I was going to just blog about this but I wanted to add a little life to this section and I wanted opinions.
Now, I can't really word this anonymously because if I made it that vague the situation might not make sense. So I'll drop names,
however keep in mind that this is about the question in the title, not about the situation at hand. This is just an example and what spurred this. If you know me, however, you may see me ramble. Just ride through whatever unneeded babble you see and humor me.
In Pokefarm, the root admin and owner Kolink (You hay have seen my little rant about him in my blog.) hacked 3 shiny, very rare Pokemon into a user account so they would trade 38 of a novelty called "Sleeping Kolink" to him. He also apparently hacked a shiny legend for one of his friends, too.
Wolfin, his GF who is another admin on the site, later found out through a public outing of this situation (Supposedly Kolink was keeping it a secret from her, not entirely sure, but she didn't know so..) Kolink reversed this after stating the only reason he was going to undo the mess was because Wolfin badgered him. How lovely.
Anyhoo, much outrage was sparked by this as Kolink was basically cheating for his friends. Three sides of this came to pass;
1 - Kolink's the admin and the creator of the game and site, thus he has the right to do whatever he wants. Besides, he's not really hacking, it's his code, he just rewrote it to make the shinies.
2 - Despite him being the creator and admin of the site, it is still incredibly unfair to hack special, extremely rare Pokemon into an account. Especially when there's payment models for premium and ultimate services. Cheating for friends when other people pay for mere chances at the special stuff, even not shiny, is like conning people out of their money. Why pay when all you have to do is suck up to the admin and have something to trade/bribe to get special stuff?
3 - Even if he did this, he's reversing it, he's human, he makes mistakes, so shut up.
Let's take my opinions down the line.
1. Yes, he's the admin and he did create the site and game. As such, I would have no qualms if he "rewrote" the code to give himself stuff that was rare for everyone else. Sure, he gets the best with no work, but it doesn't effect what I do in the game (I don't play, though, BTW, just hypothetical.) so who cares? Zerxer, an admin of another Pokemon site you may have also heard me talking about, GPX+ does this in a way whenever a new novelty comes out, but what he does is more for example not benefit. You see, every time a new novelty gets released Zerx gives himself a shiny version of the novelty and then puts his box up for display (A box that is clearly labeled that they're not legit, he even has a separate box of shinies called "legit shinies" ) so people can see all the shiny versions of all the novelties.
However, he didn't cheat for himself, he cheated for his friends. Giving special treatment and cheating other users, paying or not, all because he had the power to do so.
2. I basically agreed with my answer to 1.
3. Yes, he reversed it, but he didn't do it because he felt guilty for cheating and giving special treatment, he only reversed it (and he even said straight out this was the only reason) was because his GF Wolfin wasn't happy about. He never said at any point in time that it was a mistake, only that he would reverse it because he got caught and Wolfin basically told him too. He never said he was sorry or admitted what he did was wrong, he basically said if people were gonna **** him out over it, especially his GF, he would reverse it, so shut up about it.
So if he's not sorry, saying stuff like "he's only human, he makes mistakes" is not a valid argument. He didn't make a mistake, it's not like he accidentally reworked the codes to make the shinies, he knew full-out what he was doing and he kept it a secret from everyone, including Wolfin. He got caught because the stats changed abruptly and someone reliable ratted to someone who made a public post about it. If that hadn't happened, he never would've changed it.
I've also seen other examples of this but I won't name where, these are various site examples. Note that just because an example says Pokemon, doesn't mean it's from GPX+ or Pokefarm.
Are these also unfair? Or, as the site admins, do they have the right to do these things?
- "Rewriting" code to make a shiny novelty for your GF on her birthday when no other user gets anything special on their birthday and can't trade on the site at all.
- (Flat out admitted this was Zerxer before so, whatever) Changing code to give you a shiny novelty for each novelty out, even when you're admitting they're not legit and they're just for examples for other users.
- Giving yourself or your friends the latest mount, pair of wings, etc. (Whether or not they give special stat bonuses)
- Automatically making your GF, who has no qualifications to be an admin at all, an admin.
EDIT - Admin breaking into a user's account and destroying their game profile (Ruining their gameplay, making them lose stuff, etc.) all because he deemed the user's account info not secure enough and just to make a point of account security. (And not reversing it, BTW)
If anyone else has any examples, go ahead and tell them. For now, this is your homework; Is it alright for site staff, root admins in general to "rewrite" their own codes to benefit themselves, for their friends' benefit or neither? Does a site owner have the right to do whatever they want if it's their site that they created? In places with paying models, do you feel if staff are cheating for their friends that you're being "conned" out of money? For people who don't pay for online games, would you also feel cheated if this happened?
Thanks for wading through the babble.
