Market Discussions

Shotgun!

I doubt CCP has a target price. They might have a target rate of change, but I doubt it is any thing set in stone.

I'm pretty sure I saw some "buy admittance to event X with either PLEX or cash" a while ago.
Something like EVE Vegas Poker if memory serves right?

EDIT: Ayup.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=185429

15x PLEX for entry, 200+ tickets sold, probably only a small fraction with PLEX though, not enough to really matter except for speculation purposes, I guess.

Moslty my take Mynna.

But, discussion is always important.
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(not addressed at anyone specific)

From my squint at the volume numbers CCP I'd GUESS that could have kept the price relatively stable last year introducing about 300 plex a month for 1/2 September October November and 1/2 December and subtracting maybe 200 a day for for the following 5 months.

It is a guess, but I think I'm within an order of magnitude (i.e, the amount isn't 4 times my guess or 1/4 of my guess.

They could come out net even in terms of "game time given away" and the case could be made that they are not tinkering with the long term player set value but only tinkering with META non game effects of seasonality on human player abilty to participate.

400 plex a day is roughly 12,0000 game time subscriptions a month.

Given a stated subscripton base of 500k monthly... that amount is very small.... only 2.4 % of active subscriptions.

If that time added to market were causing them to forgo income, that number would be very large, however a stable price would tend to maintain the current habits of players in terms of subscriptions.


I think players really under estimate the value to CCP of every player in the game...... which would be a long post to explain ...
.... basically, word of mouth advertising and retention of $ paying players means that keeping people who play-to-play helps retain those players who buy other peoples game time and sell it to them for isk....very often paying $ for 3rd and 4rth and 5th accounts of the play to player, who would never dream of paying real $ to have so many accounts.

If you log on and no one is on in your corp, you're far more likely to log off. Many corps have some people who play to pay and others who Pay, not to Play the isk farming part of the game.

Shake out some play to players with price spikes in PLEX and they're far more likely to "take a month off" in terms of principle of the matter of not wanting to get over charged.. especially those months they have less time to play.

I'll stop with the explanation but more stable prices make for a incrementally more stable player base (even 1/20 would be significant)

Aren't those sold from CCP Games themselves as suggest the Amazon user name and therefore legal?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_sr_videogames?_encoding=UTF8&field-brandtextbin=CCP%20Games&node=468642

The offers are now 6 for $99.99 or 3 for $49.99
This price seem to have gone up from the 25% off offer at $74 something for 6 which was the best deal offer I had.

The "brand" is CCP. It says elsewhere "Sold by Amazon Digital Services, Inc." and apparently only people in the US could buy them (or anyhow one Canadian complained about not being able to buy them.) And the sale lasted only a day or two.

It was perfectly legit. People who contacted CCP said it was for real, but the CCP account services continued to sell 6 at the "sale price" of $99.99, a discount of $5 off the full price for individual PLEX.

EDIT: Not that I buy PLEX from CCP, but does it bug anyone else that their "best deal" of six PLEX for $99.99 is a penny more than buying two sets of three for $49.99 each?

I think you misunderstood me. I meant to include PLEX used to pay for game time in the subscription revenue.

I use PLEX for game time for my three accounts. That's $600 a year in real revenue. If they lowered the price by 25% that would be $450 a year and I probably wouldn't get a fourth account because I pay isk for my PLEX and I'm simply not that price sensitive.

Since most PLEX are traded in the Eve market there is really no such thing as a "free" PLEX. They go on the market and they are bought and sold like every other PLEX. If CCP gave you a free subscription you might add another account, but if they gave you 12 PLEX you would be more likely to sell them or use them for an existing account.

Suppose CCP offered 25% off a one year subscription price for a limited time. A lot of people would extend their subscriptions or open new accounts and you would expect a measurable increase in the number of accounts, even though many of them would have subscribed anyways. Maybe the additional accounts would make up for the loss of revenue on the other accounts, or maybe it wouldn't, but it is clearly price sensitive. Maybe there would be a price point where CCP could definitely say the offer boosted their revenue over the long-term.

On the other hand, this PLEX offer obviously boosted revenue for the quarter ending September 30, but it is highly doubtful that ot will be a net positive for CCP over the next year. There had to be another reason for the promotion. It may be that they are just trying to raise the visibility of Eve on Amazon. Or they have another ulterior motive.

Yeah, if I were CCP, I wouldn't either.

Little known fact, the CCP retirement fund is vested with isk. If Eve goes under, so do their pensions.

The idea that CCP is sitting on a pile of confiscated PLEX doesn't make any kind of sense once you actually think about it.
Firstly, who are these people getting banned? It's really hard to get banned from eve, even for botting and so forth. They give you a bunch of warnings etc first because they don't want to lose your custom. So we're supposed to think that there are large numbers of people getting permanently banned on accounts with stacks of PLEX on them?
Secondly, why are they holding stacks of PLEX. If they're RMT buyers they'll have isk, although not on the accounts CCP will find easily, and isk is not the same thing as PLEX. They may subscribe using PLEX but they have no reason to have a stack of it. If they're botters then they'll probably have use PLEX to subscribe but beyond that, just isk and assets. It just doesn't make any sense that CCP have somehow accumulated a massive stack of PLEX from their pretty non existent banning policy.

It's much more likely what CCP meant was they bought PLEX with confiscated isk to sell at a later date.

However even it doesn't really make any difference because nobody gives a **** when CCP run a PLEX sale and there is literally no difference between CCP running a PLEX sale and CCP creating PLEX out of thin air and giving them to one of their characters in game to right click sell. None, zilch, zero.

All PLEX are created out of nothing by CCP, the only thing currently tying them down is the ratio of $ CCP get to PLEX CCP create. That is the one thing that ties the virtual asset of PLEX to a known value and yet by running sales CCP can freely manipulate and change that. Consider the following three scenarios.

a) PLEX cost $20. Jimmy buys 3 PLEX for $60.
b) CCP run a sale. PLEX cost $15. Jimmy buys 4 PLEX for $60.
c) CCP create extra PLEX. PLEX cost $20. Jimmy buys 3 PLEX for $60 and CCP creates 4 PLEX in game, 3 for him and 1 for CCP market alt.

In scenario a CCP decide they will insert one PLEX into the game for every $20 they get. In b and c they decide they will insert one PLEX into the game for every $15 they get. Whether this is achieved by giving extra PLEX to the guys currently buying PLEX or by giving them to themselves is utterly irrelevant, it is still creating extra PLEX. There is **** all difference between giving players currently buying PLEX a reward of an extra PLEX per 3 they bought to right click sell on the market and giving a CCP market alt in Jita a bunch of PLEX to right click sell on the market. And yet somehow we're meant to accept that the former is not direct intervention in the market whereas the latter would be.

PLEX are a virtual good, they are created at will, the only thing tying them to anything is the circumstances under which CCP choose to create them. Adjusting those with a sale is identical to creating them.