This is very interesting. Games like Runescape, Habbo, Free Realms, Maple Story etc each employ many dozens of people, even hundreds. To administer and develop a game with millions of players takes a lot of work. Yet there is no address for Evony, no building or location full of Evony staff. Not that I can find. Not in the West.
A clue to their staffing requirements is their own advert from back in April for 16 different job titles (and payment partially with in game credits!), some of which they needed multiple people for.
Benefits:
- Specialists will receive competitive compensation, according to their skill set, at an hourly pay rate.
- Specialists will also receive in-game credit for their work.
Specialists Needed:Game Design Specialist
Graphics Designer -3D and UI.
We want to continue to improve Evony’s graphics and user interface. We need specialists with skills in one or more of the following: 3D architecture, short movies/animations and Flash-based user interface design.
Game Music and Sound
We will be adding music and sound effects to Evony and need specialists with experience creating music and sound.Game Design, Planning and Rules
We are adding a great deal of new content into Evony ?Age Two, including thousands of famous historical figures and cities, equipment systems and PvP and PvE battleground instance systems. We need developers and planners to create avatars, provide historical information and expertise, as well as background data to keep the game both accurate and immersive.
Game Economists and Data Analysts
A properly balanced and tuned economy and data system is of key importance to the long-term success of the game. Professionals with experience in this field would help adjust finances and other data to promote a robust economy and game structure.
Web Design
We need an accomplished web designer with knowledge of Javascript, Flash and CSS to improve and maintain the official website. Experience with Google Website Optimizer is a plus.
Promotion Team
Web Ad Design
We want to draw more users to Evony with ads. We need excellent ads to generate more impressions and higher CTRs and conversion rates. Candidates should be experienced, creative and enthusiastic.
Advertising Networks
We want to advertise through as many channels as possible, including rich media advertising networks. We are looking for people with connections to such networks to get our ads as much visibility as possible.
Player Promotion
We would like to not only promote Evony ourselves through advertisements, but find creative ways of encouraging our players to promote it as well, to their friends. We are looking for a qualified candidate with a solid understanding of both the game and internet social networking to generate and manage player promotion programs.
Technical Team
Email Architecture
We presently send users a welcome email and password recovery feature via email, but we would like to expand this by giving users the option of receiving emails for certain in-game events such as being attacked. We also need to correct problems in the current system which prevent some users from receiving email. A specialist in this field should have ideas and solutions for these types of issues.
Payment Processing
We want to expand payment options to include receiving payments through mobile SMS, phone billing, credit cards and other methods to meet customer demand, and we need a specialist with experience in this field.
IDC and CDN Experts
We are continuing to add new servers and upgrade bandwidth to improve the player’s experience and need experts in the field to recommend and coordinate these centers and networks.
Community Team
Community Liaison
We need customer-oriented individuals with strong communication skills to act as representatives to the Evony community. With strong community bases in the US, Europe and Australia, we would like community managers to represent our interests in each of these areas. We presently need liaisons for Europe and Australia.
Duties include: interacting with the community on behalf the developers, carrying concerns from the community to developers and helping to address player questions and concerns.
Forum Moderator
We need customer-oriented individuals with strong communication skills to moderate the community forums. Moderators should be conscientious and professional with an understanding of game forums. A mod’s job is to steer discussion away from harmful/destructive topics while fostering useful, helpful and informative topics.
In-game Moderator
We need customer-oriented individuals with good attention to detail to foster a healthy and productive in-game environment. Specialists would moderate in-game chat as necessary, as well as generate plans and methods to best encourage a positive environment for Evony players.
Wiki & Answers Administrator
We need an experienced, professional, customer-oriented individual with strong communication skills to oversee and assist the customer service team, ensure quality customer service and address customer service issues as they arise.
We need to an expert to set up and administer a Wiki/Answers system. The goal of this individual would be to encourage its use and make it as helpful as possible to users.
Customer Service Supervisor
English-Language Specialists
We need individuals with very strong English language skills and an in-depth understanding of the game to help correct language flaws and increase the usefulness of tooltips and language within the game and website. Candidates should exhibit strong written communication skills and a careful eye for detail.
This gives some idea of the range of skills need to run a global browser MMO.
So how many people do you think work for Evony and where do you think that they are?
