Jita Park Speakers Corner

You can find the article here:

http://themittani.com/news/ccp-secretly-gifted-somer-blink-ishukone-scorpions

Curious. This seems unprecedented. Telling too, that Somer, realizing how this will look, instructs his employees to be very low-key, and to deal their ships on unrelated alt characters.

Also alarming that CCP informed Somer that they intend to help with future promotions.

Does Somer earn that much for CCP in extra GTC purchases? Might people with gambling problems be purchasing GTCs with real-money to support their addiction? Is there a question of morality here, perhaps?

It did need a thread in the correct location, sir. The CSM are our representatives, after all.

That's fine.

Why would we read sell order threads? Ha!

Nevermind. Thought the ship email was sent yesterday. Apparently it was sent before the Gold Magnate **** hit it fan. 08/20.

it still doesn't change the fact that CCP is giving away a bucket load of isk to people who already make a bucket load of isk in the first place... and secretly as well
and the fact that somer doesn't have a moral compass when it comes to gambling, we see it in the news every day, the amount of damage gambling can do... this only encourages gambling and the proliferation of other sites like somer.

PS i know somer does contribute to the community, but i highly doubt its more then a fraction of the isk they make... personally, give them some game time/a few plex for the effort, not the items they are receiving now....

I wasn't around for T20, but wasn't T20 actually part of BoB and basically abused his power for ingame gains for himself and his group?
Assuming (yes, this may be a stretch) that Internal Affairs is doing their job and those tasked with picking the rewardees are not tied to those ingame, this is a pretty different matter.
CCP has always rewarded players, mostly via hardcoded ingame means, but also manually for certain achievements or such.

- All players get certain items (or ISK) for completing missions
- All players that came to recent expos/fairs got codes for faction frigates
- All players got a Primae in 2010 for the mere fact of beeing subscribed at this time, also more items at later dates
- The only Megathron Federate Issue was manually given to a player for his part in a live event
- Players that win at the AT or at one of the various on-site tournaments receive prices
- A couple from New Zealand that married at Fanfest 2005 recieved an Opus Luxury Yacht
- A bunch of players that attend Eve Vegas get free stuff, including some Collector's Editions (which contain valuable items)
- Players that participated in the recent photoshooting event thingy recieved (I hope by now) rewards
- Players that have their website acknowledged as fansite get free accounts
- Now players that are part of acknowledged community sites recieve a special ship

It is true, one can argue how you can prevent favoritism if items are given out directly by devs.. but at the same time, how do you know that there isn't a way for a dev to give distinct people special mission rewards? Or spawn better sites in a w-space system?

They only started this community site reward program, so it's a bit early to judge if they show unjust favoritism by selecting only specific sites yet.

Another question if is we accept the community as part of the game, and thus accept rewarding actions/achievements outside the game. Consindering how everyone praises Eve for its metagame, it doesn't seem far off.

I'm going to spell it out for people who obviously don't get it.

I pay to play this game.

I pay for a game in which the object is to become the biggest space badass, or the richest space industrialist, or the most devious space spy, or whatever. Those are the aspects of the game that CCP advertises and that's how CCP sold me the game in the first place.

I did not think I was getting a game in which the object is to become the biggest CCP ass kisser, the biggest fanboy of the developer of said game, so I can get all the best stuff handed to me by them and "win."

If I wanted that, there are probably hundreds of free to play game servers run by teenagers who like giving stuff to their buddies that I could play instead. If this article is true (and I am still a little skeptical, but only a little) then that's the level CCP has sunk to and I've been ripped off.

To be clear, I am speaking from my role as a CCP customer, not an in-game character or whatever.

Everyone can do something for the community to eventually stand out. It just requires a lot of effort. I tried running a video news show but gave up as it's just too much work, at least for me right now. I can see why CCP is inclined to reward out-of-game efforts (which have in-game ties).. but there does have to be some more transparent process.


My point is, whether CCP gives out items to players via code or manually doesn't determine if it's bad or not, what matters is if there is unjust favoritism at play. If you follow Dinsdale, the game code/design is full of goon favoritism.


SOMER wasn't the first, EVE Radio was, but ye, I agree, the process is still too intransparent. They could e.g. adhere to the order of their community devblogs. Those had discussions threads by which they could assess if the community values those sites/projects to the same degree as CCP percieves it.

If you feel the need to hide an award you don't deserve the reward. Either Somer is trying to make CCP look as bad as they possibly can or the whole mess is simply wrong from the start.

Stop "monitoring" CSM and give us your thoughts and actions.