The Economist ~ Statement on the Irish org thefts

Day 1,785, 09:23 • Published in Poland United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

About a year ago now (it seems so long ago!) the UK faced a number of “org thefts” by Canadian members of government. They used a durp by the admins (still not fixed) to steal our property. The glitch (if anyone is interested) was basically caused because the Canadians claimed our orgs as theirs, and the admin just gave them to them without checking who they actually belonged to originally. Later on they simply requested the email recovery and reset passwords.

At the time I wrote an article condemning it in the strongest possible terms. Not only did it mean the ONE newspaper (at that time hosted on a UK org) could be used by famous troll Smee Again to spread lies and so forth, but it was also a breach of the game rules. It targeted a community with malicious purpose, it was a disgusting and morally reprehensible thing to do. Wiping a country is fine, using game exploits to damage them isn’t.

So when I logged in to see two of the top five articles representing viewpoints clearly not shared by the Irish government or people I felt pretty damned angry. The truth is that a couple of trolls have hijacked the Irish orgs and are using them to try and destroy Ireland. The method they’ve chosen to do this is by releasing anti-EDEN and pro-Bulgarian articles. Now this is doubly nasty since it could potentially damage relations with both EDEN and CoT, with whom Ireland has a decent relationship. The Bulgarians will certainly see this as a potential stumbling block to any genuine (as opposed to fake) growth in relationships in future.

This sort of thing should never happen because at the highest level of gameplay- international politics- the admins should be much more flexible with rules and simply do what is obviously right. With the UK theft the official response was “our list says that Ministry of Finance UK is a Canadian org, so you can’t have the email”. Such obvious stupidity in the face of maintaining rules was ridiculous then and it’s ridiculous now. By the time the Irish regain control of their orgs and delete the articles the damage will already be done. It should be a simple case of returning them to their rightful owner immediately. Such things should be monitored and taken care of. I shouldn’t have to write articles complaining that someone who buys a few thousand euros of gold gets their tickets resolved faster than someone who represents a community of thousands of players.

On behalf of myself and the UK government, I condemn the theft of Irish orgs in the strongest possible terms, and wish them the best of luck navigating the cesspit of bureaucracy retrieving them.

Iain