Earlier this evening I saw a post about people having offensive and misogynistic names for pilot characters in Eve. Here’s a link to the original post: 🎀 Should These Character Names be Allowed? 🎀.
Here’s an extract of what I wrote as a reply:
"I’ve played the game for about nine years now. Time after time after time I’ve come across pilot names, language, and behaviour that is sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and sometimes just generally hateful and misanthropic.
On several occasions, I’ve complained to CCP about specific instances and pretty every time I’ve come up against utter indifference and a total lack of interest in actually doing anything tangible. Most of the time I get pointed vaguely in the direction of the EULA and told that there’s nothing in it that stops people basically behaving as offensively as possible as much as they like…"
Sadly you won’t find the post now without the link above.
This is because CCP has now unlisted it (so that it’s invisible) wiped most of the detail out of the original post (essentially the part which was a long list of misogynistic pilot names) and closed it down (so that no further discussion is possible). Apparently, the post was ‘a problem’ and CCP posted a shutdown notice advising that "If you have problems with a characters name, please file a support ticket and let CCP Support handle it. "
The ironic thing is, of course, that having written about the utter indifference of CCP to sexism and misogyny, and about the fact that, if you do complain, CCP just says 'file a support ticket" (in the full knowledge that they will refuse to discuss the issue, whatever your complaint is), surprise, surprise, rather than actually dealing with the issue at hand in any tangible way, CCP has summarily shut the discussion down and advised people to 'file a support ticket".
It’s really like a scene from Monty Python (or something similarly darkly satirical).
I do love playing Eve and I have no intention of stopping but I find the utter indifference towards sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, hateful and misanthropic pilot names, language, and behaviour from CCP really depressing.
And this feeling is amplified given the fact that there are now multiple campaigns and calls in all areas of life for sexism to be confronted, challenged and stopped (eg: the Everyday Sexism Project and the use of the hashtag #MeToo).
I’m hoping that I’m not the only non-sexist/misogynistic man playing Eve (although I fully realise as I write this that this will inevitably bring out the idiot trolls), but I am starting to wonder if anything will ever change in Eve even as the world around us changes forever.