EVE General Discussion

Hello again <3

So, a second morning of speaking with people and moving forward on this. I've been tied up pretty much all morning, but now that I'm eating lunch I'll give a few answers to some of the questions in this thread.



Thanks for the support. You guys are amazing, and the CSM has proven that it is worth it's weight in gold after the flexibility and openness we've seen from you guys on this.

To answer your question, the community team was not aware of this until I was contacted by the CSM in the middle of the night on Sunday.



I think the community response to the emails that were released (without our authorization) answers this question perfectly



Use L'orael, because you're worth it.



This is exactly why we're taking the time to investigate fully. No knee-jerk reactions, no rash decisions, no forum posts full of drama, we need to look at the problem first, which is what we're doing, then we'll make a direct, concise and informed decision.



As pointed out by others in this thread, Lisa is VP of Sales. She's not with our Legal department.



Frankly, you have no idea what you're talking about. You also have no idea how deep we have to dig to investigate this, given the sheer number of transactions that this service generates.

If you'd like to rumor mill as usual, do it elsewhere, or be prepared to lose your ability to post on this forum.



This was not authorized by our legal department.



This came to light late on Sunday evening. Investigating an individual can take a day or so, investigating this case given the sheer number of transactions that have occurred, and tracking exactly where everything is going, takes considerably more time. We're actively working on it.



No one is too big to fail in EVE Online.



For what it's worth, I agree. There have been a lot of changes at CCP since then, and we're working toward fixing this situation.



This is hands down the best post I've ever seen anyone make on these forums in the history of EVE.



Yeah, we just had a meeting with the CSM and our VP of Sales. I feel that it's only fair to include your elected representatives in the conversation as we resolve this issue.

I have a further meeting with Legal, Sales, our Executive Producer and several others this afternoon so that we can hopefully work further toward a resolution.

That said, this whole situation is so massive that it's going to take a decent amount of time for us resolve it. Please be patient.

For what it's worth, I fully agree with community sentiment on this.

Business is an interesting term. We all, to some extent, run a business in Eve. We all find ways of making isk, and ways of spending it. We watch our income statement (our "wallet") carefully to make sure we're in the black. What if we were doing so much volume that we had to hire more people to help us out, and we paid them? That's essentially what Somer's doing. Getting isk from a venture isn't a business; and I suspect the "business" restriction relates more to turning Eve into a viral marketer's dream (Imagine a sov entity called "Buy Coca-Cola's New Raspberry Coke"... not what CCP wants). Businesses that take in isk are not businesses in the real-world sense.

Now, they do capitalize on that traffic. Any ads on their website are ways of making money from Eve traffic, but not taking money out of the gameworld. TheMittani.com, for instance, receives ad revenue for every view, but that transactional relationship is this: a business pays TMC.com for every visitor who sees their ads, TMC.com puts out worthwhile content to maximize the number of those visits, and the visitors "pay" for that content by viewing the ads. How TMC.com gets the content is irrelevent; theMittani can pay his people in isk if he chooses - what's to prevent me from giving isk to a friend for the pleasure of his in-game company, or for any reason, for that matter? The isk is staying in the game; it goes from one player to another. The player providing the writing doesn't gain any money out of the deal, and the money given to the ad company doesn't interact with isk in any way. The money is acquired thorugh purely out-of-game reasons that players only interact with when they choose to leave a CCP-run site/server and interact with third-party media or resources. Nothing in Somer's in-game presence relates to any advertising company, and TMC.com is entirely out-of-game.

Keep in mind that RMT is about taking money away from CCP. All PLEX in the game originate from CCP. They allow third parties to sell plex in exchange for a commission. However, that monetary distribution is CCP's decision, not ours. CCP gets all the money they choose to get for those transactions; if they choose to give some of it up, that's fine; they're making about a 20% markup vs. subscription costs anyways already. But the choice is theirs. PLEX reduces the cost incurred players who buy PLEX on the market to 0 - and in so doing earns CCP more money than they would otherwise get if that PLEX buyer just paid his/her subscription fee; it doesn't return money to the players' hands in a net-positive fashion.

RMT, on the other hand, takes the process entirely out of CCP's hands, and it DOES return money to a player's hands. CCP doesn't get the extra cut out of a PLEX (PLEX cost minus subscription cost) and loses the ability to regulate and monitor it. It IS, in fact, stealing money from CCP. Naturally, they want to prevent this from happening in their game.

So, tl;dr:

1) "Business" Is a flexible term, and
2) Paying people in isk for generating Eve-related content isn't RMT, even if you use that content in an out-of-game setting to make real money through ad revenue. The ad revenue is dependent upon and enabled by a third-party site; the content could easily be distributed via forums or simply awful or reddit, as well. I, for instance, make no ad dollars for my blog, but I do still generate the content.
3) RMT has nothing to do with gameplay balance; it's solely assoicated with ensuring that CCP gets every bit of money due to them. That's fine; they're a business, after all.

The question at hand is really whether Somer is breaking any rules by choosing to pay above market rate for PLEX in order to win that referral commission. Also, are they able to pay out straight isk, or is the bonus exclusively in blink deposit credit?

well talk about someone who may well be in the thick of the controversy!

This is part of the email chain from Somer Blinks website, considered their defence.



The underlined bit is what you might want to focus on. However this is just a txt file on somers website, not concrete proof in any way.

CCPs VP of sales is Lisa Bell-Cabrera - http://i.imgur.com/dFszCOK.png?1

Yeah, I read those. Why do you think she was in the meeting?

So... lying about CCP's approval to boost my RL sales AND involve players in my shady RMT shenanigans is ok but me saying I'm an alt of ... is bannable offense?

Well next time I expect to see on main page of SOMERblink a fully fledged letter from Hilmar addressed to "customers" of SOMER encouraging them to use SOMER's referral link due to excellence of service. Why stop at one-liner when you can just go gunk-ho?

Word.

*drops da mike next to tinfoil hat*

To quote a departed soul:
"What Is Good For Somerset Mahm Is Good Enough For Me"
(sadly the article is gone from the web, but still in my possession)

So yes:
if they can everyone can;
if we cannot, they cannot (and should be punished accordingly)

Did anyone else feel tingly when CCP Falcon told Dinsdale off?

Well Thank you and ALI both for your responses. You were the least reasons that I believe this situation will solve for good.

Hope this thing will solve quick for the sake of the New Eden

Well I want to hear her response or wanted to see her face when all these things blew up

Banned? This is Somer Blink we're talking about.
If they aren't given a few Ishukone scorpions for this I'd be surprised