EVE General Discussion

So when amazon.com has an item listed as "currently unavailable," your conclusion would be that no such item exists in the world at that moment in time?

What does this even mean? Even your own racial distinction for privilege doesn't just have a commodity "magically disappear" for those who don't have it. Do you think that if a law was passed saying only white people could use boats I'd lose the ability to see boats? Is that what you think the status of a privilege does?

Never fear world-citizen. The honorable Saudis have been put in charge of the UN council on human rights. I am confident they will get to the bottom of this injustice.



That implies CCP can afford to run their servers and pay their employees with a reduced income. I don't know if they can or cannot do so, but I certainly wouldn't take that position for granted.

Absolutely and totally wrong. In economic theory a Giffen good is a good where the demand/price relationship reverses. That is normally as the price increases for a good the quantity demanded decreases (ceterius paribus).

Further, to date, there has been no definitive example of a Giffen good.

We do not need to invoke Giffen goods to explain PLEX prices. Not at all. Nor do we need to invoke maniuplation, speculation or any other stupid ideas.

Here is a story that can explain the price of PLEX with nothing other than simple supply and demand analysis.

We have fewer players buying PLEX to sell in game it leads to this picture. Basically, the demand schedule shifts inwards resulting in a lower number of PLEX (Q2 < Q3).

Then the effect in game is depicted in this picture. Note that we get a lower quantity and a higher price as the supply schedule shifts inwards. Wow!!! Must be speculation or a clever plan of the underpants gnomes.

Then we have skins in game which you can obtain with PLEX, which leads to this picture. In this case, the demand schedule has shifted outwards and it increases both the price and the quantity demanded.

To be clear here...the price,quantity pairs go from (P1,Q1) to (P2,Q2) to (P3,Q3).

Note that the price of PLEX in the first graph is in U.S. dollars whereas in the second and third graphs the price is in ISK.

Remember, Ockham's razor....do not go for the complicated story when the simple story is more than sufficient

Whatever. Not my problem. I don't care who can or cannot pay the game or where they live or whatever. That is their problem. Or to be more blunt, I don't give a f**king ****. Trying to deal with RL inequality, exchange rates, and that sort of stuff via game subscription prices is just mental masturbation by dolts.

My point still stands, if CCP decrease the RL price of PLEX the in-game price will then decrease.

To what degree? How much compulsion does $5 create to buy PLEX for those that aren't buying now?

But would that drive more sales without increasing the need for isk in game? I'd be worried that the end effect is just less money in CCP's pockets as the actual need for isk isn't changed, only the ability to get that same isk cheaper.

Unless the change is sufficient to bring in new buyers to offset this I'm not sure the desired effect would occur.

Or is this being looked at as an individually budgeted amount per PLEX buyer that would maintain regardless of the number of PLEX obtained/$?

There are alot of variables here so it is hard to say. For example, moving the price of PLEX from 19.95 to 14.95 would reduce the amount of money flowing into CCPs wallet IF the amount of PLEX bought does not increase. However, for that to happen we'd need a price elasticity to be zero. That is if the number of PLEX bought is X and the price changes and X is still bought...then decreasing the price wont change the in-game price either. But for CCP they should jack up the RL price, make it $100/PLEX and quintuple their revenues from PLEX. If you think that is not likely, then that says the price elasticity is probably not zero.

Basically, it all depends on the price elasticity. Is demand for PELX (in the RL market) inelastic or elastic? If it is elastic, the the price elasticity is somewhere in the range of (-1,-infinity). If it is -2, for example, and the price were reduced 15% then there would be a 30% increase in the quantity purchased. Since the increase in the amount purchased, exceeds the price decrease CCP would see a net gain. If the in-game price elasticity is say -1 then we'd see a 30% decrease in the in-game price.

But the only people who have the data on this is CCP and only they can say for sure. And price elasticity studies are not all that easy due to the issue of simultaneity in the data. You want to identify the demand curve which usually entails finding a variable to shift the supply curve which is problematic as CCP is a monopolist when it comes to PLEX--i.e. they have no supply curve for PLEX.

There is a missing link in the logic for me. Why would PLEX buyers be putting more on the market? PLEX prices are high, so they need less PLEX to sell to reach any particular isk goal they have. If there is no impetus driving the need for more isk for people buying PLEX from CCP, even if the price is dropped, would they consistently buy more?

The out of game logic could work for causing those not buying PLEX already to reconsider as the comparison of time to earn isk in game vs cost of PLEX further continues to tilt in favor of PLEX, but at the same time the fact that that's not exactly working as desired is part of the reason for the current in game prices I'd imagine.

You are assuming that there is some sort of decreasing return to having more ISK. If I can take $20 and get 1 billion ISK now, and tomorrow I can take the same $20 and get 2 billion ISK...I'd only spend $10? I was willing to part with $20 and get 1 billion. If 2 billion is even better...WTF, I'll still part with $20 and take the 2 billion.