EVE General Discussion

The following is a summary of CSM activity over the last few days regarding the SOMER Blink promotion.

The CSM was not consulted in advance about this promotion, so it was just as much a surprise to us as it was to the community. Our reaction was broadly similar to that expressed in the forums.

On Thursday the 26th, we received an update on the situation from CCP Dolan after our regular Stakeholder meeting with Team Five-0. Later in the day, we got a second update from CCP Dolan and CCP Manifest.

During those meetings, we outlined five areas of concern that we felt CCP's response should address. These were:

1. Reintroduction of historically important or unique ships.

2. Favoring one community fan site over others.

3. Trusting a community fan site, and more particularly, a player, with the task of selecting the winners.

4. Forcing players to use SOMER Blink in order to enter -- which may have legal consequences in some jurisdictions.

5. Providing direct benefit to a for-profit gambling fansite.

CCP Navigator's announcement on Thursday of changes to the prize structure has addressed (1), and details of the method of selecting winners (which we urge CCP to make public) leaves the CSM reasonably confident that the actual drawing will be fair, addressing issue (3).

Issues (2) and (5) are business decisions that CCP has the right to make. We think they are a mistake, and hope that the uproar over this issue will cause CCP to re-evaluate these policies for future promotions. Supporting groups that have a clear educational/public service focus in-game is one thing; supporting a group that is distinctly for-profit -- and one that can use the ISK it generates to secretly support in-game groups -- breeds distrust for CCP in the community.

However, the requirement that one must be a member of SOMER Blink in order to participate remains, and for a lottery with such significant prizes, is very troubling to us. Furthermore, the structure of the lottery, which encourages and rewards extensive use of SOMER Blink, may raise legal concerns in some jurisdictions. For example, in the United States, commercial lotteries cannot require the purchase of a product or service in order to receive an entry.

For this reason, we strongly suggest that the entry mechanic be adjusted as follows:

1) Members of SOMER Blink are automatically entered into the lottery and receive one ticket, regardless of how much they use the site.

2) An alternate method (such as posting in a particular thread) be used to allow people to enter who do not wish to become a member of SOMER Blink.

We further recommend that procedures be put in place to sanity-check future promotions to ensure that they are acceptable to the community.

On Friday morning we sent this statement to CCP for their comments, and on Friday evening David Reid (CCP Pokethulu, CCP's CMO) replied to us as follows (reproduced with permission):


The CSM will endeavor to keep the community informed as there are further developments in this issue, and as always, your input is most appreciated.

Sincerely,
The Members of the 8th Council of Stellar Management

Stickied on request of CSM. ISD Ezwal.

Good, hopefully now people will shut the hell up about it and let them work on it.

Wait, so now lotteries and **** are going to be tied to CCP and 100% impossible to cheat?

Call me paranoid but I thought CCP was into letting players make their own systems. This seems like another way to prevent people from losing ISK when they give it to someone they shouldn't have.

There would be no problem if CCP had implemented in-game casino/lottery/slot machines accessible via station services or something. But on the other hand they could also make fitting window to be actually useful so yeah...

Anyway, nice to have CSM and CCP feedbacks and as Darek said, maybe finally people will shut up about it and increase raging about carebears genocide apparently planned November 19th.

my soul is torn on this issue but good to see the community discussing this like adults.

I'm guessing it's since you can get blink credit by buying GTCs through a referral link on their website, effectively buying lottery tickets with real money.

I'm also disappointed that CCP completely avoided the point about not everyone being able to play Blink.

Great work CSM (and you, Trebor Daehdoow, for keeping us up to date). We'll be looking carefully at what CCP has to say on this matter in the near future. Again, thank you for speaking up for us.

Yes. This.

It's would still be a minefield, though. One of the first questions that would be asked is whether or not a given winner was chosen from the Blink pool or from the non-Blink pool. It would be a mess - a mess that's simply best avoided as a less than stellar idea.

Accolades to CSM for a thoughtful, thorough, and timely response.

What this answer from CCP shows me first of all is that :
1) They don't think at all before they do something. But that is not a surprise anymore if you play EVE since a few years.
And/or :
2) They indeed support RMT, breaking their own rules, but are too coward to openly admit it. There is something fishy there.

Seeing that they are continuing in the same direction (don't be fooled by the friendly tone of the answer), i think that the reality is a mix of both : incompetence and influence from some lobbies.
I wish to remind everyone that there is a clear difference between unfairness in game, which is part of EVE's atmosphere, and unfairness out of game, which is not at all acceptable, for we all have to pay the same 15 € every months.
If they really wanted to thank some players for what they bring to the game, then they would support entities such as EVE-University or RvB, who have the real utility to make new players stay in game, instead of a shady online casino... it's not only silly and unfair, it's also vulgar.

Edit, and thanks CSM for trying your best.

Good to see CSM doing stuff. Thanks for that.

Does the CSM consider the value of the prices being handed out as reasonable?
To me they seem completely over the top. Like a factor of 10 over the top.