No blogroll for today, I’m the on-call developer this week AND I’ve been moved to a project at work with a daily morning meeting starting this week, so it’s a time of adjustment.
One game I am not playing is a browser game called Evony, which promises something like EVE’s skill training. I know nothing more about it, and I won’t. Why? Because they are SPAMMING MY BLOG.
Here’s just their latest attempts to spam comments into my blog — all with fake email addresses attached:
evony.com is a free new web based flash video game.
Have you guys played evony yet? What do you think? evony.com
I just found this cool new game called evony. Check it out at evony.com.
If you’re looking for a new web based game to play check out evony.com. It’s free to play.
If you’re looking for a new web based game to play check out evony.com. It’s free to play.
If you’re looking for a new web based game to play check out evony.com. It’s free to play.
Have you guys played evony yet? What do you think? evony.com
Have you guys played evony yet? What do you think? evony.com
I just started playing this new game called evony. It’s pretty sweet I think you guys would like it. Just a simple little flash game, but damn its addicting. You can sign up for an account at evony.com.
I just started playing this new game called evony. It’s pretty sweet I think you guys would like it. Just a simple little flash game, but damn its addicting. You can sign up for an account at evony.com.
Want me to play your game? Don’t spam me.
Reasons I will never play Evony: soft porn advertisements that have nothing to do with actual gameplay.
Are the links they are posting direct links to the game or links that will give somebody a referral benefit? I just wonder if it is the game company itself (or its minions) out doing the spamming or some independent bozo trying to get some in-game benefit through referrals.
If that’s the kind of game it is, built on a pyramid scheme, then it could be a player – it isn’t a direct game link. Still, the game has lost its chance with me.
Wow. That’s a totally disgusting tactic. One of my writers wrote a review for them last month- I almost want to take it down now. 🙁
-Michael Hartman
http://www.muckbeast.com
Apparently the company behind Evony is a WoW gold seller, umge, who is also associated with wowmine. Sort of explains the spam don’t you think?
And by mentioning it, the Evony spam has doubled. They REALLY want me to approve their comments.
The Akismet spam filter seems to be doing a good job of keeping them at bay for me.
I saw an amusing breakdown of the evolution of their ads. You’re lucky you don’t have any banner ads =P http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001286.html
lol… I have never read that site. That’s hilarious… -ly awful. “Look! Boobies! Now play my browser game!”
Evony is developed and owned by RMT-seller http://www.wowmine.com (this is not an advertisement, it’s the truth). This company earns between $300.000 to $500.000 PER DAY from selling WoW Gold, which enabled them to single-handedly develop their own mmorpg with a CHINESE team.
The CEO of “UGME” (non-existent company!) is Eric Lam. Yes, the same Eric Lam who was sued by Microsoft for nearly a million for ADVERTISEMENT FRAUD just a few weeks ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/16/business/media/16adco.html
Everything said in this blog post can be verified by e-mailing me. The truth behind Eric Lam, WoWMine and Evony needs to be exposed for once and for all! (this truth is instantly deleted if mentioned on Evony’s official forums).
It is not just comment spam.
Evony is Chinese gold farmers going first party.
They have ripped off game content and advertising imagery.
They are misusing Google Adsense to carpet bomb the web.
I have been collecting information about all this here: http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/10/dont-play-evony/
According to the Evony site, it’s not them spamming you, it’s their players. From the site:
“Dear Players,
We have been excited at the success of iEvony, but we have also come across an unintended side effect of the iEvony system. Some players have abusively and unethically engaged in spamming practices on a variety of websites with the intent of boosting their credits. This practice affects site traffic and makes headaches and extra work for moderators on a variety of websites. It reflects poorly not only on these users, but also on Evony as a whole.
For this reason, we will absolutely not tolerate such spamming practices. Players who engage in spam practices (posting multiple threads from multiple accounts on the same site, attempting to get forum users to follow a link) will be aggressively pursued and sanctioned. Penalties may include: being stripped of ALL earned Credits and any Coins or items they were exchanged for; having your iEvony account permanently disabled; being temporarily or permanently banned from Evony.
We encourage owners and moderators of sites that receive such spam to contact us to report it. Please provide proof of the spam (screenshots or search links) and we will take appropriate action to see that your site is not disturbed by our players.”
Anyway, maybe Evony isn’t so bad after all? Perhaps if you let them know of the spamming they would even appreciate it.
Nothing I have heard about the game since I started getting spammed leads me to believe there is any value to the game.
The Game Evony is a big copyright fraud, it uses things from games like AGE of EMPIRES and use those resources to make money off of them, The thing they keep doing is that their ads are copyright frauds and so is the owners who I belive is hideing in China to escape lawsuite from Microsoft and others who Evony have been stealing from.
http://bbs.evony.com/showthread.php?t=14896&page=17 SEVENTEEN!!! pages worth of people complaining about evony and saying they are quiting, who wanna bet wif me how long it would take this game to go to the dogs…
Wow, that’s a bunch of disgruntled players….
I actually play Evony and it’s pretty fun. It is addicting (sorta, but that’s only if you really get it) and yes it is true that it was created by wowmine but I don’t care 😀 I love the game. Oh and the e-mail adress i used IS real. Try talking to me sometime.
I am a student studying computer games design at uni and decided to investigate Evony.com.
Just to see what some of these games are like etc. etc.
The game is actually kind of cool (found myself addicted and even spent a little money on it).
But I started to notice HUGE bandwidth use by the site as I played.
I am not the only one either, there are comments on the evony forums about this.
This is odd because all of the client info, the animations etc. are all downloaded in one big download at the start.
There is no streaming media so I began to wonder what was going on.
To cut a long story short I decided to break the law and reverse engineer Evony’s client.
Not to cheat. Not to rip them off or even to use even a scrap of the code.
But just to poke about a bit and find out what was going on, maybe even offer them some ways to improve things.
Aside from the fact that the whole thing is very poorly constructed (it is really very beginner coder level stuff. Reminds me of a lot of
what the first year students produce for assignments) it contained some very interesting information.
Included with the client are 2 peices of tracking software that monitor your web use and which applications you have open while the client is running.
These do not install independently on the machine though due to the limitations of flash and do not actually damage anything.
But they harvest massive volumes of information. My firewall was blocking a lot of outgoing transmissions and it turns out that these
were the data trying to be sent out. So they know nothing about me. lol.
However there is a LOT of data coming IN over the ports the client uses. In otherwords it is downloading something into my cache for use later.
I have bandiwdth restriction which slows these types of tricks down and I completely clear my cache every couple of hours if I am heavily using the net.
I also noticed that all the varanbles etc. are named Civony still and that there are multiple references to UMGE.
Even a couple of folders are simply called UMGE, one of these folders contains one of the spyware programs.
So I can only guess at where the data would end up if I didnt have a good firewall.
There are also commented out sections in the code which contain references to UMGE and Lam himself, though low on details.
Thank you for reading this.
Lee
I have now researched the shadowy people behind Evony and written it up as an article: http://www.bruceongames.com/2010/02/19/the-people-behind-evony/
hay evony is a good game just so adicting that you cant take you eyes off it and you just whant to put your fist through the screan of yoiur computer \