EVE General Discussion

ETC + bonus items may not be direclty or indirectly traded by the buyer for isk.

They're trying to play ignorant, just like CCP did for how many weeks now?

My view is this.

Somerblink has been running for nearly 4 years now.

I suspect early on when Somerblink was created CCP had a look, possibly even a chat with the guys at Somer and deemed it to be fine.

Many years later all hell broke lose because CCP decided to be dumb and re-introduce the golden magnet.

Nothing to do with Somer.

Is Somer bad, no.

If anything you could say it might persuade people to purchase plex from a authorised GTC seller then use a RMT Site which is great as its more money into CCP's pocket.

What Katarina Reid is doing is also great as it helps generate more GTC sales.

The more players doing this the better as gives people more incentive to buy GTC's from authorised sellers then use RMT Sites.

For me that is good.

You can scream RMT as much as you like but ultimately it is CCP who decides what constitutes RMT, not me, not you, but CCP.

I may not like CCP's habit of just copying and pasting the TOS and then closing a thread or banning somebody without explaining how what they have done pertains to what they have copied and pasted but that is my tough luck.

I can voice my opinion and then decide to either keep playing or quit.

Others will try and equate Somer with a real life casino, others will go tinfoil mad and suggest that its a giant conspiracy that rivals who shot JFK, good luck to them.

At the end of the day if Somerblink and Katerina Ried and hopefully many others to come in the future continue to come up with schemes that incentivised people to purchase GTC's from authorised sellers instead of using RMT Sites, how is this bad?

Weeks? Years. The crux of the controversy is that no one scrutinized any of this AT ALL until people started to copy the Somer business model, which revealed it to be a clever scheme generating massive out-of-game profits to the tune of $130,000 USD per year conservatively. How many years has Somer been up?

All while being publicly declared to be 'not a scam' by CCP themselves, Sommerset Mahm has pulled the biggest EVE scam ever. Well played sir.

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, and for the opportunity to review your statement in advance of publishing it to the community.

We acknowledge that we rushed this event, and we are certainly learning from it now.

Your statement strikes us as factually correct and appropriate to publish, and there are a few further details we want to share with you also.

First, we are developing a program to allow all 3rd parties the opportunity to apply to participate in these kinds of events and promotions with CCP support, and we will have news on that shortly. In general, we believe CCP should foster the activities our players enjoy, and it is clear these kinds of activities have a lot of support in the EVE community, much like we see in other games.

That said, we recognize it is imperative for CCP to remain impartial with respect to which 3rd parties receive CCP support for these kinds of activities. To that end, we will develop a clear policy on how we plan to conduct future events, including how we will determine which 3rd parties and which events will receive CCP support, and we will develop that policy in consultation with the CSM.

We also want to assure you that we are working closely with CCP's legal team to ensure all legal concerns resulting from this event, and future events like it, are addressed.

If you wish, it's fine to let the community know in your statement that CCP has informed you we are working on a clear 3rd party program for future events and that we will consult with you on this program as we develop it, but there's certainly no requirement for you to include this in your statement.

Thank you again for your feedback here and we welcome your further thoughts.

Thanks,
David

...SOMER Blink have a history of being trustworthy... What I am saying is that to date they have been 100% trustful and we expect that will continue...Can I promise that Somerset Mahm will not shut up shop some day and go live in Polaris with piles of ISK? Nope, a scam can happen at any time and if that does, we will react accordingly and review how we support others in future....Once again we go back to the trust issue. Having worked with SOMER for some time now I asked myself, ’Could they game this so they gets the cool stuff?’ Yep, they absolutely could. ‘Can we prevent it?’ No, we absolutely can’t. ‘Do I believe they would cheat to win it for themselves?’ I genuinely do not believe they will. SOMER Blink have been one of the most philanthropic groups in EVE..."

...Why SOMER? Well, they are really popular and they have supported a ton of events so we wanted to explore what we could do with them. Their influence in the community is significant for the same reason that they are space rich - because they're good at what they do...

...We're not novices when it comes to providing incentives....Also just so it's clear we don't award straight ISK.

.. It had to do with timing, our impression of [Somer's] overall track record and capability, their niche, and habit of sponsoring events... so it's just a relationship that we wanted to explore and which we will continue exploring...

Company?? Its one dude, ONE DUDE, or one girl.. behind a computer just like you. Who started a corp with a slick website using all the classic casino moves- they make it VERY easy to get in and difficult to get out. Casinos are physically set up that way. Ease of access.

And as far as 'doing things' for the community- they give away isk to incentivize the buying out GTC which generates the out of game dollars. So no, he or she is only cycling money. From you to her.