EVE General Discussion

Recently CCP rewarded the staff members of SOMER Blink, the highly popular micro lottery website, with Ishukone Watch Scorpions (IWS) as a thank-you for their contributions to EVE. There was also the matter of a recent special lottery event at SOMER Blink that CCP supported by contributing rare ships as prizes. This has raised concern in the community, with some calling favoritism and others airing opposition to CCP spawning items into the single-shard sandbox we all love, whether as rewards to third-party contributors, or prizes for them to hand out.

So let’s go through what happened, why it happened, what else has happened, and then let’s have a discussion on what all of us want to happen in the future.

First, what is the Ishukone Watch Scorpion?

It’s a re-skinned version of the Scorpion-class battleship, with the old Scorpion slot layout and slightly worse stats than the current Scorpion when it comes to functionality. It refines to 1 piece of Tritanium and as such is designed specifically to have no actual base value in the game’s economy, similar to the rookie frigates handed out for free when you suffer a ship loss. The IWS was originally created as a vanity item to be sold in the NeX store for Aurum, but once that plan was cancelled, the Community Team secured it as a promotional item to be given out for various efforts or events.

In its very essence, the IWS is a skin with its own “show info” description. But while that’s certainly an important thing to realize, we of course recognize that rare items you can sell on TQ will be coveted and will have some value through the law of supply and demand despite a lack of base value or actual functionality.

How many exist and who have you given them to?

A total of 132 exist on TQ today, all handed out by CCP as that is the only way for them to come into existence. The first one went to the winner of the 2012 Fanfest Poker Tournament. Subsequent ones have been given to participants of various PVP tournaments, the 2013 Poker Tournament, the winner of the BIG Lottery 10th anniversary event, Alliance Tournament player commentators, Alliance Tournament volunteers, the staff of the Syndicate Competitive League (SCL) and most recently the staff of SOMER blink. Giving these particular ships out as rewards for services rendered is a relatively new initiative and we intended to gift them to more fansites and contributors; however, those plans are currently on hold.

Why hasn’t my favorite fansite or community enterprise received something nice too?

There’s no single answer to that question. Sometimes it has to do with the timing of specific events related to that fansite or enterprise, sometimes your favorite is next in line or they’ve simply gotten something different, such as free accounts, trips and/or tickets to Fanfest, Collector’s editions, a couple of time codes, devs flown to their events, T-shirts, posters, resin ship models etc. etc.

Something to keep in mind is that the Community Team hasn’t always had the ability to give prizes or thank-you rewards to major long standing fansite operators like we would have wanted, but times change and we hope that those long-time contributors at least appreciate that we are trying to do better in that regard, specific rewards, quantities, and situations aside.

How do these recent events compare with previous ones?

Regarding the handing out of prizes for third-party events, we’ve always seen value in providing reasonable prizes to boost interest in events run by enthusiastic and capable players. There’s value in it for us as a company and for you as a community. What constitutes “reasonable” is always a judgment call that has to do with the history we have with the operator, the scope of the event, and the attention and participation the event can draw. Tl;dr, big event = bigger prizes. Not every event gets the same but we of course want to avoid any feelings of unfairness or resentment and we should be able to avoid that with increased transparency and by working with you guys and the CSM (more on that in the last section of this post).

Now on to the personal reward

The IWS is a cool thing to have and that’s why we use it as a reward, not because it carries X ISK value. The price people negotiate is wholly decided between individuals and is hard for us to predict with any precision.

In the past we have given out time codes and PLEX both as prizes and rewards for going the extra mile for the community. These have been given to just about every major fansite at some point and PLEX have a much more predictable value over time than skinned ships.

The rewards for the SOMER Blink staff was around three times larger than the one to the SCL staff but that’s because they have three times the staff. In both cases everyone got one each.

When we gave out thousands of pirate-skinned rookie frigates to players at PAX East and Gamescom, they initially sold for 1 billion ISK in-game without causing stir. Obviously those were less rare from the get-go and were handed out fairly randomly in the familiar environment of “go to game show – get swag”.

So the concerns raised seem to revolve around quantity, the selection process of the recipients, and the level of transparency. Which leads me to the next question.

Was CCP being secretive about this?

We really weren’t. In his leaked mail, SOMER asks his staff to keep this reward on the down-low but that requirement didn’t come from us at all and is completely their prerogative. When we give rewards or prizes, we often don’t announce it specifically but we don’t ask for secrecy either nor do we expect it at all.

