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A review of player giveaways with CCP and third party sites

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Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#161 - 2013-09-26 20:46:58 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
That depends, are the super capital builders sponsoring Titan give away contests to their customers?


Oh yes, I guess people should sponsor giveways by car dealerships because sometimes you might have a chance to win a TV just by walking into the showroom while a guy tries to talk you into buying an SUV.

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Zaxix
State War Academy
Caldari State
#162 - 2013-09-26 20:48:10 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:
All of those organization are potential recipients of sponsorship, remember this is a new initiative from CCP to encourage 3rd party community organizations. If they sponsor events where CCP sponsorship would be possible they will no doubt be considered. Reality has to kick in here though, they can't do everything at once.

"Potential" being the operative word. They may not ever get anything. Or they might get considered a year from now after they no longer play. Or a new site might be developed today and flooded with fake hits and contributors (because you know the smart guys are all sitting around right now figuring out how to cash in). What about people like Azual Skoll who just recently moved on from EVE (maybe he would have stayed around for 100bil)? What about situations where the site/app has been taken over by someone other than the original person? What about sites that are doing great now, but fail in the future? What if Somer shuts down 24hrs after this event (unlikely, but still a valid hypothetical)? What about in game organizations that don't explicitly run third party sites or that run sites that restate what other sites have (E-Uni wiki e.g.)? What about people who provide tons of great advice to noobs for years and years on the EVE-O forums but have no third party site (e.g., Tau Cabalander)? How many people has DeMichael Crimson and The Plan helped? And on and on.

There are too many ways this can be abused or that fairness cannot be implemented. I totally understand CCP wanting to find ways to partner with outside organizations for PR and advertising purposes. Giving away piles of ISK is just not the way to do it.

Bokononist

 
Nanatoa
#163 - 2013-09-26 20:48:22 UTC
Abernie wrote:
Nanatoa wrote:
WTF I just spent 16 billion on Blinks to get a once-in-a-lifetime shot at a Gold Magnate, literally The Stuff Of Legends - and you change the prices? Can I get my 16 billion back?

That's up to somer blink, this is a 3rd party event after all.


Good point. I have requested a refund with Somer Blink

"Stay the course, we have done this many times before." - (CCP) Hilmar, June 2011
TheGunslinger42
All Web Investigations
#164 - 2013-09-26 20:48:46 UTC
Ranger 1 wrote:

Quote:
And how will they decide which Level of sponsorship they get? Is it about how "Buddy" you are with the Devs?

That would obviously be up to them and their Internal Affairs department. I can speculate that a lot would depend on how popular the "services" the organization provides are, and how much of the EVE community is affected by them.


So are they going to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog?

Would it be fair to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog, considering there are other couriers out there trying to make a living and compete with Red Frog?
Weaselior
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#165 - 2013-09-26 20:49:37 UTC
Nanatoa wrote:
WTF I just spent 16 billion on Blinks to get a once-in-a-lifetime shot at a Gold Magnate, literally The Stuff Of Legends - and you change the prices? Can I get my 16 billion back?

boy this sure isn't a giveaway to somer at all noooooooooooooo siree

Head of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal Pubbie Management and Exploitation Division.
Kirren D'marr
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#166 - 2013-09-26 20:50:30 UTC
As I was effectively ninja'd by this new thread, I'll repeat my statement from the previous discussion:

Kirren D'marr wrote:
Trebor Daehdoow wrote:
The CSM was not consulted about this lottery, and if we had been, we would have had concerns similar to those raised by many in this thread.

We hope to arrange a meeting with the relevant CCP staff members to discuss the matter in the near future, and will keep the community as informed as possible.



CCP, with this one announcement you have validated the fears of every player who has believed the CSM to be pointless and powerless. The CSM was established in order to create transparency and restore player trust in CCP after previous scandals involving CCP employees showing favoritism to players and in-game entities.

By proceeding with a decision with such obvious potential for a similar scandal and accusations of blatant favoritism without even consulting the CSM, you have essentially created t20 ver 2.0. Frankly, the only chance you have to restore credibility at this point is to immediately reverse this decision and claim it as a lapse in judgement.

However, I fear that even doing this would be insufficient, as the damage is likely already done. CCP has again shown clear favoritism to a single third pary site and in-game entity, and the one regulation on CCP's integrity, the CSM, has been bypassed entirely, destroying player trust in the effectiveness of this organization and the transparency of CCP-player interactions.

