EVE General Discussion

And you, sir, have demonstrated that you have no idea how the business works.

Lottery hosts take a cut of the lottery proceeds. That's their "pay" for hosting the lottery. Somer does the same, to the degree of about 30%. So every blink that happens, Somer makes money from it because the payout value is not equivalent to the invested value (the cost of the tickets).

Thus, no, Somer doesn't have to buy ISK via PLEX to cover payouts. Somer just has to get people to play their Blinks and they can cover payouts forever.

What?

Anyone who buys a 60-day GTC and gets 1bn Blink credit can turn it into ISK at a rate of about 80%. Unless they are dumb. For every 60-day GTC you buy and 1bn Blink credit you get, you can guarantee a ~800m ISK payout. That's kind of the whole crux of this issue.

And I'll eat my laser eyesight if Somer is buying PLEX to cover payouts, considering the 20% house rate they make on the quadrillions of ISK being gambled; some giant % of which is NOT Blink credit earned through GTC purchases but instead ISK deposited directly from player wallets.

I think there might be one or even two persons in EvE you dont know.

Trends... even if I've got it a bit wrong its been a trend for people I do know (and I do know a fair number in eve) to move away from playing using ingame wallet and I was assuming it was similiar as a bigger story possibly incorrectly.

They have been stockpiling ISK through the years in enormous amounts. And they certainly wouldnt be doing something like that if it wouldnt give them any profit.

I wish the government was as blind and lenient towards money laundering as CCP and a large portion of the community.

Then I could buy all the game time codes I wanted, for every game, ever.

That's the only fact you need to take from this thread.

If your gonna be picky it does (at the local level) constitute a trend even if its potentially inacurrate to use it to judge the bigger picture.

Wtf CCP?

So Somer Blink gets:
A community spotlight
30 Ishkone Scorpions on the sly
Billions more in rare ships and trips to Iceland to lottery, which earns them probably trillions of ISK and $US.
A developer endorsement for demonstrating 'a solid history of trust and reliability' and being 'straight and true in their dealings' on this forum.

And now we learn that they have CCP devs on call via skype while the rest of us saps need to use the ridiculously slow and unhelpful petition system.

And instead of cracking down on them and immediately stopping them from engaging in their EULA-violating activities, you give them a week's notice to cash out their ISK.


I'm gobsmacked at how you spit in the face of your customers. **** this. This is just stupid now.

It amazes me that people still don't get this.

It doesn't matter if you get anything for your money - what matters is that SOMER gives away ISK and gets money for it.

I, and others, have written extensively on this - we can only bring you to the fountain, we can't make you drink. We offer you the red pill. You have to decide to take it.

SOMER converts isk into cash. It does not matter who wins the lottery - SOMER takes no risk in this venture and they are the RMT'er, not the bidders.

If you look close at what SOMER really does is sell, to a group of buyers, an item. The buyers then randomly decide among themselves (with SOMER's help) who gets to keep that item. SOMER gets paid what they wanted for the item no matter who wins it, and any of the isk that was paid toward the prize that was originally in the form of "bonus isk" is basically converted into cash.

If you cash out then (depending on the auction) you just paid SOMER a 20% surcharge to decide who among the bidders gets to keep the isk. You could have gotten together in a chat and done that for free with a random number generator (especially since SOMER, at least, originally used a 3rd party random number generator anyway). If all of the isk bid was from bonus isks (which with the amount being given out it will be) then they have converted that isk into cash.

As for the billion. CCP is a dupe to let it continue. SOMER is basically undercutting CCP on plex sales for the next 7 days - thumbing their noses at CCP and making cash for it. There is no guarantee there will be more TOTAL GTC sales because of this, just more GTC sales through SOMER in the next seven days. And every 1 bil they give out is 2 plex that no one has to buy down the road to keep their gambling habit fueled. Every GTC sale is 34.99 taken from CCP, not the opposite. They are injecting cash into the market - and it'd be interesting to see what the affect is. CCP needs to shut them down - but I am not sure they really see the threat posed. Clearly their economist has to, or if I am wrong, I'd like to hear from him why.

I facepalm at the folks who talk about it being "bonus credits" and not "real isk" or about how you might not win the item so it isn't RMT. You are not seeing this with clarity. RMT is not about buying isk - CCP doesn't care if you buy isk or they wouldn't sell you PLEX. The evil of RMT is the profiteering off of the game, the conversion of game currency into real cash for 3rd parties and SOMER just ramped it up full tilt and should be shut down for it.

So let me get this straight. You all but accuse CCP of running a criminal enterprise yet you give them money?