Live Events Discussion

+1

You are a good man (or woman...)

Where was/is PLEX for Syria? Ah, but we only want to help the cute catholic people, not the nasty muslim ones.

< / Devil's advocate >

Also: this is not a Live Event in the meaning of this forum. Take it to Out of Pod Experience, e.g. here, or organise an actual Live Event ingame on the topic.

Incursions maybe? I heard they still pay rather well and the payout would at least be equal.

Why does CCP not specify a perpetual charity group for which people can donate PLEX?

Not just every time "x disaster" occurs..

I didn't accuse CCP of anything. I "accused" (because some people don't seem to understand the concept of playing the Devil's advocate) the players currently asking CCP to run a "PLEX for the Philippines" campaign of never asking CCP to run a "PLEX for Syria" campaign. Regardless whether that is because of religious bias, or because it is easier to symphatise with people suffering from natural disasters than it is to sympathise with people suffering from man-made ones.

Every PLEX that exists has been bought from CCP by the PLEX-buying segment of the playerbase. If, say, 1000 PLEX are donated to a charity (and taken out of the game to do so), those 1000 PLEX cannot be used by players to pay their subscription. Therefore, an additional 1000 PLEX must be bought by the "PLEXing" segment of the playerbase (which now includes the donators) to allow it to fulfill its subscription cost. The net in-game effect is that PLEX prices (in isk) will rise (depending on the fraction of the typical monthly market that is donated).

What sets the whole "PLEX for ..." apart from more direct donations by the players is that it doesn't typically cost anything to the PLEX-buying playerbase (the ones forking over their hard-earned $$$), but instead by the "PLEXing" playerbase (who fork over the results of their ingame activities). The only reason this works is because there already IS an economy where the PLEX-buying playerbase pays the "PLEXing" playerbase for the fruits of the latter's ingame activities.

Now, there are a lot of interacting knock-on effects of elevated PLEX prices (probably a shrinking of the "PLEXing" playerbase) that even CCP's resident economist doesn't like calculating on a cold monday morning, but the whole system is more complex than merely saying "Any money that goes to charity, eventually goes out of CCP's pocket".

Think it actually lies in being unbiased.

Supporting people who suffered from a natural disaster is unbiased, as the people in need were struck by nature, who doesn't care who it kills or hurts. So in that regard you don't set bad blood with anyone.

Supporting people in a conflict lies alot harder. The Syria conflict is an example of a very loaded case. The current goverment isn't very good, but so far the rebels have demonstrated they aren't better. So if CCP would support this, they could get called out for bias for one of the sides, something an MMO operator can miss. You can say *CCP should support the local people, not a side!* Yes the people, and in a perfect world we'd do this, but in a perfect world there wouldn't be a Syria conflict. In any war/armed conflict, it's the common people that lose. But in the current situation, it means you always have to struck a deal with one of the sides to get your aid into place. Some malicious groups can use that then to call *Bias!*