The only difference between this event and previous scandals is that this time, instead of resulting from the actions of rogue CCP employees, this favoritism is officially and publicly endorsed by the company. This makes the situation even worse than any before it, as the favoritism now has a stamp of approval, indicating that it is now standard procedure and official policy for CCP to favor some players/organizations over others.

Good luck restoring trust after this one!



The fact is that changing which ships are being given away does nothing to remove the appearance of favoritism. CCP is still:

- Giving a means to make ISK to a single player organization (unique lottery prizes)
- Generating awareness of and traffic to that organization's website, ensuring their making even more ISK as players use their services, and making real life money through website ad revenue
- Publicly endorsing this organization over its competitors, ensuring that more players will use this organization's services over others, giving more ISK to this organization which may have gone to others who were not similarly favored by CCP

All of this amounts to giving a significant in- and out-of-game advantage to one group of players. How is this not favoritism?

Why a switch on/off? Because the new animation doesn't add anything to gameplay and it's graphically annoying. In other words, it's worse than bad: it's useless. Simple as that.     _ - Kina Ayami_
Verskon Qaual
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#167 - 2013-09-26 20:52:07 UTC
Back in 2007, after the t20 scandal, CCP Hellmar posted "We are not the "gods" or "the masters" of EVE Online or the EVE community. We serve the community. You have entrusted us to safeguard your hard work." http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/the-commitment/

Recently CCP Dolan posted "CCP is ultimately the arbiters of the universe that you all live in, but that doesn't mean we are beyond talking to the players and making constructive changes." https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3613784#post3613784

After "Greed is Good", the most recent TOS changes, Somer Blink favoritism and the intention of reintroducing unique ships, I have yet again begun to question if CCP is upholding their commitment to the community that has endured for 10+ years. I do not know how CCP Dolan's choice of arbiter is suppose to be interpreted, but the sentiment in that particular post, CCP actions with secretive and uneven distribution of punishments, player favoritism and arbitrary terminology that is enforceable as law pertaining to the game seems very godlike.
Zaxix
State War Academy
Caldari State
#168 - 2013-09-26 20:52:36 UTC
TheGunslinger42 wrote:
Ranger 1 wrote:

Quote:
And how will they decide which Level of sponsorship they get? Is it about how "Buddy" you are with the Devs?

That would obviously be up to them and their Internal Affairs department. I can speculate that a lot would depend on how popular the "services" the organization provides are, and how much of the EVE community is affected by them.


So are they going to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog?

Would it be fair to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog, considering there are other couriers out there trying to make a living and compete with Red Frog?

Totally valid point. BTW, I dragged the Frog in because it's a reasonably good example of a group that provides very popular in game services and also has a third party website. I'm not actually arguing for them to receive piles of ISK. Though I do want my Black Frog Special Edition Rhea!

Bokononist

 
MyEveLotto
Doomheim
#169 - 2013-09-26 20:55:59 UTC
Dear CCP,

As another host of a third-party gambling site, I have a few concerns.

Firstly, the site I host is a third-party site that allows others to host lotteries. I do not actually host lotteries myself (aside from ones for friends, corpmates and alliancemates), but instead provide an actual service to the player community that consists of more than just taking peoples' money. I do not host public lotteries because if I were to do so, using my own system, there would be an understandable conflict of interest, and I find more value in remaining an impartial third-party and providing that security to those who use my service. As I do not host my own lotteries, does this mean that I will never be a candidate for trillions of free ISK to promote my business?

Secondly, as I am fairly new to the lottery industry and provide a service that targets hosts instead of players (there are far fewer hosts than players), I don't expect my business to expand to the level of Somer Blink. If I am not taking in billions of ISK on a daily basis, does this mean that I will never be a candidate for trillions of free ISK to promote my business?

Thirdly, I have a number of businesses that I would consider competitors in the field. While I do not host the lotteries myself, they compete with my clients, which makes them indirectly competitors. However, due to a friendly rivalry, I hold respect for them and their practices. Why did my competitors, including BIG lotteries, Lotto49 or Darknesss not receive trillions of free ISK to promote their business instead of Somer?