15 comments ↓
Tbh, I’m not sure all off their employee’s “exist”.
On a sidenote, how’s that whole ridicelous lawsuit those retards at Evony sendt at you going? Really wish I could do something to help beyond spreading the news of what it is they’re doing.
What does it really matter if they use women to advertise? Alot of companies do. Do boobs have anything to do with Beer? No but they are always on Beer comercials.
Evony does enough stupid stuff to not have to nit pick everything they do.
All RTS games tend to encourage their customers to work for them on a prosumer basis. On one account they expect their users to be adults, yet in the same vain the currency they prefer to deal in is virtual. Naturally this tends to result in some creative accountancy.
UMGE and its various incarnations that have attempted to avoid being connected to Evony serves to show as to why users need to be cautious of all RTS products and their markets.
Evony is essentially a clone from a browser game called Travian. The only difference being that it is designed on a hexagon board instead of a squared board and it does not employ specific cultures. Travian itself was developed from the browser game Tribal Wars. In this respect, if one desires to see the amount of staff that should be involved in Evony we need to look at the companies that operate Tribal Wars and Travian. It is here where we may obtain a clue as to the amount of staff that is required to run a RTS MMOG. But do bear in mind that Evony has been adding a new server every three days. In contrast the growth of Tribal Wars and Travian has been much slower, or should I say realistic.
Inno Games http://www.innogames.de/en/ operates Tribal Wars. Here are their job adverts http://www.innogames.de/en/career-1.
Travian Games http://www.traviangames.com/content/what-we-do operates Travian. Here are their job adverts http://www.traviangames.com/content/jobs.
In truth there is very little difference between Tribal Wars, Travian and Evony as a game. Contrary to the reviews in the Guardian, these all follow RTS business models. While the German companies operate in a more open and honest fashion, all of these products have have safety risks. Indeed to win one needs to spend 24/7 online. A colleague of mine once won Travian. He spent an entire year at home playing non-stop. RTS can quite literally ruin a person’s life. People lose their families, friends, careers, self-respect and sanity. It disrupts a persons sleep patterns and accounts for absence from work and studies. Most importantly RTS employs addictive protocols that are very similar to gambling. This is why people are attracted, or more appropriately addicted to them.
As you can see, Inno Games and Travian Games are SMEs. This means they have a suitable workforce for the job in hand. Evony likewise will have to be run by a team and the size of these two German companies give us a clue as to the size of the Evony team. When one looks at the Evony job adverts, its desperation becomes all too apparent.
AC
Nils, I doubt it’s a side-note. The defamation lawsuit is dependent on Evony employing “fewer than 10 persons” and not being “related to another corporation”. If Bruce can prove they employ more than 10 people they can’t even start their fatuous lawsuit. If I recall, from Bruce’s earlier publication of their Statement of Claim they directly plead that they employ fewer than ten people, which is of course ridiculous but something Bruce and his lawyers need to counter.
Presumably the next target for the lawyers is an order for a copy of Evony’s business records. There’s clearly more than ten people running that thing.
I say…2. Eric Lam and his brother.
Using forum mods to steer the conversation away from harmful and destructive topics is a big mistake. First, the company may construe as “negative” something that’s important to players. Second, players aren’t stupid: they know when the conversation is being manipulated, and they usually draw the conclusion the company is trying to cover up something.
If the business plan is to limit the customer base to stupid people, that’s exploitative and will eventually inspire Protective Parents intervention and probably legislation.
I just saw a commercial for the remake of the old science fiction show V (about resistance to an alien totalitarian government). The commercial demonstrated the alien evil by a backstage chat between a Slick Alien Representative and a news journalist. The Slick Alien Representative sought to control the interview and make sure nothing would be asked that would “paint the aliens in a negative light.”
As much as businesses would like it, there is no such thing as unilateral conrol of their market. The consumer gets to make choices, and they get to inform themselves as much as possible before buying. Controlling a forum just blares to the consumer that they aren’t getting the authentic information they need to make their business decisions.
Then there’s the issue of who is going to bother with a phony forum? Who wants to hang out very long in a place they are being advertised *at* instead of participating in a genuine conversation?
