the game. It's not a very friendly game. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbYNLmtAMAw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbYNLmtAMAw
- simmerup 4y agoIt's a very unfriendly game which really teaches you to be the type of cut-throat that doesn't set you up well for real life. I wish I realised that earlier to be honest
- somebodythere 4y agoYeah, I liked the idea of the game and played it for a bit when I realized that the idea of "don't trust anyone ever" was exhausting for me.
- shadowgovt 4y agoAbsolutely. There's a reason people call pushing the delete button on your profile and biomassing your capsuleer "Winning EVE."
- BizarroLand 4y agoIt makes sense, since it's not "real" that people would act in whatever way favors their own interests the most
- Cuuugi 4y agoI've never played EVE Online, and considering how in-depth it apparently is, i am thankful for it.
- alyandon 4y agoI spent time in Goonfleet many years ago and generally did stuff like protect mining fleets. The actual work involved in maintaining access to null-sec space, running stations, etc and being part of a large in-game organization required an almost martial level of discipline from a scheduling standpoint. It was fun for quite a while but eventually it became like a second job and I moved on.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JRKrause 4y agoWhile I haven't played EvE in many years, I still hold many fond memories of it back from my middle/high school years. Particularly when I chose to abandon the peaceful in-game lifestyle of building and selling ship to other players in favor of the pirate life. I did this by fitting a small and fast ship with close-range weaponry that allowed me to take engagements versus much larger ships whose weapons couldn't reliably hit a target with so much transverse velocity. In addition I would run a special module that allowed you to deactivate your opponents warp drive, preventing them from escaping. In game life was then just patrolling law-less star systems waiting for another player to arrive, typically they'd come to my star-systems in search of NPC pirates to destroy, netting in-game currency. Once the prey was busy fighting the ai-pirates, I'd warp into their local space and begin shooting them to pieces. Once their ship was on the brink of destruction, I'd open a comm channel and demand an in-game currency transfer in exchange for letting them go. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement as the ransom was lower than their ship value but also higher than what I could salvage from their wreckage. As you'd imagine, responses were varied. More often than not however I'd get the payment and they'd return to safe space intact. Ironically, I received more in-game love-mail than hate-mail for my exploits. I've grown into a much nicer person since then but I can't help but look back on those times fondly.
- eckmLJE 4y agoGreat story, thanks. I wouldn't say that role-playing a pirate in a game where players willingly submit to the risks of low-sec space is not nice. You were providing an important service that made the game feel exciting and interesting!
- ravi-delia 4y agoYeah I paid Bethesda to make bandits, and OP is providing that service for free!
- simmerup 4y agoWell, at least you didn't take the ransom and kill them anyway
- bradhe 4y ago...allegations of abuse? Man no one has been in a Goon comms channel if they're shocked by this.
- punyearthling 4y agoThis is the most sanitized version of what actually happened. Isn't he being investigated by the IRS?
- aliqot 4y agothis time, we send our regards...
- nolok 4y agoFor people who likes the kind of backstabbing thrilling behind the scene diplomacy wackiness that ooze from Eve, but can't really get involved in it for whatever reason (most often being time, motivation, or the fact that 99% of eve gameplay is actually more excel than malta conference), I highly recommend you give Neptune's Pride [1] a try. It's not at all the same kind of game (it's a "turn by turn" 4x game where turn passing is tied to actual time in the real world), but it's really simple and at its core is based on the same thing: diplomacy through the simple but effective messaging system between the players. A game last days, but will only require you to play a few minutes every dozen hours or so (sending fleets to attack, etc ... Will take literal days to happen, which seems strange at first until you realize it's to give the diplomacy center stage, giving real people with real lives the time and opportunity to exchange and plan and backstab together. It's also extremely fun with friends, in a mario kart's blue shell kind of way. 90% of the fun is the pretenses and backstabs, don't play with friends who don't like losing, nor with people who let themselves lose on purpose if against their SO etc ... or the experience drops significantly. [1] https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing https://np.ironhelmet.com/#landing
- cycomanic 4y agoThe original game like this was/is the diplomacy board game. Definitely great fun if you play with people who don't take things too personal, but at the same time serious enough to really play. Also being a board game and personal interactions excludes much of the online virol.
- adamrezich 4y agoanother one game that's similar to EVE in some ways but different from what you're describing here (that I found from an HN comment 73 days ago) is Prosperous Universe https://prosperousuniverse.com https://prosperousuniverse.com it's kind of a cross between EVE and Factorio but glacially slow. there's no combat or graphics (aside from some fancy but not really useful map screens), so it's really just a game of logistics/planning/economy, and the amount of enjoyment you get from the game depends almost entirely on how much fun you find spreadsheet-making ("a lot" for me). I got some friends to play with me and it's been really fun to coordinate our slowly-expanding galactic empire.
- NGRhodes 4y agoCould this be a ruse, a distraction, part of a plan ?
- dave7 4y agoFinally "winning" after all these years!
- Tsarbomb 4y agoFormer EVE player, and member of SA. Mittens is a complete narcissist and all around horrible human being. I've been out of the loop for a long time now, but even from the title of the post I instantly thought "I guess something finally caught up to mittens." I very much doubt he leaves the game/metagame in any meaningful way as even way back when I played it was speculated that a non insignificant amount of his lively hood was derived from his activities around the game/metagame.
- karmicthreat 4y agoGoonfleet has always loved their charismatic fascist leaders though. A whole lot of the early GF propaganda was veiled Triumph of the Will.