EVE General Discussion

Also, it's not mob justice. CCP leaves a thread open for angry posters to be angry in and reduce moderator workload while the grownups at CCP talk. I doubt a single post in this thread was even considered in those discussions.

I'm sure their is fault on both sides to some extent. I think we can all agree upon that. But what I encourage people to think about is, Just to play devils advocat for a moment. What if Somer is guilty and maliciously thought she had a loophole to make money and sell isk or whatever. has that personally affected you? Would her doing RMT out weigh the good SomerBlink has done for the community and players? If it doesn't out weigh the good how do you punish? Because realistically if you ban somer a lot of parties get punished by proxy. Is that nessesarily fair? No. But it's the reality of the situation.

I don't think anyone's saying CCP did its due diligence in this. Clearly, there are internal communcation issues between the teams that need to be resolved. But the same disconnect that made Somer's deceit possible in the first place is actually a positive now: It's not the same party that caused this that will determine punishments. It's a different, albeit related, team.

Will there be repercussions w/in CCP? Possibly. Do I expect CCP's HR department to violate pretty much every normal HR disciplinary policy in the world (and a number of laws, in many places) and tell us about those repercussions? Not for a moment. If the VP gets docked pay to cover the extra hours by Falcon's team, or loses some vacation time, or gets a 'you screwed up' in their file, or whatever, over this, HR isn't gonna tell us. In any responsible HR department, the rule is simple: HR doesn't tell anyone about disciplinary action.

But that, too, will be determined by a different party than the one who didn't take this proposal to the people who know the game well enough to see the problems. And as much as we might want to see all of the justice there is to be done, that's not always possible. So we judge CCP's actions on what we do see, and hope what we don't see is at least as acceptable.

It was a damn good one, huh?

You are truly right. I missed the HR does not say diciplinary actions part. Well, I hope they will fix these for good.

Thank you for your response

It looks like Somer clearly overstepped the bounds of the agreement, but to be fair that proposal should never have been given the green light. Even if it was followed to the letter it still constitutes RMT.

No, Somer RMTing hasn't affected me. Neither has Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, and he was quite widely known as a philantropist as well. Still doesn't mean he didn't break the rules and shouldn't be punished for it.

To rephrase your devils advocate proposition slightly "Would the discovery of a legit way to RMT isk for $ out weight the good SomerBlink has done for the community and players?".

CCP had two choices, they could either declare the scheme legit and watch as every RMTer in the game moves to some variation of this scheme, or they had to declare the scheme not allowed, close it down and hand out appropriate punishment.

EDIT: FWIW the crux of the scheme is "out of game transaction gives a credit which entitles you to ingame above market price trade". Buy this picture of a piece of string for $15 and you get a special credit. If you have the special credit I will buy a trit from you for 1b ISK.

Not really.

Until no other written document is signed, only the EULA and the official PLEX reseller agreements (whatever they're called) apply; no-one has any other responsibility.

If you're talking about informal, 'gentleman agreements', then I'd say Somer and Ms. Bell-Cabrera are the only two people in the world that can have a meaningful opionion on that.

I have to disagree with this. RMT is not just defined by making a profit, it's the trade of any in-game items, services, or currency for out-of-game items, services, or currency. Trading the services of a Jita alt for the use of their referral would still constitute RMT.