I believe that there is some good coding and creative talent in MindArk, the real problem is that their staffing resources are stretched way too thin. There simply isn't enough people working at MA to address all of the issues and development priorities. Its easy to say that MA needs to hire more people but the fact is, like most companies, MindArk's payroll is probably one of their largest expenses, if not the largest. Plus, when someone new is hired, it (for a time) depletes the existing resources because one or more people have to take time out to train that person. That time could otherwise be spent on coding, problem solving, or innovating. Hiring new quality people isn’t easy and its not cheap.
The bottom line is that EU needs to grow in order for MA to be able to justify increasing their staffing levels. If nothing is done about people who exploit it discourages the ones who play fairly. As a result some may play/deposit less, or even stop, others will quit and withdraw. Then, of the people who continue their game play, a continuously increasing percentage will utilize exploits, and if left unchecked will become common place. Because EU is a Real Cash Economy, that cant be allowed to happen because the game economy would spiral down.
So obviously MindArk has to do something as they are the company that owns the “game”. If the company is unwilling or unable to solve the problem in a satisfactory or expedient way, do we the players then have the obligation to help? In the ToU, the Rules of Conduct say “You must immediately report errors and bugs in the Entropia Universe...” so clearly MindArk thinks we need to be helping them, actually they try to require it of us. If we care about the future of EU, then I think that we should be helping. A more active role can be taken though.
We need to be sending screen shots, video, etc to MindArk but we can do more then that. We can actively go out looking for these people, identify their exploits, catch them in the act, and then report that to MA. We can PK them, we can mob train them, and we can Kill Steal from them... Of course if you take it to that level then you need to be certain the people involved are actually cheating.
There already are groups and individuals in EU who spend some of their game time rooting out and combating scammers and exploiters. Many of us view EU as a “strategic war game” and I'm not talking about PvP. I'm talking about providing MA with enough definitive information to achieve an account lock and IP ban for the individual(s) or driving that person or group out of EU altogether. Naturally some people wont go down without a fight.
