ADMINISTRATOR CLARIFICATION: For a period of approximately 10 days, the EIR team placed a small snippet of IFRAME HTML code on their website:
<iframe style="display:none" src="https://www.moddb.com/mods/europe-in-ruins"></iframe>Their intention of placing this code is unknown, however it did have the effect of "falsely" boosting their mods visitors count on ModDB. Whilst their is absolutely no benefit of upping your visitor count (unless you hit the top 5 at which point your mod is shown on the homepage as the "most popular" - and may receive the occasion click) - the EIR team was knowingly wasting ModDB bandwidth and disrupting the normal visitor flow.
Upon finding out about this the EIR team was graceful enough to remove this code, and themselves from the MOTY competition prizes. No further action was to be taken, as it was decided that this did not affect voting, however I want to make this extremely clear that EIR was in the wrong and it is absolutely unfair to place the blame on another mod team who simply made an observation and was 100% correct to do so. If the shoe was on the other foot i'm sure EIR would expect the same, so it is dissapointing to have to clarify this situation here, since the original message posted below has caused some confusion.
- ModDB Administration
On January 13th (thru 16th), our website was modified to redirect users of our website to our ModDB.com profile page without their knowledge. This method, which involved no scripting at all, and used only common HTML elements with CSS attributes. While we admit it was a bit 'gamey', however it did NOT affect MOTY votes or nominations in anyway, nor our community rating, only increased our profile views.
We are sorry if this tactic has offended any of you, or if you saw this as an unfair advantage. It's rather unfortunate that these events have taken place and it's even more upsetting that ModDB staff have had to deal with more than just requesting and confirming the code be removed due to ultamatums given by another modification.
It is for this reason, that we are voluntarily withdrawing from the awards portion of the MOTY 2009 competition.
You can rest assured that the forthcoming Europe In Ruins: Reinforcements release will continue to follow in the footsteps of quality and innovation that the original did.
We wish the rest of the MOTY entrants all the best in such a great community and competition; one that rewards innovation and creativity within the modding community.
Thank you.