I started playing Evony on 7-10-09. After 10 days,I started to spend real money,for game coins! After 3-weeks,I had a lot of trouble getting into the game. Whenever I was attacking,or being attacked,I would get kicked out of the game,a few hours,or up to 12hrs at a time! This happen way too many times every week. I called,and wrote to their support team,about this trouble,but never got any response(they aknowledge my letters} ,or help from them! Well after spending 600.00-U.S.dollars,on game coins,and playing for 22hrs,they kicked me out on Sept19,09,7am. and I have not been able to get back in to the game! My computer is full of malware from that game,+my flash player + related stuff still does not work! I have found out that they have done this to other people too! I feel like I was robbed,and I will be suing them,and filing a on line fraud report on them!-I really need a address on this company! If anyone has any info,please help me!-Thank-You! paladin002@juno.com
I found …
one address in USA, Delaware:
Contact Us
Written by Evony Team
Friday, 04 September 2009 04:52
Evony Global Headquarters
PMB 6846
Suite 120
2711 Centerville Road
Wilmington, DE 19808 USA
Tel: +1 (302) 353-1373
Fax: +1 (302) 691-1355
NUMEROUS email addresses/accounts …
one China (Hong Kong) based financial related: Regan Merchantile
one account listed with Better Business Bureau:
Business Contact and Profile
Name: Evony
Address: Online
Tecumseh, OK 74873
Website: http://59.evony.com/s.html
Principal: There is not one
Customer Contact: There is not one
File Open Date: September 2009
Type of Business: Coins & Tokens-Manufacturers
BBB Accreditation: This company is not a BBB Accredited business.
BBB processed a total of 1 complaint about this company in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period. Of the total of 1 complaint closed in 36 months, 1 was closed in the last year.
Billing or Collection Issues
Unpursuable
1 – Company cannot be located.
*NOTE*
… “Billing or Collection Issues
Unpursuable
1 – Company cannot be located.” … SHOULD SAY IT ALL!!!
Domain Name evony.com
Created On: 28-Mar-2003 00:00:00
Registrant Street1 15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Registrant City:Scottsdale
Registrant State/Province Arizona
Registrant Postal Code 85260
Registrant Country United States
Admin Phone (480) 624-2599
Admin Fax (480) 624-2598
Sorry LLREICH…
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
So it looks like your whois is simply reiterating the fact they registered through a private method. In this example, DomainsByProxy, which is a GoDaddy hosted website.
DomainsByProxy.com (216.69.149.132)
216.69.128.0 – 216.69.191.255
GoDaddy.com, Inc.
14455 N Hayden Road
Suite 226
Scottsdale, AZ
US
If you attempt to puchase a domain from them, it sends you to a referral link from GoDaddy.
So, in the end… they registered privately. Tada!
The Delaware Division of Corporations lists Evony https://delecorp.delaware.gov/tin/GINameSearch.jsp. Simple enter either Evony or its file number (4712200) into the appropriate box and then search. If you have done this properly the following details will be listed.
File No: 4712200
Entity name: Evony, LLC
Entity kind: Limited Liability Company (LLC)
Residency: Domestic
Incorporation date: 07/22/2009
Entity type: General
Registered Agent Information
Name: THE COMPANY CORPORATION
Address: 2711 CENTERVILLE ROAD SUITE 400
City: WILMINGTON
State: DE
County: NEW CASTLE
Postal Code: 19808
Phone: (302)636-5440
Do realize that this address offered is actually The Company Corporation as can be witnessed here http://corp.delaware.gov/uccauthsrch.shtml. Here is their official website http://www.incorporate.com/. The Company Corporation also warns it users of illegal activities, but as yet does not appear to list click fraud http://www.incorporate.com/scam_alerts.html.
Do note that while Evony was incorporated on 07/22/2009, some users, like myself, registered with Civony/Evony earlier. The official email to these early users confirms that Evony was owned by UMGE. In this respect, Civony/Evony was trading under UMGE before it became a Delaware registered LLC. As the Evony press statement made after 07/22/2009 to all its users (some eight or more million people at that time, now ten million) claimed that neither Civony or Evony have ever been party to UMGE it means that all Civony/Evony users involved in the game prior to 07/22/2009 should be aware that Evony is involved in making false charges against Mr Everiss’ blog Bruce on Games. In addition, as UMGE owns Civony/Evony one needs to question the legal validity of Evony obtaining LLC status within the United States with the assistance of The Company Corporation.
