The Flag of Guinea Pig Whaling Corp
The NPO Cheating Scandal was a scandal involving New Pacific Order. The scandal began on February 5th, 2020 with game administrator Alex taking sweeping moderation action against New Pacific Order, their leadership and government.
In Alex's announcement of the situation, he included the report with all of the evidence. The announcement is linked here, and the report is linked here.
Background
On August 15, 2019, in the midst of NPO's Last Time a new alliance, Guinea Pig Whaling Corp was founded as an extension of New Pacific Order. The alliance exploded in size, with an influx of over 1100 new nations joining GPWC.
Immediate suspicions arose around the alliance, with members of the community questioning how NPO could recruit over 1000 new members for the game within such a short period of time. Many allegations were pushed but nothing illicit was found and GPWC continued on.
However, unbeknownst to many, including game administrator Alex, player Yuno had recruited over 1000 nations from an anime community, in exchange for access to a scanlation of a manhwa called “Who Made Me a Princess”. Yuno carried out these illicit actions in coordination with the government of New Pacific Order.
The enlisted nations were brought into the game to be farmed of money and resources for NPO. They brought in over 100 billion dollars in goods in the 6 months leading up to the revelation of the scandal. The influx of the funds gained through the illicit practices was suspected to have directly impacted gameplay and the on-going NPO's Last Time.
Discovery
On February 5th, 2020, Alex released an announcement, revealing the illegal actions taken by New Pacific Order's government and those in charge of GPWC violated the terms of service of Politics and War. He released a 20+ page document with information about his investigation into GPWC and listed all relevant evidence.
Alex referenced the game rule which disallows players from using real-world transactions to gain in-game materials. With that, he took extensive moderation action against the wrongdoers. Included in the moderation action was the 6-month banishment of the leader of New Pacific Order, Roquentin, alongside other members of NPO's leadership.
Moderation Action Taken
One-year bans from Politics & War:
- Yuno / Yuno / 70040 (Known on Discord as “Anna”)
Six-month bans:
- Frawley / Strangerites / 14102
- Claudia / Obelia / 174369 (Known on Discord as “Kylie”)
- Reinelynn / Lefamour / 174361 (Known on Discord as “Euphe”)
- Shadowthrone / Malaz / 40647 (Known on Discord as “Keshav”)
- Roquentin / Dreamcatcher / 11527
- Yuri / Empire of Aria / 174610
- Null / Silence / 179920 (Known on Discord as “chi”)
- Edward I / Seleucia / 33413
- Akina / Anastyria / 180465 (Known on Discord as “Akiluu”)
- Daniel Storm / Altmoras / 69290
Nation strikes:
- Auctor / Wyrdgar / 28520
- Lord of Darkness / Angmar / 28502
- Sin / Orbus / 174989
Guinea Pig Whaling Corp was forcibly disbanded. 511 inactive farm nations within the alliance were removed from the game, with the remaining members being kicked from the alliance.
NPO's illegally obtained materials from GPWC were deleted, accounting for roughly 95 billion dollars in materials.
Reaction
The reaction to Alex's revelation was immediate outrage, NPO and allies had condemned the action, which was seen as a "last straw" in a long list of perceived admin bias. Others were outraged over NPO's alleged blatant disregard for game rules and the implication that they had obtained materials from GPWC to support the on-going global war. No evidence was provided that any of the materials that GPWC had been used to fund the Global War.
The revelation had a quick and significant impact with respect to on-going NPO's Last Time. Immediately following the announcement, Partisan, of The Syndicate announced they were withdrawing from all surrender talks with New Pacific Order and coalition. He subsequently offered white peace to any combatant on the side of NPO/BK.
The following alliances in NPO's war coalition signed white peace, ending their involvement in the on-going war:
NPO's Last Time + Great Leak War
NPO's Last Time
Great Leak War
* Rebranded into Green Protection Agency and resumed attacks
The alliance GOONS initially also agreed to white peace and signed NAP treaties in-game with several other alliances. Just two days later, however, their leader Do Not Fear Jazz was removed from the alliance and the white peace was broken when they performed a coordinated attack on The Immortals.
Disbandments
In addition to many NPO allied alliances leaving the on-going war, several allies and supporters of NPO announced their disbandment in protest of the moderation action taken against NPO leadership. Black Knights and Guardians of the Galaxy, two other members of the Opus Dei bloc with NPO announced they were disbanding with many members leaving the game. Further, Acadia, citing claims of ongoing admin bias, announced that many of its members would be entering long term vacation mode and would no longer be actively participating in the game.
Disbandment announcements:
NPO Stat Page Closure
NPO announcing the closure of the stat page for the P&W community coupled with a message denying all allegations of cheating.
In addition, the stat page that NPO was hosting for the community was closed in response to the bans. While some of the war pages still link to the old NPO stat pages for their war, they are now inaccessible due to the closure. Any new war stat calculations will have to be done by a new intermediary in the future.
"This statistics utility provided to P&W's community as part of our mission to promote a stable, safe, and thriving game environment has been permanently discontinued." ~ Quoted from NPO's Stat Page.
1-Star Review Spam
The announcement made by Alex on the official P&W Discord.
Following a few days after the incident, a number of review sites involving the game, such as Yelp, Google Reviews, Google Play Store and the Apple App Store had a significant rise of 1-star reviews. With the date of these reviews being shortly after the bans of NPO Government and the deletions by some of NPO's closest allies, it can be easily inferred that these reviews are in response to how Alex has handled the scandal. The P&W application was shortly taken down on the Google Play Store to prevent any more of these reviews. This was confirmed through Alex's announcement on the official P&W Discord server.
"Hello everyone,
As many of you know, with the recent moderation action taken, there have been personal attacks toward myself and my family. I have seen information including my address, information about my loved ones, etc. shared in private groups. There has also been a smear campaign against Politics & War, as well as my business, Yellowstone Digital Media, in which groups of people have written false and libelous reviews on Google, the Play Store, and Yelp.
I have taken measures to protect myself, my family, and our privacy, as well as attempted to have these reviews removed. While some have been removed, many have not. I unpublished the Google Play Store app after heinous “reviews” were posted, using my full name and making shockingly false allegations about numerous types of illegal content supposedly contained in the app.
Unfortunately, there is nothing else I can do to take down these false and libelous reviews if Google and Yelp refuse[ed] to remove them. These reviews are devastating and have the power to destroy the reputation of both myself and my business."
Resource Spawning Exploit
On 12 February 2020, Alex announced that he caught and fixed a resource spawning exploit. Tens of millions of resources were spawned via the exploit over a period of three turns and sent to a variety of offshore banks. The three nations listed in the announcement, and their offshores were banned. One of which was NPO's Head of Training, Eric the Red II, who was accused of receiving the proceeds of this exploit and was subsequently banned. Alex had also accidentally doxxed the banned player publically (The email tied to the account, and their IP. It has been removed after being reported by the player's ISP.) while blurring out the personally identifiable information of the actual exploiter. One of the counter-arguments that has been made in this incident, other than considering the moderative action Alex has made against these nations and their offshores, that there was no evidence provided that linked the exploiter's actions to offshores. The NPO viewed this action as the culmination of a series of biased moderation results, targeted at the alliance and most of NPO's membership, about 97%+, left the game in response.
Bank Bailouts
Prior to the mass deletion, Alex decided to refund a single VIP player, Seb, 50% of the funds he had lost in loans the New Pacific Order & to other IQ alliances. This action was leaked to the boards where it was widely condemned and the offer was extended to other banks and players. The New Pacific Order confirmed that it did in fact have sufficient capital available to repay all debts in full at the time, and that the action was entirely unnecessary.