A Pantheon Rise of the Fallen Developer Accused by Players of Favoring His Guild by Spawning a Rare Mob

Currently, a controversy is brewing on the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Discord, stemming from allegations that a developer at Visionary Realms manipulated developer commands to give his in-game guild an advantage.

The hubbub involves GM Ryzel, also known as Ulmo, who serves as the technical director at the studio. A former member of his guild accuses him of spawning rare mobs for his guild to defeat and loot. The allegations initially surfaced in a subsequently-erased Discord thread, where Ulmo originally justified his actions as “trolling” and assisting “advanced testers,” said one of the MMORPG’s community managers.

While the original thread was deleted, a new thread is kept alive, hosting much of the ongoing discussion: Some players interpret developers’ initial response as a threat to the whistleblower, others argue the whole incident is inconsequential in an early access game, and some see a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the game’s community manager states that Visionary Realms is awaiting an unedited screenshot of the event. While confident that Ulmo was just “kid

Currently, a controversy is brewing on the Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Discord, stemming from allegations that a developer at Visionary Realms manipulated developer commands to give his in-game guild an advantage.

The hubbub involves GM Ryzel, also known as Ulmo, who serves as the technical director at the studio. A former member of his guild accuses him of spawning rare mobs for his guild to defeat and loot. The allegations initially surfaced in a subsequently erased Discord thread, where Ulmo originally justified his actions as “trolling” and assisting “advanced testers,” said one of the MMORPG’s community managers.

While the original thread was deleted, a new thread is kept alive, hosting much of the ongoing discussion: Some players interpret developers’ initial response as a threat to the whistleblower, others argue the whole incident is inconsequential in an early access game, and some see a conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the game’s community manager states that Visionary Realms is awaiting an unedited screenshot of the event. While confident that Ulmo was just “joking around,” they also assure that higher authorities are investigating. The entire situation is currently under review by Visionary Realms, but they seem to be treating it with diligence.

Long-time readers may recall that Pantheon is not the first MMORPG, whether in early access or not, to be scrutinized for allegations of developers using their privileged access to benefit themselves and their friends. The most notable instance is, without a doubt, EVE Online’s 2007 “T20 scandal”. This led to the restriction of developers from playing the game until the policy was rescinded years later.