China is one of the few countries that have not as yet ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This permits people to have access to freedom of speech. It will of course be quite difficult for any citizen or resident within China to offer evidence with regards to the business affairs of UMGE prior to Evony’s incorporation within the United States, because any such witness could be placed under duress due to the legal action being taken against UMGE by Microsoft. However, my Evony contract is with UMGE and this was made prior to Evony’s incorporation as a LLC in the United States. As everything stated by Mr Everiss about Evony is fair or correct I am now quite interested in understanding exactly how a Chinese concern in a country that is not bound by the ICCPR can in turn claim to be United States company, register as a LLC and then infer false liable charges through a law firm based in Australia with no listed expertise in libel when some of its customers have been formally informed by the company that it is owned by UMGE and operates from China.
Any concern involved in assisting Evony to deny its involvement with UMGE by assisting it to register as a LLC within the United States could be deemed to be party to financial corruption within the United States. In other words, any concern that chooses to be associated with Evony does so at its own risk.
As The Delaware Division of Corporations can confirm that Evony was incorporated as an LLC on 07/22/2009, this mean the first article about Evony made by Mr Everiss was made 12 days before Evony was incorporated (07/10/2009) and a few others were made prior to incorporation too. Let us look at these articles:
Don’t play Evony (07/10/2009) http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/10/dont-play-evony/
More about Evony (07/15/2009)
http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/15/more-about-evony/
Is Evony malware? (07/16/2009)
http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/16/is-evony-malware/
The first blog by Mr Everiss on Evony as a LLC can be found here:
Evony advert ridiculed by PopCap (07/29/2009)
http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/29/evony-advert-ridiculed-by-popcap/
In addition to this, the article on Evony made by the Guardian was also made before Evony was incorporated as can be witnessed here:
Has Evony become the most despised game on the web? (07/15/2009)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/jul/15/games-evony-spam-internet
The implications of Evony not being incorporated within the United States during this time is most interesting, especially in light of the claims being made by Warren McKeon Dickinson http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/08/25/evony-want-to-sue-me-for-telling-the-truth/. By carefully reading their letter and paying direct attention to the dates of their claims, one can see that Warren McKeon Dickinson are making some libel claims prior to Evony LLC being incorporated. In this respect Warren McKeon Dickenson are actually representing UMGE in China in all libel claims before 07/22/2009. This information may be of interest to some parties.
AC
That staffing requirment list was posted in the evony forums in April 2009 and is still availble for viewing in their forums. approximately 6 weeks later this was posted on a website:
“Sunday, May 31, 2009
Evony offers HR gaming positions
Are you an avid gaming fan and looking for a job? Whether you’re a gaming software developer, designer or even a massive fan just wanting to moderate game forums, do social marketing or anything related to the games (MMORPG) industry then you’re in luck.
UMGE (United Multiplayer Gaming Entertainment) the makers of the new free web browser game Evony are calling for workers of all kinds as they push their HR (Human Resources) drive into full motion, as the uptake on Evony continues to push the boundaries.
UMGE out of China has put big dollars behind Evony and the early results are very encouraging, so of the HR positions they are chasing up are as followers;
Game Design Specialist
Graphics Designer – 3D and UI.
We want to continue to improve Evony´s graphics and user interface. We need specialists with skills in one or more of the following: 3D architecture, short movies/animations and Flash-based user interface design……”
Here`s some food for thought Ben Gifford who who was hired on Aug 14 2009 to work for evony,and continues to currently work for Evony also worked for the pre July 22 2009 incorporated evony.In fact he was working for evony at the time that this May 31,2009 “want” ad was posted.Evony claims that it nor anyone who works for evony has ever had any connection to UMGE or China.The May 31 2009 “want” ad is an exact duplicate of the April ad in the evony forums with the exception that the evony forum ad does not make reference to UMGE or China.
I suppose the real questions are who posted the May 31 ad, who added the UMGE china references, and how authentic are they?
