To answer datajam's original post:
GM's are unpaid volunteers. They are players who are dedicated to the game enough to offer some of their time to help other player with problems, information and bugged situations. All are mature minded and high level players who know enough about the game to be able to advise people. GM's that fully understand the game, its problems and its deficiencies can speak to the developers better on your behalf as changes will also affect them too. Many games employ GM staff that care nothing for the game they patrol and consistently pass on support tickets as unanswered due to bureaucracy and archaic chains of command. I have removed the chain of command in favour of GM's going directly to the senior staff member who has the GM commands and authority to do what is necessary. This has resulted in faster more efficient responses and interventions.
I can't comment about Gamigo's staff policies but my GM guidelines are distinct and GM's must comply to the letter or have their gm accounts and player accounts banned immediately since they have signed full non disclosure agreements. GM's are not responsible for shaping the game but rather to ensure players adhere to the principles that make pirate galaxy fun to play and to offer assistance when necessary.
I was aware of some dubious conduct of a few GM's when gamigo was in control but they sorted that out, however, I have since changed the GM command rights and levels so that abuse is almost completely eliminated. If you see any current GM's acting dubiously, please send an email direct to my splitscreenstudios address and I will investigate personally.
There is no such thing as a developer cheat code. The problem with GM's using GM commands have been addressed 1 ½ weeks ago with the restructured command rights. Past problems with gamigo management should remain in the past. We are Splitscreen now and the rules are different and hopefully tighter. Although player punishments are subject to circumstance, GM punishments are severe and final.
Lag is an extremely difficult problem to diagnose because it is so vague and open that anything from your computer components, your local exchange, your ISP, the network routes, or our servers or a combination of all could affect it. Complaining to us about lag is like going to the doctor and saying “I don't feel well” and expecting him to fix it.
We have moved to more expensive and more capable servers than the gamigo ones. We are working hard to see if it is our servers that is the lag problem, now that the team has time to continue developing instead of hack investigating - it took 2 weeks of their time for this dirty affair. Sol is far more graphically intense to the previous systems and the next is going to be even more demanding. Remember to try changing the quality settings in the setttings menu to see if it helps client lag, especially on Earth. Please make sure it is not your own computer that needs fixing or upgrading. We are trying to diagnose our end, please help us by checking your end too.
We have made changes to the game from listening to complaints and suggestions that were deemed appropriate for the balance of the game in the whole. I need to amend your analogy a little to fit what we are really doing; it is more similar to buying a nice sports car but having the car recalled to add a speed limiter because it was too fast and detrimental to other user's safety.
Your point about hacks and game cheats is irrelevant since we only took back the game on the 1st and all incidents before that were out with our control. You say that we banned people without addressing the problem, which is completely false since you clearly do not have or have seen all the information and condemning information that we have. Every MMO in the planet takes a hard stance against server hacking and to think that we would be soft on it is ridiculous.
Everyone was under investigation, only those with complete and 100% irrefutable evidence was banned. We are not amateurs at this vocation. We adhere to our terms and conditions entirely when conducting investigations and actions. If anyone wished to challenge our decisions legally, they are welcome to ask their lawyers to contact us through the post to our studio address where we will forward it to our legal department.. You may trust your friends and their word but we put our trust only in evidence, plain and simple. Many players escaped banning because my information on them had almost plausible doubt. We know they used the hackers skills but we do not have complete 100% evidence to prove it. As the hacker himself said, there are 100 or so people who escaped but let it be know that we know who you are.
You may have lost a formidable adversary, as in Miike, but this gives an opportunity for another player to excel to take him place. One who plays fairly and does not cheat, thus proving to be even more formidable than your previous arch-enemy.
To me, it seems that you condone cheating in a game that explicitly forbids it. Saying that my actions to remove cheaters robs you of your fun is clearly skewed. You believing that some of your friends to be victims is also clearly flawed. We knew about everyone 2 weeks ago when I posted in the forum a thread about exploiting and hacking in which I wrote that the logs show everything. This was a cue to come to us for help so we will clear the hacked currency to your original level of cryonite and crystals. However, they decided to keep all their hacked currency and purchase many parsec class ships with full armour and brag about it. Victim? Use of hacked property, which is essentially stolen property, in still a crime in every country or virtual world. If you could only see what evidence we have, you would be very quiet but unfortunately to show anyone (except lawyers) these would give potential hackers and exploiters clues to our log and detection systems allowing for future problems.
We know more facts about these incidents than you can ever believe to know. Each player was investigated as a separate case for which all time-stamped evidence was collated and cross referenced with other logs of players in tandem with several other forms of detection. No banning was taken lightly; all banned pilots showed plainly obvious and condemning evidence that is irrefutable and as Gill Grissom from CSI would say “the evidence does not lie”.
. Grinding hero.