EVE General Discussion

It's not implying a CCP employee is showing favouritism when the CCP employee himself directly states that he's giving these items to a particular group because he's "worked with them" and then stating, in a completely unjustified manner (I very much doubt he has access to their servers and has audited them), that they have been 100% honest

it's just explicit, acknowledged favouritism

CCP want to directly give somer, an in profit, in game organisation, hundreds of billions of isk for shiggles

I think it means CCP thinks favoritism would be a bad thing to be associated with given some unpleasant history and the extremely competitive nature of the game. Odd that.

I would add:

6. Giving control over access to a community-wide event to a player organization.

In light of recent events involving EVE representatives withdrawing from certain RP chat channels in order to avoid individual players' whims preventing participation by other players, this one seems particularly hypocritical. Somer has the power to determine who can and can't participate in their promotions, and can ban individuals, regardless of how those players may stand with CCP and the rules and conditions of EVE.



In order to prevent a lot of the controversy of the past few days, this aboslutely needed to be in place before selecting any player organization to receive these items. The fact now is that Somer was selected without being vetted against any such policy, and because of this, the whole issue still stinks of corruption. Future intentions and improvements will not change that; reversing the decision would help though.

Still, I woudl argue that even with such a policy in place, giving items to an organization such as SOMER Blink is a huge mistake, and a slap in the face to the rest of the EVE community. The fact is that CCP has given Somer a free means to make in-game profit via increased traffic to and use of their lottery services (can you spot when the prize announcement was made?), and this gives an unfair in-game advantage to one player corporation over others.

Some are arguing that Somer is receiving these prizes as a reward for them sponsoring the EVE Vegas event. Frankly, that's ridiculous logic. Let me give you an example: let's say you have a real-life company which owns a racing team. This company decides to sponsor a race, in which their team will participate. Should the track owners give this company's car a head start in the race in exchange for their sponsorship? Of course not! If they did, no other teams would participate, as it's a rigged event! Yet that is exactly what we have happening here with CCP and Somer - the "impartial" referees are giving one group of players an advantage over the others, merely becaue they sponsored an event. The rewards of sponsorship are visibility and advertising, not direct handouts and unfair advantages.

If CCP really wants to give out these sorts of prizes in the future, then there needs to be some better criteria for which player groups participate and controls over how the prizes are given. I would suggest the following:

1. If using a lottery-type giveaway, any such prizes must be given out must be given out through a truly random and fair system. By fair, I mean that all EVE players with active subscriptions may participate, and the organizing entity cannot exclude anyone. Also, the organizing entity cannot make money (in-game or real) from the giveaway, either through direct purchase for participation in the giveaway, or indirectly through giving advantages to those who purchase other services.

2. These prizes may also be given out as awards for a contest of arms or other competition. Such a competition must be open to all EVE subscribers, and again, the organizing entity cannot make profit from such an event (e.g., a tournament requiring an entry fee will undoubtedly make more ISK if they can offer unique items as prizes, meaning they make free ISK from CCP's gift).

(to be continued)

(continued from above)

3. In general, these prizes should not be given to player organizations designed as a profit-making enterprise, regardless of what they offer the community. However, if CCP finds it absolutely necessary to give these prizes to such groups, then they need to take measures to mitigate any in-game advanage that would be bestowed on these groups. It should be required that all excess ISK generated by such an event be put back into additional prizes for the participants. If the giveaway would generate additional income for the organization indirectly (e.g., through the sale of other services normally offered), then any ISK made by the organization above their average income through these means also needs to be put towards additional prizes. This needs to be verfied by an extensive audit, the results of which need to be public and transparent to the community.

4. As an alternative to point 3., these organizations may be allowed to earn a profit from such events, if they do not receive the prizes from CCP for free, but are instead required to pay an approzimate fair market value for them. In such a case, the prizes cannot be offered to a single entity, but must be open for purchase by any player organization who wishes to obtain them (with the requirement of course that they be given as prizes and not kept by the members of the organization). If the prizes are of a nature that there are limited quantities available, then they should be made available through a bidding process, again accessible by all groups who wish to participate.

5. Regardless of how prizes are given, no member of the player entity organizing the giveaway may be the recipient of any prizes (whether the prizes provided by CCP or by the player entity itself). Nor can anyone associated with the entity receive such prizes. This includes players directly involved in organizing the event and any of their alts, their corp mates, their alliance mates, or their family members. Any abuse of this immediately disqualifies the player entity from participating in any future giveaways (in addition to whatever individual punishment CCP may mete out; item/ISK confiscation, banning, etc.). This is true even if it is done supposedly without the knowledge of the entity's leadership (something which is impossible to prove), as if an entity cannot effectively control its members for such an event, they cannot be expected to be able to do so in the future either.

(I personally still find points 3 and 4 questionable at best, but they are a way around some issues and ideas presented by others, so I included them as possible options, if not the most viable)

These sorts of requirements should greatly reduce the appearance of corruption and favoritism, and provide more equitiable options for distributing such prizes without threatening the balance of the sandbox.

Probably 5 trillion +

You've been playing this game long enough to know the answer to that question.

They cannot speak without the authorisation of their master CCP. It's written in the contract they have signed.
I think that we can't hope for anything tangible from the CSM. It's not their fault, it's just that only CCP own the key of their chains.
We must fight by ourselves, paying subscribers. *raises his fist*

You're assuming, of course, that the CSM have actually been given any answers or further information

considering they were deliberately cut out of this at the start, I wouldn't be surprised if they've only got a few worthless tidbits that don't address any issues

Damn, you're right.
In fact what is annoying me the most with the CSM is that they claim to do a lot of things for us which they don't have the right to tell us about.
It's maybe true, but in a normal democracy, the ones who are supposed to represent you (the CSM is supposed to represent us, right ?) have the duty to report to us what they do. They are accountable for what they do in our name.
I don't have to believe them, i have the right to read transparent and complete reports.

You can't really blame the CSM themselves for that. CCP are the ones who write up these NDAs. It's fun to say "hey players, heres a group of people who represent you and who we talk to" - great pr, for sure. But then when you legally gag those representatives and deliberately cut them out of conversations, it makes them pointless