It’s worth noting that when the SCL staff got their IWSs there was public chatter about it, it just didn’t get a lot of attention. It wasn’t until articles appeared about the reward to the SOMER Blink staff which also hinted at some secrecy that concerns were...

Thanks for the statement. However, it doesn't particularly address the glaring fact that SOMER received free trips to Fanfest and unique ships for a "fair" contest "for the community" that CCP has no control over or audit power for. Further, the contest is inherently biased toward people who blow billions of isk playing blinks, giving them a disproportionate amount of entries for unique ships only obtainable through this medium (not to mention making SOMER even more isk), as well as giving a player-run, for-profit corporation the ability to decide who can even have a chance at winning it, considering SOMER Blink solely and unilaterally has the power to ban accounts at will.

The fact that you guys earlier compared SOMER Blink to a charity is shocking, off-putting and shows a deep disconnection between what CCP believes "a community service" is and what the players do. Many players believe that "a community service" is something that actually enriches the game or provides content to it. SOMER Blink is a third party website created solely to print isk for its founder. They provide no services in game. At all. (This doesn't even to speak to the fact that serious concerns exist for many players to the legitimacy of the SOMER Blink lottery system. For example, how is it that the player with the most blinks won, Replacement 234, doesn't appear in the most blinks played? Is Replacement 234, with an win rate at a minimum of 32.7%+ simply luckier than the next-highest winner, Featious who has a 28.8% win rate? Or the highest winner (with over 9 TRILLION isk more than Replacement 234) doesn't even appear to have played or won the most blinks?)

The difference in your example of "go to game trade show, get swag" and the SOMERgate fiasco is that as players we can choose to attend game trade show--at our wills--and get swag. We don't, however, have the luxury of playing blinks if the account is banned. Further, you're not limiting the prize pool to players attending EVE Vegas, as your trade show example would indicate. It is open to anyone willing to blow billions of isk on blinks. Even then, they would still have an inequitable chance of winning against other players who have a disproportionate amount of tickets. Your basic example of simply playing a promo blink and having an entry is pedantic at best and deceitful at worst, considering that everyone knows that blink players will have hundreds or thousands of tickets entered.

It's good that you've put future plans on hold for hopefully a better process. It's unfortunate, though, that you decided to stop recognizing community sites short of providing rewards to meaningful providers of content in the game, instead opting to enrich a for-profit corp's wallet instead. The fact that you haven't pulled the unique rewards, given the glaring deficiencies in using SOMER Blink as the provider of the contest, shows me that CCP has only a passing concern to the legitimate grievances we players have. CCP owes nothing to SOMER Blink, and if this were believed by CCP, it would have pulled the unique and fantastical prizes in favor of something more traditional like PLEX packs or Collector's Editions.

Jealous people killing a reward that CCP gives out to people who support the community. As far as the first somer lottery was concerned this was a mistake and CCP actually fixed it.

Also thanks, Guard!

Out of game rewards only please.

When you reward somebody by giving them PLEX nobody else suffers any serious devaluation. When you give somebody an IWS all other IWS owners and collectors get completely screwed over because the price collapses.

Just give people PLEX in future, as much as you like, but no rare items ever.

LOL goons bringing in alts to reiterate their posts.

this isn't really that big of a deal, CCP never promised they would not give anymore of these outs unlike other unique ships. lots of jelly folks

This does not address at all the criteria CCP uses to determine "services rendered" and why Somer Blink got so much in the way of rewards while there are far more deserving entities for any particular criteria it would be reasonable for CCP to have used.

Items such as the memorabilia things in the "time capsule", would reward people with a permanent reminder of their impact on the EVE world.

Those things like the "Piece of Steve", relating to the first Titan shot down, or the "Assassination Contract - Mirial", or the "Band of Brothers Director Key". Souvenir items that don't do anything much ingame, beside exist.

Those sorts of items would be perfectly fine, to reward people for contributing.

Or inspace monuments, such as was done in the past, e.g. the Jita Monument originally commemorated a competition between players, yes ?

Monuments and souvenir items, people would have far fewer issues with, than things that have a definable ISK value.

Okay.


Yes. I don't care if Somer gets a dozen USB hub Rifters.


No. Bound items are terrible and dumb.


In-game items yes. Out of game stuff no.


No, mostly because that doesn't work in Eve.

I think my biggest problem with the whole situation is that I feel CCP is awarding a straight up gambling enterprise simply because they help sell plexes.

When you give out upwards of 400+ billion ISK in rare ships to 'the house' who is already raking in ISK hand-over-fist it seems lame as hell.