EVE General Discussion

That's only allowed if you're abusing people's gambling habit, not if you're abusing people's stupidity and lack of research. See, encouraging people to plex for their security deposit will get you banned, but encouraging people to plex for gambling money will get you exclusive **** from CCP.

"I will endeavor to be in this thread as often as possible and give answers." *never posts in the thread again* *is navigator*

I bet CCP knew exactly how people would react. They probably always planned to make this a one time deal.
SOMER are getting a ton of free isk because of the RL money their connection to MarkeeDragon generates for CCP. And then CCP can use the excuse of community backlash to avoid giving other community entities the same deal.

Isn't this entire thread a rant about how ******* stupid this decision by CCP is? Seriously, why aren't you deleting the entire thread and ban everyone who posted in here if you're just going to censor people that don't like what you guys have done.....

I don't see how disappointing people who are gambling on Somer's site would be any less of a headache than pissing off every other community site out there for having played favorites.

If they were to go through with this giveaway, but stop doing them afterwards due to the (completely predictable) community outrage, that would only **** off all the other community sites that got officially shafted by not having CCP endorsement, achieving the complete opposite to what CCP "bright ideas" Navigator tried to naively achieve.

Using Somer as a method to deliver the ships would be okay in my books as long as 2 things happened:

A: Guaranteed way of showing that it was not rigged in any way, shape, or form. I don't trust Somer, from a pure statistical point of view the way so many people have made so much isk through them just doesn't make sense, but I'm sure that any kind of auditing of the practices of Somer are likely off the table, so one way I could see this working is to make it so that anyone personally involved with anyone involved in the Somer Blink gambling site would be unable to win the prize, alts included, obviously needing to be checked via IP to be sure. This would be the only way I could see them ensuring that the prizes would be delivered in at least a somewhat fair way. Far from ideal, but still acceptable.

B: Somer has the entire isk gain from the promotion from these specific ships be removed from their wallets, so they do not make any isk from the deal. They are still able to distribute the ships, gaining them a lot of public exposure and advertisement, so that would be well worth the trouble for them, but they wouldn't outright make a trillion or so through this transaction. Yet again, far from ideal, but acceptable.

Without knowing that these prizes are distributed fairly, and with a player entity gaining a shitload of isk in this deal, I don't see how anyone could see how this is anything remotely close to fair. Honestly, I'd rather have the Goons distribute these prizes than Somer (aka steal it for themselves). And, no, I'm not a goon alt. I'm just saying that between 2 bad ways of distributing these prizes, at least Goons have done some things that bring life into this game. Somer just finds ways to redirect isk from other people's wallets into their own. Not that it's a bad thing to do that, because that's ultimately the best way to make isk in this game, but to get such a boost and endorsement directly from CCP is a terrible move.

I've read the nearly 500 posts in this thread and I know this won't get me many "likes," (as if that has ever mattered) but I'm having a hard time getting worked up over this guys. SomerBlink is a for-profit microlottery site which promotes EVE. Yes. But so much has been written about how we just don't know if they're legit, and we just don't know if they might keep the isk, on and on... Well, I don't know if Chribba wears underwear, but it doesn't affect my belief that he's trustworthy and an asset. Chribba could be a dancing leprauchan for all I know. It is impossible to police 3rd parties to such a degree as would satisfy most of these demands. It should suffice that SOMER's record speaks for itself. Over 58,000 registered users and over 20 million hits per month. That has to translate into a nice chunk of change in GTCs for CCP. One would suspect that documented impropriety would have made its way into some forum, some blog, or to the ears of some CCP dev. Maybe not, but 1) it doesn't take much gumption to be a whistleblower and 2) people here complain readily. I'm guessing that didn't happen and here we are.

I could've went either way on the Gold Magnate. Yes, its part of EVE history and history should be respected, but on the other hand, afaik, none exist in game whatsoever. What's the point of having a ship model that doesn't even exist? Had they given one out, it wouldn't have shaken my sense of continuity one bit. They could have written it into the lore in any way necessary. An ancient Sarum weapons depot has been discovered by archeologists and whaddayouknow - they found a gold magnate inside! But hey, whatever, they aren't giving one away now and that's ok too.