There is a bit of irony attached this following quote :
“A mod’s job is to steer discussion away from harmful/destructive topics while fostering useful, helpful and informative topics”
not only has discussion on the evony forums been steered away from evony`s pending lawsuit but it has specifically been banned.
one has to wonder why evony feels that discussion of the lawsuit would be harmful,destructive,uninformative,unhelpful and unuseful, to the point that they felt the need to ban all discussion of it?
nbforrest,
Not discussing the details of an ongoing lawsuit over public channels is standard practice for any company. Think about it. You’re a business and you’re suing someone for trying to stir up what you see as unwarranted controversy about your business. His zombie followers are blaming any PC trouble they have on your software, your livelihood, and pledging to spread this message everywhere they can.
Are you suggesting that most for-profit companies would allow this sort of garbage in THEIR forum, which exists to serve the interests of the business? Why don’t you go to your local Quick-Stop and try post some signs that say “This store kills babies” on the side of the building and see how long it takes before your post gets “moderated”.
Danny,
I have noticed some intermittent connection issues in the past couple months, but that’s not them “kicking you out”, that’s just the reality of the Internet. It would really help if someone, ANYONE, posted DETAILED TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS and LOGS on how they determined Evony to be the cause of their malware infestation. Did you contact Adobe to resolve the Flash issue? Did Adobe tell you it was the Evony Malwarez that broke it?
You spent $600 on a flash game, buddy. $600 on a Flash Game! In less than 24 hours no less! I’ve spent $50 in 4 months! There’s a word for your behavior — “Compulsive” as in: “Compulsive Spender” “Compulsive Gambler” “Compulsive Liar” as in: “Insane”
Next time pay that $600 to someone who “is good at computers” to click the “update virus definitions” link (WARNING: you may have to sit still for up to 30 seconds),.. or better yet, give it to someone who’s “good with brains” so you can finally stop blaming others for the problems you no doubt routinely create for yourself.
—
Do you guys realize that the Evony client has been reverse-engineered and that regular, non-affiliated tech people probe every inch of it in order to automate the game (cheat)? You should post some of these ‘theories’ in that forum, full of geeks who know WTF they’re actually talking about, and have SEEN the code. See how fast you get laughed out of the room.
I can’t decide if this whole thing is a pity party or a train wreck, but it sure is fun to watch! Please keep the nonsense coming!
@Bob
You sound like you work for Evony.
And you obviouly haven’t read this comment from Lee: http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/16/is-evony-malware/
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
As the Evony -v- Bruce Everiss case has been adjourned until February, here are the names listed on their forum after the date of the scheduled hearing.
Evony Senior Staff:
Admin (Number of people unknown)
Vice Development Officer (Benjamin Gifford)
Evony Reps:
Dawnseeker (Also listed child protection)
Valkirah (Also listed child protection)
Vittog
Supermoderator:
FoxyBunny (Also listed child protection)
Current Moderators:
abracax
AbstractAngel
Alusair
Bickyz
Boleslav
Brightfang
chinothepony
Hods
JPA32
Lord Arumen
rainegirl
wakey
Wildor
Resigned or Fired Moderators:
DANKFIRE
Zenrax
Phoren
TWT
Stevinho
Crypteia
MadK
Sukasai
Ktanaqui
Lord_Zylok
BBQ_Sauce
Aderik
Just Jurgen
Brutal Xian
Gazza
f0zzy
John
Terryrayc
Heraclius
Shinigami
Logrus
Lord Drazsyr
Katiara
Cyhort
Zim
Alusair
Thor
Kittiana
Sarasca
vBobLing
etrnldarkness
BF2viper
! mINDsELFiNDULGE !
Of course, the above names do not include the directors, developers, core staff and the numerous positions advertised within both Civony and Evony. As I have witnessed reading the Civony adverts for staff prior to renaming it Evony, I can certainly state that this list alone exceeds ten staff.
Naturally all of the above people behind their pseudonyms are party to the conspiracy of deceiving the general public into believing Evony employs less than ten people, in addition all staff, even volunteer staff that signed into Evony when it was called Civony will be in possession of emails that clearly state that UMGE are the owners of the game.
I would also suspect that some of these people are minors because many MMOs engage minors as moderators in their forums because their employment procedures lack legal robustness. In addition, many minors apply for moderator positions because they lack credit card details, so by obtaining a moderator position, often through fraud, they receive game bonuses they would not be able to obtain normally. This of course could means that there is likely to be a violation of US employment law too, especially as Civony/Evony has stated that all its moderators must work at least two hours a day. Naturally because these moderators come from all over the world, it will be interesting to see how this transpires.
AC
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