EVE General Discussion

Want to know why this doesn't pass the smell test? Replace "Somer Blink" with whatever in-game entity you despise the most and read this out loud.

"In an effort to promote the Winter Expansion, we will be giving Somer Blink several unique prizes to auction off, including rare ships and fan-fest trips. They are a very special little snowflake and do so much for the community we think this is a great idea for everyone and see no problems at all with this directly or indirectly benefiting Somer Blink with loyal followers, customers, and ISK."

0.02 ISK

While better, it's still a fundamentally wrong move.

To be truthful, it's not that different from invite PLEX, where you get money every time one of your contacts subscribes. It's also an ISK reward for promoting and making EVE bigger and better so I can understand that. Yes, it is an intrusion into the "pure" market mechanics of EVE but to be honest it's a justifiable one. Without new players, EVE dies. Thing is, invite PLEX are very straightforward. Someone pays CCP, you get paid. Content is added to the universe, money to CCP's coffers. Everyone wins.

This a whole other story. It's essentially a blank check and an official endorsement to a player-run for-profit corporation (running something as pedestrian as a lottery of all things) that's potentially valued in the 100's of billions. I know for a fact I've gotten at least a 100 accounts to subscribe through my founding and promoting of Brave Newbies. My in-game reward was becoming space-rich from invite PLEX. Now should I go ask CCP for a special-edition vessel that I can sell for billions? No, because I believe the unique player-driven concept of EVE is more valuable than myself or my organization.

I applaud CCP for promoting player-run organizations that increase EVE's visibility, they absolutely deserve rewards and recognition, but injecting 100's of billions into their wallets and thus violating the very principles of the EVE universe is the wrong way to go about it. Give people something, yes, but not in a way that affects the economy or gives an unfair advantage.

I thought CCP thousand dollar jeans had left the building?
(this is terrible)
Time for the new CSM to throw their weight around.

Only?

For the economic side of the game, that is the equivalent of saying 'CCP is only guilty of making it easier for a single chosen corp to kill its enemies'. Businesses in EVE compete with each other and deliberately handing a business an unearned edge is no different from handing combat advantages to a favourite PvP corp.

Well, if the supported events are ingame and for-profit then I hope that CCP stops supporting them, that's what this is all about.

If they choose to sponsor non-profit out-of-game things I don't mind, that doesn't distort competition in the sandbox. And if they choose to sponsor for-profit ingame things like Somer with small out-of-game stuff like free subscriptions or mentions in dev blogs I don't care much either.

First of all, you don't know if the Somer employees can't win the prizes they are given, if they do it smart neither you nor CCP would ever know if they did.

But that's beside the point really, the problem is that an ingame for-profit organization is supported, on top of that it's a very successful for-profit organization which therefore doesn't require support anyway. This distorts the competition with similar organizations and CCP is de facto acting as a kind of kingmaker, crowning Somer as the CCP-endorsed lottery provider. They are making it even worse by officially claiming that Somer has not scammed in the past, which they can't possibly know (unless Somer is Navigator's alt) and even if they magically knew it they have no business commenting on the legitimacy of ingame for-profit organizations.

Most people do not have anything as such against Somer, and most people do not believe that Somer is a scam (it could be however, no outsider including CCP can know for sure), and most people do not think that Somer isn't contributing something to the community.

However I dislike the philanthropy angle cause as I've said in the older thread: If they close down their gambling site and continue sponsoring all kinds of stuff then it's philanthropy, as long as they run the site it's simply called marketing.

And yes, other ingame for-profit organizations can use marketing too, and doing marketing is totally ok. Getting support from CCP is not ok however.

I like it. It has this certain je ne sais quoi.

I don't know why everyone is so mad really. Would you all be annoyed if they teamed up with Budwiser to do a give away based on codes on bottle tops?

Just for clarification. Is this CCP giving a guarantee that they have examined Blink's workings, their RNG and so forth and are willing to guarantee the legitimacy of the service that Blink offers?

Is this unheard of audit of a player run service by CCP going to become available to other player run enterprises?

I think the idea of supporting player run corps/groups/events like that is awesome, but giving items to a gambling site is somewhat questionable (regardless of what exactly they receive).

Giving in-game items to any player or group of players to do with as they see fit is "somewhat questionable" (as you put it), regardless of who they actually are or what they get. If there was even a modicum of oversight, it would be vastly less questionable, but since Navigator outright stated they couldn't police the lottery, this promotion shouldn't have ever left the idea stage.

A gambling site that makes a profit out of the deal in form of both ISK and $$$. Nothing 'somewhat' about it.

Not to mention the general idea of supporting a fansite/service/anything into a tune of a trillion isk to "test the waters" is completely insane.