Oh look! Another one!

Creating a post mostly of quoting other people is a low-effort way of blogging. If you can call such thing blogging at all. I mostly refrain from it, but this one fits my theme so much that I must make an exception. It started with MMO Fallout reporting on accusations that a Runescape developer took part in competitive Runscape playing and helped his clan improperly.

Runescape replied:

Following allegations made against Mod Jed, we have thoroughly investigated every allegation and piece of ‘evidence’ provided. We’re satisfied that no wrong doing has taken place and that no further direct action will be taken.

As part of our commitment to both our players, and our staff, we will always fully investigate any allegations made against a Jagex employee. As I am sure you’ll agree, as a development team, we endeavour to be as open as possible with our community. However, in matters which impact our team’s privacy, it is only right that the details remain confidential.

What is clear is that there’s more we can do to convince you of the integrity of the team, and to ease any fears of dishonesty. Firstly, we will be assessing whether or not direct involvement in any competitive clan is the right thing for an employee of Jagex. You all want a development team who play and enjoy Old School as much as you do, and whilst clans are integral to RuneScape, our participation within them is something we’ll have to review. We are committed to ensuring that no one player (or clan) is given any treatment that could be seen as preferential in any way.

Obviously, this is a very sensitive situation and everyone will have their own opinions on what they believe to have happened, but rest assured that we are satisfied with the outcome of our investigation. We ask you to respect the outcome, and work with us to move forward.

The redditors weren’t happy. Not with the individual investigation, but the general state of things:

You shouldn’t have to sit down and meditate on whether or not it’s right for a Jagex employee to be in a clan that participates in tournaments with large prize pools. It’s an obvious conflict of interest.

how?

Because he has access to information that could be considered vital to the success of a clan in a game mode with a significant prize pool and there’s no good way to prove if he leaks this information or not

You can’t host a tournament where knowing how it plays out could change the outcome and play with the people within that tournament.

Even without there being a significant risk to integrity it would be considered in almost any other situation a clear conflict if interest, and saying “we can trust him not to leak information” is like a judge handing his mother’s case and saying “we can trust him not to give her special treatment”

Regardless of if they will keep their integrity you don’t stick people in positions where there is even a chance they may be tempted to do something unethical, and if you do it is a conflict of interest

I’m just surprised that JMods are even allowed to be a part of clans on any accounts whatsoever. Sure, they have their personal accounts, and they are regular people just like everyone else, but this creates clear bias towards their own clanmates, which, in turn, can create situations like this.

being apart of clan is one thing. But being apart of a highly competitive clan is completely different. Because as you said it creates bias. Whether he did any of the things he’s being accused of or not, each time that clan wins you will have people wondering if it was legit or not

I’m all for Jmods being in clans to expand the team’s view of the average player experience in the game (while overwhelming about are, not everybody is a skiller). But Jed should’ve known better than to be in a clan that has in the past been proven to have ddos’d and dox’d people. While the recent evidence is vastly inconclusive, there is hard evidence that they did participate in such actions back in 2010-2011. Jed should have never come close to a clan which has such a past, regardless of their current stance.

What can I add? In real life sports there are strict rules of conduct, down to the point of collecting pee samples to prevent doping. In video games – despite being a multi-billion dollars industry – a developer taking part in a competitive event that his company hosts is not obviously wrong. Most companies have no internal security and even those that have it’s just a joke (remember when the devs got away with tricking highsec players into flying into nullsec and dying to their nullsec characters?).

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PS: I wouldn’t give a dime that the Jagex employee wasn’t guilty. It doesn’t matter though. What matters is the system where an insider cheating in a multi-million dollar game is only a moral choice with no systemic checks.