EVE General Discussion

I am curious what Somers relationship is with Markee Dragon, a confessed RMT'r.

"Marcus Eikenberry is 37, big, bearded and tattooed. He started gaming with Ultima Online in 1997.

“I was working a 40-hour job and playing 40 hours a week,” Eikenberry says. Naturally, he says, his wife complained. Rather than quit, “I decided to make the game my job.”

His wife, a “casual gamer,” was skeptical, but Eikenberry’s online gaming business took off, and the marriage survived. His two sons, also gamers, help out at the office, and his younger brother is a full-time employee.

Today, Eikenberry owns what he believes is the largest company of its kind, catering to online gamers from all over the world. Markee Dragon Inc. is housed in a boxy commercial complex near Portland International Airport.

His company is like a combination of Citibank and Wal-Mart. He sells virtual items—like gold, magic swords and real estate in the form of castles, or even entire characters—for real money.

The business involves complex spreadsheets tracking supply and demand in different areas of the virtual world, as well as constant monitoring of competitors’ prices. He even benefits from globalization. Often he buys from Chinese “gold farmers”—who spend their days killing monsters for virtual treasure, often earning a real-world commission (in yuan) on the fake gold pieces that they gather. The farmers’ employers make their money by selling the virtual loot to dealers like Eikenberry.

His employees connect buyers with sellers and run what are essentially credit checks, because of the high fraud rate in the secondary market for virtual goods.

Eikenberry says he facilitates over $1 million a month in sales.

Eikenberry has no moral qualms about how he makes his living. “The people that are buying [this stuff] already know what the game is about. You can’t say that they’re naive,” Eikenberry says. “I’ve never thought about it as the game that’s the problem. It’s the person that’s the problem.”

At the same time, he freely admits: “If you’re not addicted, we don’t make money off of you.”

According to the article on TMC Somer was an affiliate for Shattered Crystal and then got greedy and wanted a bigger cut, so SC cut Somer loose and Somer went to Markee Dragon.

HOW DOES ANYONE NOT SEE THE FIRE COMING FROM THIS SMOKESTACK

Because letting Somer get away with it without any consequences will just fuel the player anger even more.
Yes it's harsh but either Somer or someone from CCP needs to go, depending on who's fault it is. Ie. was this (or rather is this, it's still ongoing) done with CCP's approval or not.

Somer could do the decent thing here and remove the referral link right now, but it seems like they intend to profit as much as possible during these 10 days instead. Which makes me lean more towards banning them than not.

They made 135K off of them at 5-8%. so CCP got at least 2 mil out of the deal. OF COURSE they are going to support it. So what if they have to alter the rules to allow it and retroactively ignore the violation?

they fully intend to milk it for as long as possible, and they don't give a **** about the playerbase aside from what they can get out of them. have you ever actually read some of the **** the staff types in the comfort of their channel? they act like feudal overlords and as if the playerbase were merely serfs for them to make money off of. they showed nothing but disdain for the player concerns raised during all of the somer gate fiasco. the affiliate referral link along with the bonus credit will remain on their website until literally the last minute.

2.5 months ago I created a petition asking CCP if SOMERblink’s 200m credits reward for GTC purchases is violating the EULA. I actually got an answer back then. The GM told me that SOMERblink is not violating the EULA. I responded to that answer explaining the GM why the 200m reward is in fact RMT. The GM then told me that receiving SOMERblink credits, an artificial "currency" that allows his visitors to play a game on his website, does not constitute RMT and he said that these credits are not a promissory note for ingame riches. I then explained the GM why the 200m reward is in fact a promissory note. The GM gave me a rude answer and simply closed the petition.

Basically it looked like CCP knew it’s RMT but they weren’t going to act on it as long as the players don’t complain about it on a large scale.

if this is indeed the case, heads definitely need to roll.

incarna was quite the shitstorm and it doesn't even begin to compare to this.

You know what to do guys. It looks like our only recourse is to take it to the Monument.

Why on earth would anyone complain? Why IS anyone complaining?

As it stands we have two legal options for buying ISK with real money. And one of them is actually a much better value for your money.

With SOMER you buy a 35 dollar 60 day GTC for which you receive 200m credit. You can directly cash it out if you want, leaving you with something like 140m. Or if you're lucky you may walk away with a little more. 800m? 1 billion if you're extremely lucky?

OR

You buy a 35 dollar 60 day GTC, turn that directly into two PLEX and sell those for a whooping guaranteed 1.2 billion ISK.

And everyone is crying about SOMER facilitating RMT? Are you freaking kidding me? CCP is offering this right in their PLEX store. They are even promoting the in-game trade:



CCP is promoting RMT themselves for much, much, MUCH better value than SOMER will ever be able to. For the love of god stop pretending this is about RMT. RMT is legal as long as the money ends up at CCP. Deal with it or give me your stuff.

JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT IT AND MAYBE ITLL GO AWAY ON ITS OWN

From what I could tell almost every rebellious attempt to copy SOMER failed horribly because people fail to understand how SOMER's sceme works. There are actually 1 or 2 attempts that do understand it very clearly and as a result haven't been shut down (yet).

SOMER manages to walk the fine line very skillfully while most people trying to do the same on the forums are falling off with their first step. It's quite hilarious actually.