EVE General Discussion

CCP dropbears live events not being axed and killmails for pods indlucing implants (and in the future boosters/SP loss I hope) made me believe they believe and I believe faith needs to be supported.

The choice is not "Cut 20% of our employees or go out of business." There are most likely dozens of other ways that CCP could reduce costs if they really needed to. Probably the best of which is a slight reduction in upper management pay scales.

It's so funny that people really believe the "Refocus" stuff. You'd think after all the lies and mis-information that CCP put out earlier this year, some people would be suspicious?
You don't refocus by cutting 20% of your staff. You cut 20% of your staff because you made some very bad mistakes and now your paying for it financially.

If you kiddies want this sugarcoated over, due to your inability to understand business concepts, keep believing....but cutting 20% indicates a company in trouble...

Despite the fact that I did not agree with the direction that CCP was taking with EVE, I never unsubed my account during NeXgate. In the end, this came down to the fact that I still had fun playing EVE. The game play that I had enjoyed for so long was still compelling, and I enjoyed spending my free time blowing up spaceships with my friends. I advocated strongly for my positions on MT and the state of FIS, but I never stopped playing the game.

That may change next month.

Up until this point, every objection I have had towards CCP has been on the basis of game mechanics, or where they put their development time. They were differences of opinion about somethings that in all honesty are not that terribly important. Now however, CCP has done something that I find moral reprehensible; something that has an impact on more than a hundred peoples lives.

CCP has recently laid off 20% of its workforce; programmers, artists, community managers. Hilmar has labeled this mass lay-off as part of an attempt to "refocus" CCP's priorities. In other words, the people at CCP who have actually listened to our concerns, who have put in the work making EVE what it is, who have in many cases advocated on our behalf are the ones who are paying for the mistakes of CCP's upper management.

This is sadly something that happens all the time, in every industry. When companies start to run into financial pressure, they do not look to upper management to cut payroll costs. Instead they immediately go to the bottom of the pay scale, to the people who are actually being productive. They cut positions where the most harm to the companies capabilities per dollar is done. It is corporate culture at its very worst. That does not mean that it is something I simply accept as the status quo. I do not support companies that treat employees like this.

This means, that come next month when my subscription is up I will not be continuing my account. This is a terrible shame, as this comes at a time when I could not be happier with the direction the game seems to be heading. Some things are more important than internet space ships however.

A large number of the people I fly with are also considering letting their subs lapse. A few people in Rote went inactive during the summer, but it was not because they were outraged at CCP. It was in most cases simply because they had gotten bored with the game. It was not something we had huge discussions about, occasionally someone would just mention that they were unsubbing to take a break for a while. Some of them have come back and are flying with us again, some of them are waiting until this winter. Either way, it was never something that significantly disrupted alliance operations.

This time around, there are quite a few people in Rote who are livid over CCP's actions. People are actively trying to get others to unsub with them over this, and a 10 page thread about this poped up nearly instantly on our forums (which usually go weeks with out much more than a few CTA threads.) I can tell you, those of us who have friends at CCP, and those of us who have been affected by the same upper management mentality care about this.