EVE General Discussion

Even is SOMER has been completely honest and legit up until today, the point is this is EVE and if they want to wake up tomorrow and scam the crap out of everyone and walk away with a day's take - they CAN. And CCP shouldn't be involved if that happens. But the community devs simply don't get it.

And if SOMERblink does scam everyone at some point, CCP is now responsible since they sanction them as trustworthy.

So will CCP then undo the damage and return the isk everyone was scammed out of? That would be unprecedented.

The point is, they are an in game entity, CCP shouldn't be supporting them. The biggest argument CCP devs have for supporting them is that they have a lot of isk and spread it around. That is influence peddling. At this point, CCP Guard and the other community devs can not be trusted, as they are basically being influenced by the isk that SOMERblink tosses around.

CCP shouldn't be promoting/supporting any in game entity to the extent that they have SOMERblink. But the devs won't admit that.

The only real hope now is someone with a bit more insight and business ethics knowledge to intervene from higher up in CCP.

I've already unsubbed all my extra accounts, keeping what I need to run my corp for now. I suggest others start unsubbing as well, it's perhaps the only thing that will get noticed by someone who can make a difference.

Exactly. Imagine what would have happened if CCP had officially endorsed EBank.

There is nothing wrong with being a skunk.

There is nothing wrong about being a cat.

There is something wrong with calling a skunk a cat.

There is nothing wrong with scavenging your own trophies.

But that's not the case here is it? You have shown that you obviously care about the value inherit in this discussion....

So, if we were take "value" to it... why didn't CCP just hand over 150 isk then? Screw the hull, give them the value of it.

Or rather, why NOT the rifter usb, even they ebay it then?

Yeah, let's go with your idea. We should give them rifter usb dongles instead.

Good idea. Much better than just yet another mona lisa.

Ok Guard i`m gonna be real simple about this because if I ask politely the question doesn`t get f%^&i% answered.

The CSM had pre warned you that not everybody in EVE could participate in the blink and asked you to add functions into the lottery.

CCP knew the blink lottery was skewed and still let it go ahead.

WHY THE HELL DID YOU LET A TILTED LOTTERY GO AHEAD?????

It seemed to me at the time that CCP was more interested in protecting SOMERS public image than their own?

But 1 more last time....

CSM said the draw was flawed , why did you let it run?

Thanks for the update.

Something that has annoyed alot of traders myself included is that previously when ships have been given out it was always kept at that number and more were not subsequently given out again so people could trade the commodity.

I and others will be out some considerable ISK as the change in the giving out of unique was not communicated.

Well, look at it on the bright side. At least you have puppets like the CSM members and CCP Guard being sent to this thread by the chief marketing officer and company stakeholders to try and pour some water in the fire, just to close themselves in hearts and back out again when the real matters start being discussed

So what I'm seeing here is CCP answering what EVERYONE said was the "key problem" of the secrecy SOMER asked their employees to use when selling the ships. Now they've answered that in a conclusive fashion, everyone has now decided that the secrecy actually wasn't the problem (because CCP answered and the drama over it is over) it's now about the value of the ships.

Make your fricking minds up.


As several other people have said, SOMER were chosen primarily because they are, without any shadow of a doubt, THE most successful lottery site in EVE history. They may not be the longest running, but they've definitely made the most of what they've created. CCP have obviously looked at that success and said "Hey, they're the clear market leader, so let's use them to give out some stuff" because they have the capability of doing it and it getting to the largest playerbase.

As Guard said, if your problem is that it's a "for-profit" site then nothing anyone says or does will satisfy your prejudice against them.
If your problem is that 30 of the ships were given out, then who out of the 30 SOMER employees does CCP not give a ship to?
All the bleating about SOMER favouritism and no-one has mentioned that BIG Lottery got one of these ships given to them earlier in the year. I'm guessing that it wasn't made a biog deal of because they're so much smaller than SOMER and it therefore went under the radar to a large degree. Why were they given a ship before their much more successful competitor? Perhaps because CCP wanted to help them grow - thus giving THEM an advantage over their competitors?

As for the "RMT" issue, I believe CCP has looked into it - or I hope so anyway - because they seem 100% positive that there has been no RMTing from SOMER.
Covering the "it's all RMTing because they make money off each referral" - so does every other site that refers you to a GTC site. CCP has clearly decided that this is acceptable for one reason or another (I'd guess because the site owners are having to pay RL cash for the sites?)


CCP has answered all the relevant questions and inferred the answers for most others. Yes, I'm white-knighting CCP here but not because I think they need it - more because there's a lot of hate being spewed about for something that CCP has already answered to a satisfactory level for anyone that can read and reason.

There you go confusing a spaceship barbie with a real human being again. The guy that created the character "SOMER"... the human being, has an affiliate arrangement of some type with CCP. I guarantee you CCP is getting the bulk of any RL money being processed. Every. Time. It has nothing to do with SOMER the spaceship barbie. Spaceship barbie SOMER only trades in GTCs and ISK. The real life human being behind him may sell GTCs on CCP's behalf, by their guidelines, for a tiny fraction of what goes to CCP. As I said, that's how a lot of internet marketing works. I thought by making the spaceship barbie analogy I'd get through... guess I need to go look for posterboard, a hand puppet, and a box of crayons.


Here, I concede you have a point. I didn't know about that credit and you didn't mention it. I just checked SOMER's site and this is what it says:


I've made thousands in RL from affiliate links. That part is just normal business on the net. Paying people additional ISK on top of the GTC for RL cash is bannable RMT according to CCPs policy. If SOMER were offering the additional ISK as part of the GTC trade in it would not be RMT, because it's on the Blink side of the transaction and there's no money involved. If you want to pay a premium in ISK for PLEX or GTCs that's your prerogative. However, now that I understand SOMER's affiliate relationship a bit better from seeing the site, I have to concede this point. Offering ISK for clicking on an affiliate link is RMT. There's no getting around it. I could do the same thing. I could put an affiliate link on my site and offer 300 million isk to click my affiliate link and buy PLEX. I could commodify my entire EvE online account if I did that. ...and that is exactly what SOMER is doing.

Crap.

Well guys. Let's test the water and find out what's going on here.

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ATTN: CCP Guard

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I would like to put up a link on a web property I own that sells 30, 60, and 90 day GTCs via affiliate link. I would like the same return on referrals that SOMER gets, and I want to offer 150, 300, and 450 million isk to players who purchase GTCs via my affiliate link. Is this possible?

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That's what their legal team is working on right now - measuring any possible litigations that can arise from having this lottery service "hosted" inside the game. For the isk tokens' RMT they can just turn the blind eye on the EULA section that forbids it, it's their game they are the rulemakers and can do whatever they want.