The Mittani gets hit with ban and resigns in wake of EVE Online controversy

Life lesson: do not attend panels while drunk.

Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco has been a fairly notorious figure in EVE Online for years now, but his recent notoriety has been all about some rather untoward remarks from the EVE Online Fanfest. Following harsh remarks in which he advocated finding and harassing a player who had expressed suicidal thoughts, Gianturco issued an official apology for his actions. But that isn't the end of it -- Gianturco has also been hit with a 30-day ban from EVE Online due to actions that violate the game's terms of service. He's also resigned from his position as chairman of the current Council of Stellar Management and forfeited the right to serve on the next CSM.

CCP Games has been following the whole issue and has put together an official post detailing what happened at the panel, what went wrong, and what steps will be taken to ensure that this incident is not repeated. According the official response, the format for the panel was entirely wrong and went far beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable for an official event hosted by the company. Offhand remark or no, it looks like a few careless words have caused some major disruptions to the life of EVE Online players.

Reader Comments (194)

Looks like "The Mittani" got ganked.

The karma police are gonna get you.

@jimr9999us

Agreed, lets hope he learned his lesson. When he comes back maybe he'll have learned a little empathy, maturity and social etiquette. Everyone screws up and can make a social gaff. That this guy obviously pursued an action to see if he and others could cause this guy to off himself, shows a total lack of maturity and maliciousness that I find unacceptable.

@jimr9999us

Unfortunately Test and the Goons have already put a 1b isk bounty of the persons head as a show of protest to CCP.

For the corporations that poke fun of people who take the game not seriously, they are putting a lot of effort and emotion into showing how much they don't care..

@Amy
That's more or less what I've come to expect from Eve to be honest. To paraphrase Gandhi, "I'd be a Eve Player if not for the Eve Players."
Sure you can argue that there's a bunch of nice Eve players but at the end of the day I don't see them. Potentially this only means that Eve has a serious PR deficiency and that gaming news outlets enjoy a controversial story. But as someone on the outside I'm certainly not seeing the nice side of the playerbase and that's somewhat off putting...

@(Unverified) I have to agree with you there. I pretty much stopped playing Eve because of the general sense that most of the player base is out for number one and that's about it. I keep seeing all of these comments that the Eve player base is nice and I just have never seen that while playing the game.

That said, I find it a terrifying state of affairs when it's the status quo these days in any game is to be an e-thug and treat the people on the other side of the screen like they're verbal punching bags.

he got off easy IMO. such behavior shouldn't be encouraged or tolerated IRL or a video game.

@warpax

I agree completely, CCP's decision is ridiculously light. It does not fit the offense in any way.

The lightness of the punishment just goes to prove that CCP not only condones such reprehensible behavior, they encourage it. They are certainly not serious about curtailing it.

No question, the lack of morality exhibited by CCP is nothing short of shocking.

@AnathemaOne

They condone it because they stripped all authority from him and have banned him from the game at all for at least a month? Overreaction, much?

Sure, it's lighter than it could have, and probably should have, been, but it's hardly condoning. To condone his actions they'd have to not punish him at all. All they've done is show that they're willing to give even a total douchebag a second chance. *shrug*

@warpax

Isn't this exactly what people were asking for just a few days ago?

@warpax mean while people slur racial hatred, death threats and what not every day, every game in league of legends.

30 days is a pretty long time for a CEO, and, he lost his seat on the CSM.

In all honesty nobody would have cared if he hadn't been the CSM chairman.

@AnathemaOne

I 100% agree, their statement was lacking of any true apology and it shows how they act, and how they want their players to act. Their punishment was no punishment at all, and I make a vow today never to put a single penny into the coffers of CCP.

@oddshrub "In all honesty nobody would have cared if he hadn't been the CSM chairman."

if he wasn't, would he even have been on the panel?

@Professer
Then please stop what you are trying to do and I advise you to seek an outside proffesional help. Seriously.

@AnathemaOne

If you don't like it, go play WoW or Farmville.

Good riddance!

It's people like him that keep me away from EVE. The sooner CCP distances itself from such individuals, the better.

@Wensbane If you keep away from good games because their community contains griefers who'll do stupid shit you frankly can't be playing any multiplayer games.

Aside from that the EVE community at large is much nicer and mature than any other MMO community I've experienced since I started playing ultima online more than 12 years ago.

Sure there are bad seeds, but this is the internets.

@oddshrub

Keeping away from a game because the community, to a large quantity, consist of griefers, bullies and sociopaths, is in actuallity, a very good decision.
It frankly doesnt matter how good (doesnt apply to EvE sicnei ts a terrible game) a game seems to you, if the community sorrounding it, is terrible, filled with hatred, inmaturity, griefing and whatnot, it wont be much joy.

Subsequently, Ive enjoyed some mediocre games, because their communities were amazing.

While EVE is not my cup of tea, i do not like seeing all of these bashing comments about its community at large. In the month and a half I tried it, i foundthe vast majority of players to be helpful to this newb, as well as mature (ok well sometimes, its a game what do you want..). This incident appears isolated, and the man and company are taking actions. I think it was tragic that what happened did happen, but think some are carrying this rather far.

@Heathengamer I don't agree. have you happened to read the Eve forums and seen the number of player postings supporting this guys actions and even some encouraging further such action. CCP is responsible for the types of behavior they allow in their game and its clear that a large number of Eve's playerbase share the same mentality of this "The Mittani"..

@warpax As i have not read them, i will say if thats true i will retract 100% of what i said. Ok, not 100%. I will modify and say the experience I HAD back then was different from what people are saying.

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The Mittani gets hit with ban and resigns in wake of EVE Online controversy

Reader Comments (194)

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 7:19PM jimr9999us said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 11:10PM Celtar said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 2:41AM Amy said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 2:55AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 9:22AM Almohada said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 7:21PM warpax said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 8:36PM AnathemaOne said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 10:00PM JuliusSeizure said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 10:59PM Eamil said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 1:58AM oddshrub said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 8:50AM Gojant said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 9:19AM fallwind said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 11:05AM MrLabus said

Posted: Apr 4th 2012 8:43AM Ban Me said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 7:23PM Wensbane said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 2:04AM oddshrub said

Posted: Mar 29th 2012 6:26AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 7:23PM Heathengamer said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 7:28PM warpax said

Posted: Mar 28th 2012 7:32PM Heathengamer said

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