Fourthly, I have a number of regular clients who use myEVElotto.com to host their lotteries. I appreciate their business and their continued use of my services, and am glad to have them as customers. As you are now apparently giving out items to organizations in similar business as mine, will I be able to receive any items that I might use to reward the people who utilize my services, and only those who utilize my services? After all, I have to encourage people to use my services.

Fifthly, if I were to have a crisis of conscience over accepting trillions of ISK worth of free stuff to provide to my customers and users, what would you suggest as the best method of overcoming my qualms and concerns in order to happily accept the items? It seems rather immoral to me to accept items from a supposedly impartial host, particularly when I am trying to maintain an impartial outlook myself. I may need some instruction on immorality in order to accept trillions in free ISK.

Thank you for your prompt replies and answers to my concerns.

Sincerely,
MyEveLotto

myEVElotto.com - The New Public Lottery Site
Abernie
Thoroughly Incompetent
#170 - 2013-09-26 20:56:21 UTC
This whole thing wasn't mentioned during stream, despite mentioning other player driven stuff.
I'll take that as a good sign. Maybe this can still be fixed.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#171 - 2013-09-26 20:56:29 UTC
Andski wrote:
Ranger 1 wrote:
Truthfully, I view this as an honest attempt to provide CCP backing to prominent organizations in the community... handled in perhaps the clumsiest way imaginable, but their intentions are fairly clear and honest I believe.


The last time CCP backed a "prominent organization" they ended up in a media disaster that destroyed their reputation with the playerbase. People have regularly accused CCP of favoritism towards in-game organizations since.

This is blatant favoritism.

That is true, this is a slippery slope for them.

Though to be honest CCP was accused of favoritism long before any actually occurred, and the events in question were the actions of a single Dev, not a company policy. This has happened in every game I've every played, and I'm sure you have probably noticed the same thing.

Look, it's pretty obvious that CCP's motivation is to strengthen ties with the community and especially it's 3rd party developers. They view them as (for the most part) enriching the options the EVE player base has by way of tools or entertainment (via web sites, utilities, services, gambling, or competitive tournaments).

All they really wanted to do was give away some cool ships at a great player run event, and use a very widely used player run service to do it. I'm sure they had little idea they would be "what if"ed to death as a result. Granted, with a little more forethought they could have avoided most of the negative feelings, but that's CCP for you.

But the fact remains that if we take this stance with every attempt they make, they will be forced to back away from their more creative attempts at community support/interaction entirely, which would be a shame.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
TheGunslinger42
All Web Investigations
#172 - 2013-09-26 20:57:51 UTC  |  Edited by: TheGunslinger42
Kirren D'marr wrote:
As I was effectively ninja'd by this new thread, I'll repeat my statement from the previous discussion:

Kirren D'marr wrote:
Trebor Daehdoow wrote:
The CSM was not consulted about this lottery, and if we had been, we would have had concerns similar to those raised by many in this thread.

We hope to arrange a meeting with the relevant CCP staff members to discuss the matter in the near future, and will keep the community as informed as possible.



CCP, with this one announcement you have validated the fears of every player who has believed the CSM to be pointless and powerless. The CSM was established in order to create transparency and restore player trust in CCP after previous scandals involving CCP employees showing favoritism to players and in-game entities.

By proceeding with a decision with such obvious potential for a similar scandal and accusations of blatant favoritism without even consulting the CSM, you have essentially created t20 ver 2.0. Frankly, the only chance you have to restore credibility at this point is to immediately reverse this decision and claim it as a lapse in judgement.

However, I fear that even doing this would be insufficient, as the damage is likely already done. CCP has again shown clear favoritism to a single third pary site and in-game entity, and the one regulation on CCP's integrity, the CSM, has been bypassed entirely, destroying player trust in the effectiveness of this organization and the transparency of CCP-player interactions.

The only difference between this event and previous scandals is that this time, instead of resulting from the actions of rogue CCP employees, this favoritism is officially and publicly endorsed by the company. This makes the situation even worse than any before it, as the favoritism now has a stamp of approval, indicating that it is now standard procedure and official policy for CCP to favor some players/organizations over others.

Good luck restoring trust after this one!



