RoM did have some "public relations issues" when I was playing - they were quite renowned for eating threads that were negative. OK, some did deserve to get eaten, but others didn't.
Also the progress updates on patches and things was pretty atrocious imo.
But yeah - threatening the player base is pretty low. Why expose data of those who aren't to blame?
The monitoring on the network - I say that's a fairly sensible thing to do. A fair few GMs over several companies have been fired for giving out stuff to friends etc. How would you like to trounced by the guy who just happened to be friends with a GM or dev? Doesn't sound like this guy works - if so he should know a lot of corporate internet access is monitored, at least to some degree.