I just don't get all the rage.

This Summer, CCP sponsored an EVE Radio 10th anniversary promotion, donating at least 20 GTCs and advertised said promo on the log-in splash screen and the character selection screen. 3rd party adverts on the client! I'm pretty sure there wasn't even one comment about that. No, they aren't an in-game entity, but they do solicit donations (of isk and RL currency) (both on the website and via djs) and all djs have in-game alts. (Some are Goons, shhh.) Now, their policy is of course that djs can't keep isk or prizes and I have no reason to doubt that this is enforced. But as a listener, we don't know that. You just trust that it's true. They could all be in cahoots stashing away isk so the lot of them play for free. We would never know. And yet, that promotion garnered not even a peep from the community. How much did CCP sponsorship benefit that 3rd party? Was that also favoritism? (**For the record, I'm a fan of EVE Radio, have been listening for over 5 years, and have donated billions in ships and isk to various djs to enhance contest prizes over the years. I mean them no disrespect. I'm just using this as an example.)

You know, I was initially going to suggest that CCP could perhaps limit it's 3rd party promos to RL objects like tee-shirts, coffee mugs, and posters - but I don't see how that would quell the complaints of favoritism. No matter what is donated, the claims of favoritism would continue by whichever entity didn't receive tee-shirts, coffee mugs and posters. Given the choice between zero third-party partnerships or suffering through the potential for impropriety (with no evidence of any,) I'm opting for the latter. SOMER has built itself into something successful enough to warrant recognition and promotion. So be it.

Actually, this controversy has to be great for SOMER. I didn't even know what a "blink" was until all this started.

Oh and Goons. Why hasn't there been outrage over there being no Something Awful or CFC "Community Spotlight?" Is that oversight also favoritism or is it favoritism only when uber-rare ships are involved?

Just curious.


YK

This is the same thing as giving a high-sec, mission running, 20%+ tax corp special ships and large amounts of income (that basically only benefits the CEO) for organizing events that in-and-of themselves generate large sums of isk for that CEO. You can be kicked out of corp for anything the CEO doesn't approve of. You can be banned for trying to get your non-productive alt in, get your irl corp friend banned for logging into corp forums from your house (IP address), making a public statement that might put the CEO in a bad light... among other actions that might directly or indirectly affect the CEO's bottom line.

Not everyone can participate in this event without sidestepping a few rules and putting forth great effort with proxies or VPNs to get around a ban or blacklist. Why do I need to apply to this high-sec tax-scheme corp, that a LOT of people think is a very fun corp to participate in? Just because so many people think it's fun, does not mean I do, nor does it mean I should join them (if I weren't blacklisted) in order to get in on actively attempting to gain prizes in a CCP sanctioned/co-sponsored event that this exclusive, high-sec, tax-scheme corp is throwing in Rio.

...But, this high-sec, tax-scheme corp has it's forums loaded with Eve ads and partner-links directing to GTC sales (not even a very questionable source, like MarkeeDragon 'might' be). Also, Rio is an extremely fun hot spot and being greeted with welcoming arms after gifting the high-sec, tax-scheme corp CEO with invaluable special ships to give away to his participating corp members (rng from corp tax wallet income participants) would be a great feeling after the long plane trip.

Is this Somer Blink co-sponsorship not exactly the same thing? Only difference that I can see is that the high-sec tax-scheme corp is likely making a lot less profit.


*I'm not a Goon. Nor am I in CFC. Nor is my main character or any of my alt characters.

+ 1 to this. Its a big fat load of fuss over nothing

Gambling is entirely against certain Islamic beliefs and even Catholics have guidelines as to when it is morally acceptable to gamble (Which SOMER Blink may or may not meet).

Gambling is a highly regulated activity and playing Blink is an illegal activity in places around the world.



(remember, you have to gamble on a blink first to play a promo and buying a promo ticket is gambling in itself)

Ahem. So where does encouraging people to gamble in violation of article 3 and 7 fall?



Yeah..
I don't see the "Not be banned from a third party web site by a player run in-game entity" clause.
Also as I recall, if you have credit/tokens on blink you can play and be eligible for the prize even if you are not subscribed. Violating 2C.