The fact is that changing which ships are being given away does nothing to remove the appearance of favoritism. CCP is still:

- Giving a means to make ISK to a single player organization (unique lottery prizes)
- Generating awareness of and traffic to that organization's website, ensuring their making even more ISK as players use their services, and making real life money through website ad revenue
- Publicly endorsing this organization over its competitors, ensuring that more players will use this organization's services over others, giving more ISK to this organization which may have gone to others who were not similarly favored by CCP

All of this amounts to giving a significant in- and out-of-game advantage to one group of players. How is this not favoritism?


Which is why after 7 years I am finally going to peace out. It's one thing for a rogue employee to act inappropriately, it is another for the company to officially state this is now it's standard operating procedure. It's unthinkable. Even after T20, after the fumbles with $60 pieces of virtual clothing, even after deleting my boot.ini, I stuck with EVE because CCP were always demonstrating the desire to fix their mistakes, and always seemed to be doing their best.

Now? Um... nope.
Glasgow Dunlop
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#173 - 2013-09-26 21:02:39 UTC
still stinks

@glasgowdunlop #tweetfleet

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Glasgow EVE Meets Organiser
Alt Two
Caldari Capital Construction Inc.
#174 - 2013-09-26 21:03:04 UTC
Hmm, I see T20 is back at CCP.. Now I really regret renewing my accounts yesterday. Oh well, that mistake won't happen again.
Ranger 1
Ranger Corp
Vae. Victis.
#175 - 2013-09-26 21:03:30 UTC
Zaxix wrote:
TheGunslinger42 wrote:
Ranger 1 wrote:

Quote:
And how will they decide which Level of sponsorship they get? Is it about how "Buddy" you are with the Devs?

That would obviously be up to them and their Internal Affairs department. I can speculate that a lot would depend on how popular the "services" the organization provides are, and how much of the EVE community is affected by them.


So are they going to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog?

Would it be fair to drop hundreds of billions of isk on Red Frog, considering there are other couriers out there trying to make a living and compete with Red Frog?

Totally valid point. BTW, I dragged the Frog in because it's a reasonably good example of a group that provides very popular in game services and also has a third party website. I'm not actually arguing for them to receive piles of ISK. Though I do want my Black Frog Special Edition Rhea!

I would totally love Red Frog to organize an event that CCP could sponsor. I think they are one of the best services available in EVE and would completely support/participate in any event they put together.

View the latest EVE Online developments and other game related news and gameplay by visiting Ranger 1 Presents: Virtual Realms.
Josef Djugashvilis
#176 - 2013-09-26 21:04:40 UTC
Andski wrote:
I think Ranger 1 somehow confuses Somer Blink for a charity.


Wow, you are in tip top form today my dear chap Smile

This is not a signature.
DJ Damage
Eve Radio Corporation
#177 - 2013-09-26 21:06:46 UTC  |  Edited by: DJ Damage
Link someone in ccp said this.. for sure
Bronco Platz
Doomheim
#178 - 2013-09-26 21:07:24 UTC
Quote:
I would totally love Red Frog to organize an event that CCP could sponsor. I think they are one of the best services available in EVE and would completely support/participate in any event they put together.


Goons hosted the "Jita Burn" for example and every Player could taking part. They are a for-profit-org and had a own Website. That sponsorship do they get?

This signature is under NDA. Sorry.
Pytria Le'Danness
Placid Reborn
#179 - 2013-09-26 21:08:12 UTC
Seriously?

This is your solution?

Instead of giving a third-party website the chance to give out unique ships for their very own profit you give that third-party website the chance to give out even more unique ships for their very own profit?

SERIOUSLY?

CCP, I am not worried about half a dozen ships being spawned. I am worried that you give those ships to someone who earns money off them.

When do I get my free ships that no one else gets?
Janine Frost
The Conference Elite
Safety.
#180 - 2013-09-26 21:08:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Janine Frost
Quote:

"All you scammers and legitimate businessmen out there, take heed. If you want to succeed beyond your wildest dreams, make sure you get audited by CCP and have their official seal of approval planted on your business and/or scam. It's a brand new day in the world of EVE."


Fellow Eve players!

Allow me to share the above quote with you, taken from an article, which can be found here:

http://www.minerbumping.com/2013/09/ccp-audits-somer-blink-gives-them-free.html

I urge you to read it in its entirety, it is well worth it.

Pointing them to the article can also serve as an easy way of making your friends and anyone else you deem interested aware of the situation.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Frost
NEW ORDER DEATH DEALERS/CODE.